چکیده:
This study investigates the way a political issue as well as its main participants and their actions are represented in newspaper headlines. Employing a number of analytical tools from Van Dijk (1998) and Halliday's transitivity model, the study examines the headlines of news stories on Iran's nuclear program published by a number of British newspapers to identify the specific ideology propagated by the newspapers. The findings of the study indicate that the British newspapers' coverage of Iran's nuclear program tends to present a negative image of Iran and its nuclear program in the context of "Us" and "Them". The findings provide evidence to support the claim that news media do not simply reflect the social reality but articulate dominant ideologies in representing political events. The study contributes to the understanding of the ideological role of language within news discourse in constructing representations of a society
خلاصه ماشینی:
Employing a number of analytical tools from Van Dijk (1998) and Halliday's transitivity model, the study examines the headlines of news stories on Iran's nuclear program published by a number of British newspapers to identify the specific ideology propagated by the newspapers.
Considering the growing interest in this issue, such an analysis is important to see if and how the discourses of some Western newspaper stories paint a subjective and ideologically biased picture of socio- IJAL, Vol. 8, No. 2, September 2005 109 political issues about a foreign country like Iran to the readers.
It is argued that the headlines of news stories on Iran's nuclear program in the British mainstream newspapers may manifest a relatively ideological power relation in representing two participants, Iran on the one hand, and EU on the other hand.
Findings of the transitivity analysis of the headlines demonstrate that transitive structures dominate the actional processes used in the selected newspapers' discourse on Iran's nuclear program.
Table 4 illustrates that in the British newspapers Iran and Iranian participants, UAL, Vol, 8, No. 2, September 2005 125 similar to EU, are involved in the four processes of material, verbal, mental, and relational and they have been assigned different types of roles.
!JAL, Vol. 8, No. 2, September 2005 127 As for the present study, the analysis of the relational processes indicates that the acts of classification in the British newspapers' discourse of headlines constructs a world divided into 'rule of law', `determination', 'power', 'peacekeeping' on the one hand, and `threat', `irrationality', 'lawlessness' on the other hand.