تمثيل مقتل قاسم سليماني وابي مهدي المهندس في صحف امريكية وايرانية: تحليل نقدي للخطاب

The Representation of Qassem Suleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis' Murder in American and Iranian News Reports: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract
This study is concerned the representation of the event of murdering Qassem Suleimani; Iran’s military mastermind, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis; the second-in command leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq from a critical analytical perspective. This event is big enough to jolt the public opinion among which media and journalism. Upon that thing, a critical study is conducted in two opposing international news agencies: American and Iranian, in their coverage for this event. The American includes Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times while the Iranian includes Kayhan, Tehran Times, and Iran News. It is expected that there is a clear foreseeable differences of the event because these two nations’ news agencies have different political ideological impulses. Because of the importance of this event and lackness of critical studies conducted about this particular topic, the researcher attends to fill this gap, outlining some aims to override it.
The study aims at scrutinizing macro and micro strategies used in representing the event, unraveling hidden ideologies, explaining the role of quoting in the representation of the event. The study also examines how the main social actors, Suleimani and Al-Muhandis, are represented, basing on in-out group dichotomy. The last aim is to compare the representation of the event between the two selected media agencies in light of the micro and macro categories.
The study hypothesizes that there is rather apparent otherness in representing the event in the selected data, using certain linguistic choices like, activation, suppression, and overlexicalization. The reporters conceptualize the event by appealing to some over the others; for example, activation, negative value expression, and else. Ideology controls the use of the micro and macro categories; and, conversely, is revealed through these categories. The event and the main axes, Suleimani and Al-Muhandis, are represented differently in the two media agencies.
This study is based on an eclectic model which includes Fariclough’s lexicalization (1989), integrating with Fowler (1991), and Fariclough’s intertextuality (1992), van Dijk’s ideological square and discursive strategies (2000), Halliday’s transitivity (2004), and van Leeuwen’s social categories (2008). The categories of the aforementioned models are analyzed according to Fariclough’s schematization of three-dimensions (1995). At three levels of analysis; micro, meso, and macro, the model categories are incepted.
The data are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively as the research design is mixed method. SPSS program is used for the quantitative analysis, using chi-square test for presenting the statistical results.
After analyzing the selected data, the study concludes that: (1) similarities and differences do exist in American and Iranian news reports in representing the event of killing Suleimani and Al-Muhandis, (2) activation, overwording, and material process overweight the other categories at the micro-level, (3) hidden ideologies control news reports therefore formulate themes and topics of the reports differently, (4) interrelated text has a salient role in revealing hidden ideologies, representing the event, and enforcing objectivity, and (5) Suleimani and Al-Muhandis are represented in response to different political ideological stances as an application of the ideological square. The study ends with some recommendations and suggestions for further studies.