Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 10:2 (2019) ► pp.251–286
Interpersonal rhetoric of attitude in news
CNN vs. AJE
Published online: 5 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.13016.bah
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.13016.bah
Abstract
Drawing on principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) the proposed study examined and compared
the attitudinal positioning of both CNN and Al-Jazeera English (AJE) concerning
Iran’s Nuclear Program (INP). The paper has employed the appraisal
framework (Martin, James, and Peter R. R. White. 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave. )
to reveal the different subtypes of attitude, i.e., affect,
judgment, and appreciation, which have been encoded in the
selected news items. It has been found that AJE discourse is highly evaluated.
AJE has appraised INP positively; yet, it has evaluated Iran (apart from INP)
and the US negatively. Unlike CNN, it is very obvious that AJE has various
agendas. To achieve its goals, AJE has employed judgment more than the
other subsystems of attitude. This is not surprising, given that the
function of judgment is to judge people and their actions rather than
things. This may explain why AJE news coverage is biased. On the other hand,
although CNN relies heavily on appreciation, its coverage is biased as
well. Indirectly through appreciating INP as being a nuclear weapons program,
CNN has tried to invoke readers’ judgment of Iran. In addition, CNN has
highlighted aspects of their opposition towards Iran such as unity, unification,
consensus, etc, through the use of (+sec). Unlike AJE, CNN has one agenda and
they achieved it through appraising the “self” positively and the “other”, i.e.,
Iran negatively.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Contextualization of the data
- 2.1Iran’s Nuclear Program (INP)
- 2.2CNN
- 2.3AJE
- 3.Theoretical foundations
- 3.1The semantics of attitude: Emotion, ethics, and aesthetics
- 3.1.1 affect
- 3.1.2 judgment
- 3.1.3 appreciation
- 3.1The semantics of attitude: Emotion, ethics, and aesthetics
- 4.Data collection
- 5.Data analysis
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
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