Arabic-L:LING:new dissertation

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Sat 29 May 2010
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1) Subject:new dissertation

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1)
Date: 29 May 2010
From:reposted from LINGUIST (via Uri Horesh)
Subject:new dissertation

nstitution: University of Vienna 
Program: Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2010 

Author: Mekki B. Elbadri

Dissertation Title: News on the Web in Arabic and English: A discourse analysis 
of CNN's websites 

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)
                    English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Ruth Wodak

Dissertation Abstract:

This research consists of an analysis of the news presented by the CNN
(Cable News Network) on its websites in Arabic and English. It is based on
the hypothesis that the CNN as a news producer modifies the news content
and presentation according to the audience it addresses. It is also assumed
that, as the Web has actually become an important source of news,
distinctive features of form and content are used, making web-news
different from other traditional types of news and requiring different
analytical tools. The research is interdisciplinary in nature. It is based
mainly in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), with insights
from other disciplines, such as multimodal discourse analysis, functional
linguistics and translation studies. The analysed data consisted of stories
collected from both sites in Arabic and English during a one-month period,
as well as a users' questionnaire distributed and collected online. For the
purpose of triangulation, the analysis included multimodal, quantitative
and qualitative analyses of the collected websites stories and the
questionnaire data. The research concludes that the Web has become a major
news source for many people; the written material is more dominant compared
to other multimodal elements; the websites in question address each public
using a completely different discourse, i.e. using texts with different
linguistic, cultural and ideological implications; and that negative views
are widespread concerning CNN's reporting, reliability and balance. It also
emerges that news translation is rather a process of re-writing, providing
totally new products depending on different ideological positions.
Translation studies tools are not adequately designed for analysing this
type of text production and discourse analysis scholars have concentrated
more on monolingual texts than on cross-linguistic discourse. It is
therefore considered desirable and advisable to conduct further research
that looks into these questions and to develop a contrastive critical
discourse analysis approach for investigating them. 

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End of Arabic-L:  29 May 2010