An M.A. thesis at Basrah University Entitled
By: Rawa’ Kudhir Nasih
The thesis has been discussed at the Department of English, College of Education for Human Sciences, University of Basra.
Topic & Abstract: Critical Discourse Analysis, Iraqi media and democracy with special reference to some Iraqi political speeches. It focuses on exploring different ideologies, perspectives and attitudes through the use of Teun Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive framework (2005). Twenty five ideological discursive devices are used to reveal their effectiveness in identifying the most disguised organizations of language and manipulation. It emphasizes the ideological opposed structures of as way of manipulating and controlling the audience’s mind. Additionally, the study explains how media and democracy have become “imposed socio-politico force” in determining and shaping views and attitudes.
The study falls into two parts.The theoretical part is divided into three chapters. Chapter one presents the general preliminaries to the whole study. It includes an introduction, the hypotheses, the objectives, the scope of the study, the significance of the study and the procedures of the study. Chapter two starts with a detailed explanation of both Critical Discourse Analysis & Media and Democracy. It consists of two sections. It also discusses the purpose behind the selection of Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive framework (2005) and the choice of Iraq political speeches. Chapter three comprises the framework of the study to be applied to the speeches of Iraq politicians.. Chapter four presents the methodology, findings and data analysis of the study. Chapter five starts with the discussion of the results of Iraqi politicians’ speeches at micro and macro levels analysis of the use of Van Dijk’s (25) discursive devices. Chapter six presents the main conclusions of the study and suggestions for future studies.
The results of the study display how the underlying ideology of each political speech with respect to the democratic issue and media in Iraq are revealed and show the concealed ideologies, perspectives and power organizations in their speech. It uncovers the role of media as having a positive role in discussing the concerns of politics (Iraq and its issues, Iraqi forces matters, formulation of government..etc.) and that media have a great role in the improvement of the political discourse. As such, media discourse is concerned with the era of politics and thus media has proved its positive accredited role due to the high percentages of positive – representation devices utilized in the politicians’ speeches.
