Language and the Complex of Ideology

This book undertakes a systematic analysis of the workings of ideology in discourse, using an interdisciplinary approach that links language, cognition and society. Through examination of two corpora - a collection of British newspaper articles and a set of political speeches - the author examines Britain's involvement in the Iraq War (2003), and critically assesses the language practices which constructed a pro-war ideology under Tony Blair's premiership. Drawing on a constellation of concepts from van Dijk's socio-cognitive model, this book carries out both qualitative and quantitative analyses and conceptualises discourse as a nonlinear, highly discursive and socio-cognitive phenomenon. This innovative work will appeal to students and scholars of Cognitive Linguistics, Quantitative Linguistics, Social Constructivism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Political Sciences and Communication Studies.

Applies a multifaceted methodology to examine how ideology is embedded in the micro and macro structures of language Provides a theoretically-grounded and empirically illustrated critique of the scope and limitations of Critical Discourse Studies Conducts an exhaustive quantitative analysis of the lexico-semantic components of a large corpus of news articles and political speeches

Autorentext
Mohamed Douifi is Lecturer in British Studies at the Department of English, University of Algiers -2, Algeria. His research interests are Critical Discourse Studies and Cultural Theory with a focus on studying how knowledge, power, and ideology are packaged in the micro and macro structures of language.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Basic Theoretical Insights on Ideology and Discourse Analysis.- Chapter 3: Contemporary Orientations in Discourse Studies.- Chapter 4: The Anglo-Iraqi Relationships: A historical overview.- Chapter 5: Blair's Foreign Policy Discourse on Iraq.- Chapter 6: The Discursive Construction of the Iraq War in the British 'Quality' Press.- Chapter 7: Conclusion.