Representation of Social Actors in Iran's Nuclear agreement Discourse Based on Model Van leeuwen in Two Newspapers Al Riyadh Saudi Arabia and Tishreen Syria

Document Type : Research

Authors

1 PH.D student / Alzahra university

2 PhD in Arabic Language and Literature, Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Al-Zahra University

3 PhD in Linguistics, Department of General Linguistics, Lecturer at Islamic Azad University

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary field in which social, political, and sociological patterns are interwoven. Its purpose is to examine the relationships that are brought about by the inequality of power, and ideology and hegemony apply in the form of texts and conversations in political and social contexts.
 One of the most powerful institutions that plays a very important role in using ideological discourses and rebuilding power relations in today's societies is undoubtedly media (television, newspapers, films, magazines, etc.). The press performs ideological work by representing various issues. How does the press cover events in the framework of ideology of the media and based on their interests? Syntactic and vocabulary choices are not optional or incidental; in fact, the ideological positions in each period and in each discourse are revealed in the structure of the news reports. The focus on analyzing media texts should be on how to represent events, situations, relationships, and people in media content. It is important how events are represented in the linguistic structure of the sentence; how to make propositions, combine them and arrange them.
 Van Leeuwen developed the analysis of critical discourse from the field of linguistics into the world of the universe, and defined the sociological-semantic indicators as the reason for this "absence of a 100% direct relation between linguistic indices and their role. " He also believes that "the study of sociological-semantic components of discourse is a powerful tool for the analysis of the text rather than mere linguistic components".
Iran's nuclear program is one of the most challenging issues at the international and regional level, which has attracted the focus of all the media. The Arab world has adopted different approaches to this issue due to the heterogeneous and incompatible national interests. The views of Saudi Arabia and Syria are influenced by variables such as the nature and volume of relations with the United States, the background of bilateral relations, the conception of the intentions and goals of Iran. Hence, the researchers intend to determine how conflicts between the views of the two countries are expressed in the language. What is the quality of referrals, how is the representation and naming of the parties involved in this agreement and how to portray incidents and events in these newspapers? What are the ideological and existing differences between the two newspapers? In order to achieve this goal, the writers, in addition to using the Van Leeuwen model (2008), use the Halliday’s transitivity model (2004) throughout the paper. The reason for the selection of the two newspapers is that both are published in Saudi Arabia and Syria, both of which are governed and written in accordance with the policies of the two countries and are the most prestigious newspapers.
The difference in the results disclose that the representation of social actors in these texts has been carried out with various references tailored to the intended purpose of the authors. The newspaper Al-Riyadh has more to do with other identities and has used all the means to represent them negatively, while the Tishreen newspaper represents other identities negatively and actively and self-identities positively and actively. Both papers use the same amount of these references, and it seems that appraisement is the most referent used for negative representing the other and positive representing the self. A review of these two newspapers revealed that these two newspapers revealed quite different ideologies about Iran's nuclear energy and the actors involved in this text. The negative representations of the newspaper Al-Riyadh from Iran, Iranian actors, and even Western actors as Barack Obama as an important factor in signing this agreement are endorsement of this article. On the contrary, the positive representation of the newspaper Tishreen in relation to this agreement can be a sign of the positive ideology of the newspaper's owners towards Iran and Iran's nuclear agreement.  But the processes used in these papers are based on Halliday’s transitivity model: the material process has the highest frequency among existing processes that represent the positive and negative actions of the self and the other. The relationship process is also another process used to represent the nuclear agreement, which has been used by the Tishreen Newspaper to be more frequent than the Riyadh newspaper. It has used it to represent the nuclear agreement positively. The verbal process is another process used by the writers to identify the actors, and the remarkable point is that both newspapers have used the process to represent a negative one. The use of both newspapers from the material process and the relationship is that these two processes are more realistic and more truthful than other processes.

Keywords


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