A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Selected Opposition and State Printed Media on the Representation of Southern Mobility in Yemen

Abstract

This study scrutinizes the relationship between language and ideology and how such relationship is represented in the analysis of texts, following Systemic Functional Linguistics and transitivity analysis developed by M.A.K. Halliday. It shows that news structures are working apparatuses of ideology and store meanings which are not always obviously recognized by the readers. Through a comparative analysis of two Yemeni English newspapers with seemingly opposing ideologies, the study uncovers how these ideologies are represented in a different way in these printed media with regards to southern demonstrations in 2009. Though both newspapers are not with those seeking secession, the study aims to reveal how the two newspapers represent events to serve its purpose and ideology, blaming some for such actions. It also shows that these printed materials highly mystify the agency of processes by using various strategies such as nominalization and passivization. That is to say, critical text analyses reveal how the choices used by writers enable them to manipulate the realizations of agency and power in the representation of action to produce particular meanings that are not always explicit for all readers. Such analysis will reveal and unmask the hidden ideologies.

Keywords: CDA; ideology; power; southern movement; transitivity system; Yemen Post; Yemen Observer