Textual Analysis of Print Media Text Discourse

Abstract

Text analysis consists of linguistic analysis, which involves in terms of grammar, vocabulary and cohesion. Textual analysis is a process for researchers to gather information about how other human beings make sense of the world. Textual analysis comes from the work of researchers, theorists known as the French structuralists in the 1960s particularly the work of Roland Barthes (1915-1980). Media discourse is an interaction platform where the discourse is introduced to a listener; viewer or non-present reader either in spoken or written form. Written or spoken discourse is oriented to the readership or listing/viewing audience respectively (O Keeffe,2011). CDA describes the relationship between the language text, its meaning and the society focusing on the use of text types to show the particular meanings and relate the events.  But in this analysis we will analyze the text types and linguistic formal structure in the newspapers language. Editorials especially focus on the issues of national politics, political leaders, policy makers and the decision taken by leading politicians. This paper will analyze the newspapers “The Nation” of May and September. In this paper, we will analyze (i) the text types used in media discourse (open and close text) and (ii) the linguistic formal structure of media discourse.  In the linguistic formal structure  we will  analyze ‘Modality’, ‘Lexicalization’, ‘Direct and indirect discourse’, ‘sentence links’, ‘pronouns’,  and  ‘idioms’. The Fairclough analytical framework will be followed to analyze the text of newspapers. According to Fairclough’s framework of “communicative events” which can be categorized into three elements: text, discourse practice and sociocultural practice (Fairclough, 1995: 57). The sampled editorials May and September of “The Nation” will be analyzed to  explore  the answers of the above two research questions.

Keywords: Textual Analysis, Media discourse, linguistic formal structure.