Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Easter Attacks in the Daily Mirror A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This paper reports the consequences of the Easter attacks that hit Sri Lanka two years ago through applying critical discourse analysis as a main area of study. It is believed that there is hidden strategies and unequal power relations in the news on this topic. It is hoped that the study uncovers this agenda through the use of language. As a result, the researchers employ two models of analysis to explore the interrelations of the linguistic values and the ideological strategies embedded in this discourse. The study equips Fairclough’s model for linguistic analysis and van Dijk’s ideological square as a main analytical framework of examining the data. In doing so, the researchers select one article from the Daily Mirror as a Sri Lankan newspaper to examine and investigate to reveal the state of Muslims in this troubled country. The findings of the linguistic analysis show that lexical expressions have a major role in presenting the central and ideological contested words that reflect the ideological impact of the editor and his participants in the text. Consequently, the findings of the grammatical analysis display “modality” for being the most frequent value in this discourse, followed directly with negative sentences, passive sentences and nominalizations. For more emphasis on pronouns, the subjective pronouns are the most frequent ones in the text. As for the ideological analysis, the study reveals the negative image of people in general and the Muslims in particular. Ultimately, this study delivers the vital link between the linguistic values and the ideological values for other linguistic researchers and critical discourse analysts.