A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES IN INTERNATIONAL NEWS DISCOURSE

Abstract

The portrayal of refugees in the international news media is very instrumental in determining the opinions of the people, their politics as well as their social reactions towards forced migration. Media discourse is not a neutral discourse of ideology, but on the contrary, institutional power relations and dominant social ideologies. The discursive construction of refugees in international English-language news media through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is examined in this study. The paper is based on the three-dimensional model of Fairclough and the socio-cognitive perspective of van Dijk and explores the purposive sample of the news articles of the three news sources: BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and The Guardian. The critic in specific pays attention on lexical choices, transitivity strategies, metaphor and nomination strategies. Findings indicate that discourses of victimhood, threat and burden and their agency and voices are often silenced as refugees are overwhelmingly typified. These representations promote the polarization of ideologies and re-enactment of unequal relations of power. The research sheds light on a need to have a more balanced and ethical approach to media practices and also adds to the increasing body of research on discourse, ideology, and migration studies in English linguistic.