Abstract
Saudi women face many restrictions compared to other Arab or Muslim women as they have been barred (legally and or culturally) from doing many things by themselves or can only do some activities with the presence of a male guardian. Over the last two decades, there are many struggles recorded by the mass media, particularly the newspapers and the satellite channels. The media has been reported on the debates between groups demanding more rights for Saudi women and the conservative groups preserving the fundamental of Saudi's culture heavily based on the Islamic teaching and values. Hence, this paper examines the way modern standard Arabic online news of Al-Jazirah (AJ) of Saudi Arabia and BBC Arabic (BBCA) of United Kingdom portrayed the challenges faced by Saudi women in their involvement in international sporting events. This paper aims to analyse the ways that language is exploited in BBCA and AJ to report on struggles around the participation of Saudi women in sports, particularly in the used of presupposition strategies as one of discourse construction strategy utilised by the selected news outlets. Therefore, the paper critically examines news articles published by BBCA and AJ between 2010 and 2014 using a qualitative approach based on the textual-oriented Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Fairclough, media discourse of Ruth Wodak and Discourse and ideology of Van Dijk. The preliminary result shows that the two news outlets have a different way of portraying the restriction of Saudi women' participation in international sporting events according to their ideologies. Thus, at the end of the study, the researchers reveal the outlets' stand on this issue. Hence, highlight the hidden ideologies at the back of the struggles in the construction of Arabic online news discourses around Saudi women in general.
Highlights
Saudi Arabia has been widely considered as the most practising Islamic teaching country in the world as the two holiest cities among Muslim the Mecca and Medina situated
Compared to Al-Jazirah, shows that both AJ and British Broadcast Cooperation (BBC) Arabic (BBCA) have utilised presupposition strategies to presuppose to main themes regarding the Saudi women and their participation in sports namely: the involvement of Saudi women in sport is limited and the struggle between the supporter and opposer of women involvement in sports
AJ differs from BBCA as the outlet used presupposition strategies to presuppose another two essential themes of the issue namely the existence of special law to limit women from involvement in sports and the efforts to encourage Saudi women to practise sports for their health
Summary
Saudi Arabia has been widely considered as the most practising Islamic teaching country in the world as the two holiest cities among Muslim the Mecca and Medina situated. Saudi women typically portrayed in mass media as totally adhering to Islamic values and local culture rules by wearing a hijab (veil), being mother, wife and being put under a male guardian either a father, brother or husband (once she gets married) Their daily activities and social involvement are limited to family matters, women affairs and house cores. It is essential to examine the way modern standard Arabic online news of BBC Arabic (BBCA) of United Kingdom and Al-Jazirah (AJ) of Saudi Arabia represents Saudi women around the issue of women participation in sport. This topic has been chosen as it has resulted in many issues among the local society and caused lengthy debates. This paper analyses the ways that language is exploited in both news of AJ and BBCA to portray Saudi women being banned from sporting activities
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