A Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2021 Lebanese-Saudi Diplomatic Crisis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36586/jcl.2.2025.0.51.0099Keywords:
Cognitive, critical, discourse, socialAbstract
The current study aims at investigating the discourse of the Lebanese- Saudi crisis of late October 2021. This diplomatic and press war created a splash on Arabic and international media. This study delves into the written media war between the two countries in terms of Van Dijk's social-cognitive framework. The critical theme in Van Dijk's framework is based on the concept of manipulation. The analysis is conducted by selecting two articles from daily newspapers published in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The study is a qualitative attempt to account for the strategies used by the media to reproduce the discursive reality of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries. The study found that the main manipulation strategies used in this discourse are targeting the cognitive level of short term memory by means of negative lexical selection of the other part rather than the positive representation of self.
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