A Critical Discourse Analysis of The Los Angeles Times and Tehran Times on the Representation of Iran’s Nuclear Program

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how ideological differences manifest themselves in the discourse of The Los Angeles Times and Tehran Times dealing with Iran’s nuclear program to have a wake-up call about the power of language in changing one’s view about the events. After the critical analyses of six news reports based on van Dijk’s (2000) framework, it was found that the two newspapers represent the same issues differently, according to their different ideologies by using two macro-strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation which are realized by other discursive strategies such as: lexicalization, presupposition, consensus, hyperbole, illegality and disclaimer. Some implications of the findings are suggested.