Discourse Analysis in Two News Stories - A Comparative Case

Abstract

There is power in the hierarchy of society. This power is expressed in politics through force or language. In more modern societies, the use of language exceeds force. We stabilize things among people via the language, and that is why power is included in language. People and media conceal their ideologies beneath language, yet they unconsciously transfer these ideologies to the listener through particular patterns in their speech. Even they force these ideologies on listeners without them knowing. The investigation of form allows us move beyond it and discover the listener's or writer's power, ideology, social status, culture, spirit etc. The investigation of lexis and specific constructs and the knowledge of the listeners’ or speakers’ social status and their relationships can assist us to know what is beyond the language. This helps us to know what is transferred but not expressed. Hence, in this paper, we will investigate two news stories with similar topics from two different newspapers with various political views by two authors whose political attitudes differ. Through the implementation of discourse analysis principles and the application of word designation and particular interpretations (naming), nominalization, the application of active versus passive and the use of various sentence patterns, we have concluded that although these authors are reporting the same news in terms of information, they are, consciously or subconsciously, suggesting and enforcing their ideologies to the readers via special linguistic patterns.