Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of Applied Linguistics
First Advisor
Kimberley Brown
Term of Graduation
Summer 2006
Date of Publication
Summer 6-16-2006
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Department
Applied Linguistics
Language
English
Subjects
Battle of Fallūjah -- Fallūjah -- Iraq (2004), Iraq War (2003-2011), Critical discourse analysis, Violence -- Press coverage, Iraq, Iraq -- Fallūjah
Physical Description
1 online resource (97 pages)
Abstract
Since most of our knowledge about current events such as wars in foreign countries comes via news reports, the ability to recognize bias in news media is an important skill. Linguistic discourse analysis is one way in which one can identify the unconscious biases evident in otherwise objective news. Patterns in positive and negative word choices can show which news actors a news organization identifies with and which an organization assumes to be suspect or ill-motivated.
The purpose of this study was to find such patterns in word choices from the war in Iraq. To this end, headlines were gathered over a one-month period from an American and a Canadian newspaper, and the violent-connotation in words were evaluated in choices of participant labels and verbs. The frequency of violentlyconnotated words for both sides in the war were compared to body count numbers to determine whose violence the news organizations de-emphasized.
The occurrence of explicitly-violent participant labels and verbs showed that both the American and the Canadian newspaper found anti-American violence in Iraq more newsworthy. The violence of the American military and its allies was deemphasized in a manner inconsistent with accepted body count numbers, showing that both news organizations favored the American side of the war.
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Recommended Citation
Harrington, Jesse T., "Lexical Choices in War Headlines: A Case Study" (2006). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 6746.
Comments
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.