Religious Racism: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Western Media News on the Representation of Muslim’s Reactions to the Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Linguistics, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran

Abstract

The representation of Muslims in English-language media is still fraught with challenges. Negative stereotypes and one-sided images remain dominant. They can normalize and legitimate racism through their discourses and contribute to its reproduction at the societal level. This study with a descriptive- analytical approach, examines various ways of delegitimizing Muslim’s protests against the publication of offensive cartoons by Charlie Hebdo in the news of four western media outlets: The New York times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and BBC, from 2020 to 2024, using the concepts of VanDijk’s ideological square and discursive strategies. In this regard, the discourse components in this news report were identified and then each of them was analyzed according to the discursive strategies. The findings of this research indicate that the author of this news report highlighted the positive characteristics of insiders (non-Muslims) and marginalized the negative characteristics of non-insiders, that is, Muslims. In this regard, discursive strategies such as: lexicalization, Authority, Norm Expression, Victimization, Evidentiality, Hyperbole, Categorization, Euphemism, Implication, Irony, Number Game, Generalization, National Self-Glorification have been used to persuade the readers.

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Journal of Iranian Dialects & Linguistics
Volume 9, Issue 2
March 2025
Pages 111-137

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History

  • Receive Date: 17 January 2025
  • Revise Date: 07 April 2025
  • Accept Date: 13 March 2025

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