Subliminal Ideology in Media: Representation of Iran's Nuclear Energy in American Networks and Newspapers

Abstract

Media texts are manipulated by different hands in order to justify their own act and get positive image in the public. This study concentrates on the linguistic manifestation of “Iran's nuclear energy” in American newspapers and networks. The model applied for the analysis of headlines and news reports is Critical Linguistics– pioneered by Fowler (1991), and Halliday (1985)– which considers them on the basis of lexico-gramatical features. The system of transitivity, passivization and nominalization is applied for the analysis of headlines and lexical one for the analysis of news reports. So, the study will call the attention of the public to the critical understanding of the lexis, strategies and structures utilized in the media text. Because the linguistic features utilized in the newspapers are very authentic and real to life they can be informative source for language learning classes but we should be meticulous of the ideology lying behind the linguistic structures.