Abstract
The purpose of analysing the Iraq War in the news discourse, as is articulated particularly in the language of the “quality” press, is to glean light on another facade of wartime communication in Britain. In this respect, it is advocated that a critical assessment of the broadsheet’s reaction to the official stance is important to properly address the tacit mechanisms of ideological dominance, and the ways in which the discourse of the elite permeates into the media and public spheres.
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Notes
- 1.
See estimates and other relevant data about press readership and its audiences on the website of the National Readership Survey: nrs.org
- 2.
Lord Northcliffe was one of the most influential figures in British politics who used his newspapers, The Daily Mail and The Times to put pressure on the government. These newspapers, as many political commentators noted, were behind the downfall of the Asquith’s coalition government in December 1916.
- 3.
See Jones (2001) for further details on the techniques used by Blair’s spin doctors to manipulate the media and the public as well.
- 4.
The report “Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation” was said to be plagiarized by civil servants working under Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell. The report was presented at the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003.
- 5.
On the use of Critical Linguistics in the analysis of US press coverage of the Iraq War, see, for example, David Weiss’ “‘New Mexico’s Been Always Patriotic and Loyal to the Country’: Uncritical Journalistic Patriotism in Wartime”, Haridakis, Hugenberg, & Wearden, 2009, pp. 183–204.
- 6.
Some symbols such as the dollar sign ($), the asterisk (*), and the underscore (_) have specific function to play in the software and should be omitted to avoid possible errors.
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Douifi, M. (2018). The Discursive Construction of the Iraq War in the British “Quality” Press. In: Language and the Complex of Ideology. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76547-1_6
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