A critical discourse analysis of the image of Muslim woman in some English newspapers

الملخص EN

Woman issues and particularly Muslim woman issues gain a lot of interest in the western mass media in its different kinds; audiovisual and print media.

Brining the focus on Islam and Muslim issues is mainly part of what is called Islamophobia in the west.

As the press has a power of changing and creating public opinion so they have worked to reflect their ideologies about Islam and Muslims.

Since the nineties of the last century and early beginning of this century, the western press started focusing on Muslim woman issues which coincided with the declaration of war against Afghanistan.

The current study is a critical discourse analysis study of the image of Muslim woman in some English newspapers.

The study aims at investigating whether the image of Muslim woman is presented positively or negatively in English newspapers and clarifying the most common ideologies that English newspapers have created about Muslim woman.

To fulfill the above aims the study hypothesize that (i) English newspapers have created a certain image of Muslim woman which is mostly negative.

(ii) most of the negative ideologies about Muslim woman's way of life are represented explicitly.

(iii) English newspapers share the same ideologies about the status of Muslim woman in Islamic countries.

The data selected from two English newspapers, The Washington Post (American) and The Guardian (British), 2 articles have been selected, 1 article of each one.

The articles are analyzed linguistically and ideologically within the Fairclough's three-dimensional approach (1989, 1995, and 2010).

The analysis of ideology and identity will be revealed under Qualitative and quantitative analysis.

The study comes up with these conclusions: (i) all the hypotheses which are set for this study have been approved.

(ii) The two selected English newspapers showed Muslim woman as being oppressed, dependent, weak and obliged, and (iii) the two selected English newspapers have expressed their negative ideologies explicitly through the choice of vocabulary and overlexicalised items