5.1 Alharbi & Bahmani
Ahlam Alharbi and Mona Bahmani. (2015). Media Representation of the Islamic Law: A Case Study of Ashtiani’s Stoning. International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse 5(1), 66-100.
Abstract: Drawing on principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) the proposed study tried to reveal media portrayal of the Islamic law in general and stoning in particular. In order to achieve this purpose, quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted on the coverage of the Ashitiani’s case in eight English-Language European newspapers to examine the discursive strategies of ENGAGEMENT (Martin & White 2005), in turn, reveal the news writers’ positions regarding stoning as an Islamic practice. The current study has demonstrated that far from merely reporting events, news writers have univocally shown that one of their main jobs is to present reality (news events) based on their perspective even though they may challenge some of the readers’ through employing contracting and expanding heteroglossic strategies. At the same time, (in)direct quotations have been employed extensively to delegate, or at least share, the responsibility of these propositions.
Keywords: Islamic law, stoning, media discourse, appraisal framework, engagement, subjectivity
Category: Volume 5
