The Representation of Social Actors in Jacinda Ardern’s Parliamentary Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis of New Zealand Mosque Massacre | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Article 10, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 2019, Pages 253-284 PDF (1.05 M) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2019.133236 | ||
| Author | ||
| Abeer Aly El Attar El Attar | ||
| Abstract | ||
| On the 15th of March 2019, the world witnessed Christchurch Muslim massacre in New Zealand which took the lives of 50 Muslims and left many injured. The study adopts a critical discourse approach to account for such massacre. Adopting critical discourse analysis as an approach serves to investigate the interrelationship between language and ideology. Working within the theoretical framework of van Dijk’s (1997,1998,2006, 2009, 2011) concept of ideological square and van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic approach as an analytical framework, the study accounts for the representation of social actors in addition to the presentation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in the parliamentary speech of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister. The study also attends to the representation of the identities of the social actors and the ideology underpinning Arden’s parliamentary speech. The results of the analysis reveal that the social actors were differently represented in Ardern’s speech, so as to suit her ideological stance. The study concludes that Muslims are positively presented as “other”; the perpetrator is negatively presented as “other”; and New Zealanders (incorporating Ardern, official bodies, and people) are positively presented as ‘self’. The ideology underpinning her speech reveals her rejection of the perpetrator’s racist stance and ideology; acceptance of the other, and an anti-racist stance against Muslims. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| representation; social actors; ideology; critical discourse analysis; self and other | ||
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