“Where got i that truth?” an analysis of external sources in English and Persian news reports on Syria
“Where got i that truth?” an analysis of external sources in English and Persian news reports on Syria
Author(s): Abbas A. Rezaee, Mohammad MozaffariSubject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Comparative Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Stylistics
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: attribution; evidentiality; external source; political discourse; news report; reported speech
Summary/Abstract: While there has been a plethora of inquiries into reported speech, a cross-linguistic analysis of the source segments in political news reports is still a rarity. This study aims at a three-fold investigation: first, tracking the frequency, transparency, and types of the sources; second, identifying the strategies employed to introduce these sources in text, and third, interrogating the contextual elements. To this end, a bottom-up analysis of 120 news reports from four quality newspapers (Kayhan and Jomhouri-e Eslami from Iran and The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal from the U.S.), mainly informed by van Leeuwen’s (1996) model of social actors, was carried out. The findings suggest a heavy reliance of both sets of newspapers on external sources to fulfill their vested interests, although they varied significantly with respect to frequency, transparency, and type.
Journal: Discourse and Interaction
- Issue Year: 16/2023
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 118-142
- Page Count: 25
- Language: English