Ideological representations in English and Arabic news reports : a thematic structure analysis

Abstract

The broad aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy of Theme/Rheme analysis in identifying underlying ideologies in English and Arabic news reports. The study takes as its starting point the assumption that the different choices of Theme/Rheme, their organization at the local and global structures and the presentation of Given/New information can elucidate ideological factors that underlie news presentation in English and Arabic. This thesis designs a conceptual framework which combines structural, ideological and linguistic approaches to Discourse Analysis. It also develops an innovative methodological model to analyse Theme/Rheme in Arabic Verbal and Nominal clauses and enhances the linguistic tools to analyse the thematic structures in English and Arabic texts. The thesis applies the developed model, methods and tools to a selected corpus of English and Arabic news reports in order to identify ideological representations of Syria in mainstream online news media. The study seeks to analyse and compare the different choices of Theme/Rheme, nominalization and lexical variations in the thematic structures, on the one hand, and their implications and attribution of causality and responsibility, on the other hand. These issues are investigated in a corpus of English and Arabic news reports during times of political assassinations in Lebanon and the implication of Syrian involvement. Based on the recurrent preferences in the thematic structures of the selected corpus, the study concludes that developed model, methods and tools help identify underlying ideologies in the presentations of Syria in both English and Arabic news reports.