A discourse analysis of sectarian discourse on some selected news websites

Abstract EN

The new sensational difference in occasions on the planet, especially eleventh Sept., pleasant assault and the presence of ISIS, have made Islam, Muslims, and matters relating to them "news today", I.e., one of the most significant and appealing themes.

occasions and activities occurring for the sake of Islam or by the people who misjudge Islam have given media goliath stories for depicting Islam and Muslims adversely.

so, media have begun to utilize different phonetic means to accomplish their political, philosophical, or financial objectives.

however, the current study is a discourse analysis aims at investigating the Islamophobic talk that media are leaned to use in addressing Islam and Muslims; accordingly, it likewise targets exploring the portrayal of against Islam belief systems on Western news sites.

to achieve these aims, the study hypothesizes that (1) a biased negative technique of selection of materials is used in representing Islam and Muslims on news websites and (2) the linguistic tools mostly used and the ideas given focus to on British and American news websites are almost similar reflecting similar ideologies in dealing with Islam and Muslims.

to carry out the study, six articles from two websites are selected.

the articles are analyzed linguistically and ideologically according to Fairclough's three-dimensional approach (2010) which, in turn, employs the notion of thematization in addition to Halliday's systemic functional tools.

the main conclusions of the current study are as follows: (i) all the hypotheses set for the study have been verified, (ii) Islamophobia on Western news websites is taking a grave direction which is looked at as a representation of Islam and Muslims, that is, mainly the generalization of every negative incident or feature about Islam as a faith and on the majority of pacifist Muslims (iii) anti-Islam bias ideologies are represented on Western news websites through five primary themes (the theme of violence ,the theme of Muslim women, the theme of Sharia Law , the theme of the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the theme of Muslim / Non-Muslim relationship).