A Corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Qaddafi in Media: Evidence from Asharq Al-Awsat and Al-Khaleej Newspapers

Abstract

The Arab Spring, a period of revolutions and protests that spread across the Arab world in 2011, is considered to be one of the most important series of events that have affected the Middle East and North Africa in modern history. This study combines two strands of research, namely, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics (CL) to examine how discourses around the regime of Qaddafi were constructed before, during, and after 2011, the year when most of the uprisings began. This is based on a new 7-million word corpus of two newspapers; namely The Guardian and The New York Times from 2009 to 2013. The analysis shows that the 2011 Arab uprisings represented a turning point on how the former Libyan president, Qaddafi, is represented. For example, in the pre-uprisings period (2009/2010), the newspapers appear to be careful and conservative representing Qaddafi neutrally and sometimes positively, and covering his visits to other countries. During the uprisings (2011), the analysis shows that the two newspapers assume a more critical role in reporting the cruelty, corruption and violence of the Libyan leader representing him negatively, highlighting his use of excessive power against his own people during the 2011 Libyan civil war, and criticizing his policies and behaviours during his 42 years in power. In the post-uprisings era (2012/2013), and although Qaddafi died in October 2011, the newspapers tended to continue to describe him negatively, highlighting the different stations in his life, and referring to the terrorist activities he was involved in. These results are connected to AHMAD S HAIDER 8 the political and social contexts of the particular periods showing that there is a wide range of discursive construction for Qaddafi based on the agendas of the investigated newspapers and the countries where they are based.