A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Stance-taking in English News Reports on the Environment
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Abstract
How corporate media represents environmental discourse (e.g., global warming) can dramatically influence how humans perceive environmental changes. Accordingly, this study employs multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) to examine how English-language news agencies targeted toward Asian and Western audiences take stances on environmental issues. Drawing on one recent conceptualization of ideology in discourse, we explore how linguistic and visual strategies shape readers’ perceptions of environmental responsibility and awareness. To accomplish this, MCDA was combined with ecolinguistics and used to analyze eight news items. This sample was purposefully selected from China Daily, Thai PBS, the Guardian, and NBC. More specifically, we analyzed linguistic devices at the lexicogrammatical level, and images at the discourse semantics level from both Asian-targeted and Western-targeted news agencies. Three dominant ideologies were found in the stances taken by these agencies, which involve the obfuscation of causal agents and a corresponding focus on the results of the processes these hidden agents are responsible for. The findings demonstrate the utility of MCDA in revealing dominant ideologies within environmental news and, in doing so, emphasize the power of language and images in crafting ideological narratives. Overall, our analysis has implications for understanding corporate media’s influence on environmental discourse and public perceptions.
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