Newspaper Racial Agenda: A Critical Discourse Analysis

A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study aims at researching the role of print media in creating a racial project through
the development and perpetuation of ethnic stereotypes. For this purpose, American
newspaper coverage of mass shootings occurring from year 2000 onwards are analysed,
through corpus-based approach. The research focuses on a comparison between the
discriminated reporting of white American shooters and the American shooters of
different ethnic backgrounds by a close analysis of the lexical items, particularly
adjectives. Thus, two corpora of 38,582 words are formulated based on sixteen mass
shooting incidents. Among them eight incidents were carried out by white shooters and
eight by non-white American shooters. The news articles are taken from the top
American newspaper agencies such as The Guardian U.S Edition, The New York Times,
New York Daily and The Washington Post. Critical Discourse Analysis approach
presented by Fairclough (1992) and the concept of ―Other‖ put forth by Edward Said
(1978) serve as a theoretical framework for the study whereas Corpus Linguistics along
with CDA serve as the two methodological constructs. The data is analyzed using
software tools such as Wordsmith Tools and LancsBox 32. The findings reveal that the
ethnicity of a shooter such as Korean, Afghan, Bosnian, Saudi and Vietnamese
determines the shape a discourse would take. However there is a deliberate omission of
the race when the perpetrator is a white man. The findings further reveal the lexical items
with negative connotations like ―terrorist‖, ―extremist‖ and ―radical‖ are mostly used
with Muslim perpetrators or with perpetrators of immigrant status to some extent but
never with white mass murderers. These white killers are justified or humanized by
declaring mental health issues as the root of the problem. The analysis yields that the
articles about the white American perpetrators are mostly constituted of objective facts
i.e. about the objective details of the incidents and the lives of the shooters. On the other
hand, the articles about shooters with different ethnic background focus on the subjective
details about the lives of the killers. Similarly adjectives with negative connotations such
as ‗crazy, mad and abusive‘ are never associated with white American shooters.