A Saturday Like No Other. The Beginning of the Latest Military Conflict in the Middle East – a Cross-Linguistic Analysis of News Headlines from British, German, Bulgarian and Turkish Media
A Saturday Like No Other. The Beginning of the Latest Military Conflict in the Middle East – a Cross-Linguistic Analysis of News Headlines from British, German, Bulgarian and Turkish Media

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the language used bythe Guardian from the UK, Der Spiegel from Germany, Dnevnik from Bulgariaand Cumhuriyet from Türkiye to report on the events of Oct. 7th, 2023 startingwith Hamas’ attack on Israel and continuing with Israel’s military response toit. The cross-linguistic critical analysis is limited to the headlines of thepublished articles and attempts to reveal whether the events in question arereported in a similar way considering the fact that all four media outlets areseen as left-liberal and in the case of differences whether and to what extentthese are determined by national historical and/or political realities.All four media outlets report on the events of Oct. 7th as theydevelop; however, the Bulgarian and the Turkish newspaper lack theresources to do this as extensively as the Guardian and Der Spiegel. There aredifferences both in the presence of victims in the headlines and in the wayHamas and its attack are referred to. While the Guardian talks about‘militants’, Der Spiegel prefers ‘terrorists’ and Cumhuriyet uses more agentlessstructures. All four media outlets publish videos of the military conflict butDer Spiegel limits itself to showing only Hamas’ attack and not the destructioncaused by the Israeli army in response. Possible explanations for suchdifferences are belonging to the same religion in the case of Türkiye andhistorical events like the Holocaust in the case of Germany.

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