Selected american media coverage of the 2008 US presidential election a critical discourse analysis

Selected american media coverage of the 2008 u.s. presidential election: a critical discourse analysis Lê Thị ngọc Anh Trường Đại học KHXH&NV Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành:; Mã số: 60.22.15 Người hướng dẫn: Prof. Nguyễn Hòa, Ph D. Năm bảo vệ:2009 Abstract: This minor thesis aims at examining ideological constructions of representations of the two candidates running in the United States Presidential Election 2008, Mr. Barack Obama (Democratic Party) and Mr. John McCain (Republican Party) by two American dailies, The New York Times and New York Post. 45 pieces of news coverage from September 1 st to October 30 th , 2008 were taken randomly from these two newspapers to make a corpus. In the light of Critical Discourse Analysis, the analysis was then undertaken on this corpus in two stages: transitivity analysis of headlines and discursive strategies analysis of sample full-text news reports. The analysis findings revealed that, in opposition to a tradition of seeking relative neutrality and objectivity in American journalism, these two newspapers deliberately chosen a “fair and balanced” coverage – “fair and balanced” in their own viewpoint. As a result, the two dailies news coverage of the candidates showed their totally different political stance in term of who they backed up in the 2008 run to the White House. Apparently, media and politics have such a close relationship and the classical ideological bias in media is unavoidable. At the end of the day, certain American media institutions still tend to be more democratic or republican. Keywords: Phân tích diễn ngôn; Tiếng Anh; Báo chí; Bầu cử Tổng thống Mỹ. Content: TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF APPENDICES vi PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale 1 2. Scope of the research 2 3. Aims of the research and research questions 2 4. Methodology of the research 3 5. Background information about the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election 3 6. Design of the research 5 PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6 1.1. What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? 6 1.2. The development of CDA 6 1.3. Directions in CDA 7 1.3.1. Van Dijk 7 1.3.2. Wodak 9 1.3.3. Fairclough 10 1.4. Principles of CDA 10 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 12 2.1. Data 12 2.1.1. Data source 12 2.1.1.1. The New York Times 12 2.1.1.2. New York Post 12 2.1.2. Data collection and sampling 13 2.2. Analytical framework and methods 13 2.2.1. Headlines analysis 13 2.2.2. Full-text news report analysis 15 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 16 3.1. Headlines analysis 16 3.1.1. The New York Times 17 3.1.1.1. Representation of Mr. Obama 17 3.1.1.2. Representation of Mr. McCain 20 3.1.2. New York post 22 3.1.2.1. Representation of Mr. Obama 23 3.1.2.2. Representation of Mr. McCain 25 3.2. Full-text stories analysis 26 3.2.1. Naming referent 26 3.2.1.1. The New York Times 26 3.2.1.2. New York Post 27 3.2.2. Lexicalization 29 3.2.2.1. The New York Times 29 3.2.2.2. New York Post 33 PART 3: CONCLUSION 1. Summary of major findings 36 2. Suggestions for further research 36 REFERENCES APPENDICES 1 Part 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Everyday we use language, in other words - produce discourse, to negotiate, to give information, to ask for information or to make choices; in short, to communicate. To discourse analysts, “discourse” means actual instances of communication in the medium of language. In the discourse we produce are conventional ways of talking that create and perpetuate systems of ideologies and sets of beliefs about how the world works. Van Dijk (1988) points out that discourse, in a wider sense, is a complex unit of language form, meaning and actions that might best be captured under the notion of a communicative event or communicative act. Among many types of discourse produced under different contexts/communicative events, journalistic discourse has some very specific textual characteristics, specific methods of text production and consumption, and is defined by a particular set of relationships between itself and other agencies of symbolic and material power. As Fowler (1991) pointed out, the language of the news is never neutral, and articles within newspaper must be regarded as constructed “stories” told from particular point of view. When it comes to journalistic discourse analysis, the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach is often employed. CDA is a methodology that enables a vigorous assessment of what is meant when language is used to describe and explain. How the media describe and explain things or events and portray people can have a great influence on the public who often have decisions and choices to make. That explains why the role of the media in electoral politics is key to the functioning of a democracy, because now most voters increasingly use the media as their primary source of information. All the information about discourse and media briefly mentioned above leads the author of this thesis to the research topic and conduct a small study entitled “Selected American Media Coverage of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election: A Critical Discourse Analysis”. 2 2. Scope of the research Within the limit of a minor thesis, this research focus only on the texts of the news reports published from 31 st August 2008 to 1 st November 2008 in the two dailies The New York Times and New York Post, on the topic of the 2008 U.S Presidential Election. In this research, 45 headlines and 24 full-text news reports are analyzed. As this is a purely linguistic study, the author is not, by any means or in any way, expressing her own political point of view. 3. Aims of the research and research questions The general goal of this research is to investigate the ideological function of language in representing the world and constructing certain realities. The main objective is to look into the ways language be employed by two media institutions to produce discourse to present the two 2008 U.S. presidential candidates. More specifically, this thesis aims at: - Providing a textual analysis of the news on the 2008 U.S. presidential election in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis. - Giving an illustration of the CDA concepts as well as analysis procedures. - Conveying a message that CDA provides a useful, systematic way for language users and language learners to begin raising awareness of the ideologies embedded in discourse, as language not only reflects and records but also shapes, distorts and even create realities, both culturally and naturally. To achieve these aims, the following research questions are proposed: (i) What are the representations of the two 2008 presidential candidates, the Republican John McCain and the Democrat Barack Obama, constructed by The New York Times and the New York Post? (ii) What are the underlying ideologies embedded in the way The New York Times and New York Post represent the two candidates? (iii) How are such ideologies encoded in the discourse of the two newspapers? 3 4. Methodology of the research Following in this part is a brief summary of the basic steps taken in the research. The first step is to conduct a literature review. The author searched for reference via the thesis advisor, Dr. Nguyen Hoa, lectures of related subjects like Research Methods, Applied Linguistics, etc., books and journals in the libraries and materials from the Internet. The second step is searching for data. News reports published from 31 st August 2008 to 1 st November 2008 in the two selected newspapers were collected. Then the data for analysis were sampled through random sampling. Through thoroughly examining of the sampled data, closely looking into prominent linguistic features in the data, proper analytical tools were then decided. The next step in investigating two sets of data – headlines and full-text news reports. - Analyzing selected headlines according to transitivity system - Analyzing selected full-text news reports according to two discursive strategies of naming referents and lexicalization. Through the analysis of the two sets of data, the study attempts to find out the similarities as well as differences in the way the two newspapers reported on the same topic, the same people. Based on the findings, further ideologies embedded in the text are discussed. 5. Background information about the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election The United States presidential election of 2008 was held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. It was the 56th quadrennial United States presidential election. Outgoing Republican President George W. Bush's policies and actions and the American public's desire for change were key issues throughout the campaign, and during the general election campaign, both major party candidates ran on a platform of change and reform in Washington. Domestic policy and the economy eventually emerged as the main themes in the last few months of the election campaign, particularly after the onset of the 2008 economic crisis. Democrat Barack Obama, then - junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona. Nine states 4 changed allegiance from the 2004 election. Each had voted for the Republican nominee in 2004 and contributed to Obama's sizable Electoral College victory. The selected electors from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia voted for President and Vice President of the United States on December 15, 2008. Those votes were tallied before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009. Obama received 365 electoral votes, and McCain 173. There were several unique aspects of the 2008 election. The election was the first in which an African American was elected President, and the first time a Roman Catholic was elected Vice President. It was also the first time two sitting senators ran against each other. It was the first election in 56 years in which neither an incumbent president (Bush was barred from seeking a third term by the Twenty-second Amendment) nor a vice president (Dick Cheney did not seek the presidency) ran. It was also the first time the Republican Party nominated a woman for Vice President and only the second time a woman was nominated for Vice President on a major party ticket. Also, voter turnout for the 2008 election was the highest in at least 40 years. The two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are nearly 25 years apart in age. This is the largest age disparity between the two major party presidential candidates in history, surpassing Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, (23 years apart in age) who ran against each other in the 1996 presidential election. On January 20, 2009, Obama was inaugurated to the presidency at the age of 47 years 138 days. He is the fourth youngest man to be elected president, after John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Ulysses Grant, and the fifth youngest president when inaugurated, after Kennedy, Clinton, Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt. Polls taken in the last few months of the presidential campaign as well as exit polls conducted on Election Day showed the economy as the top concern for voters. In the fall of 2008, many news sources were reporting that the economy was suffering its most serious downturn since the Great Depression. During this period John McCain's election prospects fell with several politically costly comments about the economy. 5 6. Design of the research The study is divided into three main parts: Part 1 – Introduction: in this part are the rationale, the scope of the research, the aims of the research, the research questions, the methodology, some background information about the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election and the design of the research. Part 2 – Development: this is the main part of the research and has three chapters Chapter 1: Theoretical background: this chapter present related theoretical background for the research. Chapter 2: Methodology: this chapter describes steps and procedures of the research. Chapter 3: Data analysis and Discussion: this chapter analyzes the data and discusses the findings of the analysis. Part 3 – Conclusion: this is a summary of the findings and some suggestions for further research. REFERENCES 1. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. Harlow: Longman 2. Fairclough, N. (1992). Critical Language Awareness. London & New York: Longman 3. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (Language in Social Life Series). London 4. Fairclough,N. / Woddak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In van Dijk, T.A.(ed). Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London, pp 258-284 5. Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power. London: Longman 6. Fowler, R. et al (1979). Language and Control. London: KRP 7. Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London & New York: Routledge 8. Halliday, M.A.K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. 9. Hoa, N. (2003). Phân tích Diễn ngôn: Một số Vấn đề Lý luận và Phương pháp. Hanoi: Nxb. ĐHQGHN 10. Hoa, N. (2006). Phân tích Diễn ngôn Phê phán, Lý luận và Phương pháp. Hanoi: Nxb. ĐHQGHN 11. Kress, G. (1991). “Critical Discourse Analysis”, in Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Vol.11. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 84-97. 12. van Dijk, T.A. (1988). News as Discourse. New Jersey: Erlbaum 13. van Dijk, T.A. (1991). Racism and the Press. London: Soutledge 14. van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Principles of discourse Analysis. In: Discourse & Society, 4(2): 249 – 283. 15. van Dijk, T.A. (1995). Discourse Analysis as Ideology Analysis. In S.& A. l. Wenden (eds). Language and Peace. Dartmouth: Aldershot, pp 17-33 16. van Dijk, T.A. (1998). Ideology - A multidiscipline study. London: Sage 17. Van, Hoang Van (2006). Introducing Discourse Analysis. Hanoi: Nxb Giáo Dục 18. Woddak, R. (1996). Disorders in Discourse. London: Longman. 19. Woddak, R. (2001). “What’s CDA about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its development”. In Woddak, R. & Mayer, M. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage Websites: www.nypost.com www.nytimes.com www.wikipedia.org www.journalism.org www.discourse-analysis.com www.etd.lsu.edu www.socialresearchmethods.net . Selected American Media Coverage of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election: A Critical Discourse Analysis . 2 2. Scope of the research Within the limit of a minor thesis, this research focus only. this thesis aims at: - Providing a textual analysis of the news on the 2008 U.S. presidential election in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis. - Giving an illustration of the CDA concepts. for the 2008 election was the highest in at least 40 years. The two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are nearly 25 years apart in age. This is the largest age disparity between the