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Title (MIS) Representing Islam: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Western Print Media with a Focus on The Times

Author(s) Madiha Tahir

Abstract The present research attempts to explore how ideologically loaded discourses of “The TIMES” newspaper represent Islam and Muslims discursively. The data for the study in hand has been collected from the mentioned western newspaper .The research has been further delimited to the articles of the newspapers which appeared form June1, 2015 to June30, 2016 regarding the representation of Islam and Muslims. The study begins with the discussion about construction of reality and its representation, role of print media discourses, war of words between Islam and non-Muslims (West),ideological conflicts and the way various discursive techniques are employed to deconstruct a desired version of reality in order to make things naturalize and common sense, regarding fear-based representation of Islam and Muslims. The researcher has employed an amended research model by triangulating Dijk’s (2004), Wodak’s (2009) and Leuween’s (1996)frameworks for Critical Discourse Analysis .The research model employed in the study has been triangulated in accordance with the nature of existing data and the analytical categories emerged from the analysis of the data. The researcher has supplemented her qualitative findings by documenting the frequency of occurrence of loaded lexical items, analytical categories and the emerging themes regarding representation of Islam and Muslims. The findings of the study highlight that the discourses of the newspapers are ideologically loaded and are deliberately employed in the propagation of desired ideology, worldview and to hegemonize the target readership about Islam and Muslims .All the levels of analysis used in the present research are an instrument through which the process of negative “Othering” of Islam has been played up. Additionally, the study reveals that highly politicized terms like Islamophobia, hardliners Muslims and radical Islam are employed to represent negative, irrational and violent nature of Islam, which carry the systematic discrimination against Islam and Muslims .This is how print media discourses are employed insidiously to propagate the negative image of Islam and Muslims. Key Terms: Representation, Implication. Print media, Discourse, Ideology, Hegemony, and CDA.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

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