A multimodal analysis of attitudinal resources in UK news about Raheem Sterling

Abstract EN

Appraisal theory provides an account of how speakers/writers position themselves as standing with or against certain issues or figures and the way this position is manifest in language.

After being subjected to alleged racist abuse by supporters in the Premier League, Manchester City winger Raheem Sterling has accused British media of helping to fuel racism in football by their portrayal of black players.

This accusation has led to this investigation of British media coverage of Sterling in order to consider how articles on this young black player may result in racial behaviors in football.

This research is an application of the theory of Appraisal (attitudinal resources) as proposed by Martin (2000) and Martin and White (2005) and visual metonymy as presented by Feng (2016) to analyze a thread of UK newspaper headlines about Sterling, in an attempt to question Sterling's accusation against press coverage.