What is the truth? A demonstration of language manipulation in two newspapers and the pedagogical implications

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) aims to show how discourse shapes and is shaped by power relations in society. Conducted in a CDA framework, this study aims to investigate how The Los Angeles Times and Tehran Times represent the reaction of Russia after a speech delivered by Iran’s ex-President on May 26, 2010 in order to have a consciousness-raising about the power of language in changing one’s view about the events, and, more importantly, to shed light on the implications of CDA for language pedagogy. In this study, Van Dijk’s (2000) framework was employed to detect the discursive strategies used by the two newspapers. After the analyses of news reports, it was found that the two newspapers represent the reaction of Russia significantly differently to their readers, based on their different ideologies by using two overall semantic macro-strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation which are realized by other discursive strategies such as lexicalization, repetition, vagueness, illegality, and history as lesson.