Negative Other-presentation Research Articles

Just War: Critical Discourse Analysis of US Presidential Speeches

War discourse plays an important role in the current political and media agenda. This CDA-based study aimed at identifying how the nature of conflict affects the discursive practices used for conflict representation. The concept of war discourse was thoroughly described in view of a just war tradition. Two contexts of extensively covered conflicts were chosen for investigation, namely the American-led intervention in the Syrian civil war and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. These military conflicts that seem different at first sight were mediated by direct and indirect US involvement. The research data were drawn from two US Presidents’ speeches and examined through CDA (van Dijk 1993, 2005), relating language use to its social, political and historical context. The analysis revealed a number of identical war discourse elements, their linguistic and extralinguistic (historical and cultural) peculiarities. These elements include a) the US conflict management strategies, b) negative other-presentation, c) positive self-presentation, d) a historical context of the US participation in similar conflicts, and e) a call to action. Combined together, these elements form a typical pattern, which can be used for both text analysis and text production.

A discursive reading of ideology, dominance and resistance in political texts

The North (or the West) considers itself superior to the South and has thus arrogated to itself the right to ‘guide’ it in many a sphere, something that has gone down badly with some countries in the South, so much so that some of them resist this domination. It is against this background that this paper analyses four texts from the two contending geo-political zones to untangle discursive strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other presentation. Using Teun van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square, the paper analyses the texts concerning aspects of ideology, dominance and resistance. It has been found that Donald Trump and the European Parliament (representing the North), as well as John Pombe Joseph Magufuli and Nicolas Maduro (representing the South), deployed semantic macrostructures, macro-speech acts, the active voice and lexical resources, among others, to do positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. The paper contends that the two sides deployed the strategies because the North wants to continue dominating and exploiting the South and the South wants to liberate itself from the chain the former placed around its neck centuries ago. About the South’s goal, the paper shows how the South could go it alone, with a bias towards Africa.

“Mapping and projecting otherness in media discourse of the Russia–Ukraine war”

Abstract This paper shows how otherness, having a negative representation potential, is covered in media discourse with a focus on the first day of the Russia–Ukraine war. In this article, I specifically investigate the representation of otherness that weaves the web of relations within the “us versus them” narrative espoused most strongly by Teun A. Van Dijk (1992. Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse and Society 3. 87–118, 2002. Discourse and racism. In David Goldberg & John Solomos (eds.), The Blackwell companion to racial and ethnic studies, 145–159. Oxford: Blackwell) and further developed within the premises of a proximisation theory (e.g., Cap 2013. Proximization: The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Chilton 2004. Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge). This framework concerns the positive self-representation of Ukraine and its performance contrasted with Russia’s negative other-presentation. Following this account, otherness serves as means of legitimising media actions as preventive measures taken to inform society about the past, create the present state of the world through assertions (Dunmire 2011. Projecting the future through political discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Searle 2010. Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press) which endorse media credibility and predict future outcomes with respect to the horror of the unfolding war. This study argues that the representation of otherness takes place at the proximisation level of certain lexico-grammatical choices that are used strategically by media to cover the narrative of a “permanent military standby” and the “immediacy of otherness”.

Ideology and cognitive stereotypes in media representation of the Russia–Ukraine conflict

This study investigates the representation of the Russia–Ukraine conflict by two state-owned Russian news media and two state-owned Ukrainian news media, namely Izvestia, Russia Today, Ukrinform and Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. The aim of this investigation is to determine the ideologies embedded in the news reports and discourse structures, and strategies deployed in portraying the conflict actors and their actions. Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (see Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach, 1998; New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach, 2000; and Politics, ideology, and discourse, 2006) and Martin and White’s Appraisal Framework of attitude and graduation (see The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, 2005) served as the theoretical frameworks. Using Critical Discourse Analysis as the analytical framework, the study examines how attitudinal and evaluative language use are employed to enact ideologies and to portray biased presentations of conflict actors. The findings reveal that the media reports of the Russia–Ukraine conflict are laden with militarism and nationalism. Discourse structures and strategies of emotive verbs, evaluative adjectives, positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, national self-glorification, actor description, comparison and number games are powerful tools for enacting ideologies. The media representation of the Russia–Ukraine conflict lacked conflict resolution embedded linguistic frames and is rather distorted, stereotypic and conflict-inciting.

IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT IN EDITORIALS ON TERRORISM: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PAKISTANI AND INDIAN ENGLISH NEWSPAPERS

Dicourses produced in the print media generally carry implicit ideologies to shape the cognitive make up of its readership. English newspapers in Pakistan and India also use such discourse strategies to adance their own countries’ ideological agenda. This research study, therefore, aimed to explore the discursive strategies that two leading English dailies of the two countries employed to portray ideological conflict in relation to the Indian-claimed surgical strikes (2016) against terrorist hideouts in Pakistani territory. To achieve this aim, editorials from English newspapers of both the countries were purposively selected and analyzed using Ideological Square Model proposed by van Dijk (1996,1998). The results of the study show that discourses of the newspaper editorials of both the countries carry discursive strategies that display the ideological conflict of the two countries in relation to terrorism. Using strategies such as passivisation, positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, passivisation, personalization, and metonymy, the Indian editorial considers these strikes valid and successful, while Pakistani editorial vehemently denies this, thereby accentuating the Us and Them dicotomy. The findings of the study has implications for general readership as well as political elite of the two countries. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Ideological Conflict, Media Discourse, Surgical Strikes, Ideological Square.

تحليل الخطاب النقدي لتمثيل الذات والآخر في خطابات الرئيس السوداني المخلوع عمر البشير.

This study aims to explore how ousted Sudanese president, Omar Al-Bashir utilized political discourse to maintain his power and bolster dominance by manipulating his audiences’ attitudes, and beliefs with regard to the government and the opposition. It explores the former president’s use of the discursive ideological strategies in his political speeches to create an ‘in-group’ with favourable characteristics and an ‘out-group’ with negative characteristics. It investigated the impact of the popular uprising against him on his choice of different strategies employed by comparing the speeches that he delivered before the uprising with those that he rendered during the revolt. The study analysed ten speeches delivered in the period from November 6, 2016, to February 1, 2019. The five speeches that he delivered before the uprising were chosen randomly, while those that he gave during the uprising represented all the speeches that he made during that period. The study adopted a qualitative and quantitative approach to analyzing its data. The analysis is based on the identification and calculation of the discursive ideological strategies that Teun van Dijk introduced and discussed in the Ideological Discourse, 13-45; Ideology and Discourse Analysis,115-140; and Discourse and Power, 138-153 The results of the study showed that Al-Bashir used 21 discursive strategies to portray his in-group in a positive manner and to represent the opposition in a negative way. It showed that he used the strategies of mitigation, hyperbole, positive self-presentation, actor description, metaphor, negative-other presentation, negative lexicalization, victimization, authority, national self –glorification, counterfactuals, denial, warning, generalization, evidentiality, polarization, apparent honesty move, presupposition, negative comparison, irony, and telling story. It also demonstrated that the former president made changes to his choice of strategy types before and during the revolt to pacify the protesters and to avoid his government’s failure, in addition to political and economic crises.

A Computational-Augmented Critical Discourse Analysis of Tweets on the Saudi General Entertainment Authority Activities

This study used both computational tools in the form of a machine learning predictive model (Support Vector Machine) and a critical discourse analysis model (Van Dijk’s ideological square model) (Van Dijk, 1993, 2008, 2009) to fulfill three objectives: (1) clustering the Saudis’ Twitter-based opinions and sentiments regarding the entertaining and recreational activities run by the Saudi General Entertainment Authority (GEA); (2) offering empirical evidence on how computational linguistic methods could be implemented for offering a reliable conceptual framing of such opinionated big data; and (3) outlining the central themes generating ideologically motivated polarity in Saudi public opinion and the macrostrategies through which this polarity is textually instantiated and actualized. Toward fulfilling these objectives, we designed a purpose-built corpus of 9378 tweets based on five trending hashtags, covering the period between 2020 and 2022. Findings affirmed the efficacy of synergizing the Support Vector Machine model and the ideological square model in clustering and interpreting the target tweets. Based on the output discourse features and thematization of the tweets, two main groups with different ideologically motivated perspectives were identified. This ideological polarity was achieved through the use of two macrostrategies: positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. These findings may prompt policymakers to reconsider current (mis)practices in order to achieve long-term sustainable development goals.

All Talk, Little Impact: Media Frames and Discursive Strategies of Out-of-School Children in Nigeria

Statistics show that Nigeria has 10.5 million out-of-school children (OOSC), the highest figure in the globe. This study investigated the media frames and framing strategies of OOSC in Punch, Vanguard, and Daily Trust Newspapers. Using qualitative content analysis, the study adopted van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) alongside the thematic and episodic positions of Framing Theory. Analysis showed five media frames and six framing strategies for OOSC. For media frames, OOSC were represented as vulnerable and poor victims; silenced voices; children sprouting from state and policy failure; children sprouting from non-state actors’ failure, as well as children in crisis and need of collaborative responses. For framing strategies, we found source avoidance as a means of masking negativity, authoritativeness as a framing strategy, positive self-presentation, and negative other-presentation, apportioning blame, and foregrounding, alongside direct and implied metaphors. Journalists used these representations to frame opinions and influence people’s perceptions of the OOSC menace. The study recommends that media houses always explore ways of actualizing the truth efficacy of news reportage, and write stories about OOSC more thematically.

The Brexit campaign in British tabloids: The role of passives in the process of positive self- and negative other-presentation

Abstract This paper examines the local syntax in 65 articles from the British mid-market tabloids, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, covering the pre-Brexit vote period (February-June 2016). The paper focuses on the passive constructions in the chosen corpus and the main objective is to examine their role and function in a traditionally conservative and anti-EU discourse through an analysis of the sampled data set within the qualitative theoretical and methodological framework of CDA. The results point at an intricate network of both agentless and passives with agents contributing to both positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation as the dominant strategies of manipulation in the examined discourse. This paper is part of the AILA Europe special issue.

Fighting terrorism, fighting the West: Them versus Us appraisal in Chinese media’s discursive war on terror

Abstract While discourses on terror by the United States and its allies have been the focus of most previous studies, this article investigates discourses produced in the Chinese context. 247 news articles from China Daily and People’s Daily were analyzed according to a revised system of attitude within the appraisal framework in systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The findings reveal a correlation between polarity, types of attitude, and social actors being evaluated. Two Them groups, terrorism/terrorists in Xinjiang and Western media and governments, are overwhelmingly evaluated in terms of negative propriety of their behaviors and negative valuation of their things. Two Us groups, China and its people and non-Western countries supporting China, tend to be evaluated through positive valuation of their things, their positive capability, and positive and negative feelings (affect). The West is put in the same category as terrorism, quite contrary to what is commonly seen in the discourses produced by Western media. The attitudinal construction of Them and Us reflects not only the ideological square of negative other-presentation and positive self-presentation, but also the motivations of maintaining domestic stability and proper international relations behind China’s war on terror.

Islamophobia, Ideology, and Discourse Analysis in Ecuadorian Social Media

Although it has been repeatedly suggested in western media coverage that the countries of Latin America are currently or could become future covert breeding grounds for Muslim extremism, there is no substantive evidence to support this otherwise imagined threat. On the contrary, Catholicism is so widespread that the estimated Muslim population across the continent is projected for the next forty years to remain the same relative to the whole (0.1%). Despite this realization, however, Islamophobia is on the rise even in Latin America. In this context, the present study extracts and examines the most comment-provoking statuses posted during a two-year period on the Facebook page of the Ahmadiyya community of Quito, Ecuador, in order to identify the ideological-linguistic stances reflected in and discursively created, reproduced, and reified through almost 600 responses by other users. In doing so, this study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine (1) the types of multimodal messages presented to the public; (2) the way in which the ‘Other’ is conclusively, collaboratively defined; and (3) the discursive strategies employed both in negative Other-presentation and in solidarity-building measures, ultimately indicating religious, linguistic, and nationalistic group positioning recreated in the ‘online world.’

An Analytic Study of the Evaluative Resources Used in American and Iraqi Opinion Columns

This study investigates how American and Iraqi writers utilize the evaluative resources in newspaper opinion articles (henceforth, op-eds) from a critical discourse analysis perspective. It explores how American and Iraqi writers of op-ed pieces draw on the evaluative resources to establish their attitudes, create rhetorical effects, and serve their ideologies in influencing readers’ and addressees’ feelings and attitudes towards certain subject matters. This study hopes to enhance the critical thinking of readers of an increasingly important journalistic genre in democratic societies. The main questions this study raises are: On which categories of attitude markers do American and Iraqi op-ed writers base their evaluation? Which types of referencing external voices are the most recurrent? And why? The researcher adopts Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal theory and Van Dijk’s (2006) ideology perspective to achieve the study’s goals. After applying qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, the study finds that the significant ideological strategy of positive-self presentation and negative other-presentation significantly motivates the evaluative resources used by American and Iraqi op-ed writers. Both American and Iraqi op-ed writers use similar evaluative techniques in terms of distribution. The analysis also finds that there are variations concerning the overall frequencies and the frequencies of the sub-types of evaluative resources under examination across the corpus.

How Duterte States His View on The Philippines and Other Countries Relation: A Discursive Strategy Analysis

Different types of social or cultural background, combined with a region or social status, go into the making of spoken or written discourse. One of the interesting spoken discourses to discuss is political interview. It often reveals the intention of political leaders’ way of speaking. While there are those who are subtle in their way of talking, there are also a few who do not, one of whom is the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Known for his outspoken personality, he often states controversial things that influence his country and derive critics from various places. Using van Dijk’s (2004) framework, this study analyzes the macro and micro discursive strategies used by Duterte in delivering his views on other countries’ relations with the Philippines based on his most-watched English interview with Russia Today. The findings revealed that the macro strategies used by Duterte are positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, and outside polarization. Meanwhile, the mostly micro discursive strategies used are implication, lexicalization, and example/illustration.

How Duterte States His View on The Philippines and Other Countries Relation: A Discursive Strategy Analysis

Different types of social or cultural background, combined with a region or social status, go into the making of spoken or written discourse. One of the interesting spoken discourses to discuss is political interview. It often reveals the intention of political leaders’ way of speaking. While there are those who are subtle in their way of talking, there are also a few who do not, one of whom is the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Known for his outspoken personality, he often states controversial things that influence his country and derive critics from various places. Using van Dijk’s (2004) framework, this study analyzes the macro and micro discursive strategies used by Duterte in delivering his views on other countries’ relations with the Philippines based on his most-watched English interview with Russia Today. The findings revealed that the macro strategies used by Duterte are positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, and outside polarization. Meanwhile, the mostly micro discursive strategies used are implication, lexicalization, and example/illustration.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Discursive Ideologies in Pakistani and Indian Print Media about the Abolition of Article 370 and 35A in Kashmir

The aim of the current study was to identify the hidden stances and discursive ideologies of Pakistani and Indian English newspapers’ editorials on the special status of Kashmir through abolition of Article 370 and 35A. For the current study the Van Dijk Ideological Square Model (2005) as theoretical framework was chosen for positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation for the examining of discourse. The study analyzed linguistics traits in thirty newspapers’ editorials from six newspapers. Three English newspapers were selected from Pakistan and three from Indians. The data analysis revealed that different micro strategies such as hyperbole, authority, lexicalization, illustration, comparison, euphemism, etc. were used in these editorials. Besides these micro strategies, also the macro strategies like negative other-presentation positive self-presentation were also used. The study further revealed that how the polarity and racial agenda were projected by the use of language by two countries in their editorials. The micro strategies in Pakistani editorials were used more than that in the Indian editorials, while the macro strategies used in the Indian editorials were more than in the Pakistani editorials. The positive self-presentation was mostly used in Pakistani editorials whereas India editorial mostly focused on negative other- presentation.

Manipulacija u političkom diskursu / Manipulation In Political Discourse

Manipulation is a kind of speech activity which has definite intentions and aims, such as gaining control and power within political discourse. This paper will shed light on the theoretical ground on which this phenomenon is based to determine how language is utilized for manipulation. The analysis aims to investigate manipulative strategies and the language devices used in generating these strategies in al-Gaddafi s speech known as Zenga. Also, it will pay more attention to strategy of polarisation, i.e. basic strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. This paper will be limited to lexical-semantic devices (selection of negative words for them and positive words for us), certain grammatical mechanisms (passive, nominalisation) and rhetorical devices (metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole). The study shows the diversity of modes of how language of the speech is manipulated on diffe ent levels of discourse.

Representation of the Self and Other in Joe Biden's Democratic National Convention Speech

This paper discusses the analysis of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation in Joe Biden’s speech in Democratic National Convention on 20 August 2020. This research utilizes van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in which the main analysis is related to social power abuse and inequality in the social and political context. The main purpose of this research is to find out how language contributes to build both positive and negative representation in the speech. However, the research will only focus on the micro-level approach which consists of macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructure analyses. This research employs a qualitative descriptive method since it involves data interpretation in describing the representation. The result of the analysis shows that Biden as the Self has a positive representation; on the other hand, Trump as the Other has a negative representation. Both negative and positive representation are formed through various tools. Through this analysis, it is hoped that people can be more critical in absorbing the information given by political figures.

Ideological Representation of Women's Oppression in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

The abuse of women is an issue that persists throughout the ages till the present time because people are still living in a world of a dominated idea which is known as man is the self and woman is the other. So the objective of this research paper is to argue this global issue using Van Dijk's Ideological Square (1998) as a framework so as to examine the ideologies that underline the use of language in The Handmaid’s Tale. It is hypothesized that the ideology of oppression is exposed in the novel throughout using the ideological strategies of positive- self presentation and negative-other presentation. Ultimately, it concludes that the novelist employs both, male and female, characters to consistently ridicule and offer negative coverage about women and to increasingly align and offer favorable comments about men to present the world of patriarchy from a different perspective.

Ideological Representations in the Nomination Acceptance Speeches of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: A Contrastive Study

The study examines the correlation between language and ideology through critical discourse analysis and semiotics of two nomination acceptance speeches of the 2016 American election. It is an interdisciplinary study that combines different fields: ideology, ideological structures, and semiotics. Through a comparative analysis between the speeches of two nominees who run for the American presidency: the Republican candidate, Trump, and the Democratic candidate, Clinton, the study explores the ideological polarization of the self and Other presentations that each candidate applies concerning three themes: internal problems, foreign affairs, and immigration. Besides, the internal problems theme is sub-classified into five sub-issues: crime, violence, economy, American rights, and health care. In this regard, the study focuses mainly on uncovering the hidden ideologies that each speaker utilizes either verbally and nonverbally to reveal how far each speaker can successfully manipulate the language and utilize signs to serve his/her political intentions. Therefore, the ideological square model of Dijk (2006a) is utilized for the verbal analysis to provide an analysis of polarization techniques of the self and Other. The ideological structures and strategies model of Dijk (2006b) is also applied to do a linguistic analysis along with Kress (2010) multimodal social semiotic approach for the nonverbal analysis. The study revealed that Trump and Clinton are varied in presenting self and Other presentations. For the nonverbal analysis, Trump concentrated more on denigrating the negative Other-presentation than boasting the positive self-presentation. On the other hand, Clinton focused on lauding the positive self-presentation than disparaging the negative Other-presentation. However, they both agreed on neglecting the mention of the good properties of the out-group and the bad properties of the in-group. Concerning to the nonverbal analysis, Trump and Clinton also utilize more semiotic modes to boast the self-presentation and perform fewer semiotic modes that denigrate the Other-presentation. On the contrary, Clinton focuses on emphasizing the positive self-presentation than disparaging the negative Other-presentation. Besides, the study introduced a modified model that helps to analyze nomination acceptance speeches verbally and nonverbally.

Language and Manipulation: A Critical Discourse Analysis of All Progressive Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) War of Words

This paper examines the crucial role language plays in manipulating the act of discourse comprehension as a means of constructing mental models meant to effect mind control against the people’s best interests. To achieve this, the study utilises the rich resources of critical discourse analysis (CDA) precisely, the socio-cognitive framework, to analyse media political discourse within the Nigerian context. A number of discourses that hinge on the APC and PDP’s war of words over the issue of corruption extracted from the online editions of Nigerian newspapers constitute the data used for the study. The result of the data analysis indicates that Nigerian politicians consciously indulge in positive self-presentation and negative-other presentation by making use of the ideological square in the portrayal of self for the sole purpose of imposing their ideological designs on the entire populace in order to gain political dominance. Through the ideological square, each of the political parties aims at emphasizing the positive sides of its actions and the negative aspects of the other party while de-emphasizing its negative activities and the positive sides of the other through the use of manipulative language. Such manipulative use of language disables the people’s critical thinking for the manipulators’ benefit.