Language of Islamophobia in Right-Wing British Newspapers

Abstract

ABSTRACT British Muslims have been at the center of Western political and media discourse in the past two decades, thanks to terrorism and increased number of Muslims in the West. Research on Muslims in the media suggests that Islam and Muslims are positioned as a “threat to security” by a section of the British news media that implies Islam as incompatible to mainstream British way of life. The present study uses Critical Discourse Analysis method to examine how three right-wing British newspapers, The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Telegraph, use language to position Islam and Muslims as culturally unassimilable and complicit in terrorism. Considering the complexity of what Islamophobia means, the paper investigates whether the language used in news articles and opinion columns is overtly or covertly Islamophobic.