Critical Discourse Analysis on ISIS Referents : Framing and agency in four British newspapers

Abstract: To conclude, this essay set out to investigate how British newspapers of different political affiliations used discourse and the language when reporting on ISIS returnees to promote their views, biases, and perspectives. In order to fulfil the aim, critical discourse analysis was chosen as a means to conduct the analysis. Inspired by the process of doing CDA proposed by Huckin, two aspects of the articles were analysed: the framing of the headlines and the lead paragraphs, and the agent-patient relations assigned to ISIS referents. The analysis of the headlines and lead paragraphs showed that the Labour publications used different strategies to frame the story in ways that downplayed ISIS – the Daily Mirror reduced the threat posed by the suspect and the Guardian backgrounded the supposed connection between ISIS and the suspect. Conversely, the Conservative papers framed their articles in ways that displayed ISIS and the returnees as major threats – the Sun created a damning view of the suspect, while the Telegraph promoted a view in which a large influx of ISIS returnees will cause problems for the UK. Furthermore, the second part of the analysis, in which the agency of suspected and confirmed ISIS members, and the types of referents used were analysed, found no decisive evidence on how the political affiliation of a publication correlated with how they assign agency – although there was a small tendency for Conservative papers to give less agency to ISIS referents, which could indicate that it is a deliberate strategy. Additionally, the analysis of the types of referents revealed two tendencies: the Labour affiliated newspapers used a higher share of groups when referring to ISIS, while the Conservative ones had a higher frequency of referents appearing as named individuals. It was reasoned that a higher share of group referents may be a way of maintaining a general perspective and to show restraint. However, an alternative interpretation was that it could also be used to establish a diffusion of responsibility, or to stay distanced from the actual story. Moreover, it was argued that the higher degree of named individuals shown in the Conservative publications may be a way of grounding the story in reality and making it more tangible, but it can also be interpreted as a desire to shame and display the suspects to the public. Another theory was that the names were used to highlight that the majority of the named ISIS referents had non-European names. Finally, it was found that, on the whole, the four articles’ use of framing and their choices of referents seemed to correspond to their favoured party’s policies on extremism and terrorism – Labour and its affiliated publications promoted restraint and consideration, while the Sun and the Telegraph used strategies that would justify the more confrontational approach advocated by the Conservative Party. At the outset of this project, I expected the Labour affiliated papers to employ a fairly restrained and careful approach, and the Conservative ones to adopt an outspoken and somewhat more provocative tone. In addition, my expectation was that there would be clear differences between the reporting of the quality papers and that of the tabloids. For instance, a first expectation was that the Guardian and the Telegraph both would use a sparser language than the tabloids, and that they would use less divisive rhetoric. Conversely, a second expectation was that the tabloids would, in their own ways, take more categorical stances; I expected that the Daily Mirror would opt for a reluctant (or even relativistic) approach, and the Sun to use aggressive (or even demagogic) language. I would say that, to some degree, these expectations were met – and for the Guardian, fully so. However, the insinuatory tone of the Telegraph article was somewhat surprising. Furthermore, while the Sun did use a number of strategies to emphasise the threat of the suspect, the language proved to be less inflammatory than initially expected. Finally, the Daily Mirror met the expectation that it would use a restrained language, and, even though it does not register in text, one could argue that the relatively short article is an indication of reluctance. With this last point in mind, one must recognise that there are a number of limitations to this study. Firstly, it has a small samples size – both in terms of stories, articles, and newspapers. In order to draw general conclusions on any differences between left and right-wing reporting on ISIS, one would have to analyse more material on the organisation. Secondly, as mentioned in section 2.1, CDA is a very wide approach that is hard to define, which means that it allows for a great variety in how one approaches a text. For instance, this essay analyses only two aspects of CDA. Even so, these two aspects can be studied in more detail – the approach to analysing headlines and lead paragraphs used in this project could be applied to entire texts. Similarly, future analyses of agent-patient relations would benefit from studying the links between referents, their agency, and the types of activities they are shown to perform in closer detail.