Covert Ideologies Research Articles

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ideology in Selected Iraqi Memes on Facebook

Nowadays, people tend to use various ways of communication to communicate, deliver messages, express ideas and opinions and/or influence others. Due to the advancement of technology in general and social media in particular, using memes is considered one of easiest and most influential ways of spreading opinions that carry overt and covert ideologies. This study is aimed to reveal how Iraqi internet users employ these internet memes to spread their ideologies. The study takes into consideration the semiotic, linguistic and socio-cultural dimensions into consideration in analyzing the visual-textual aspects of these selected Iraqi memes to reach a better understanding of the purpose and the profound meanings of such memes that people might not fully grasp. The researcher tries critically, by using Fairclough (1989) and Wodak (2011) approaches, analysing the overt and covert ideologies implied in the language of internet memes and show how these ideologies can be used to affect others within its social-cultural context.

A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of Trump’s China-Related Political Discourses

Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper explores the concentrated focus of Trump’s China-related political discourses as well as the covert ideology of the same. Based on corpus-driven text mining tools KH Coder and Antconc, the paper found Trump’s concentrated focus on trade, Trump-Xi relationship and Korean Peninsula. Trump administration has taken a hard-line and cautious stance toward China. Trump administration’s strategies toward China reflect isolationism and protectionism. This paper provides a new linguistic angle for studies on Sino-U.S. relations process.

Speech Acts and Progressive Discourse in The Inaugural Address of President Paul Biya-6th November 2018

This paper investigates the persuasive strategies of President Biya’s public speaking as well as the covert ideology enshrined in his inaugural address. My analysis is grounded in Ruth Wodak’s assumptions in critical discourse analysis claiming that, language is not powerful on its own-it is a means to gain and maintain power by the use ‘powerful’ people make of it. This explains why the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) critically analyses the language use of those in power who have the means and opportunities to improve conditions (Wodak 2009:88) the DHA focuses on the field of politics, where it develops conceptual frameworks for political discourse. The selected corpus assesses the ideological and persuasive components of Biya’s discursive strategies.

Ideological Positioning in Presidential Inaugural Addresses: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of President Agyekum Kufour and President John Evans Ata Mills

Scholars have become interested in analysing the language used in the inaugural speeches of African presidents, likely because of the rise of multi-party democracy in a number of African countries. But there have not been many studies done on the ideological analysis of Presidential Inaugural Addresses (PIA), especially for African heads of state. Studies that have already been conducted did not focus on minor indications of ideological orientations and stances presented by these political figures in their political speeches. In this paper, we examined two Presidential Inaugural Addresses (PIAs) delivered by John Agyekum Kufuor and John Evans Atta Mills who were Presidents of the Republic of Ghana. The objective is to outline the covertly expressed ideological positions used in the selected PIAs and to ascertain possible areas of ideological divergence and convergence between the two opposing political leaders. We used a CDA approach to discourse analysis, which is predicated on Fairclough's assumption that discourse analysis aims to investigate the causal relationships between discursive practices and broader social and cultural structures, relations, and processes. More precisely, this study sought to uncover covert ideology that is 'hidden' inside the texts. The study discovered that Kufuor was more direct in his language, promoting his capitalist ideology, criticizing the previous administration, and also having the least self-criticism, whereas Mills was less direct, espoused an ideology of socialism, was less critical of others, and sounded more conciliatory.

Covert Ideologies and Sign Manipulation: a Functional Semiotic Analysis of Western vs. Arabic News Coverage of New Zealand 2019 Mosque Carnage

The primary concern of this comparative study is to explore sign manipulation in front page photographs and headlines in both Western and Arabic news reports in a humble attempt to determine how visual and verbal signs are purposefully presented to the target audience. The researchers precisely try to scrutinize and analyze covert ideological biases of such news reports not only as expressed verbally but also visually. This study exclusively hinges on the event of the New Zealand Mosque Massacre which took place during Friday Prayers on 15 March 2019 in Christchurch City, where an Australian terrorist opened fire on innocent Muslim worshippers and brutally killed fifty of them. The heinous crime has left the world in a state of mourning and utter shock. Media coverage of this attack overwhelmed the Western and the Arab newspapers as well as social media worldwide. Unfortunately, the Christchurch massacre has not been headlined as a terrorist attack by several Western news reports unlike Arabic ones. The source of the data in question mainly relies on 10 popular newspapers: five Western newspapers and five Arabic ones: Daily Mirror, The New York Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sun, Addustour, Al-Jazirah, Al-Anba, Al-Quds Al-Arabi and AL-Sharq, respectively. The data represent a random sample, so the content does not necessarily represent attitudes or perspectives of all Western and Arabic newspapers. Following the Peircean semiotic triadic model, this study tries to unveil basic ideological features and manipulative strategies that clearly depict the Australian terrorist in some Western newspapers. In addition, it bluntly and objectively shows covert racial prejudice against Muslims in western newspapers. The findings show the significance of both verbal and visual signs in news story because they enable the reporters to express their perspectives towards major events such as New Zealand mosque carnage more effectively. As a result, the use of visual images in front page headlines does not merely serve to represent the reality of that horrible event in a visual form; rather, it is an essential tool of persuasion and tampering with the public opinion by means of insinuating some seriously embedded ideologies.

A Critical Analysis on the Representation of Muslims in Britain in the Daily Mail Newspaper: Applying Discourse Analysis

The pervasiveness of mass media has become an inevitable side of our daily life; the ubiquity of the latter has allowed an unprecedented influx of information that is not necessarily value free and objective. The news that is present on our devices is full of ideological insinuations and is undoubtedly value laden. News corporations have spread enormously and reached different homes, especially with the advent of technology which permitted an outreach to distant various communities with a simple click. There are daily articles released claiming to have the most breaking and exclusive scoops of news that was not covered. Nevertheless, people find themselves overwhelmed and unable to differentiate between what is authentic and what is not. Not only that, but they ostensibly newspaper claim to have an innocent editorial line that matches worldwide media ethics, the truth is certainly a far cry from what is publicized. Every day, covert ideologies and doctrines are passed through news articles that target specific communities that either tend to vilify it exclude to perpetuate certain clichés and stereotypes about it. So this paper aims to critically analyze an article in the Daily Mail British newspaper which was written on British Muslim minorities, it address the issue of religion in a generalized way using extreme categorization, so as to infiltrate and increase division and animosity in British community. The paper uses a set of critical methods of discourses analysis to uncover hidden and even explicit messages ideologies in the article that. The analysis shows how implicit strategies are utilized to display a binary line between US and THEM. The THEM group is synonymous with extremism, irrationality and oppression against women whereas US is portrayed as a group serving justice and eradicate fanaticism and radicalism.

Social Domination and Marginalization in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery: Critical Discourse Analysis and Appraisal Study

<em>Ideology is sometimes hidden away, especially in language, since language is the closest aspect of human, for it is used every day. One of the examples is covert ideology within the short story. This is why critical discourse analysis is needed to uncover this kind of thing. The short story scrutinized in this research is Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. In order not to merely reveal an assumption, this research combines the critical discourse analysis theory by Fairclough, specifically termed Dialectical-Relational approach, as the philosophical theory with Appraisal study as the linguistic theory. All of the sentences and clauses in the story are the data of the research. The data, then, are close read for more accurate analysis. It is observed that the ideologies concealed by the text are social domination and marginalization through tradition. However, those social wrongs are hard to abolish, since they are even desired by the society; the tradition is believed to bring prosperity to the village regardless of wicked impact to the individual it brings, related to metanarratives, doxa, and symbolic violence, and fidelity towards the actor of domination. Therefore, there should be law to govern the habit harmful for others, so that all of the society rights can be protected.</em>

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II SPEECH TO THE NATION ON CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been a crucial field in social sciences that aims to investigate the language structures in a social and cultural context. Furthermore, it scrutinizes the relationship between language, power, and ideology in political discourse as well as specific discourses such as media and literature. In other words, CDA is utilized to reveal the covert ideology in political speeches by focusing on language use. Various political speeches of significant politicians have been investigated by researchers so far. The common problem of different countries is coronavirus these days. Hence, the most popular speeches are generally about coronavirus. The purpose of this study is to investigate Queen Elizabeth II's speech to the nation on Coronavirus which is a call for unity. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar is used as a framework to analyze Queen’s speech and raise readers’ awareness in terms of comprehending the underlying messages in the speech based on three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function, and textual function.

Language Situation in Ripky (Chernihiv): Results of Focus Group Research

This article highlights the results of recent focus group interviews about language use carried out in the small town of Ripky and in nearby rural villages. Ripky and environs are situated in the northwestern part of the region of Chernihiv in central northern Ukraine. This research complements a more extensive study devoted to the analysis of the language situation of this area that attempted to obtain a deeper understanding of the language attitudes (including covert ideology) of this administrative district. This territory is interesting from dialectal and sociolinguistic viewpoints, as several language varieties coexist. This is also a consequence of the geographic proximity of the three main east Slavic countries: Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation. The qualitative data obtained from four focus groups in the local secondary school of Ripky are of particular significance because they clarify the language/dialect selection of the speaker, thus adding information to the previously outlined framework of the peculiar language situation in this district.

A Comparative Study of the Gap Between De-Jure and De-Facto Language Policies: The Case of Kyrgyzstan and Hungary

Summary The purpose of this study was to find the main factors that guide language policies and discover correlations between top-down and bottom-up ideologies in the context of Hungary and Kyrgyzstan. To accomplish this, the study created a database of relevant official documents, photos of linguistic landscapes and qualitative data. The study analyzed the documented top-down decisions from historical perspectives, and then compared them with the data collected from interviews and surveys, and from the collection of photos. The participants included both high-ranking political figures, professors, students and random citizens. Results showed that the official policies often do not comprehensively match with the people’s beliefs, attitudes and desires. Findings also imply that using either document analysis, or the method of linguistic landscape, or qualitative methods alone, might not sufficiently validate the results in the absence of each other, since errors may top up from various discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up arrangements, as well as from overt and covert ideologies.

Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in Media Discourse Studies: Unmask the Mass Media

The purpose of this paper is to know how CDA unraveling the covert ideologies while researching the existence of power in media discourse studies. This study reviewed sixteen journal articles to examine the ways and methods to discover the social phenomenon while revealing the authentic identity of the social actors. It was found that CDA has been used extensively to unmask the ideologies which classify the oppressed group while presenting a positive image for the group with the highest authority. The theory proposed by Teun Van Dijk seems the most used theories used when it related to unmask the media profiling. There are three elements in the theory of CDA Van Djik that plays an important role in the research is Macrostructure, superstructure and microstructure. This study manage to reveals that mass media play an important role in the production of trust, prejudice and dominance over social contexts.

The Struggle this Time is the Struggle for Our Independence: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Historic 7th March Speech

Political speeches are not mere linguistic texts encoded in verbal or written form. They also carry covert ideologies which are embedded in a country’s social, political and cultural context. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be used to investigate such interaction between discourse (speech/text), its covert ideology and the context. This paper sets out to analyse the historic 7th March, 1971 speech of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which has lately been recognised by UNESCO as part of the world’s documentary heritage. Based on the work of Fairclough (1989, 1992, 2001) and Halliday (1978, 1994), a shared, discursive analytical framework within the CDA paradigm was employed to carry out the investigation. The analysis of 94 clauses identified a mutual existence of multiple linguistic and ideological patterns and strategies including the personal pronouns, mood blocks, modality and tense, the reference of the then-socio-political situation as well as the depiction of power relations between the speaker and the audiences. These strategies were intertwined in a wholesome way, thus revealing the ingenuity of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s leadership and his rhetoric skill. The study, by analysing the selected speech, attempts to fill the gap in CDA-based linguistic studies of political texts in the Bangladeshi context. The author believes that this attempt, in tandem, will act as a motivation and centre of attention for further scholarly endeavor in this field.

ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE STRATEGIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN THE INAUGURAL SPEECHES OF BARRISTER IBRAHIM SHEHU SHEMA

Inaugural speeches are crucial to political processes because they are avenues to mobilize, seek for support, persuade the people and consolidate their loyalty throughout the administration. Political actors,therefore, use the medium to persuade, manipulate, or simply inform their audience about their administration's policies. Their speeches are carefully crafted to convey their messages which definitely have ideological intents because political speeches are not value-free or neutral in terms of ideological leanings. In this study, the authors investigate the discourse strategiesin the inaugural speeches of Barrister ShehuShema. This is done by operationalizing some tenets of Critical Discourse Analysis with the aim of uncovering covert ideologies enshrined in the inaugural speeches. Several linguistic facilities such as allusions, conversational tone, pronominal references, positive face-strategies, etc are used by the speaker to change the orientation of the people and sold his party agenda to them.All these linguistic tools, as wielded by BarristerShema, help to underscore the fact that 'ideologiestruly reside in texts' and cannot be read off. The findings revealed that the languageused in the speeches are consciously and skillfully deployed to champion his party ideologies of inclusiveness, fairness and justice, continuity, acceptance of religious diversity, and unity

Comparative Study of Linguistic Features Used in the Inaugural Speeches of American Presidents

Language is a very useful and powerful tool for communication and especially in political discourse it is very significant. During a political speech the leader tries to express, declare, commit, emphasize or motivate the listeners by using one’s ideology and power. Political personalities speak in different modes and tones and they announce their planning and aim to keep all aspects under their control and reduce the worry of the people. The aim of this paper is to identify the linguistic features used in the inaugural speeches of selected American Presidents and to analyze their functions using Critical Discourse Analysis theory proposed by Fairclough and the theory of Persuasion postulated by Aristotle. Researchers selected inaugural speeches of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The study was an attempt to relate the inaugural discourse to the discursive social processes and to find covert ideology and power factors in the speeches. The findings revealed significant differences among the different linguistic features, discursive practices and rhetoric devices used in inaugural speeches of the two US presidents.

Whose parallellingualism? Overt and covert ideologies in Danish university language policies

AbstractThis paper aims to contribute to the study of multilingualism in the workplace by analysing top-down language policies advocating parallellingualism at Denmark’s eight universities. Parallellingualism, a key concept in Nordic language policy, has been suggested as a way to ensure an equitable balance between English and the Nordic language(s) without the former encroaching on the latter. Drawing on theories which consider discourses about language to constitute positioning for or against a particular social, moral or political order (Cameron 2012), the paper contrasts state- and institution-authored university language policies. The overall aim is to understand what the different actors mean when they invoke ‘parallellingualism’. Supplementary data consist of a corpus of newspaper articles on the topic of the use of English and Danish at Danish universities published in the same period as the university language policies. It is argued that while both state and institution-authored policies overtly advocate ‘parallellingualism’ as a guiding principle for managing multilingualism at Danish universities, in the state-authored policies, this seems to mean ‘more Danish’, while in the institution-authored policies it seems to mean ‘more English’. Some underlying ideologies of each of these positions are proposed before the implications for workplace discourse are discussed.

An Ideological Reading of <i>Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories</i> Using Critical Literacy

Uncle Arthur’s bedtime stories stands as the principal and archetypal Seventh-day Adventist children’s literature text. It is heavily inscribed with distinct ideologies, which are specifically referential to Seventh-day Adventist dogma and faith. As children read these texts, they are exposed to, and affected by, these ideologies. This thesis seeks to expose the overt and covert ideologies of the text so that their power can be recognised and their value evaluated. This is accomplished through a brief investigation of the author and the publishing institution that conceived the texts, then through an explanation of the development and aims of critical literacy reading processes. These reading processes are then applied to the text in order to render explicit the belief structures constructed into the text which sustain the stories’ proposed ‘truths’ and ‘meanings’. This investigation has revealed that Uncle Arthur’s bedtime stories assumes levels of authority over truth, interpretation and the reader, which it does not intrinsically command. This assumption of authority allows the text to propose and defend one-sided ‘truths’, spurious arguments and potentially unethical behaviour.

Positivism and patriotic militancy: The influence of covert ideologies on students' reactions to September 11, 2001.

This study examined the relationship between personal epistemology, as measured by the Attitudes about Reality Scale, attitudes about the September 11 World Trade Center disaster, and patterns of blame assigned to various individuals and circumstances associated with the crisis. Data were collected within 1 month of the disaster and 6 months later from undergraduate students at a university from which people could see the destruction of the World Trade Center and from another university 200 miles from the site. A significant relationship was found between positivist attitudes about reality and support for militant government policies at both universities and at both time periods. This relationship was not different for the two universities and was significantly stronger at both institutions 6 months after the attacks. Students near the disaster site were more supportive of a strong response. However, differences between the two universities in the way that demographic and other markers related to covert a...

Who's Zoomin’ Who? A Feminist, Queer Content Analysis of “Interdisciplinary” Human Sexuality Textbooks

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiohgies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Them and Us: Hidden Ideologies‐Differences in Degree or Kind?

This article looks at three measuring instruments—the Right‐Wing Authoritarianism Scale, the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, and the Attitudes About Reality Scale—used to examine covert ideology and its relationship to social and political beliefs and behaviors. These scales share similar ideological components involving abdication of moral responsibility to an outside agent, belief that one's own ideology represents the only form of truth, and negative beliefs about individuals who are not members of one's own group. Evidence is provided to suggest that radical fundamentalists and some groups within U.S. society share ideological beliefs that differ in degree rather than kind. These beliefs make it easy for them to divide the world into “us” and “them” and exacerbate the present conflict.

CULTURE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA AND OTHER PSYCHOTIC DISORDERS

The comparative study of schizophrenia and related disorders across cultures has come a long way since Kraepelin advocated its cause, following his trip to Java at the beginning of the last century. The principal development since then has been the burgeoning of interest in the field, culminating in innovative and ambitious international collaborative research by the WHO. Despite reservations about covert ideology or about the more overt methodologic difficulties, the balance of evidence from these and similar studies suggests that: It is feasible to conduct such research despite the numerous hazards. There is a certain uniformity to the way schizophrenia presents globally; there are equally significant cultural differences. The outcome of schizophrenia appears to be better in developing, than developed cultures; reasons for this are far from clear, nevertheless, it can be safely assumed that culturally-determined processes, whether social or environmental, are partly responsible. Overall, the study of schizophrenia in different cultures has proved useful in establishing the pancultural and the culture-specific properties of this and related disorders.