A critical discourse analysis of the selected Iranian and American printed media on the representations of Hizbullah-Israel war

Abstract

This study examines the relationships between language and ideology and how such relationships are represented in the analysis of texts, following Systemic Functional Linguistics and transitivity analysis developed by M.A.K. Halliday. In this study, it is tried to show that news structures are working apparatuses of ideology and store meanings which are not always obvious for readers. Through a comparative analysis of an Iranian newspaper and an American magazine with opposing ideologies, the researcher attempts to reveal how these ideologies are represented differently in these printed media with regard to Hizbullah-Israel last war in 2006. It also suggests that these printed materials mystify the agency of processes by using various strategies such as passivization and nominalization. In other words, critical text analyses reveal how these choices enable writers to manipulate the realizations of agency and power in the representation of action to produce particular meanings which are not always explicit for all readers.