Syria-Israel Relations in Al-Assad’s Speeches and Interviews: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1202.10Keywords:
Bashar Al-Assad, corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, presidential speechesAbstract
This paper uses a 1,445,000-word corpus to examine Syria-Israel relations in the speeches and interviews of Syrian President Basher Al-Assad from 2000 to 2016. Van Dijk’s (2009) notions of manipulation and polarization are employed to highlight the discursive strategies that Al-Assad uses to legitimize his points of view regarding a range of regional issues. Examining how Al-Assad constructed Israel* in his speeches revealed recurrent thematic categories, such as conflict, occupation, negotiation, and criminality/violence. The analysis suggests that Al-Assad used Israel to build solidarity with his people portraying himself as a man of values who does his best to resist the occupier and liberate the occupied Arab lands.
References
Al-Abbas, L. S., & Haider, A. S. (2020). The representation of homosexuals in Arabic-language news outlets. Equality, Diversity Inclusion: An International Journal. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/edi-05-2020-0130
Baker, P. (2006). Using corpora in discourse analysis: A&C Black.
Baker, P. (2010). Sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., KrzyŻAnowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. DISCOURSE & SOCIETY, 19(3), 273-306. doi:10.1177/0957926508088962
Bartsch, S. (2004). Structural and functional properties of collocations in English: A corpus study of lexical and pragmatic constraints on lexical co-occurrence. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Chomsky, N. (2003). Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. New York: Henry Holt.
Fairclough, N. (2009). A dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis in social research. In R. a. M. Wodak, M. (Ed.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (Vol. 2, pp. 162-187). London: Sage.
Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Introduction to Discourse Analysis. (pp. 258-284.). London: Sage.
Gabrielatos, C., & Baker, P. (2008). Fleeing, Sneaking, Flooding: A Corpus Analysis of Discursive Constructions of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 1996-2005. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 5-38. doi:10.1177/0075424207311247
Haider, A. S. (2016). A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of the Arab uprisings : evidence from the Libyan case. (PhD), University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Haider, A. S. (2019a). Syrian-Lebanese Relations: A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of Bashar Al-Assad’s Speeches and Interviews. Dirasat, Human Social Sciences, 46(4), 551-570.
Haider, A. S. (2019b). Using corpus linguistic techniques in (critical) discourse studies reduces but does not remove bias: Evidence from an Arabic corpus about refugees. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 55(1), 89-133. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/psicl-2019-0004
Haider, A. S. (2019c). The Representation of Al-Megrahi’s Release in Arabic and English Newspapers in 2009 and 2010: A Corpus-assisted Discourse Study. Dirasat, Human Social Sciences, 46(1 Supplement 2), 297-317.
Haider, A. S., Al-Salman, S., & Al-Abbas, L. S. (2021). Courtroom Strong Remarks: A Case Study of the Impact Statements from Survivors and Victims’ Families of the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 1-18. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09872-4
Haider, A. S., & Hussein, R. F. (2019). Analysing headlines as a way of downsizing news corpora: Evidence from an Arabic–English comparable corpus of newspaper articles. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 35 (4), 826–844. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz074
Haider, A. S., & Olimy, S. (2019). The Representation of Laji’een (Refugees) and Muhajireen (Migrants) in the Headlines of Jordan News Agency (PETRA). International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 32, 155–186. doi:10.1007/s11196-018-9550-4
Hardt-Mautner, G. (1995). Only Connect.’ Critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics’. . UCREL (University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language). Technical Papers 6: Lancaster University. Retrieved May 26, 2021,from http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/papers/techpaper/vol6.pdf.
Hunston, S. (2002). Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Khalaji, M. (2013). Iran-Syria Religious Ties. Retrieved June 15, 2021, from https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2013/jun/03/part-i-iran-syria-religious-ties
Küçükkeleş, M. (2012). Arab League’s Syrian Policy. SETA. Retrieved June 20, 2021 from http://setadc.org/pdfs/SETA_Policy_Brief_No_56_Arab_Leagues_Syrian_Policy.pdf.
McEnery, T., & Wilson, A. (2001). Corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book: Taylor & Francis.
O’Halloran, K. (2000). Mystifying discourse: a critique of current assumptions and an alternative framework for analysis. (PhD), Murdoch University, Australia.
O’keefe, D. J. (2002). Persuasion: Theory and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? DISCOURSE & SOCIETY, 8(2), 165-187. doi:10.1177/0957926597008002002
Scott, M. (2016). WordSmith tools version 7. Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software.
Sharrock, W. W., & Anderson, D. C. (1981). Language, Thought and Reality, Again. Sociology, 15(2), 287-293.
Stubbs, M. (1997). Whorf’s children: Critical comments on critical discourse analysis (CDA). In R. A. & W. A. (Eds.), Evolving Models of Language: British Studies in Applied Linguistics (Vol. 12, pp. 100-116). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Stubbs, M. (2001). Words and phrases: corpus studies of lexical semantics. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Discourse analysis as ideology analysis. In C. S. a. A. L. Wenden (Ed.), Language and peace (pp. 17-33). Dartmouth: Aldershot.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2003). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, Tannen, D.,Hamilton, H.E. (Ed.), The handbook of discourse analysis. (pp. 352-371). Oxford: Blackwell.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2004). From Text Grammar to Critical Discourse Analysis. A brief academic autobiography. Retrieved April 19, 2021 from http://www.discourses.org/From%20text%20grammar%20to%20critical%20discourse%20analysis.html
Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. DISCOURSE & SOCIETY, 17(3), 359-383.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach. Methods of critical discourse analysis, 2(1), 62-86.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Critical Discourse Analysis. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. Vol. 3, pp. 290-294.). Oxford: Elsevier.
Wodak, R. (2009). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. M. Wodak, M (Ed.), Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Publications.
