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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in American, Arab, and British Media: Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis

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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in American, Arab, and British Media: Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Department of Applied Linguistics and English Language Dissertations as a Second Language 5-27-2009 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in American, Arab, and British Media: Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis Magdi Ahmed Kandil Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/alesl_diss Part of the Applied Linguistics Commons, and the First and Second Language Acquisition Commons Recommended Citation Kandil, Magdi Ahmed, "The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in American, Arab, and British Media: Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2009. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/alesl_diss/12 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT IN AMERICAN, ARAB, AND BRITISH MEDIA: CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS by MAGDI KANDIL Under the Direction of Patricia Byrd and Lucy Pickering ABSTRACT The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the longest and most violent conflicts in modern history. The language used to represent this important conflict in the media is frequently commented on by scholars and political commentators (e.g., Ackerman, 2001; Fisk, 2001; Mearsheimer & Walt, 2007). To date, however, few studies in the field of applied linguistics have attempted a thorough investigation of the language used to represent the conflict in influential media outlets using systematic methods of linguistic analysis. The current study aims to partially bridge this gap by combining methods and analytical frameworks from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics (CL) to analyze the discursive representation of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict in American, Arab, and British media, represented by CNN, Al-Jazeera Arabic, and BBC respectively. CDA, which is primarily interested in studying how power and ideology are enacted and resisted in the use of language in social and political contexts, has been frequently criticized mainly for the arbitrary selection of a small number of texts or text fragments to be analyzed. In order to strengthen CDA analysis, Stubbs (1997) suggested that CDA analysts should utilize techniques from CL, which employs computational approaches to perform quantitative and qualitative analysis of actual patterns of use occurring in a large and principled collection of natural texts. In this study, the corpus-based keyword technique is initially used to identify the topics that tend to be emphasized, downplayed, and/or left out in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in three corpora complied from the news websites of Al-Jazeera, CNN, and the BBC. Topics –such as terrorism, occupation, settlements, and the recent Israeli disengagement plan— which were found to be key in the coverage of the conflict—are further studied in context using several other corpus tools, especially the concordancer and the collocation finder. The analysis reveals some of the strategies employed by each news website to control for the positive or negative representations of the different actors involved in the conflict. The corpus findings are interpreted using some informative CDA frameworks, especially Van Dijk‘s (1998) ideological square framework. INDEX WORDS: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Critical discourse analysis, Corpus linguistics, Collocation, Concordance, Keyword analysis, Terrorism, Settlements THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT IN AMERICAN, ARAB, AND BRITISH MEDIA: CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS by MAGDI KANDIL A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2009 Copyright by Magdi Kandil 2009 THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT IN AMERICAN, ARAB, AND BRITISH MEDIA: CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS by MAGDI KANDIL Committee Chair: Patricia Byrd Lucy Pickering Committee: Diane Belcher Susan Conrad Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2009 iv To my parents, wife, and children with love v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work could not have seen the light without the support of some people I have been very fortunate to have in my life. First of all, this research would not have been possible without the continuous support, guidance, and encouragement of my dissertation committee through every step of this dissertation. I am especially indebted to Pat Byrd, who first introduced me to the field of corpus linguistics and who provided me with unlimited support and guidance through my MA and PhD programs at Georgia State. I am also indebted to Diane Belcher, in whose genre seminar I first learned about critical discourse analysis and started to explore the media representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the class project. I also sincerely thank Lucy Pickering for her quick constructive feedbacks on the many drafts I have written, and I thank Susan Conrad whose corpus linguistics book (which was a gift from Pat) was the first work I ever read in corpus linguistics. I would also like to extend my thanks to the department of applied linguistics and all its faculty members. None of my academic or professional goals could have been accomplished without the stimulating scholarly environment and the continued financial support I have received from the department of applied linguistics during the years of MA and PhD programs. I am grateful to my professors Dr. Patricia Dunkel, Dr. Jodi Eisterhold, Dr. Joan Hildenbrand, Dr. Nan Jian, Dr. Stephanie Lindemann, Dr. John Murphy, Dr. Lourdes Ortega, and Dr. Sara Weigle for their great knowledge, effective teaching, valuable advice, and tremendous support. I am also especially grateful to Dr. Gayle Nelson for her generous support, advice, and encouragement. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students who made the GTA office such a pleasant place to work in. I am especially grateful to my colleagues Lauren Lukarilla, Weimin vi Zhang, Iryna Kozlova, Luciana Diniz, Kate Moran, Pam Pearson, John Bunting, Guiling Hu, Brent Poole, Joseph Lee, Yanbin Lu, Cheongmin Yook, Amanda Baker, Caroline Payant and many others. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their continued love and support at every step of the way. I am especially grateful for my parents for their dedication, love, and prayers for me throughout my whole life. I would also like to thank my children Sara and Ahmed for trying to understand at their young age that ―Daddy has to go to work and could not be with us all the time‖. Last but not least, I am very grateful to Heba, my wife, whose love, support, encouragement, and delicious food were always a source of motivation and inspiration. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF TABLES x LIST OF FIGURES xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Background 1 Critical Discourse Analysis 4 Corpus Linguistics 10 Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics 12 Current Study 19 Structure of the Dissertation 21 References 23 2. KEY TOPICS IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT ON AL- 31 JAZEERA, BBC, AND CNN NEWS WEBSITES: CORPUS-BASED KEY-KEYWORD ANALYSIS Introduction 31 Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics 32 Historical Overview 34 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in American, Arab, and British Media 37 Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks 42 Methodology 45 Results and Discussion 47 Conclusion 63 viii References 68 3. TERRORISM IN THE COVERAGE OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN 73 CONFLICT ON AL-JAZEERA, BBC, AND CNN NEWS WEBSITES: CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Introduction 73 Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks 76 Methodology 81 Results 86 Discussion 100 Conclusion 104 References 108 4. OCCUPATION AND SETTLEMENTS IN THE COVERAGE OF THE 112 ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT ON AL-JAZEERA, BBC, AND CNN NEWS WEBSITES: CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Introduction 112 Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks 115 Methodology 118 Results 121 Discussion 136 Conclusion 147 References 150 5. CONCLUSION 154 Summary of the Results 154 ix Contributions of This Research 156 Implications 159 Future Directions and Recommendations 162 References 165 COMBINED REFERENCE LIST 167 APPENDICES A: Collocational Grid of Terrorism (definite form) in Al-Jazeera 179 Corpus B: Collocational Grid of Terrorism in the BBC Corpus 180 C: Collocational Gid of Terror in the BBC corpus 181 D: Collocational Grid of Terrorism in CNN Corpus 182 E: Collocational Grid of Terror in CNN Corpus 183 x LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1. In-Group/Out-Group Polarized Representation (Based on Van Dijk, 1998b) 7 Table 2.1. General Statistics of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Study Corpora 45 Table 2.2. Participants in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 50 Table 2.3. Key Keywords Referring to the Political Aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian 53 Conflict Table 2.4. Key Keywords Referring to the Military Aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian 56 Conflict Table 2.5. Key Keywords Referring to Israeli Occupation Practices 60 Table 2.6. Key Locations in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
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