Islamophobia in Global Media Narratives: A Qur’anic and Prophetic Counter-discourse

Applying Critical Discourse Analysis as a conceptual framework for investigating gender stereotypes in political media discourse

This article examines the linguistic strategies employed by political parties in crafting campaign messages through election banners, utilizing a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach. The study focuses on identifying language patterns and cohesive devices found in five campaign banners representing various political parties. This research addresses a notable gap in the literature on Indonesian language studies, particularly in the domain of critical discourse analysis of political visual texts such as campaign banners, which have received limited scholarly attention. It offers a novel perspective on the ideological construction of meaning within outdoor media discourse as a form of language practice in Indonesia’s socio-political context. This study adopts a qualitative descriptive method guided by Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis. Data analysis was conducted through three stages: textual analysis, analysis of discourse practice, and analysis of social practice. Each banner was analyzed to uncover hidden meanings, linguistic structures, as well as rhetorical and persuasive strategies embedded within the campaign messages. The findings reveal that each political party exhibits distinct linguistic characteristics shaped by its ideological stance, voter segmentation, and political communication strategy. Populist diction, repetition, collective pronouns, and causal conjunctions were identified as key cohesive devices used to construct political identity and reinforce legitimacy. The practical implications of this study suggest that an understanding of linguistic strategies in campaign banners can be effectively integrated into Indonesian language education, particularly in teaching persuasive texts and political media discourse. Furthermore, the results may serve as a valuable reference for enhancing students’ critical literacy regarding political language, while fostering ethical awareness in the use of language in public discourse.

The war unleashed by Russia in 2022 is widely presented in online versions of English-language newspapers; Ukraine is constantly in the epicentre of the world news. This study highlights political and ideological contexts of the war in Ukraine, the sociopolitical and cognitive aspects of news according to an interdisciplinary approach considering the language as a social practice. The article highlights the polarization in the presentation of the events and the main actors entitled in the discursive strategies, representing the dichotomy In- versus Out-group. The study is aimed at the investigation of the ideological structures and their manifesting linguistic devices in political discourse based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of discursive strategies for constructing the images of Ukraine and Russia in the British and American press. The integrated Critical Discourse Analysis was applied to the research of the news to study the media discourse and the language, where CDA focuses on social practice, social power and ideology. Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) is used to research the ideology of war images presented in the language of news reports. The relevance of this study determined by the aim is to show the main discursive strategies of polaeization in political media discourse. The research methods of the article combine three vectors of the analysis by Fairclough with explanatory tools (by van Dijk), and the elements of stylistic analysis and Critical Metaphor Analysis. The illustrative material was collected by information search and continuous sample from the open access newspapers and magazines issued in the US and Great Britain (The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others). Conclusion. This research argues that polarisation is being demonstrated in the media discourse on the war in Ukraine in 2022. The taxonomy of the identified discursive strategies of polarization deployed in the media political discourse includes labelling, evidentiality, number game, hyperbolism, victimization, personalization and analogy, that can either be used singly or intervened. The discursive strategy of evidentiality is applied to authorities, officials, witnesses that are accepted as trustworthy sources of data; the number game strategy combined with victimization are verbalized by metaphoric simile, metonymy, enumerating and magnifying the numbers with the modifying adverbs; the strategy of hyperbole conveys the positive impression of the in-group and negative acts magnification of the out-group verbalized by metaphor, metonymy, metaphtonymy; the personalization strategy is deployed with the purpose of foregrounding the positive actions of the in-group that implies negative out-group actions; the strategy of analogy is applied in the comparison of the war in Ukraine and the struggle of the Ukrainians for their independence with other historical events. Linguistic means used to realize the discursive strategies of polarization include the conceptual metaphor, metonymy, simile, idioms, metaphtonymy, intertextual allusion and personification.

The main objective of the article is to conduct a critical media discourse analysis as presented in the Polish and international editions of the "Newsweek" magazine in the years 2001-2006 and 2012-2016; the subject of which was climate change. The introduction provides the definitions of the key terms, such as: the greenhouse effect and critical discourse analysis (CDA). The theoretical part presents the most important assumptions of the CDA and presents a characteristic of the weekly. The results of the conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis partially lead to varying conclusions. Based on the CDA, the hypothesis was assumed that more attention was provided to climate change in the international (English) edition of "Newsweek", than in the Polish-language edition. Rejected in turn was the hypothesis, according to which, more importance to climate change and their repercussions was provided in the discourse within the last 5years of publication of the weekly than in the discourse from the years 2001-2006. As a result of comparison of both discourses, the disturbing fact that media discourse did not present and encourage among the readers an active stance in favour of the climate was noticed. It is the task of this influential weekly, the message of which reaches many people, not only to provide knowledge and shape specific values or view, but also to encourage and popularise attitudes in favour of the climate. If man wants to continue to live on earth, then one of their goals is to modify the form of discourse by entities responsible for its form.

In most traditional accounts of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) text and discourse are viewed as being the product of a one-directional flow of information from a handful of dominant (and powerful) text producers to an seemingly subordinate mass of readers who passively consume texts. To this end, CDA proclaims an interest in both production and reception factors as they are reflected in social practices (Fetzer & Johansson, 2008). Yet, in the CDA literature actual empirical data focusing on reception factors have often been lacking and/or have been limited to the researcher’s personal reading of a text. With the advent and spread of converged media platforms (Herring, 2013) and the new discourse practices this entails such factors need to be reconsidered and the more prominent role played by users in both reception and (co-)construction of texts embraced (Boyd, 2014). This work focuses on the importance of user-generated content in user comments written in response to online newspaper editorials and proposes that such commenting practices not only change media discourse and social practice but also, ultimately, may upend the traditional flow of media discourse, transforming it from a primarily top-down, one-to-many model to a more interactive and participatory model that fosters many-to-many participation schemes (KhosraviNik & Zia, 2014). In traditional print newspapers text consumers had few opportunities to respond directly to a topic they felt strongly about if not in the form of a “letter to the editor” which was not guaranteed publication. Furthermore, editorials, as the official mouthpiece of a news organisation, were seen as playing a predominant role in evaluating issues, forming public opinion and eliciting reader support and agreement (Henry & Tator, 2002; Moon, 1994; Van Dijk, 1991). Today, most online newspapers allow users to comment on both news reports and opinion articles, including editorials, in which they can react to as well as interact with media texts. Such social interaction gives the (CDA) researcher access to valuable user-generated content which can help to gauge, in part, the degree to which such media texts as editorials still have in forming and swaying public opinion. By focusing on reader comments in a limited set of editorials (dealing with the European migrant crisis), this study attempts to determine readers’ varying opinions about the issue and how this reflects and/or diverges from the view(s) presented by the editorial. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the empirical data (the editorials and reader comments) aim to demonstrate the various representations of society inherent in online newspaper discourse. In particular, the analysis focuses on the linguistic means adopted by text producers to align themselves with (proximization) or differentiate themselves from (distancing) from the views presented in the editorial. Thus, the work is interested in the ways in which powerful public discourses are received by the general public through the interactive feature of text commenting available on many media platforms. Text commenting, in turn, is seen as crucial to understanding how certain texts are received and transformed by different types of (social) media users in the online newspaper.

Despite the invaluable role that women play in the peacebuilding process, statistics still show this as a male-dominated field. Since media narratives have the power to frame reality providing the public with preferred lenses to understand it, this study asks, How do media narratives frame the role of Afghan women in conflict resolution? To address this question, we combine Frame Theory (Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58) and Critical Discourse Analysis (van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 466–485). Wiley Blackwell) to explore media narratives before and after the Taliban came into power in August 2021. The samples include 32 articles published between 2018 and 2022 on different sources ranging from traditional news outlets to magazines, newsrooms, intergovernmental organizations, and think tanks. Findings show that media narratives perpetuate unfair gendered expectations, failing to effectively render the irreplaceable role of women in peacebuilding. Frames confirm the double bind of hegemonic femininity (Schneiker, A. (2021). The UN and women's marginalization in peace negotiations. International Affairs, 97(4), 1165–1182) as women are subject to different expectations – the exception presents them as courageous, yet the norm frames them as being too vulnerable and without a voice.

The subject of the article is the history of discourse development, the current situation, the characteristics of language at different stages, and its problems. The object of the study includes various practices of political media discourse in Chinese and foreign communication space, including traditional media, documentaries, virtual space and other media. We accomplished the following tasks in the research : 1) Described the history of the development of political discourse in China and the characteristics of each stage of its development in both Chinese and international dimensions. 2) Identified the problems and challenges facing the development of Chinese political discourse at present. 3) Attempt to find ways to solve the problems of discourse development and look into the future. The paper uses the methods of case analysis, comparative and descriptive analysis, as well as generalization and outline. Critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, narrative theory and intercultural communication methodology served as the theoretical basis. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it presents a comprehensive picture of the development and transformation of Chinese political media discourse in recent years from a macroscopic perspective, and summarizes the features and new trends in Chinese political communication. The results of the study show that Chinese political media discourse has achieved the transition from unidirectional ideological output to diversification of content and form. From a linguistic perspective, it can be determined that Chinese political media discourse at this stage faces developmental challenges such as monotonous vocabulary, limited narrative, lack of audience adaptation and cultural differences. In the context of the new era, Chinese political media discourse should enrich vocabulary and sentences, utilize different linguistic styles of speech, change narrative perspective and adapt to cultural differences.

The purpose of the present study is to use transitivity analysis to investigate gender variations in political media discourse from the point of view of male and female columnists. To attain this purpose, this paper adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Halliday’s theory of transitivity process types. Literature shows that gender variation is one of the key elements affecting language. However, variation in gender studies, particularly in article writing, has not been recently addressed in relation to transitivity analysis. To scrutinize types of transitivity involving material, mental, relational, verbal, existential, and behavioral processes, qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed to achieve a deep understanding of transitivity process types. Paired Sample T-Test has also been employed to investigate whether there is a significant difference in gender variations pertaining to frequencies of process types of transitivity. The results revealed that the material process has been the most frequent process used by female and male political columnists and has highly dominated the discourse in both articles. In addition, the finding showed that there is no significant difference in gender variations pertaining to the frequencies of process types of transitivity. Analyzing participants’ roles and circumstances elements could provide more pertinent data for further research.

The main subject of this study is a detailed literature review analysis of critical discourse researches made in the Turkish language. As a unique discipline, critical discourse analysis has played an important research tool role in social sciences. Critical discourse analysis, which emerged in the late 1980s, can be considered a relatively new research method in our country. This discipline has developed around the schools of three different academics. One of the leading figures in this field is Teun A. van Dijk (b. 1943). Van Dijk, the founder of the Socio-cognitive Approach, is one of the important names cited in the analysis of political and media discourses. Another name is Norman Fairclough (b.1941). Fairclough's 3-Dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis method also constitutes an important space in discourse studies. Another significant figure in the field of critical discourse analysis is Ruth Wodak (b. 1950). Wodak, the founder of the Discourse Historical approach, first developed this method to analyze the biased anti-Semitic language and imagery in Waldheim's electoral programs in the Austrian presidential election that was held in 1986. Since then, the methodology developed by Wodak has been useful for discourse analysis of cases with an important historical dimension. This study aims to explain the approaches of the discourse experts mentioned above and to compile critical discourse analysis and corpus analysis studies conducted in political and media texts in Turkish academia. As a result of this study, which was carried out within the scope of the qualitative research method, important insights into the basic features, possibilities, and limitations of critical discourse analysis research in Turkish academia have been obtained. Some of the insights obtained can be summarized as follows: It has been determined that the critical discourse analysis studies available in the Council of Higher Education online database include a total number of 54 master’s and doctoral theses published since 2003. Among these theses, the number of the theses prepared in Turkish is 23. As a result of the Google Scholar search, it has been found that the number of Turkish studies conducted since 2003 is more than 90. The most cited research among these studies is the article “Discourse Analysis” published in 2008. The main limitation of most of the critical discourse analysis studies made in the Turkish language is about the usage of the translations of the works authored by the above-mentioned experts who developed this discipline, and this usage limits the number of resources concerning the method because not every major work has been translated into Turkish. In the light of the findings, the ways to improve the discipline in Turkish academia shows the importance of this study.

This study aims to analyse power, dominance, racial discrimination, and power exercise that is narratively established through a subtle network of metaphors in a fiction work, The Kite Runner. The Kite Runner exposes the socioeconomic conditions in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, revealing the differences between power manipulation and the domestic performance of powerful social groups. The work also explores how religious and status dichotomies circumvent the progress of minority groups and align their physical features with their receding power and financial features. An adopted model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) indicates power, economic, and racial dichotomies in the book while revealing the shades of metaphors through conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) in a post-colonial text. Dogmatic ideographs are perpetuated in every public sphere through language and established gradually through unprovoking tools of metaphors. The metaphors are uncovered through CMT, providing a helpful understanding of different conceptual domains. Rhetorically, CDA helped reveal the racial discrimination, human rights violations, and hatred against minorities embedded in the selected metaphors. This investigation is very significant in connection with the current scenario of cross-cultural studies, as it mainly depicts the prevailing social trends regarding two different settings. The study may benefit intelligentsia interested in post-colonial and decolonial discourse and diaspora literature. Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, Metaphor, Power Expansion, Racial Discrimination Agbo, I. I., Kadiri, G. C., & Ijem, B. U. (2018). Critical metaphor analysis of political discourse in Nigeria. English Language Teaching, 11(5), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n5p95 Burke, K. (2017). A rhetoric of motives. 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New Political Economy, 3(1), 5–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563469808406330 Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Hosseini, K. (2003). The kite runner. New York, NY: Riverhead Books. Jawaid, A., Batool, M., Arshad, W., Kaur, P., & ul Haq, M. I. (2024). English language pronunciation challenges faced by tertiary students. Contemporary Journal of Social Science Review, 2(04), 2104-2111. https://contemporaryjournal.com/index.php/14/article/view/361 Jawaid, A. (2014). Benchmarking in TESOL: A Study of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013. English Language Teaching, 7(8), 23-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n8p23 Jensen, D. F. N. (2006, April). Metaphors as a bridge to understanding educational and social contexts. International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. https://sites.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_1/HTML/jensen.htm Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 202–251). Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Reddy, M. (1979). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 284–324). Cambridge University Press. Talib, N., & Fitzgerald, R. (2016). Micro–meso–macro movements: A multi-level critical discourse analysis framework to examine metaphors and the value of truth in policy texts. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(5), 531–547. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2016.1182932 Van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006 Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), 249–283. Van Dijk, T. A. (2005). Discourse and racism in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 62–86). London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about: A summary of its history, important concepts and developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1–13). London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R. (2007). Pragmatics and discourse analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Objective: This study aims to explore the integration of Islamic teachings on tolerance and multicultural education within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The focus is on analyzing the values of democracy, tolerance, and multiculturalism derived from the Qur'an and Islamic education, emphasizing their relevance in promoting global peace and inclusivity. The study is motivated by fundamental Islamic principles, including prohibitions against denouncing other religions, respect for human dignity regardless of belief, interfaith communication, freedom of religion, the prohibition of forced adherence to any religion, maintaining positive assumptions (husnudzan) about others, and acknowledgment of diverse religious practices. Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework is grounded in the intersection of Islamic ethics and the SDGs, particularly Goal 4 (Quality Education), Goal 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Literature Review: The literature review highlights previous studies on tolerance in Islamic teachings and their implementation in educational settings, showcasing how Islamic education aligns with global goals. Methods: This research adopts a qualitative field study approach, collecting data through in-depth observations and interviews with educators and students at the University of Muhammadiyah Surakarta. Results: The findings reveal that democratic and tolerant multicultural values in Islamic education are implemented through three learning models: (1) Baitul Arqam for Muslim students during semesters 1-2, (2) Classical Learning for non-Muslim students in semesters 1-2, and (3) Integrated Classical Learning for both Muslim and non-Muslim students in semesters 3-4. The study demonstrates that these models effectively foster a culture of inclusivity and tolerance among students from diverse backgrounds. Implications: The findings have significant implications for developing educational frameworks that contribute to SDG targets by promoting peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. Novelty: The novelty of this research lies in linking Islamic educational practices with the SDGs, offering a unique perspective on the role of religious education in achieving global sustainability.

This article is devoted to studying of the phenomenon of censorship and self-censorship in the modern American and Russian political media discourse. The authors analyse the pre-election speeches and the publications in the social networks of K. A. Sobchak and V. V. Zhirinovsky, as well as of D. Trump and H. Clinton. The purpose of the article, which consists in conducting a comparative linguocultural study of the mechanisms of censoring and self-censoring information in the modern American and Russian political media discourse, is achieved by using a comparative method, linguocultural analysis, a complex method of lexical and semantic, stylistic, interpretive, and emotive analysis. The analysis of the material shows that traditional forms of censorship in Russian political media discourse are not identified, but they can be found in the media space of the USA, causing a relatively weak public reaction among the communicators. In media space of the USA and Russia, the absence of formal external censorship restrictions leads to the updating of self-censorship to maintain the integrity of the manifestations of the language personality of a politician. Censorship in modern American and Russian media environment lies in such a structuring of information, that deliberately prevents the addressee from interpreting the information in an undesirable way. Self-censorship in modern media environment of the USA and Russia is characterized by an increase of the volume of information and the relative preservation of its valuable aspect. In addition, media discourse can be implicitly censored by filtering the comments under social media publications or by artificially increasing the number of approving reactions to them (by getting «cheat likes»). Self-censorship may use some features of the response to visual elements, when the picture and text supplement each other, causing the desired for the addressee emotional response. Hypertext can also direct the emotional response in the desirable direction, referring to the beneficial for the addressee elements of media discourse.

The paper is a critical discourse analysis of political discourse. It relies on van Dijk’s socio- cognitive approach which employs miscellaneous linguistic methodologies as input to support the interdisciplinarity of the socio- cognitive base. The paper adopts an eclectic model that combines pragmatic and semantic concepts as a methodology for the socio- cognitive approach. The pragma- semantic interface has always produced better holistic, integrated, and objective linguistic inference. The eclectic model combines Sabet & Zhang’s (2015) pragmatic functions of vague expressions (on the pragmatic level) and the semantic macrostructures and the semantic microstructures (on the semantic level). Wodak (2007) emphasises the vitality of the pragmatics in any critical discussion that analyses indirect and inferred linguistic techniques and biased utterances in order to identify and evaluate political discourse . Since vague expressions overlap sometimes in performing pragmatic functions, the pragmatic component of the eclectic model is further supported by the semantic concepts of semantic macrostructure and semantic microstructure. The data is collected from the White House Press Releases (issued in 2014 when ISIS took hold of major Iraqi cities) on Iraq. Such discourse is globally interesting and can shape public opinion about the critical events and realities in Iraq at that time. The analysis has proved the workability of the pragmatic- semantic integration and the paper has come up with a set of concluding remarks. Keywords: critical discourse analysis; semantic macrostructure; semantic microstructure; van Dijk’s socio- cognitive; vagueness; White House Press Release

A woman’s maturity places her somewhere between youth and old age. A woman trapped between the two receives advice to help her break free. The aim of the study was to reconstruct the linguistic ways of understanding a woman’s maturity and its social implications. The analysis was performed with the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a research concept that allows the visualising of inequalities and relations of power. The definition of the concept as well as linguistic strategies representing various ways of striving for youth (reversing, lying, avoiding, fighting) and categories of disciplining such as appropriate appearance, sexuality and fi nancial position, were specified during this analysis.

Amidst escalating climate threats and the increasing frequency of natural disasters, media discourse has become a central arena for shaping public risk perception, mobilization strategies, and collective responses. Metaphor serves as a key cognitive and discursive instrument for meaning construction, framing interpretation, and embedding culturally resonant models of perception. The analysis of metaphorical framing provides insight into the mechanisms of crisis communication, environmental rhetoric, and collective sense-making. This study examines and systematizes metaphorical frames in English-language media discourse on natural disasters. The corpus comprises BBC and Voice of America texts (2023–2024) covering wildfires and floods, thus enabling a symmetrical comparison of British and American media ecosystems. The theoretical foundation integrates conceptual metaphor theory, frame semantics, critical discourse analysis, and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). The methodology combines corpus-based procedures (frequency, collocational, and contextual analysis in AntConc) with the MIPVU protocol for metaphor identification, ensuring reliability through corpus symmetry and inter-annotator verification. The study introduces the concept of a “frame index” – a quantitative metric for assessing metaphorical intensity thereby expanding the methodological repertoire of cognitive-discursive analysis. The research aims to identify the dominant types of metaphorical framing of natural disasters, describe their cognitive-discursive functions, and trace their variation across media platforms and disaster types. The findings contribute to the advancement of cognitive linguistics and media discourse analysis and hold practical value for enhancing environmental communication, media education, and editorial standards in reporting climate risks.