A Critical Discourse Analysis of Juvenile Crimes in Three British Newspapers: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent (2011 – 2013) MA Thesis submitted by Nermine Ezzat Mossaad Shehata To The Department of English In the fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics Under the Supervision of Prof. Mona Fouad Attia Professor of Linguistics and Vice Dean for Postgraduate Studies and Research Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University Prof. Ghada

Abstract

The present study tackles the theme of juvenile murder and theft crimes owing to its great prominence in written media discourse in the last five years. A juvenile offender is a person who is under the age of 18 and often displays antisocial behavior. This study examines different murder and theft crimes committed by juveniles, providing a remarkable insight into their representation in media discourse. Thus, the study investigates the media coverage of juvenile crimes from 2011 to 2013 in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent. This study adopts the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to look at the representation of juvenile offenders in media discourse. CDA is a field that is concerned with analyzing how different social phenomena are reproduced through text and talk. Moreover, it examines how ideology is interwoven and manipulated in discourse (van Dijk, 2001, p. 352). In this regard, the study carries out a detailed analysis of selected juvenile crimes in western media discourse adopting the approach of CDA and applying Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) as the tool of analysis. The present study aims at; first, highlighting the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ polarization in the data under investigation; second, revealing how juveniles (the Other) and police, court, government as well as society (the Self) are positively and negatively represented; third, determining whether juveniles are represented as victims or as criminals; and finally, unveiling the writers’ ideologies regarding the representation of juveniles. This study employs the transitivity system embodied in the experiential metafunction and the system of modality as identified in the interpersonal metafunction to detect the writers’ ideologies in representing juvenile offenders in the selected newspaper articles. With respect to the transitivity system, the qualitative method is employed to investigate the process itself, participants involved in the process as well as the circumstances associated with the processes, whereas the quantitative approach is used to record the numerical data for the Self and the Other-representation in percentage terms. Regarding modality choices, the qualitative method is used to examine the writers’ attitudes and ideologies towards juvenile crimes through analyzing striking instances of deontic and epistemic modality as well as different mood and comment adjuncts. Similarly, the quantitative method is adopted to obtain numerical data for the Self and the Other-representation on a percentage basis. The thesis falls into two main parts and is composed of four chapters. The first part of the thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the theory, whilst the second part forms the application. Chapter one tackles the theoretical framework of the study, providing an introduction to CDA. Chapter two gives the review of relevant literature. It presents an introduction to media discourse, particularly in relation to CDA and juvenile crimes. The data analysis is presented in two chapters. Chapter three performs an in-depth analysis of the selected data, using the transitivity system that constitutes the first pole of analysis. Chapter four provides an analysis of the data based on the system of modality. Conclusions are drawn in the final section of the thesis that summarizes and relates the findings of the two chapters of analysis. The analysis reveals that linguistic choices of both transitivity and modality complement each other in constructing the image of juvenile offenders in media discourse. In this regard, the writers tend to stress the negative representation of the ‘Other’ and the positive representation of the ‘Self’, resulting in creating damaging stereotypes of juveniles as a deviant social group. Following van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model, this study reveals how ideology is expressed and reproduced through discourse. CDA proves to be a powerful device for analyzing texts as it helps unveil the writers’ ideologies, whether representing juveniles as criminals or as victims. Besides, adopting SFG to analyze the selected data indicates that it is an efficient model for detecting ideological patterns in media texts. Models of mental representations from the perspectives of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ are constructed. Such models of mental representations represent the writers’ beliefs about juvenile crimes that, in turn, control how they address this issue and understand the social practices of juvenile offenders. Therefore, the study investigates the hidden ideologies of the writers through identifying the positive and negative opinions about the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. This means that discourse is controlled by underlying ideologies that constitute the representation of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ as social groups. The writers’ ideological stances dignify the role of the ‘Self’ embodied in the court, police authorities and government while putting the blame at the door of juveniles. Thus, transitivity and modality choices help produce the image of juvenile offenders in journalistic discourse and unveil the writers’ hidden ideologies.