Application of Multiple Discourse Analyses: Analyzing News Text - Case Study Example

 Application of Multiple Discourse Analyses: Analyzing News Text In September, 2006 Pope Benedict XVI included in his remarks at the University of Regensburg, Bavaria certain statements that inflamed the Muslim world, bringing with it reactions ranging from responses of outrage to death threats. The reaction prompted those charged with protecting the Pontiff to employ security measures beyond the norm. The rest of the world was left wondering why the Pontiff, an educated worldly man certainly aware of the sensitivities of Muslims toward criticism of their religion, particularly its founder, Mohammed, would have chosen to make the following remarks in public forum. Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, and referring to the concept of jihad or holy war, the Pontiff challenged, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Pope’s Speech at University of Regensburg,” para. 8). The Pope later indicated the remarks were taken out of context and that he was merely quoting statements made by the medieval emperor, for which he later apologized. The textual excerpts below gleaned from Reuters news reports are particularly interesting in terms of discourse analysis. The first section of the paper analyses both texts using methods of analysis including Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology of Norman Fairclough and those suggested by Jan Blommaert. A second section applies other approaches that are useful and relevant, such as member categorization analysis (MCA). First Text Excerpts Indians set fire to an effigy of the Pope as a wave of protests ripples through the Muslim world. Words written more than 600 years ago still cause offence when taken out of context. The Pontiff’s care to point out that he was quoting someone else doesn’t seem to have prevented an angry reaction in some quarters. The statements are ugly and unfortunate. The Pope needs to take a step back, and should apologize to the Islamic world. Further north police had to restrain protestors in Jammu and Kashmir. Churches in the West Bank and in the Iraqi city of Basra were attacked, although the damage was minor. The church in Basra is Christian Orthodox and not aligned with the views of the Pope. Second Text Excerpts Extra security outside the Pope’s summer residence on a very unsummery day. The Pontiff made a further apology, this time in person, to try to quell the anger in the Muslim world over his quote of a medieval philosopher. “...I am deeply sorry for the reaction in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.” Pilgrims outside the Castel Gandolfo residence seemed to think the Islamic reaction was overblown. The Islamic world sometimes goes beyond the reasonable, also with violence. Problems can be solved by using words, not with violence. However, in Egypt the reaction from the Muslim Brotherhood was one of guarded forgiveness. The remarks that came from the Pope today are a retreat from what he said in his lecture on Tuesday in Germany. And this is a good step towards an apology. Despite that it was not a clear apology towards Islam and the Muslim people. It remains unclear what sort of apology will suffice for some parts of the Muslim community. As defined by Moslem Ahmadvand in his paper, Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) “is the uncovering of implicit ideologies in texts. It unveils the underlying ideological prejudices and therefore the exercise of power in texts” (Widdoson 2000, qtd. by Ahmadvand 2). Fairclough, a main proponent of CDA methodology, viewed text analysis as only one portion of the more complete discourse of social interaction. In interpreting Fairclough in Language and Power, Ahmadvand sees the theorist as having two main objectives: “to correct the vast negligence in relation to the significance of language (in power and control over social groups)...and (as) helping to raise awareness to the question that how language can influence the dominance of one group of people over the others could be considered as the practical aspect of his approach” (Ahmadvand 4). Viewing certain statements in the texts, we find evidence of this theory. The statements are ugly and unfortunate, which perhaps underlies a prejudicial attitude regarding language itself, its particular intent and who is speaking. If, as the Pontiff insists, the words were taken out of context, then their use might be called unfortunate (or misguided) perhaps, but hardly ugly—a word that in its extreme seems to fan the controversy between Islam and the Pope (and perhaps Catholicism as well) into an attempt by the Pope to demonize Islam. The statement The Pope needs to take a step back, and should apologize to the Islamic world, is instructive, and implies an attempt at enforced humility (needs to; should) on a personage whom Catholics believe beyond criticism or apology. It does, as Fairclough might conclude, cast a humiliating pall over the entire group (Catholic Church and its believers). Pilgrims outside the Castel Gandolfo residence seemed to think the Islamic reaction was overblown dismisses Muslim anger over the original statements which cast Mohammed as an evil person, making their concerns appear ignorant and over-reactionary. One wonders how the power group, Christians and Jews, might react to a similar statement regarding Jesus or Moses. In critiquing the Fairclough work, New Labour, New Language, Joseph Pearson suggests a personal Fairclough bias in his analysis. “At every turn... the analysis (of Tony Blair’s language) is coloured by the author’s (Fairclough) old-Labour political prejudices (such as pacifism) instead of his desire to see how language works in action” (Pearson, Cercles, para.3). Atlhough the statement Problems can be solved by using words, not with violence expresses a pacifist notion of which Fairclough might approve, it is, based on CDA methodology and theory, nonetheless highly political in nature in that it reinforces attitudes widely held that the Muslim religion (group) itself condones violence to achieve its religious goals, thus, once again, diminishing its legitimate argument of having been offended. Regarding government and globalization, Fairclough addresses the popular, well recognized practice of “spin,” or the distortion of ideas through the use of certain language. ...Pilgrims outside the Castel Gondolfo residence seemed to think the Islamic reaction was overblown; The remarks that came from the Pope today are a retreat from what he said in his lecture on Tuesday in Germany all use spin to convey an idea. The word “overblown” spins the story in favor of the Pope by painting the criticizing group (Muslims) as possibly irrational. The second statement implying the Pope “retreat(ed)” from a former statement paints the Pontiff as in the least, disingenuous, and at worst a liar. Jan Blommaert adds another dimension to CDA by arguing that the method should specifically analyze the effects of power on discourse in the social realm. “Voice is the issue that defines linguistic inequality...in contemporary society. An analysis of voice is an analysis of power effects—(not) being understood in terms of...sociocultural rules and norms” (Blommaert, Introduction 5). A study by Barkho clarifies “voice” in the hard news media. “When discourse is contextualized, voices taking part in it do not enjoy equal opportunity to power, emphasis and authority. Hard news discourse is an ‘amalgam’ of voices...” (Barkho 112). Thus the text must be analyzed from this latter perspective. Show me just what Mohamed brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. The voice of the Pope as proponent of the message of Christianity and the peaceful non-violent message of Jesus is a powerful tool in reinforcing already negative attitudes toward Islam. Indians set fire to an effigy of the Pope as a wave of protests ripples through the Muslim world—dismisses the amalgam of voice in the protest by pinpointing “Indians,” (all Indians), as taking part in the violence. It remains unclear what sort of apology will suffice for some parts of the Muslim community relates directly to the voice of the Pontiff as insufficient (powerless, i.e., Blommaert) to communicate to the amalgam of voices he must reach. The text, And this is a good step towards an apology, despite that it was not a clear apology towards Islam and the Muslim people sounds as if the voice may have been that of a news agency which speaks for the Muslim world, perhaps Aljazeera. Considering the apology offered in a condescending voice, the latter is not a surprising response. ...I am deeply sorry for the reaction in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. The Pontiff is saying he is sorry for Muslim reaction; he not apologizing for saying it. Alternate Approaches to Discourse Analysis Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA), based on the original concepts of Harvey Sacks, promotes the idea that people use membership categories to orient themselves when speaking to others. “Sacks' proposals for a  Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) were (are) ...focused on the ways in which procedures of 'membership categorization' could be seen to be inherent in members' talk to suggest obvious implications of what they were saying” (Schegloff; Sachs 295-6). In short, Sachs and MCA examine word cues selected by the communicator as appropriate to the listener (audience) to not only effect and control discourse but interaction in a diverse range of settings, which, in this case is hard news text analysis. A good place to start and an example of MCA discourse analysis is provided by Leudar, Marsland and Nekvapil in discussing the discourse with the public of George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Osama bin Laden after 9-11. “Each speaker distinguished ‘us’ from ‘them’ and formulated this distinction so as to justify past violent actions and to prepare grounds for future ones” (Leudar; Marsland; Nekvapil 1). Applying MCA analysis to the hard news text, it is particularly the province of journalists to inject certain words or cues into stories that, while not technically allowable under strict journalistic practice, is done with stunning regularity. The Pontiff’s care to point out that he was quoting someone else doesn’t seem to have prevented an angry reaction in some quarters. (The sarcasm in the statement negates its value as news. The writer could have chosen, “The Pontiff took care to point out that he was merely quoting someone else and that the statement was taken out of context. Despite his explanation anger remains intense in some quarters.” It remains unclear what sort of apology will suffice for some parts of the Muslim community (the intimation being, “what do these (they) people want?” The AHRC project team tells us, “A corpus-based investigation of lexical pragmatics is in many respects a pilot project...since the interpretation of utterances in discourse may depart significantly from the linguistically encoded meaning, the analyst’s intuitions about the intended interpretation must play an important role” (AHRC Lexical Pragmatics Project Team 1). Text corpus, a large structured set of texts, now usually electronically stored and processed, are used to do statistical analysis and hypothesis testing, checking occurrences of language or validating linguistic rules on a specific area. Linguistic corpus (in the hard news realm) may be legitimately defined as a body of utterances, words or sentences, assumed to be representative of and used for lexical, grammatical, or in our case, linguistic analysis. The generally accepted corpus for news articles sits somewhere between the sixth and eighth grade levels, which assumes a wide intellectual range of readership that leaves no one out and reaches the widest possible audience. Related to pragmatics it studies language as used in the social context, measuring its effect on those involved in the discourse—in the case of the news article, both the writer and in a non-direct discourse manner, their intended audience. When the writer writes, Churches in the West Bank and in the Iraqi city of Basra were attacked, although the damage was minor. The church in Basra is Christian Orthodox and not aligned with the views of the Pope, the interpretation allowed under a corpus-based investigation might conclude the writer seeks to lesson the impact of the church being set afire by inserting the word, “although,” not generally part of the journalistic lexicon. If the report came from an agency such as Aljazeera, the analyst might conclude that the discourse “code” might be speaking to those in semi-sympathy with the act or providing a warning of sorts in the second sentence. Depending upon which methodology is used to analyze text, none can ever be completely scientific due to the human element involved in the discourse. Human means unpredictable. Such studies applied, however, provide interesting insights from a sociolinguistic perspective, as well as a mirror into how discourse either promotes or denies social and political equality; alter opinions and deliberately provide information rife with hidden meaning and intent. The power of language in discourse is long held as an undeniable reality. The power of the written word (news) is particularly powerful in that it is far reaching in its impact. Even those whose intent it is not to promote a particular view, or group over another may not even be aware of how the language they use affects the discourse. Studies in this area are ongoing. Works Cited Ahmadvand, Moslem. Critical Discourse Analysis: An Introduction to Major Approaches. Term paper. University of Zanjan: Academic year 2008-2009. http://www.iranianlinguistics.org/papers/CriticalDiscourseAnalysis.pdf AHRC Lexical Pragmatics Project Team. Corpus Analysis and Lexical Pragmatics: An Overview. 1-21. http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/lexprag07/corpus%20analysis/pdfs/Corpus%20a nalysis%20and%20lexical%20pragmatics%20-%20an%20overview.pdf Barkho, Leon. Jönköping University. Studies in Language and Capitalism: The Discursive and Social Power of News Discourse: The Case of Aljazeera in Comparison and Parallel with the BBC and CNN. 2008. 111-159. (Retrieved Oct. 20, 2009 from Website). http://www.languageandcapitalism.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/slc3-4- barkho.pdf Benedict XVI, Pope. Catholic Culture.org. 20 Sept. 2006. Pope’s Speech at University of Regensburg (full text). 12 Sept. 2006. http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=46474 Blommaert, Jan. Discourse: A Critical Introduction: Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge. 2005. (Retrieved from Google Books Web site: Oct. 21, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LQgJicoVUn8C&oi=fnd&pg=PP 15&dq=%22Blommaert%22+%22Discourse:+A+critical+introduction%22+&ots =cMPAe9oT_V&sig=MXmg3Kqk73f0vEznvptK- giyTaY#v=onepage&q=&f=false Leuter, Ivan, Marsland, Victoria and Nekvapil, Jiri. On Membership Categorization: ‘Us’, ‘Them’ and ‘Doing Violence’ in Political Discourse and Society. Sage Journals Online. Vol. 15, No. 2-3, 243-266 (2004) DOI: 10.1177/0957926504041019. http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/2-3/243 Pearson, Joseph. Cercles: Review: Pluridisiplinaire du Monde Anglophone. 2002. Book Review: Norman Fairclough. New Labour, New Language. London: Routledge 2000. http://www.cercles.com/review/r6/fairclough.html Schlegoff, Emanuel and Sachs, Harvey. MCA: An Overview of the Idea of Membership Categorization Analysis, Based on the Original Initiatives of Harvey Sacks.... ASL: MCA/Paul ten Have. 11 May 2000. http://www.fragment.nl/mirror/Have2000/asl-mca.htm Read More