Abstract

Words have the power to influence society, especially when those words are delivered through the mass media and consistently used in a certain way. Since mass media has a great role in shaping public opinion and influencing collective attitude, it is worth asking how such tasks achieved only through how the language is presented to the audience. Subtle and careful discourse phrasing is how the first spark of an inequality ideology is born and perpetuated in public and media.  Influence is not always positive; for example, racism and discrimination have been facilitated in public discussions, at times through media that is held in the highest regard. To understand how this happens one can start right from where the language of the media is understood and how it is comprehended by the audience. Different uses of language can cause different reactions and that is only because the way how it is received. This is because different ways in using language are represented or comprehended in the audience mind differently.

On the other hand, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations. This prospectus seeks to define how one can engage in a CDA, with specific focus on what is written in the comments sections of online articles. The reason for this is that the comments section allows a researcher to determine, evaluate or measure the interpretation of the article’s gist by the general public and consumers. Attention will be paid to elite publications and speakers because of the capacity for influence that they hold. For the purposes of expediency, this prospectus proposes that analysis be thorough, starting from lexical units and expanding to entire organization of information in the text.

This prospectus defines the scope of a proposed dissertation that will take the form of a Cognitive psychology and critical discourse analysis of contemporary mediated discourse, with the goal of describing how attitudes of racism and discrimination are perpetuated through public discourse. This dissertation will provide a quantitative backing of the analysis through the use of coded reader-response research, examining readers’ perceptions through their reaction to the presented discourse. Based on these observations, the texts will be analyzed through the lens of cognitive critical discourse analysis (CCDA). This analysis will include examining lexical units representation beginning with individual words, communicative grammatical representation and expanding to entire bodies of the text. This prospectus will define the perspective of cognitive CDA and reader response, describe their applicability and usefulness to the topic, and propose a method of research, along with an outline for the organization of the thesis.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Three decades ago, social psychologists began releasing results of laboratory and survey experiments regarding the subconscious expression of American racism. Gaertner and Dovidio (1986), two pioneers in the field, explored the notion that racism was not going away but rather was mutating in repressed regions of the national psyche. People might no longer admit to racist feeling, opinion or belief, but that does not mean the feeling is not there. “Although the old fashion ‘red-necked’ form of bigotry is less prevalent,” they wrote, “prejudice continues to exist more subtle, more indirect and less overtly negative forms” (Satangor, 2000).

Although many investigations of this topic focus more on measuring and describing language of bigotry from an interactional point of view, this dissertation will dig into deeper levels of linguistic analysis to unveil responses to the features of racial talk. This approach will permit the creation of a model that describes the impact of racial dialogue on those to whom it is directed and identify which forms of language create which mental representations.   Specifically, it will take a representative sample of public discourse, featuring discussions of race and immigration, determine what common features exist according to reader perceptions, and analyze these factors through the lens of critical discourse analysis. The goal of the investigation is to identify psycho-linguistic elements that contribute to the creation and perpetuation of racial ideology, taking into consideration the social and historical context of a work.

According to van Hoek (1999), the field of cognitive linguistics is more like a paradigm than a specific theory, and it is characterized by a focus on “explicating the intimate interrelationship between language and other cognitive faculties” (p. 134). Within the scope of CDA, the application of cognitive linguistics relies primarily on conceptual metaphor theory (Charteris-Black, 2004; Musolff, 2004); the author of this paper is interested in contributing to the field by going further, focusing particularly on the elements of language that carry latent racial connotations. This requires expanding the focus to include the way words are contextualized by the organization of sentences, metaphorical schemata and paragraphs to elicit certain mental representations.

While it is not possible to evaluate with precision how meaning is represented, the juxtaposition of two different online news articles about the same events enables for an indirect evaluation. Online news articles have the advantage of allowing readers to comment easily, and these comments reflect, in part, the way meanings were inferred in response to each article. This approach is limited in that such comments will also reflect the unique opinions of the reader, as well as the views prevalent in the population represented by the general readership of each paper; however, a great number of useful observations can be made when contrasting the articles and their respective comments.

This paper is, therefore, a Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis of both content related to linguistic features of mediated racial talk and the perceptions created. It will examine the linguistic tools that public speakers, media outlets, and others involved in public discourse employ to carefully phrase the language of news in a way that contributes to and supports production and reproduction of a racially unequal ideology. The thesis of this paper argues that language and ideology exist in continuous cycles in which language is intentionally used by power elites to elicit a specific response, which is then accepted through mental representation and repeated by an audience. Rothenberg (2008) and other researchers have studied how an existing ideology can affect the way individuals in positions of social influence, and by extension dominant cultures, use their language to perpetuate and enforce social influence. While featuring in the comments section of an article does not equate to having social influence, the social influence and credibility of the publisher, or the article, trickles down to the comments in such a way that the article cannot completely dissociate itself with the commenters. As such, the commenters are taken to be part of the body of the article. This paper takes a corollary of this stance, arguing that language can also shape and reinforce the ideology of a dominant culture by subtly transmitting existing power structures in ways that are largely subconscious but still emotionally rousing and politically divisive.

The proposed paper employs an analytical framework to determine explicit as well as implicit discursive and linguistics strategies used deliberately to cultivate, maintain and reproduce racial ideologies through careful and subtle choice of wording, grammar and finally overall discourse structure. A number of research studies have proved CDA to be a useful tool for the analysis of language, or discourse at large, in the field of linguistics (Shojaei, Youssefi and Hosseini, 2013). One of the major objectives of CDA as stated in these research studies is to deconstruct the explicit and implicit ideologies of discourse that in one way or the other encourages inequality in power relations and mental representation within society (Wodak and Meyer, 2015).

1.1.0 Language, Ideology and Cognitive Science

Ideologies can be defined as the systems of beliefs human beings have about the world.  They include the values and evaluations the individual human holds about people, issues, and objects, and are highly analogous to the analytical concept of a frame (Hart, 2010, pp. 109). Several traits of ideologies are important from a psychosocial perspective. First, an individual’s attitude and behavior manifest and reflect the ideologies they hold. Second, ideologies rarely if ever appear out of nowhere. Instead, they are the result of a long process of creation and recreation over a span of time, as a result of social conditions and the transmission of beliefs about them (van Dijk, 2006). In linguistics, the creation of an ideology starts from a word of a language used to label a phenomenon. Such labeling in language is the first step that shapes and frames human understanding of the things around us. Also the usage of specific language maintains, recreates and further develops the created ideology. Hence, different uses of language will lead to the creation of different ideologies.

The cognitive approach of the current study tries to examine how the different components and techniques of language are implicitly employed to deliberately create a certain negative or racially discriminatory ideology. We choose mediated discourse as the material for analysis because media is both broadcast across society and tends to be ideologically biased (Herman & Chomsky, 2002). Media is, intentionally or otherwise, a useful tool for shaping public opinion. The fact that media is typically controlled or influenced by powerful governmental or business interests means that these interests can use it to unbalance the equation of struggles (Sinason, 1989). Even if this were not the case, media disproportionately provides attention and a podium to those who are successful, powerful, or otherwise of privileged status, enabling them to promote their ideology in a way that is disproportionate relative to others (Fairclough, 2013).

Since people hold and express different opinions about social issues such as ethnicity, racism and inequality, those who share belief systems form a collectivity of social actors (Omi and Winant, 2014). It has further been argued that ‘…not any collectivity develops or needs an ideology…this is only the case for some kinds of group’ who do so in relation to other groups. In other words, ideology is inherently a tribal construct that exists through the identification of “in groups” and “others” (Freeden, 2013). Thus, there are political, social, and professional groups of ideologies; each represents a shared or common system of beliefs that the group applies to its discursive and social practices.

Some research studies have demonstrated the importance of newspaper editorials, particularly for literate circles, simply because readers regard them as a reliable source of information about political, religious, cultural, and national issues in a country (Freeden, 2013). Editorials also assume great importance because individuals turn to experts’ opinions out of cognitive scarcity. In general, readers have difficulty drawing a conclusion about a given topic from the overwhelming amount of information broadcast and/or published daily; consequently, they look to an authority whose opinion they can trust, to avoid the time-consuming analysis they would otherwise need to conduct (Every, 2013). The privileged status of the editorial makes it easier for print media to shape the world views of their ideological groups – ‘…homogenous group[s] of people with shared beliefs and values whose defining features is the newspaper that they read’ (Tahir, 2013).

Editorials express and communicate opinions in an effective and persuasive way, so they represent an excellent source of analysis for how media affects public opinion. According to Fairclough (2013), newspaper editorials significantly employ a series of arguments to support their stance for or against any given side of a topic. By commenting on news events from different angles and providing a summary in the form of recommendations, warnings or predictions, editorials create easily digestible points that can be recalled and repeated easily. In this context they employ various strategies, including the use of polarized vocabulary to describe political actors and events, and specific rhetorical structures of discourse (Haller, 2013). The use of these strategies is ideological in the sense that they disseminate positive information about ‘us’ and negative information about ‘them’. Such usage makes analysis of the ideological role of the editorial genre quite significant from a research point of view in the present paper, and the perspective of critical discourse analysis one of the most useful tools for examining this situation. The comments or feedback section under the article is also an important tool for examining the situation too.

1.1.1 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

The origin of CDA can be trace it roots from Critical Linguistics. Critical Linguistics is seen as a powerful tool for studying ideological processes that are responsible for mediating relationships of power and control.  Critical Discourse Analysis is mainly focused in analyzing the opaque and also transparent relationships of discrimination, power, dominance and control as it is revealed in language. This analysis of discourse is associated with knowledge and development of identity and societal knowledge, and therefore, relates to the aspect of power and its relationship with knowledge. It also relates to the concept of construction of identity and societal knowledge. This, therefore, offers the means to explain or narrate “reality” in a certain way. The meaning of discourses is analyzed using both a cognitive and social approach. The CDA holds the view that discourse and social structures are mediated by social cognition. For this reason social structures and discourse are both dialectically related. This also means that language and power are related dialectically. Though power is not derived from language, language can often be used to alter perceptions of reality, and this ultimately affects social change. The social change means movement and action.

The proposed investigation will use CDA as the primary theoretical tool for practicing and evaluating the cognitive effects of racial language, through the process of identifying and recreating a racial ideology that is mainly sourced by linguistics and practiced as applied linguistics. The critical framework in our project is rooted in the critical nature of CDA as described in the works of Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Habermas and Foucault, who granted CDA its critical nature as a “radical critique of social relations” (Blommaert and Bulcaen 2003: 38). Adopting such social critique allows analysis to be combined with the critical linguistics approach. It becomes possible to examine how the media use language as an instrument of power to racially polarize society, both on the micro- and macro level of discourse. The micro-level analysis manifests in the careful study of the deliberate lexical, semantic and syntactic manipulations of message-senders; and the goal of analysis is to determine how certain linguistic techniques provide different mental images through the process of meaning comprehension (cognitive realization of the discourse meaning that triggers ideology production). On the other hand, the macro-level of analysis helps to understand the social, cultural, historical and political system as the contextual frame within which the reification of those micro features makes perfect sense. Hence, in this setting CDA is used as practice more than a theory of discourse.

The cognitive perspective in this project relates to the representation of meaning. The project argues that ideology and beliefs are constructed as a result of the audiences’ ability to cognitively represent and realize subtleties in the language of public discourse. Such realization of meaning is the nature of the mental image (in its narrow sense of mental representation of meaning) that automatically appears in the audience mind as part of the comprehension process of racial text and talk (Bloor and Bloor, 2013).

CDA and social structure always exist in a dialectical relation (Hart, 2014). CDA studies the sociopolitical norms that regulate the mediation of discourse. However, contemporary attention has been driven towards how discourse (including mediated discourse) enforces social structure (Fairclough, 2013) as well as how discourse cognitively shapes individual beliefs (van Dijk, 1993) and any collective shared ideology. The proposed dissertation will focus on this cycle of production and reproduction through mediated discourse as constructed by cognitive representations of language.

The concept of discourse as a socially functioning instrument in the production and reproduction of ideology and belief is rooted in the work of Austin and Wittgenstein as quoted in Holtgraves (2013) and their theory of language use as social action. Discourse as social practice “contributes to the formation of the social systems, situations, institutions and ideologies in which it is embedded” (Hart 2014 p.3). As such, “…every single instance of language use reproduces or transforms society and culture, including power relations.” (Titscher and Jenner 2000: 146). However, the extant literature regarding the cycle of production and reproduction of ideology between discourse and social structure does not encompass the nature of human cognition  and how it functions to form abstract (and maybe various) beliefs and ideologies about the world, subsequently reifying them in concrete attitudes through verbal actions. This topic, applied to the mediated public discourse that occurs in media, will constitute the subject of the proposed research. We hypothesize that a section of the media uses linguistic resources to normalize and legitimize racism while using language that superficially appears to be politically correct. This leads us to seek an answer to the following question: if racial discrimination is an enforced ideology, and if language is shaped in the mind of the audience or receiver, then what process can be formulated to explain the involuntary mental reflex of accepting these subtle cues? Further, if indeed language is used to shape the mental images for the consumer, how is this represented in public responses to the very text and talk that supposedly leaves the audience with less possible free will to extend an interpersonal dimension and possible variant meaning of the discourse they are exposed to?

1.1.2 Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis is the semiotic study of language that has emerged from the field of discourse analysis. In turn, discourse analysis is the study of the way language shapes communication and social interactions at any scale, from the individual to the cultural level. Because language, society, and culture pervade nearly all human activities, and particularly those that involve interaction with others, discourse analysis is a broad, pan-disciplinary field with a wide range of applications in such areas as psychology, sociology, and philosophy (van Dijk, 1993). Critical discourse analysis, in turn, constitutes one approach to the study of sociolinguistics.

Discourse analysis (DA) can be distinguished from the individual fields to which it is applied in several ways. First, it includes larger units of analysis than critical discourse analysis (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). For example, while traditional psycholinguistics might focus on the meaning of individual words in a transcribed conversation, discourse analysis can include the study of entire written works or common ways of speaking. DA is also applied to a wider range of communication, including all forms of recorded or performed media as well as nonverbal communications such as body language and images (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). Finally, DA considers a wide range of phenomena, such as pacing, topic, emotional involvement and many other patterns and structures present in communication (Wodak & Meyer, 2009).

Critical discourse analysis differs in several ways from its parent field. First, CDA does not have a single theoretical foundation through which inquiry is conducted (Weiss & Wodak, 2003). This is not necessarily a weakness, as it enables the tailoring of analysis to the specific and subjective elements of the type of communication under study, and permits the incorporation of theories from the disparate fields to which discourse analysis is applied. However, it can lead to a lack of uniformity in theoretical frameworks and research methods.

Second, as the word “critical” suggests, CDA is associated with critical theory through its attention to the “socially informed construction of society” (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). Critical theory involves reflection upon the causal relationships between social constructs, political ideologies and values, and communication (Wodak & Meyer, 2008).  By extension, critical discourse analysis can be described as the study of how language shapes these things. However, CDA should not be viewed as a sub-discipline of critical theory, as the two developed separately, with CDA later applied to critical theory as a method of analysis. As Threadgold (2003) points out, in reaction to the historical elitism of literary studies, the exploration of traditional literary texts was considered to be explicitly outside the domain of cultural studies. However, at the time of Threadgold’s writing this was beginning to change, due in part to the applicability of CDA to the dissection of culture (Threadgold, 2003).

Both of the above differences point to a core difference between discourse analysis and CDA: the latter is “problem-oriented” (Wodak and Meyer, 2009). CDA is inherently concerned with understanding and addressing social inequalities, including allocation of power, political ability, and media portrayal. This focus on illuminating and resolving social problems inherently prioritizes an interdisciplinary approach over adherence to a single, formal body of knowledge. In effect, CDA’s function of addressing social problems requires it to reach beyond individual fields to form a structural picture of social communications.

1.1.3 CDA and Racial Talk

The CDA perspective is concerned with how language shapes communication and focuses on the social inequities that such communication enables (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000) This analysis is not dispassionate because, as van Dijk (1993) wrote, “…the point of critical discourse analysis is to take a position” (p. 270).

The issue of race is one that persistently looms in the consciousness of societies that have a mixed racial profile and in fact is part of the communication most people regularly consume through the news media, racial talk falls well within CDA’s domain. It is evident that, despite legitimization of racially charged issues through the political process, racial tension, and as a result, racism, still haunts society’s psyche. While this phenomenon is often written off as older, less “progressive” traditions resisting social change, such an explanation is somewhat unsatisfactory. In reality, several factors may permit the expression or internalization of racism through less than obvious means.

First, while not all racial talk is publicly evident, its absence does not necessarily indicate that it does not exist. The meaning of words is not fixed, but subject to interpretation through various psychological anchors and “spaces”; conceptual worlds created during discourse (Hart, 2010). Further, these spaces may exist through previous definition. Thus, words spoken between two people who are familiar with one another, even if spoken in public, may be interpreted differently by the participants than by those overhearing the conversation. On a larger scale, it is not unreasonable to propose that media communications, targeted as they are to specific demographics, are likely to be interpreted differently by their audiences in ways that are not obvious.

A similar proposal can be made about the larger conceptual apparatuses of perception called frames, defined as “cultural experiences, including cultural categories, norms, values, narratives, practices and routines” (Hart, 2010, pp. 109). As a frame is part of a series of interlinking perceptions, including feelings, which are used to interpret the world and are out of the control of the communication producer, phrases that seem outwardly innocuous or void of influence can in fact be laden with attitudes toward race. However, the concept of framing in CDA is somewhat a victim of the broad applicability of the field, because the theory as applied to news media has been criticized for vagueness and for lacking a unified theoretical framework (Scheufele, 1999). In consequence, any use of framing as an explanatory process deserves as precise a description as possible.

Schemas, related to frames, can be defined as recurring patterns of cognition formed from previous experiences. Van Dijk (1993a) related the manipulation of schemas to subtle projections of power in racial speech. In particular, this power projection has been described as the enforcement of dominance, with such speech having the purpose of both creating dominance through the act of speaking, and projecting power by managing public affairs in a desired way. This occurs because certain values can be invoked during such speech that serves to associate the perceived value of a schema, as a recurring mode of cognition, with the speaker’s position. A speaker can, for example, allude to superiority of one race or propensity of the other to engage in crime repeatedly albeit in subtleness. In van Dijk’s (1993b) example, free speech was invoked, which allowed a Prime Minister’s criticism of his opposition to be perceived as a “breath of fresh air” in a burdened area of public discourse, thus permitting him to project power in a way that was appreciated for its integrity rather than being viewed as derogatory, as it might have been under a different cognitive mode (pp. 273).

 There are also examples of how language selection can affect perception in racial talk, intentionally or otherwise. One subtle example lies in the force-dynamic schema. This schema suggests that certain lexical objects are linked to the concept of physical force, and so place the subject and object of communication into opposed conceptual roles in which one acts upon the other (Hart, 2010). Another, somewhat more obvious example is the use of metaphor. Words associated with certain activities, such as warfare, or states of vulnerability, such as floods, can be used to color the perception of an event while being consciously perceived as nothing more than emphatic language physically (Hart, 2010)

The enforcement of power and manipulation of discourse does not need to be limited to written or spoken words. Images are powerful communicative tools, both in the media and in our own minds. Aside from obvious manipulations, for example selecting images that evoke a desired response or support a desired narrative, in the theory of CDA abstract concepts of motion and visual representation are constructed as modes of thought in response to linguistic signals. The CDA concept of the image-schema is related to discursive strategies, defined by Hart (2014) as “a more or less intentional…plan of discourse practices [that result in] internally coherent representations of reality” (pp. 110). The image-schema itself is not truly an image, but an abstract representation of common experiences. These experiences allow an image or scene to be categorized in certain ways, and as such a visual image or a linguistically created one can be imbued with specific associations. Moreover, because abstract schemas tend to be common across individuals and across individual experiences their use can be widely applied, and therefore widely invoked. Like the invocation of a value schema or a particular cultural frame, the image schema can be invoked to project power, associate a statement with a certain set of values, or create impressions of acting or being acted upon. By analysing comments against these technical dimensions, my dissertation hopes to draw attention to their capacity to strengthen racial ideology through language.

1.1.4 Thematic and Reader Response Analysis

The usefulness of CDA in analysing the transmission of established systems of power is evident from its critical stance and focus on cognitive linguistics. However, it has been said that CDA is a not a methodology but a means of interpretation (Baker et al., 2008). This is true at least in the sense that CDA does not have a set of common quantitative tools for empirical proof at its disposal, and so risks falling into the realm of pure theory or opinion. This is often overcome with corpus-linguistic methods that analyse the structure of a text. However, this does not allow for the creation of a model of representation that exists subjectively to an audience. To overcome this, CDA can be paired with quantitative methods that focus on the perception of discourse, which can still be interpreted through the CDA lens. One of the most useful of these methods is the method of quantitative reader response analysis.

 Reader response methods study samples of text as they are used in real life by soliciting feedback from an audience. Properly designed, such studies can identify common perceptions, and therefore meanings, in a text. This creates a model that the dissertation can refer to. This method of analysis shares some ground with the qualitative method of thematic analysis because it seeks to identify how a work is intended to be experienced. Unlike these qualitative methods, it takes the description of a text’s meaning from an audience that is external to the researcher. Quantitative reader response analysis is therefore the study of samples of texts or conversations that are numerically measurable through perceptual feedback on the part of their audience. One method ranks responses on a graded scale. Another allows the audience to describe their experiences, then code and sort the responses to characterize perceptions. Recalling that thematic-analysis is flexible enough to analyse varying bodies of text, and CDA is a perspective rather than a methodology, this approach allows the quantitative analysis of both individual words and entire bodies of text in a way that can be framed through CDA while also analysing how it is represented in the mind of the audience.

Thematic analysis allows for a process of coding in a way that is similar to corpus analysis. By identifying patterns, indicators, and commonalities between texts, intentions can be identified. For example, if a word is used frequently in describing immigrants, then this represents a conceptual pattern on the part of the text producer. If the word, phrase, or text also is described similarly by those reading the text, then this is another pattern. This pattern can then be analysed as evidence for the transmission of a cognitive representation, and its effectiveness at transmitting a speaker’s intentions can be assessed (Boyatzis, 1998).

Part of the effectiveness of this method of research is its flexibility. Thematic analysis has been widely applied across psychological research, from the development of grounded theory to the description of specific theoretical positions (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This flexibility, is useful in combining it with CDA. As CDA is the perspective, thematic analysis provides a method of approaching it that can be adapted from individual words to entire periods on cultural discourse. Further, it is not difficult to invert this analysis by turning it from the thematic impressions of the researcher to those of an external audience.

This analysis can be used as a phenomenological approach, allowing the researcher to understand the received meaning behind words and describe the experience of an audience. It also has the benefit of being able to identify associations and trends, particularly over time. However, research design is important for such analysis. The work under analysis must be representative, and the data collected standardized and coded before themes are identified. Identification and grouping of themes demands great care. The research proposed here poses additional risk in that it also analyses the cognitive modelling of the audience; hence, this audience must be carefully selected as well. Also, the wide range of possible responses requires careful sorting and coding to avoid invalidating the CDA perspective by failing to accurately identify cognitive representations.

1.1.5 Recent Developments and the Direction of Research

In its developmental stages, particularly in the early 1990s, CDA focused on the intentions of the speaker and how her choice of language influenced, often intentionally, the attitudes of listeners, as demonstrated in van Dijk’s (1993) example of free speech, cited above. However, as theories of mental representation of language developed, the specifics of this process were outlined to describe how such language is translated in the mind of the listener (Hart, 2010, 2014). Along similar lines the critical analysis of culture originally avoided textual analysis, but more recently has incorporated CDA and other theories as a lens of analysis (Threadgold, 2003). This has naturally led to incorporating the tool of language analysis.

In recent years, various authors have attempted to combine the CDA perspective with quantitative analysis. Several previous studies have combined corpus analysis and CDA, though many of these focus on standardizing a methodology, and the area is still in development. This exposes one of the weaknesses of such research: the inability to find evidence of representation in an external audience.  Baker et al. (2008) used a corpus of over 140 million words drawn from news articles to analyze cultural attitudes on immigration. This study focused on determining a meaningful framework for combining CDA with a quantitative approach, which shows the relatively recent attention this method has received. However, it only identified the attitudes of a published elite, and by nature of its design could explain the limited perceptions of a silent observing audience. With some modification, specifically the consideration of an audience that takes part in the discourse via the comments section, this research can serve as a model for combining method and perspective.

Threadgold (2003) also noted that the discourse of global politics was only beginning to be addressed at the time of his writing, and since then CDA has increasingly directed its attention to the role of nations and cultures in power relations. This is particularly true of immigration. Every (2003) analyzed expressions of shaming and privilege in public media and their effect on the popular consciousness. Kim (2014) applied corpus analysis, particularly collocation patterns, to investigate attitudes toward North Korea in U.S. media. Non-print media is increasingly the subject of analysis, with Catalano and Waugh (2013) treating media images as descriptors of groups with a high relative power differential. Thorbjornsrund (2015) discusses all of these in the context of media relations.

It is notable that both Kim and Baker (2008) focus on the intention and attitude of the speaker, rather than the construction of this experience by the listener, while Every and Catalano focus on both. This does not need to be the case however, particularly when analyzing online media and print publications, which often allow for responses from readers, mediated though they may be by the publishers of such media. This suggests that while immigration and global politics are now receiving due attention as topics of analysis, increased focus on the role of the listener is warranted in media analysis. Further, such a focus should be able to be analyzed with some success using already established methods. 

1.1.6 CDA, Analysis, and News Media

Thematic and response analyses as methodologies are well-suited to incorporation in a CDA framework, because CDA examines communication in a sociological context, while responses and thematic cues can aid in exploring experience of that communication. This means that CDA can form the research question or problem, while these methods analyse evidence for the problem. In the case of corpus-driven analysis such as that proposed here, it is possible to search for evidence supporting a theory formed through CDA, while thematic analysis can be used to form theories from the same perspective, provided the body of communications is well selected. Both approaches can analyse any media that can be recorded.

Because CDA is not grounded in a single theoretical framework, it is adaptable to a variety of methodologies. Thematic analysis is also highly flexible and can easily be applied to sociological and psychological inquiries, but is less adept at forming theories. This flexibility supplements well the theory- and solution-generating focus of CDA. Also, a focus on real-world communications and the construction of a received message grounds the CDA perspective by allowing for the analysis of both sides of a communication; this serves to protect conclusions against the charge of subjective interpretation on the part of the researcher.

The use of news media as a body of work also already controls for some variables because it tends to use a uniformly stylized language, reducing the noise in semiotic analysis. Because news media focus on topics of social significance and represent most of the socio-political spectrum, analysis need not be limited to a single ideology or set of beliefs. Because of its well-recognized relationship with social behaviour, through both the representation of and ability to influence opinions (Wanta, Golan, & Lee, 2004; Scheufele, 1999) news media is a reasonable representation of the sociocultural orientation of a society, making it an excellent focus for CDA. Combining these two theories allows the analysis of similar phenomena over time, enabling researchers to demonstrate changes and patterns, or the lack thereof,  that may be masked by other cultural changes.

1.1.7 Media Selection and Design

Several issues arise in media selection and its relationship to the quality of research methodology. Miller and Biber (2015) argued that the selection of a body of text too often focuses on representing the domain of discourse, in this case mainstream media, rather than the actual structure of that discourse, thus affecting conclusions and limiting the validity of research. It is not necessarily true that a presupposed amount of variability exists, as media sources do seem to converge lexically in some ways; however, the range of political perspectives and the sheer volume of discourse plausibly correlate, albeit with greater variability. For this reason, the selection of media should at the very least equally represent the two common poles of political discourse.

It is quite possible to communicate racism while proposing a policy that appears benevolent or espouses an attitude of compassion. The “soft bigotry of low expectations” is one prominent example, in which an attitude of pity is used as a form of condescension and display of superiority (Delgado, 2000). Examples such as this demonstrate that the overt intent of a text or speech may not necessarily need to appear discriminatory in order to aid in influencing the listener toward discrimination. This example also demonstrates why CDA, response, and thematic analysis are mutually beneficial. They can help to separate the topic of discussion- for example a housing policy that permits reduced lending rates to lower class minorities- with the constructed message of the policy’s delivery- These people are unable to help themselves, so our superior institutions are needed to support them”- and its reception- “This policy seems compassionate toward those with less status than me” (Delgado, 2000 p.38). Setting aside the fact that there can be unexpected economic winners and losers from such a policy that demonstrate an applied, as well as implied, racism, the delivery of such a policy could, through the use of analogy and schema as proposed in various theories of CDA, still promote discrimination.

The historical period under consideration also merits concern. The media available for analysis typically reflect a limited historical record, particularly if only a certain perspective has been preserved (Hilpert & Gries, 2013). In effect, this literally demonstrates how the winners write the history books. Fortunately, modern technology has made public discourse easy to preserve and recall, though only for very recent history, which emphasizes the need to select a contemporary body of media. In addition, discourse in the media, while broadly consistent, is topically in flux alongside popular opinion. As a result, a more contemporary selection will prove more accurate, by virtue of being more voluminous. Research design should strive as accurately as possible to capture a period in time, ideally the current one.

Further considering the volume of available data: greater availability of media imposes a greater burden of analysis. Beyond the sheer amount of processing needed, which can easily reach levels unachievable by unaided humans, (Michel et al., 2011), a larger set of signals represents greater variety, requiring more effort comparing them to CDA perspectives. Fortunately, available software tools can simplify this analysis, though they have some complications. Different tools will approach part-of-speech marking differently, for example, dictating a choice between using multiple tools or understanding and accounting for the limitations of a given tool (Anthony, 2013). Once research has begun, an evaluation of the available tools and a description of the benefits of any that are selected will be necessary.

More generally, the volume of text produced and recorded in media and public speech is considerable and constantly growing. This process of generation could easily be analysed indefinitely, but beyond a certain point analysing media from the same sources provides diminishing returns in terms of relevance to the theory.  One therefore needs to choose media that is both representative and comprehensive, achieving a balance between the volume of data generated and the relevance of that data to the subject of research.

Now that these considerations have been described, we can explain the selection of media to be examined. Two major media outlets, each representing one pole of mainstream political discourse, and each permitting responses from the audience in the form of comments, editorial responses, and similar methods, will be selected. The poles will admittedly be influenced by the researcher’s experiences and opinion given that the researcher cannot extract her person from the exercise. For the time period of one year from the date that research begins, media will be examined, all of it available publicly and at no cost, and relevant to the topic, including immigration, minorities, discussion of relevant policy, and related topics. This will specify a moment in time as concisely as possible and ensure access to records that are most readily preserved and pertinent to the topic of research. The body of media under analysis will first be examined for the inclusion of words and phrases that are considered to enforce discrimination, such as the use of the term “illegal”, as opposed to “undocumented”, to describe immigrants. Next, responses to these messages will be analysed using the lens and tools of CDA, including frame, schema, metaphor, and image representation, to construct a theory for the process by which these terms are used to reinforce racial discrimination. For the example given above, this might include the association of the word “illegal” with the commission of crime, the force schema of entry or being acted upon, and other explanations. Recalling that the purpose of CDA is to take a position, that of established ideologies of power and discrimination perpetuated through psycholinguistics, the work proposed here becomes one of identifying models of psychological meaning – constructing and then identifying their social and political impact in terms of power. That inequality and power structures exist can hardly be argued. The purpose of this work is to illuminate the process of perpetuation and form a model of the process of interpretation that is already known to occur. Achieving this goal will require focusing on the construction of a message by the receiver as the intent of the sender.

1.1.8 Racial Ideologies in Online Articles

Words convey meaning in a way that is inevitably influenced by their context, and context has multiple levels – the context of a sentence, a whole article, or the entirety of discourse about a particular issue.  Even culture can be understood as an aspect of the context for any given statement. Critical Discourse Analysis is a field that has grown out of the need for scholars to make sense of how words are used to influence social ideology, more so in political contexts where Fairclough (2013) observes the use of implied meaning is popular and encouraged. Discourse itself can be described as communication of thought. Effectively, to analyze discourse is to analyze thoughts and intention. To carry out a critical discourse analysis on any type of content is an exercise in trying to understand cognition. Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis is favored as the approach of choice in this research paper because as noted in Van Dijk (2013) it takes into consideration three important aspects of any discourse; discourse as the subject matter, society and cognition. In this case, the socio-cognitive CDA approach will be used to test the production of racial ideology. To understand how that ideology is received in the audience, the reader-response method will be used.

1.2 Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology refers to a scientific study of the human being’s mind as an information processor. To make this study effective, the cognitive psychologists often build cognitive models of the information processing that aim at going inside the mind of a human being and thee models include attention, perception, memory, language, thinking and consciousness. The figure below represents the models used by cognitive psychologists to study the human mind as an information processing center.

There are two approaches applied by cognitive psychology; Nomothetic Approach and Reductionist Approach. Nomothetic Approach is an approach used by psychologists to establish what people share with others, and hence it a way of establishing laws and generalizations. This approach is applied in cognitive psychology to discover cognitive processes. On the other hand, Reductionist Approach holds the view that human behavior can be explained through diving or breaking it down into small components. The proponents of this approach argue that the best way to study the behavior of an individual is to look closely at his simplest units of his behavior that constitute his system. Then, you use the simplest explanations to establish how his how system works. Reductionist approach is said to be scientific in that a complicated behavior is broken down into small componenets that can be scientifically tested. Again, the explanation on these small components is also explained through scientific evidence. It would, however, be argued by critics that this approach lacks validity. Further, this approach does not enable people identify why behaviors happen. Generally speaking, the reductionist approach holds the view that any human behavior irrespective of its complexity, it can be reduced by breaking it down into cognitive processes such as memory and perception.

The cognitive psychologists often use scientific laboratory experiments in order to investigate behavior since the cognitive psychology is scientific in nature. This means that behavior of human beings is investigated under strict controlled conditions. In mid 1950s, the cognitive psychology had gained a lot of importance. One reason for this is that, the behaviorist approach had proved to be dissatisfying due to its simplest emphasis external behavior compared to internal processes. Another reason was that at this time, there was development of better experimental methods. Again, this was a computer era and it means that comparison could be made between computer processing of information and human processing of information. In other words, there was shift from the study of conditioned behavior in psychology towards the study of human information processing where individuals would be subjected to strict laboratory conditions.

1.2.0 Information Processing

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the cognitive approach had began to revolutionize psychology and had developed to become the dominant approach in psychology. Through the work of Piaget and Tolman, there was gradual restoration of the interest in the mental processing in the psychology field of study. The arrival of computer era gave the cognitive psychology the vigor it need in terms of generating the necessary metaphor and terminology to study the human mind. The computer enabled the psychologists to attempt to understand some of the complexities of human mind through comparing it with simple artificial system of the computer.

The computer analogy involved using a computer as a tool to understand the processing of information by the human mind. Just as how the computer functions by receivind coded information, storing the information, processes the information and producing the information, the cognitive psychologists used this model to understand how human mind works. However, this analogy of information processing approach is based on various assumptions. The first assumption is that the information which obtained from the environment goes through a series of processing systems during processing such as perception, attention and short-term memory. The second assumption is that there is transformation or alteration of information by these processing systems, usually in a systematic way. Third, it is assumed that the aim of the research is to specify the structures and the processes which constitute the cognitive performance. The further assumption is that it is assumed that human information processing resembles that computer information processing system.

1.2.1 Mediated Processes

To begin with a comparison needs to be made between the behaviorist approach and the cognitive approach in psychology study. The behaviorist approach holds the view that internal behavior cannot be easily studied since there is no way people can see what happens inside the mind of a person. This approach, therefore, studies only the external factors such as stimuli and response which can be measured objectively. The proponents of this approach believe that internal behavior of a person cannot be objectively measured.

On the other hand, the cognitive approach holds the view that scientific studies can be used to investigate the internal human behavior using experiments. Here, the cognitive approach assumes that between stimulus/input and response/output, there is a meditational process that occurs.

The meditational event or the mental event could be perception, attention, memory or problem solving. All these are referred to as the meditational processes since they mediated between the stimulus/input and the response/output. This is to say that the meditational processes such as memory, attention perception or problem solving occur after the stimulus and before the response.

1.2.3 Mental Processes

The cognitive psychologists mainly focus on the mental processes that influence the human behavior. These mental processes include attention, memory, perception, language and meta-cognition. Attention in this case is defined as a state of awareness that is focuses on any available piece of information.  The attention process aims to filter the data so as to acquire only the relevant data data and dismiss the irrelevant data. If this was not happen, the human brain would be overloaded with a lot of data, most of which is not relevant. This would make the processing of information so difficult. Attention is usually divided into two subsystems; exogenous control and endogenous control. The exogenous control is responsible for spotlight attention, alertness and arousal, as it functions from bottom up basis. On the other hand, the endogenous control functions from top to down and is responsible for selective attention, conscious process and divided attention.

Another characteristic of attention is that it tends to be either visual or auditory. One thing that is so focal to attention is the concept of divided attention within the field of cognitive psychology. Some early studies have focused on studying the concept of divided attention. One popular study involved participants wearing earphones and putting separate messages in their both ears. The key findings of this study showed that the participants could pay attention to the message only on one ear and dismiss the message on the other ear. However, the participant could only attend to the ear that had relevant information. The study was repeated by switching the relevant message to the other ear and the same result was obtained. This aspect of the ability to attend to one conversation when faced with many alternatives is commonly referred to as cocktail party effect.

The other mediated process is the memory. The memory is usually of two types; short-term meory and long-term memory. Short term memory is said to be working memory and it is therefore used by the cognitive psychologists in their study. The working memory is defined as the ability to recall information in the face of distraction.

The third mental process is perception. The perception entails physical senses and cognitive processes that are used to interpret such physical senses. The physical senses in this case include smell, hearing, sight, touch and taste. In simple terms, the perception entails how individuals come to understand the world around them by interpreting the stimuli. In the early studies the perception was used by psychologists in their structuralist approach to psychology. The structuralism model concentrated on attempting to reduce the human though or consciousness into its simplest and basic forms through gaining understanding of how certain stimuli are perceived by an individual. Today, the perception perspectives focus on certain ways in which an individual’s mind interpret stimuli from his physical senses and how such interpretations can influence behavior.

The fourth mental process is language. The use of language in cognitive psychology study dates back to the 1870’s. today, work on language entails study on language acquisition, how language is involved in mood, individual components of language formation as well as other numerous areas. Recent studies have been carried out to study the timing of language acquisition and how this understanding can be used to establish whether a child is at a risk of developing a learning disorder during growth.

Lastly, the other mental process is meta-cognition. This refers to the thoughts that an individual has about his own thoughts. The meta-cognition looks at things such as how effective an individual is at monitoring his own performance on a certain task, the ability to apply cognitive strategies and an individual’s understanding of his capabilities to certain mental tasks. The current study of meta-cognition in cognitive psychology focuses on application in the field of education. An increase of a student’s meta-cognitive abilities leads to significant impact on his learning and study habits. One vital aspect of this concept is the improvement of ability of a student to set his own goals and self-regulate the goals effectively.

1.2.4 Critique of Cognitive Psychology

B.F. Skinner criticized this approach by arguing that only the external stimulus and response behavior should be investigated through scientific study. On the other hand, Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, holds the view that the cognitive psychology creates an artificial environment through the control of variables and, therefore, this approach using laboratory experiments yields low ecological validity. Rodgers, therefore, calls for a more holistic approach in order to understand the human behavior better.

Another criticism of the cognitive psychology approach is regarding the comparison of human mind with the computer in terms of their processing of information. It could be argued that there are big differences between humans and computers that should be considered of great importance in this comparison. For example, the computers do not have emotions or do not get tired as the humans during information processing.

The cognitive psychology has influenced and integrated with other aspects of psychology study and can be associated with Social Learning Theory. The social learning theory agrees that there is occurrence of mediated processes between the stimulus and the response. Again, this theory holds the view that human behavior is learned from the environment by the way of observation. This theory therefore subscribes to both the behaviorist approach and cognitive approach to psychology.

1.3 Discourse Analysis of Contemporary Mediated Discourse

Discourse analysis deals with language in use, social practice, ideological assumptions that create a phenomenon under analysis. In other words, discourse analysis has three main parts; linguistic paradigm, cultural paradigm and critical approach represented by integrational paradigm. The features of discourse analysis are as follows:

1.3.0. Cohesion and coherence

The concept of cohesion entails the features that bind sentences grammatically and lexically to each other. On the other hand, coherence refers to the logical unity and notional of a text. A coherent text refers to a text that component parts such as episodes and sentences, are meaningfully related such the whole sentence can make sense. Therefore, cohesiveness or cohesion refers to the way clauses in sentences are linked together, and how in turn sentences are linked together to produce larger units in texts. This often achieved though conjunctive words, repletion and near-synonyms or vocabulary from a common semantic field. Simply to put it, cohesion focuses on the textual aspect of discourse.

1.3.1 Context and co-text

The contextual knowledge involves the cultural, social and political understandings that are relevant to the certain communication. Here a situation establishes a basis of the context. Therefore, a context and a text are two inseparable aspects that makes up a discourse. The situational context differs from co-textual context and this restricts or restrains the interpretation of specific lexical forms that occur in a text.

1.3.2 Inter-textuality

The inter-textuality is an essential quality of discourse. Texts usually contain references to and quotations emanating from other texts. References can be included to previous situations, statements whether verbal or visual, and knowledge background in order to extend the inter-textuality definition.

1.3.3 The importance of “unsaid”

In discourse analysis, it is important to take into consideration what has left unsaid between a writer or a speaker and a hearer or a listener. The concept of “unsaid” usually arises when something to be communicated is expressed through pragmatic notions of interference, implicature and presupposition. Such concepts are used to show relationships between discourse participants and elements in the discourse. Presupposition is an implied concept that is a specific feature in media discourse. While doing the discourse analysis of the texts used by media, lexicogrammatical resources, presuppositions and also the implications of unsaid are important to consider. Of particular to note is that media discourse tends to be prolific in the use of presuppositions and this has to be kept in mind during analysis. There is also need to understand the role that media plays in the proliferation of ideologies.

1.3.4 Mental Models and Social Cognition

The analysis of regarding social and political aspects of power and dominance often focus on social formations, groups, classes or institutions. Sometimes, various cognitive notions such as ideology and consciousness may also be involved, but sometimes may be ignored. The social representations in structures of ethnic and racial inequality may include world knowledge, general knowledge about language and more fundamental ideologies. the mental model is a cognitive notion required in the account of discursive dominance and influence. The mental model refers to a persona and ad hoc representation of a situation or an event like the one that is personally heard or experienced. This model is a subjective representation of relevant structures of the event such as participants, actions, setting, among other things. However, the event  may also include other things such as opinion or a personal evaluation about the event. For example, whenever we read a read a text or listen/watch news in the media, we either recall and update an existing old model on the same event, or construct a new model about a new event that we have now witnessed or heard/read. These models also feature certain instances of more general social beliefs such as scripts and attitudes.

The mental model may be built around the speech participants of present communicative situation. The context model features self as well as other representations of speech participants, their goals and their type of communication. It also features the time, an location of an event. This context model focus to monitor what piece of information or opinions that language users will take with regard to their model of events relevant input for the discourse production. The context model sometimes give warning to speakers not to express their personal opinions concerning the minorities in some situations, or at minimum to mitigate them with some well-known disclaimers. It would therefore be concluded that context models characterize certain instantiations of general attitudes and norms concerning appropriate communication, regarding the own group, among others. in other words, the context models monitor some well known processes of positive self-presentation and face keepingin talk and text. In general, every text or talk is monitored or evaluated by underlying event or models, context models and social cognitions such as knowledge, attitudes or ideologies.

1.3.5 Discourse and Dominance

In general, the enactment of social power involves social control over others. Such control applies to various forms of possible actions and cognitions of others. here, more power participants or actors have the resources and means to influence the minds or actions of the less powerful. It is assumed that since actions are cognitively based, most forms of power enactment usually control the minds of people, with the exception of the exercise of bodily force. We are also able to analyze the detailed enacted of power and power abuse, therefore able to examine the dominance, discrimination and ethnic dominance, since the mind control is one of the goals of text and talk.

This form of discourse can be illustrated through use of directive speech acts. For example, police officers of immigration may threaten illegal immigrants with expulsion if they fail to comply with specific police commands. This is abuse of power. The discursive power in this case involves limiting the freedom of the immigrants no to act by making them know about the possible sanctions.

In other instances, people like judge, politicians or employers control the minority members directly through constraining their freedom to act or even constraining their participation in socially desired values such as social, physical and economic sanctions such as prison sentences, harsh legislation or threat to fire employees. The discourse power in this case refers to the direct function of social power which is outside their own legitimate power and therefore the social actors in minority side may have little to do or say. The issue of immigration discrimination is involved when majority groups feel entitled to control minotities through such things like directive speech.

In modern society, however, most power is less directly coercive. Usually, this power may be subtly negotiated in interaction. In this case, people may be forced to act more or less voluntarily according with the wishes of the more powerful. Therefore, this is to say that it is would seem more effective to control the minds of others through persuasion as this is the way of making them comply through their own free will. However, even in the coercive forms of power abuse, discourse is involved in the enactment of persuasive dominance.

Such subtle mental control through discourse may take various forms. The actions usually presuppose knowledge about certain situations or events and this constitutes the mental models. This is to say that actions might be controlled indirectly through influence on the models that monitor them. This usually happen because of providing wrong, biased as well as self-interested information, or at time withholding certain relevant information concerning events as in case of news reports or scholarly reports. When there is repeated exposure to such biased models such as economic refugees or black crimes, the recipients of such discourse may generalize the models and form equally, socially shared attitudes such as ethnic prejudices when there are no alternatives sources of information.

When these prejudices are strongly formed, they will eventually lead into new models, and this explains the future actions and perceptions of dominant group members. Such negative social attitudes may further grow into ideologies that gain dominance in a certain setting politically. The discourse dominance is defined as the communicative control of beliefs, knowledge and opinions of those people with few resources or sources to resist or oppose such influence. Discrimination of immigrants is as a result of the discursive control of the ethnic attitudes.

1.3.6 Lexical style

This relates to the context-dependent use of words. This is usually important in studies of political language. In the lexical description of both the properties and actions of majority members versus the minority groups, there is manifestation of mental models of ethnic situations and this translates into ethnic prejudices.

1.3.7 Socio-cognitive Interface: Dominance and Production

This may be seen as description of enactment of social power through the use of certain discourse structures. However, it should be remembered that it is important that a fully fledged theoretical explanation get to have cognitive dimension. The socio-cognitive processes surrounding discrimination discourse may be largely automatized. In other words, there is no need to assume that impoliteness during talk or text is intentional in such a case. Intentionality is therefore irrelevant and inappropriate in ascertaining whether discourses or other acts may be interpreted as discriminatory. Such mental strategies and representations of a individual speaker are based on the premise that both minority members and majority groups share their attitudes amongst themselves.

1.3.8 Social Cognition

Although the management of discourse access reveals one of the vital dimensions of dominance in terms of who is allowed to talk, write read or hear whom, what, when or where, an emphasis is stressed that modern power has a major cognitive dimension. Apart from various forms of military, judiciary or police, the practice of power often presuppose mind management, comprising of the influence of beliefs, knowledge, ideologies, norms and values. This access of public mind comprises the social cognition. The social cognition constitutes socially shared representations of societal arrangements, arguing, thinking and inferencing.

The social cognition monitors discourse, communication as well as other forms of action and interaction. This also applies to our understanding on social events or power relations. It would be argued that social cognition mediate between micro and macro levels of society, between the individual and the group , and between discourse and action. Thought, social cognition is much embodied in the minds of individuals, it is social because it is shared and presupposed by group members, monitor interaction and social action. Social action, therefore, allows us to link the dominance and discourse. Social cognitions help explain the production and understanding and influence of talk and text. The control of knowledge significantly shapes the interpretation we have of the world as well as our discourse and other actions. This points to the relevance of a critical analysis of such forms of text and talks such as in media and education that aim to develop such knowledge.

However, little is known about the operations and the structures of softer forms of social cognition such as ideologies, attitudes, norms, values and opinions. It would, therefore, be assume that these evaluative social representations also have a schematic form which features certain categories. These schematically organized attitudes have contents that are formed by general socially shared opinions. That is, through evaluative beliefs. The general norms and values that may surround such beliefs may further be grouped in more complexes, basic and abstract ideologies like those concerning immigrants as well as freedom of press. For the purpose of this dissertation, we get to understand that ideologies are important social cognitions that show the basic interests, aims and values of groups. These may be seen as metaphorically being cognitive programs that organize as well as monitor the more certain social attitudes of groups and their members. Although ideologies, attitudes and knowledge are generalized representations which are shared socially and which characterize the whole groups and cultures, certain models are so unique, contextualized and personal. In other words, they define how one language user manufactures or understands this certain text, even when large parts of such texts are not socially or autobiographically determined. It is important to establish how certain discourse structures determine particular mental processes, or ven facilitate the formation of social representations.

1.4 Statement of the Problem

The mass media has a great role in shaping public opinion and influencing collective attitude, it is worth asking how such tasks achieved only through how the language is presented to the audience. Subtle and careful discourse phrasing is how the first spark of an inequality ideology is born and perpetuated in public and media.  Influence is not always positive; for example, racism and discrimination have been facilitated in public discussions, at times through media that is held in the highest regard. To understand how this happens one can start right from where the language of the media is understood and how it is comprehended by the audience. Different uses of language can cause different reactions and that is only because the way how it is received. This is because different ways in using language are represented or comprehended in the audience mind differently.

On the other hand, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations. This prospectus seeks to define how one can engage in a CDA, with specific focus on what is written in the comments sections of online articles. The reason for this is that the comments section allows a researcher to determine, evaluate or measure the interpretation of the article’s gist by the general public and consumers. Attention will be paid to elite publications and speakers because of the capacity for influence that they hold. For the purposes of expediency, this prospectus proposes that analysis be thorough, starting from lexical units and expanding to entire organization of information in the text.

1.5 Objectives of the Study

1. To establish how different uses of language, as well as language rephrasing provide different mental image to the mind of the audience on immigration issues and immigrants
2. To explain how politicians exploit the media to shape public opinion on immigration issues and immigrants
3. To establish how Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations

1.6 Research Questions

1. How do different uses of language, as well as language rephrasing provide different mental image to the mind of the audience on immigration issues and immigrants?
2. How do politicians exploit the media to shape public opinion on immigration issues and immigrants?
3. How can Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) be used to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations?

1.7 Scope of the Study

This prospectus will take the form of a Cognitive Psychology and Critical Discourse Analysis of contemporary mediated discourse, with the goal of describing how attitudes of racism and discrimination are perpetuated through public discourse. This prospectus seeks to define how one can engage in a CDA, with specific focus on what is written in the comments sections of online articles. Attention will be paid to elite publications and speakers because of the capacity for influence that they hold. A quantitative backing of the analysis through the use of coded reader-response research, examining readers’ perceptions through their reaction to the presented discourse will be sued.

1.8 Plan of the Study

This section outlines the type of study to be carried out, the data sources to be used, how the data will be collected and analyzed.

1.8.0 Proposed source of data

Data that will be used to create the basis for any deliberations in the research paper will come from twenty articles from two sources; the online edition of the Dailymail UK and the CNN website between January 1^st 2015 and December 31^st 2015. Ten articles will be selected from each source. The content to be analyzed will not only be the article but the comments too. This paper proposes to investigate both sections for two main reasons. One is that the main article contains the discourse in its intended form; which is the creation of racial ideology. The research paper assumes that publishing the articles under review the media sources will have effectively have assumed agency. As such the intention of the article will be assumed to be the same as that of any people or institutions that contribute or are therein mentioned. This approach has some paradoxical dimensions to it considering that the position of the publisher may not always be the same as the position of the sources, for example a politician or any other journalistic sources. However, when publishing has been done then the capacity of that article to influence power dynamics and other social situations is assumed to be its own. Whatever the articles say will be investigated for creation of racial ideology, therefore. That brings in the second reason for investigation of the article as well as the comments section as sources of data for this research paper which is that the comments section contains the clearest exhibition of cognition. The people who are so involved with the article that they decide to react to it by commenting are part of the larger group of an audience that is moved by the article. This paper will focus more on the comments section because of the wealth therein of examples and samples of how cognition occurs in society when an article is published by the media. The comments section is therefore the source of data for the reader-response testing.

The two media sources are also chosen because they have a wide readership. Consequently, they have the best distribution of a readership that is global and informed by different life experiences. The interpretation of what happens in the article should therefore be diverse. Any patterns that might be identified from the comments section of such publications are therefore of extreme importance to the analysis of cognition in context of influencing society.

1.8.1 Data Collection

Data collection will follow a quantitative style.  Data will be collected at three levels; the semantic level, the sentence level and the textual level. Keywords, sentences and whole texts with hints of creation of racial ideology, will be identified in the selected articles. The distribution of the keywords, sentences and texts will be determined. This will result in data that shows how many items in the article can be interpreted as creating racial ideology.

In the comments section the focus will be on items that indicate cognizance of the racial ideology that was alluded to in the articles. Of importance will be the distribution of understanding, that is how many comments seem to agree with the ideology, how many disagree and how many are undecided over or completely missed the ideology being created.

1.8.2 Data analysis

Data analysis will follow a combined qualitative and quantitative fashion. Quantitative methods will be used in the collection and analysis of statistical distribution of the items (keywords, sentences and texts). This will help the researcher come up with a list of items that can influence racial ideology that come up frequently. These items will be qualitatively analyzed too. Qualitative analysis will allow the researcher to investigate the penetration of the racial ideology in the comments through reader-response method.

1.9 Significance of the Study

This prospectus aims to help the researcher as well as other scholars get comprehensive understanding of cognitive discourse analysis in the field of cognitive psychology and other related fields. The study will help explain how representation of language and language use shapes the public opinion and this will make the parties involved aware of the reality. Cognitive discourse analysis on discrimination will help the readers make explicit the conclusions or inferences about the social cognitions that majority groups may have about the minority group members in terms of text and talk. This study will also significantly benefit the field of political science and the study of law. Here government laws and regulations are based on discourse as well as ethnic affairs. The study of various forms of political discourse shows underlying sociopolitical as well ethnic attitudes that politicians have. Such studies also cane help analyze the strategies for agenda setting in politics especially on sensitive issues such as immigration.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

In today’s approaches to discourse the problem of contextualization has over the years been a big issue. Contextualization has been a cornerstone in many disciplinary areas where actual language use is described. This has also been a factor in methodological debates among the various paradigms such as CDA.

The Mediated Discourse Analysis (MDA), unlike many other approaches, fails to consider the notion of “context” , a concept that is vital to deal with complex relations that exists between discourse and the society. According to Scollon (2001), the concept notion is looked at with suspicion, since it relates to approaches to discourse concentrates in the end as it primarily on use the language. On the other hand, contextual information is seen as mainly as an external bundle of background determinations.

Since mass media has a great role in shaping public opinion and influencing collective attitude, it is worth asking how such tasks achieved only through how the language is presented to the audience. Subtle and careful discourse phrasing is how the first spark of an inequality ideology is born and perpetuated in public and media.  Influence is not always positive; for example, racism and discrimination have been facilitated in public discussions, at times through media that is held in the highest regard. To understand how this happens one can start right from where the language of the media is understood and how it is comprehended by the audience. Different uses of language can cause different reactions and that is only because the way how it is received. This is because different ways in using language are represented or comprehended in the audience mind differently.

On the other hand, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations.

This analysis of discourse is associated with knowledge and development of identity and societal knowledge, and therefore, relates to the aspect of power and its relationship with knowledge. It also relates to the concept of construction of identity and societal knowledge. This, therefore, offers the means to explain or narrate “reality” in a certain way. The meaning of discourses is analyzed using both a cognitive and social approach. The CDA holds the view that discourse and social structures are mediated by social cognition. For this reason social structures and discourse are both dialectically related. This also means that language and power are related dialectically. Though power is not derived from language, language can often be used to alter perceptions of reality, and this ultimately affects social change.

The cognitive perspective in this project relates to the representation of meaning. The project argues that ideology and beliefs are constructed as a result of the audiences’ ability to cognitively represent and realize subtleties in the language of public discourse. Such realization of meaning is the nature of the mental image (in its narrow sense of mental representation of meaning) that automatically appears in the audience mind as part of the comprehension process of racial text and talk (Bloor and Bloor, 2013).

Critical discourse analysis is the semiotic study of language that has emerged from the field of discourse analysis. In turn, discourse analysis is the study of the way language shapes communication and social interactions at any scale, from the individual to the cultural level. Because language, society, and culture pervade nearly all human activities, and particularly those that involve interaction with others, discourse analysis is a broad, pan-disciplinary field with a wide range of applications in such areas as psychology, sociology, and philosophy (van Dijk, 1993). Critical discourse analysis, in turn, constitutes one approach to the study of sociolinguistics.

It is quite possible to communicate racism while proposing a policy that appears benevolent or espouses an attitude of compassion. The “soft bigotry of low expectations” is one prominent example, in which an attitude of pity is used as a form of condescension and display of superiority (Delgado, 2000). Examples such as this demonstrate that the overt intent of a text or speech may not necessarily need to appear discriminatory in order to aid in influencing the listener toward discrimination. This example also demonstrates why CDA, response, and thematic analysis are mutually beneficial.

Words convey meaning in a way that is inevitably influenced by their context, and context has multiple levels – the context of a sentence, a whole article, or the entirety of discourse about a particular issue.  Even culture can be understood as an aspect of the context for any given statement. Critical Discourse Analysis is a field that has grown out of the need for scholars to make sense of how words are used to influence social ideology, more so in political contexts where Fairclough (2013) observes the use of implied meaning is popular and encouraged. Discourse itself can be described as communication of thought. Effectively, to analyze discourse is to analyze thoughts and intention. To carry out a critical discourse analysis on any type of content is an exercise in trying to understand cognition.

The cognitive psychologists often use scientific laboratory experiments in order to investigate behavior since the cognitive psychology is scientific in nature. This means that behavior of human beings is investigated under strict controlled conditions. In mid 1950s, the cognitive psychology had gained a lot of importance. One reason for this is that, the behaviorist approach had proved to be dissatisfying due to its simplest emphasis external behavior compared to internal processes. Another reason was that at this time, there was development of better experimental methods. Again, this was a computer era and it means that comparison could be made between computer processing of information and human processing of information. In other words, there was shift from the study of conditioned behavior in psychology towards the study of human information processing where individuals would be subjected to strict laboratory conditions.

The analysis of regarding social and political aspects of power and dominance often focus on social formations, groups, classes or institutions. Sometimes, various cognitive notions such as ideology and consciousness may also be involved, but sometimes may be ignored. The social representations in structures of ethnic and racial inequality may include world knowledge, general knowledge about language and more fundamental ideologies. the mental model is a cognitive notion required in the account of discursive dominance and influence. The mental model refers to a persona and ad hoc representation of a situation or an event like the one that is personally heard or experienced.

This model is a subjective representation of relevant structures of the event such as participants, actions, setting, among other things. However, the event  may also include other things such as opinion or a personal evaluation about the event.

The social cognition monitors discourse, communication as well as other forms of action and interaction. This also applies to our understanding on social events or power relations. It would be argued that social cognition mediate between micro and macro levels of society, between the individual and the group , and between discourse and action. Thought, social cognition is much embodied in the minds of individuals, it is social because it is shared and presupposed by group members, monitor interaction and social action. Social action, therefore, allows us to link the dominance and discourse. Social cognitions help explain the production and understanding and influence of talk and text. The control of knowledge significantly shapes the interpretation we have of the world as well as our discourse and other actions. This points to the relevance of a critical analysis of such forms of text and talks such as in media and education that aim to develop such knowledge.

However, little is known about the operations and the structures of softer forms of social cognition such as ideologies, attitudes, norms, values and opinions. It would, therefore, be assume that these evaluative social representations also have a schematic form which features certain categories. These schematically organized attitudes have contents that are formed by general socially shared opinions. That is, through evaluative beliefs. The general norms and values that may surround such beliefs may further be grouped in more complexes, basic and abstract ideologies like those concerning immigrants as well as freedom of press. For the purpose of this dissertation, we get to understand that ideologies are important social cognitions that show the basic interests, aims and values of groups. These may be seen as metaphorically being cognitive programs that organize as well as monitor the more certain social attitudes of groups and their members. Although ideologies, attitudes and knowledge are generalized representations which are shared socially and which characterize the whole groups and cultures, certain models are so unique, contextualized and personal. In other words, they define how one language user manufactures or understands this certain text, even when large parts of such texts are not socially or autobiographically determined.

2.1 Theoretical Framework

The development of critical discourse analysis is rooted on a series of studies ranging from critical theory to critical linguistics. Some of these theoretical studies are based on formal linguistics while others are grounded on use of the language as a tool for social justice. The theoretical analysis of this dissertation will is constructed on the proponents of CDA who subscribe to the school of thought that is intimately related to critical social theory and those who have an understanding of knowledge as a form of power.

Critical Discourse Analysis has three main principles; discourse is a social action, social action constructs reality and discourse is the use of the use of language. The language use which is simply the discourse is associated with the construction of knowledge concerning social objects, processes and identities. The basis of argument here is that power and knowledge are interrelated and this means when you uncover the source of knowledge production concerning reality will reveal ultimately the societal power.

The other important thing to note is that the uncovering of knowledge and power may help reveal whether interconnection between cause and effects in human matters are intentional or unintentionally obscured. The CDA thus suggests that critique is vital to ensure such obscured interrelations are visible. The ideas that are expressed in form of texts as compared to narrations and language use in their different forms will assist disseminate and re-manufacture certain ways of viewing the world. This eventually facilitates particular political actions as well as re-manufacture of specific type of knowledge.

When the anlyses of discourse is viewed in this dimension, it help relate to the concept of power and its association with knowledge in a way to describe and narrate reality in a certain way.

This dissertation looks bases its analysis on a cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis. Here the term “discourse” draws its definition from the fields of media studies, critical theory and discourse analysis. Discourse is seen, therefore, as a way of communication that is developed in certain socio-cultural context. Though discourse may be realized through various semiotic forms, the linguistic forms of expression are said to be the most important. It is also important to note that discourse may be manifested in different ways or discourses which include verbally or visually in terms of texts and pictures in expression of statements. Critical Discourse analysis, therefore, comes in as a way to analyze these discourses of statements especially when they have been collected in a corpus. This analysis aims at looking at the generalized and specific features of such statements.

CDA forms a theoretical base for analyzing the talks and expressions whether written or spoken.  The Systematic Functional View is one theoretical way of analyzing a language. According to this theory, language achieves interpersonal, ideation and textual functions in a socio-cognitive strand of CDA. Here, the aspect of interpersonal function focuses on construction and replication of identities and social relations. On the other hand, the ideation aspect focuses on replication and construction of mental models/structures. Further, the textual function focuses on strategies that replicate ideologies and the structures of discourse and comprise and regulate the social relations.

In CDA, the framework of Appraisal theory also comes in play. The theory focuses the evaluative stance that is is strategically used by writers in texts. It holds the view that it is possible to establish how writers apply lexical expressions in order to encode their attitude. The theory focusess on both dialogical positioning and attitudinal positioning. The attitudinal positioning refers to the how writers or speakers use meanings to indicate the assessment of people, things, places or happenings or state of affairs. On the other hand, dialogical positioning refers to the ways through which writers or speakers may embrace evaluative positions when they express their views and statements about their propositions presented by other writers or speakers. The Appraisal Theory states that the attitude of human beings can be studied through analysis of “affect” and “judgment”. “Affect” entails the characterization, whether positive or negative, of human behavior by reference to its emotion. On the hand, “judgment” entails evaluation, whether positive or negative, of human behavior in terms of the social norms

The procedure for analyzing the above is conceived within much related theoretical work on text analysis where intuition judgment is particularly entitled in respect to the distribution of different forms and meanings of words that relate to racism and discrimination. Every language is governed by linguistic and selections and restrictions, and the feedback given on the speech are assumed to be in line with the systems of language more or less where their meaning is what governs their peculiar linguistic choices.

In redress to the ideas and theories that exist in Critical Discourse Analysis, this resource will provide an approach to the analysis of language use in social context. It will identify the conceptual and theoretical strengths of this approach analyzing the practicalities that can be employed to linguistic data.

The kind of knowledge employed by people to interpret the world around them is sourced from different experiences, i.e. from individual relationship (s) with other people, from personal experience and knowledge, educational conventions and models in their social lives. Mainly, people gather knowledge from exposure coming from both learning and non learning institutions, succeeding reflections, practice and theorizing as per the experiences gathered from these environments (Barton and Hamilton 1998). To add on, there are recent sources of information such as magazines, Television, the internet, radio and so on.   

Each source of information is usually measured differently according to the status of the source, making the interpretation process different according to the accorded degree of validity. Even though there are other means of communicating i.e. intonations, gestures and images, ‘Language’ is so far the main means of relaying information. Therefore, it will be true to argue that the main way in which people seem to make sense in this world is through language – which in this context is considered as a discursive process. This approach seeks to challenge the relation of social reality and language. It explains that language is the only way which plays an active role in categorizing the experiences and phenomena through which people create, comprehend and address reality in life.

This study borrows from Hyatt (2006), a series of principles that gives teachers, students and researchers a new perspective for viewing textual elements as both a ‘micro’, lexico-grammatical level, while analyzing both the outcomes of such choices on more ‘micro’ societal and semantic levels. To expound more on these concepts, this study draws more on the systemic works of Critical literacy and Critical Discourse Analysis, CDA (Foucault, 1980).

The following are some of the core questions for framework application as used in analysis by CDA:

• What type of text is this?
• Who is the producer of the text?
• Who is the indented reader?
• Will the text be understood by all readers in the same way?
• What was the intended purpose of production?
• Is there any other means in which it could have been written?
• Are there any other missing contents in the text?
• What is the texts reflection to the entire society?
• What is it that can be done just in case the text is disagreeable?

Therefore, Critical Discourse Analysis needs to be understood as both a method and as a theory (Rogers 2004). CDA not only explains the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of a discourse but also explains and interprets discourse in social context.

The use of Critical Discourse Analysis sheds more light on the relationship between power and language. In this context, CDA borrows from a wide array of theoretical resources drawn from various disciplinary fields. This approach presents CDA as a method which has overtime historically developed from Neo and Post Structural – Marxists influences and a vast range of differing linguistic conceptions (Rogers 2004).

2.1.0 Linguistic influences on Critical Discourse Analysis

Scholars use Critical Linguistics as a method of analyzing texts in their social and political contexts (Halliday 1985). It presents that language is core to all social activities in human beings and that linguistic choices reflects the ideological process in an individual’s mind. Emanating from this, the systematic analysis of information can therefore be viewed as the main way for examining the process in which people are ‘literally’ controlled by certain forces deemed to be more dominant than they are.

Initially, Critical linguistics was meant to address the way in which texts were produced with less concern on the ways in which the indented audience interpreted the text (Fowler et al. 1979). It was intended to be more ideational rather than interpersonal so as to marginalize issues emanating from social identity. However, debates regarding these limitations were made by scholars to give this approach a more inter-textual approach to textual analysis, a concept central to CDA, as it shall be addressed in this paper later.

2.1.1 Critical Social Theory influences on Critical Discourse Analysis

Citing the works of Foucault, CDA maintains the position that discourse/language cannot be taken as a neutral medium for describing how the world works but rather regulates and constructs knowledge as it relates to social relations.

This is an indication that discourse has a controlling effect on individuals citing the impact that language has on enquiries and boundary limits, whilst at the same time setting the extent of what is acceptable in terms of actions and beliefs within certain limits and how they can be expressed.

Educational establishments are thereby described and understood through discourses in how they are perceived both in an individual or institutional levels – for example, what it is implied to be  a ‘college’ or an ‘academic’, is a discursive edifice which carries itself a set of ideologies and values.

Critical Discourse Analysis holds on to the notion that language helps create a negative hegemony in the way it presents common sense as been controlled by the thoughts of the dominant groups. CDA scholar Fairclough (2013) uses the word ‘naturalization’ to describe these phenomena.

CDA presents that texts cannot occur in isolation and therefore depends on the factors of socio-historic and socio-political as important aspects of analysis. It has three functional levels of analysis:

1. Text engagement
2. The discursive applications – This requires the three functions of production, reception and interpretation to be complete and
3. The Socio-historic and socio-political context.

 There are five theoretical suggestions that frame our approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, as explained by Fairclough (2013).

• The use of language (known as discourse), at the same time shapes and is shaped by the society. This presents language as a two way dialect relationship: context can change the language used; the type of language used can alter situations i.e. an advert can be used to change consumer’s attitude/behavior towards a certain product.
• Discourse can be used to change and constitute knowledge, social identity and relation. This indicates that the way we use language influences our way of representing the world: a good example is use of terminologies like them; us i.e. the terming of themselves as Pro-Hispanics by Anti-discrimination groups in the US means that the opponents are “Anti-Hispanics”.
• Power relations and ideologies shape discourse. An example is how the Spanish language/dialect/accent is associated with the minority ethnicities in the US (Hispanics), an indication that it is de-valued (Gee, 1990).
• Power struggles use discourse as a powerful mechanism in controlling social behaviors, an indication that language is contestable and fully contested in the world.
• Critical Discourse Analysis seeks to elaborate how both discourse and society complement each other in developing new ideas, practices and conventions hence creating social balance and justice in the world.

Critical Discourse Analysis can thereby be portrayed as a democratic and sensitive approach which embraces an ethical stance on social matters with the intent of developing the society (Fairclough, 1989). It is founded on the norm that there is unbalanced distribution of social and linguistic resources, wherewithal which are institutionally controlled.

Critical Discourse Analysis is therefore concerned primarily with the institutional discourses i.e. gender, media and labeling that has an effect on people’s lives (Althusser, 1971). It holds on to the fact that reality is mediated by semiotic systems and not fixed, offering a discourse of possibility. 

2.1.2 Theoretical Issues

The term “discourse” can be used in various ways within the context of discourse analysis. However, there two relevant ways in this term may be used. The first way is where the term discourse is taken in abstract sense as a category that signifies major semiotic elements of social life such as language as opposed to non-semiotic elements. The second way is where the term discourse is used as a count noun, which is a category for signifying certain ways of expressing certain concepts of social life. For example, it is common behavior to differentiate between certain political discourses that represent, let us say problems of inequality, poverty and disadvantage in different ways.

The realist social ontology that is applied here treats social events as well as social structures as parts of social reality. It would be assumed that coherent accounts of the relationship that exist between social events and social structures depend on mediated categories. The phrase “social practices” may be used to describe this relationship and this means social activity that is more or less stable and durable, and which are articulated together to comprise social fields, organizations and institutions. At each of these levels, there is a semiotic dimension. The social structure may constitute languages and other semiotic systems. The term “order of discourse” relates to the semiotic dimension of articulated networks of social practices. For example, political field is partially comprised of a certain order of discourse, an similarly the certain educational or business organizations. The term “text” is used in an extended way for the semiotic dimension of social situations. For example, the government written documents and websites are “texts” in this sense. When used this way, the term “text” is not in actual sense felicitous, since one can’t possibly shake off its primary association with written texts. Social practice and social events are articulations of various diverse social elements, including semiosis.

Social practices may include such elements such as activities, social relations, time and place, social subjects, values, beliefs and knowledge, objects and instruments and semiosis. All these elements are dialectically related. This is to mean that, though these terms are different, they are not discrete fully separate from each other. That means, there is a way that these terms relate to each other without being reducible to them. For example, social relations in business organizations may have a partly semiotic character, but this does not mean that we can theorize simply and research the social relations just the same way we can theorize and research language. These two have distinct properties and, therefore, researching them may lead to distinct disciplines. On the other hand, texts are largely over determined by other social elements that linguistic analysis of texts may easily finds itself answering the questions concerning social relations, institutions or social identities. However, this does not imply that the linguistic analysis texts are reducible to forms of social analysis. Analysis of texts includes “interdiscursive” review of how genres, styles and discourses are articulated together. Usually, these are categories which are distinguished and associated with the level of social practices like elements of orders of discourse.

The impoetant thing about critical discourse analysis research is that language can be defined explained or defined in terms of its use in a discourse and this means that language is seen as an array of diverse representations of social life which are inherently positioned. Institutions such as media in form of newspapers bring out ideas by identifying which ideas are worthy or important, those which are not and those which should never be heard at all.

The development of critical discourse analysis is rooted from a variety of studies which range from critical theory to critical linguistics. It should be noted that CDA is not so a particular extent the product of merger of particular types of linguistics and social theory.

2.1.3 Humanistic psychology

Humanistic psychology refers to a value orientation that holds a constructive and hopeful view of individual human beings and their significant capacity to self-determining. This is a school of thought together with appreciative theoretical research and system of psychotherapy provides a perspective of seeing how minority groups overcome various challenges of discrimination in life.

2.1.4 The Critical Theory

The program of CDA and the shared perspective relate to the term “critical” which is in the work of critical linguistics which is rooted from the influence of Frankfurt School and Jurgen Habermas. The Frankfurt school is founded on the famous work essay of Max Horkheimer in 1937. This means that social theory should be oriented towards changing and critiquing society as the whole. This is in contrast to traditional theroy which solely concentrated to understanding or explaining it. The first core concept of the Critical Theory is the theory should be focused on the society in totality in its historical specificity. Second, the Critical Theory aim at improving the understanding of society by integrating brining all the main social sciences together, including sociology, economics, history, psychology, anthropology and political science.

The analyst’s position itself is what is rarely expressed in the understanding of critique. Researchers, philosophers and scientists are not outside the societal hierarchy of power and status, are prone to this structure. In the studies of language, the term “critical” was first coined to signify an approach that was called Critical Linguistics. These scholars held that the language use could result into mystification of social social events which systematic analysis that may elucidate. The crucial observation that language use is a social practice is one of the most important principles of CDA. The social practice is both determined by contributes to stabilizing and social structure.

Today, the concept of critique is much used in a broader sense, signifying the practical linking of political and social engagement with a sociologically informed construction of society. It therefore means that the term “critique” basically means making interconnectedness of things visible. The reference of the contribution of the critical theory to the analysis and understanding of CDA and the concepts of ideology and “critical” are vital importance.

The critical theories aim to produce and reveal critical knowledge that enables individuals to emancipate themselves from forms of self-reflection and domination. That means, they are focused at producing emancipation and enlightenment. These theories aim not only to describe an elaborate, but also to base a certain kind of delusion. The Critical Theory seeks to create awareness in agents of their own interests and needs.

CDA agrees with its Critical Theory predecessors, and therefore it emphasizes on the need for interdisciplinary work in order to achieve a better understanding of how language functions in transmitting and constituting knowledge, in exercising power or organizing social institutions. The CDA researchers are aware that their own work is based on economic, political and social motives or orientations, just as in any other academic work. The term “critical” in this case implies superior ethical standards. That is, the intention to establish their position, research values and interests, without necessarily having the need to apologize for the critical stance of their work.

2.1.5 Ideology and Power

The critical impetus of CDA together with other critical programs is a bit the legacy of enlightenment. Critique frequently focuses on expressing structures of power and unmasking ideologies. The term “ideology” is therefore not understood in a positive way, in that it is not subject to a process of falsification. Nor is according to political scientists, there about four features of ideologies. first is that power is more important than cognitions. Second is that ideologies have ability to guide individuals’ evaluations. Third, ideologies provide guidance through action. Lastly, ideologies must be coherent logically.

Although the central definition of ideology as relatively stable series of belief or values and coherent has remain constant in political science over time, the connotations related with this concept have gone through many transformations. Ideology was often faced with democracy during the era of communism and cold war. When we consider ideology of new capitalism we see that ideology has a bad connotation. However, it is becomes difficult to see ideology as belief system and at the same time to free the concept from the negative connotations.

Further, what interests CDA is not the type of ideology in the face of culture, but rather the more unnoticed and latent type of everyday beliefs, that usually appear as distinct conceptual metaphors and analogies, thereby attracting linguistics attention. This relates to issues such as life is a journey, love is way and social organizations are plants. In everyday discussions, particular issues arise more often than other. For example, more often than not, people with diverse interests and backgrounds will find themselves thinking alike in startling way. The dominant ideologies may appear as neutral, subscribing to the assumptions that remain unchallenged. Organizations that strive for power will often attempt to affect the t=ideology of a society to turn to closer to what they want it to be. For example, we may arrive into the Gramscian concept of hegemony when most individuals in a society think alike in certain matters. This brings us to a point of seeing ideologies as worldviews that comprise of social cognition. That is to say worldviews are schematically organized set of representations and attitudes concerning particular concepts of social world such as the schema.

Moreover, what intrigues the CDA researchers is the everyday functioning of ideologies. Fairclough argue that there is more of Marxist view of ideologies and persuades them as developments of practices from certain perspectives.  Power is also another concept which is key to CDA. Power, usually analyzes the use of language for those in position and are responsible for inequalities, for example, political leaders. The CDA researchers are primarily concerned with the way discourse remanufactures social dominance. That is to say, they are interested in the way power abuse of a particular group over another group, and how the dominated groups or minority groups may discursively resist such abuse. This of course raises a question of how researchers of CDA distinguish between power use and abuse. This question often remain unanswered.

There are various concepts of power the same way there are social theories. There is about no socio-psychological theory or sociological which does not provide a separate notion of power. There are three distinct approaches to power. First, power is seen as a result of specific resources of individual actors. Second, power is seen as a particular attribute of social exchange in every interaction. Third, power is seen as constitutive and systematic element or characteristics of society.

Michel Foucault focuses on technologies of power. This refers to a discipline which is complex bundle of power technologies constructed during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Power is therefore practiced with intention, but is not individual intention. Foucault concentrates on what accepted knowledge is regarding how to exercise power. This is sometimes done through threatening with violence. However, suggesting how happy people may become in case they buy certain consumer goods, is also an exercise of power.

2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis on Discrimination

Cole (2001) notes that at times, those in power usually use certain comments to identify and legitimize their pejoratives against certain individuals who are less valued in the society. For example, he quotes on how ‘labeling’ has had enormous impact in the education sector, drawing to Ballard’s (1995) comments that the dialect of ‘Special Educational Needs’, particularly the term ‘”special” which fosters continued segregation among the individuals who require that type of education.

This resource therefore focuses on the role of Critical Discourse Analysis in creating understanding, through the analysis of dominant discourses and on the means at which the systems of power impact on people by the meanings they represent and construct. It redresses the use of CDA in tackling issues of power and textual practices that trigger them. CDA thereby provides an important stride in providing an analysis as well as grievous decoding of discourses and powerful texts (Fairclough, 2013). Critical Linguistics has played a vital role in the helping scholars understand socio-political contexts of language use when analyzing specific statements. This way of analysis of discourse enabled increased investigation of issues concerning language and socio-political context.

2.2.0 Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis

The first principle is that CDA always concerns itself with social problems. It studies social phenomena and not investigation of a linguistic unit per se. The second principle is that the relationship between discourse and society forms a cornerstone of CDA. This is because discourse constitutes culture and the society, and itself is constituted by them.

Third, discourse usually does ideological thereby representing and developing a society by manufacturing unequal relations of power. Basically speaking, the aims of CDA are to investigate and understand critically how social inequality signaled, expressed, comprised and legitimized by use of language. According to a constructionist approach, reality is not often fixed, but rather is constructed through interactions. This is to say that an identity shows that various attributes shape the meaning of certain features used to talk about identities. For example people usually communicate to interpret events and also to share with others. It follows then that reality is a product of communication which is constructed socially. In other words, the meanings and understandings that we have arise from our communication with others.

The fourth principle of CDA is that involves a systematic methodology and an investigation of context and is therefore interpretive and explanatory in nature.

2.2.1 Language Functions and Meanings Construction

Usually, discourse analysis can have structural or functional perspectives. Functional orientation is based on the assumption that utterances as well as larger stretches of discourse may have multiple functions. CDA has taken this functional approach as a theoretical base for its purpose. The analysis of discourse means the analysis of language in use.

2.3 Mental Representation in Critical Discourse Analysis

2.3.1 Levels of analysis

This phrase is applied to social sciences to point to the location, size or scale of a research target. It is unique from the term ‘unit of observation” as the former relates to an integrated set of relationships while the latter is about the distinct unit from which data will be gathered.  The levels of analysis are not mutually exclusive but an in critical discuss analysis research generally falls under micro level and the macro level of analysis.

2.3.2Macro versus micro level of analysis

The usage of language, discourse communication, and verbal interaction belong to the micro level of the social order. On the other hand, powered, dominance and inequality between social groups are concepts that relate to the macro level of analysis. Critical discourse analysis bridges the gap between the micro and macro level of analysis that makes get to be a sociological construct in its own right. The macro and micro levels of interactions integrate into being one whole that is unified. For example, a racist remark in parliament is a discourse at the micro level of the social interaction but at the same time, it may also constitute a part of legislation or reproduction at racism at the macro level. The language of thought hypothesis(LOTH) states that the nature of thought and thinking is undertaken in a mental language i.e. it is   done in a symbolic system that is physically realized in the brain of Humans. Critical discourse analysis is a holistic and multidisciplinary theoretical approach that does relate to the micro level analysis of talk and text in relation to the political and social. Its various methodological approaches are nevertheless unified by a micro level social critique which maintains that social inequality may be constructed, legitimized and sustained through the elite language use discourse (Brown, Barber, & Stainton, 2010).

Basing on this micro level analysis, there is no specific methodology favored in the research of critical discourse analysis. Nevertheless, linguistics is favored in which systematic functional grammar provides the techniques for deconstructing the socially and in extension the linguistically constructed power machinery.

2.3.4 “Critical” in critical discourse analysis

Critical concepts show the relationship and causes that are unseen. It, therefore, implies intrusion as it provides the resources for those individuals who may be disadvantaged through change.  It is the exposure of this phenomenon that is hidden that is crucial because they are not comprehensible to the laymen.

2.3.5 The analysis of discourse and the society

The explicit awareness of a critical discourse analysis is of their role in society. The analyst rejects the possibility of a value-free science where the pose an argument that science, especially in reference to scholarly science, is inherently part of n influenced by the social structure and are produced by social interactions.  Such a relationship cannot be ignored between scholarship and society and that theory formulation, description and explanation in discourse analyses are socially and politically located. The discourse analysis framework, therefore, encompasses the society and the polity as a whole. Therefore the research undertaken in discourse analysis is executed in conjunction with and the cooperation with dominated groups. These assertions are effectively realized through achievements of specific requirements.  The CDA need to be better than other research and need to focus primarily on the social problems and political challenges instead of present paradigms and trend these critical analyses ought to e empirically multi-disciplinary where it endeavors to explain the discourse structure instead of just describing them.

Of importance is the focus that CDA puts on the manner in which the discourse structures, enact, legitimize and confirm or reproduce the challenge relations of powered and dominance in the society.

2.3.6 Political discourse

This is important in the enactment, reproduction, and legitimization of power and domination where the critical discourse studies of text and talk are central. Basing on the socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse, social structures are mediated through social cognition described as an arrangement of psychological representations and processes of group associates (Chomsky, 2006). This is the most logical model for critical discourse analysis because language; as the doctrine of critical discourse analysis is what asserts, and connects the constructions of what is the so called knowledge relating to identities, social objects, processes etc. Cognitive interface models are therefore needed to effectively associate power and discourse in an explicit manner theoretically; for attitudes, knowledge, ideologies and other social representations of the mind. The concept of frames has been adopted in the analysis of text and talk in relation to politics.

Frames are conceptual structures or a set of belief that do organize political thought, discourse and policies into standard categories in the perception and analysis of an issue. Politics and the media also do have an interface especially in the manner in which it is covered in the mainstream media. Normal political language does have an indirect but stronger impact on the given people political thoughts in comparison to expressions of strong opinions.  In an analysis of political reporting, bias is a complex issue meaning that nearly all political news does have a bias as the concept is fairly complex. Furthermore, analysis of the lexicon of the daily newspapers shows that they hardly have any ‘value free words’.

Therefore, the manner in which political speech is reported, and the role of context in speech reporting cannot be overlooked. Moreover, verbs in a political speech like ‘define” or negative  effect e.g. “brag”, high volatility e.g. ‘blast’ and low volatility e.g. ‘report’ may have in the analysis of the significant relationship between politics and the press and the accompanying reaction and impact on the masses.  Hence, in political discourse, the usage of metaphor, questions giving of answers and dodging of the same have implications and pre-assumptions.  For example, there are words like ‘I’ and ‘WE’ which have a reference to a group with an implied meaning of inclusion, allegiance, and exclusion.  The full social and historical context in the production of discourse and its structures has to be fully analyzed. As a result these Conceptual approaches to discourse and the ideational characteristics of conceptualization mean that it is the construction of the world’s knowledge that includes the social knowledge of objects, people, events, processes and the world state of affairs (Wodak, 2005). Meaning or belief is a conceptual system of a specific kind where meaning is a worldly view where conceptualization is the meaning i.e. it is a specific construal of reality.

2.3.7 Mind control

The control of discourse is the first major form of power where the control of people’s mind is an important way in which to reproduce dominance and hegemony.  CDA is important in Cognitive psychology and the mass communication as it helps to show how influencing the mind is not a straight forward process. This is because the recipients of the message of communication are quite autonomous and variable in their interpretation and use of text and talk especially as a function of the class, gender or culture.  Many of the beliefs that humans have about the world are acquired through discourse, even though many of the recipients will passively accept the intended opinions of the discourse.

Therefore under CDA, mind control is more than just the acquisition of beliefs about the world through communication and discourse, but the element of power and dominance is also a factor. People do accept beliefs through discourse from what they perceive as authoritative, credible and trustworthy sources e.g. from scholars, experts, professionals or reliable media. Unless of course, this is inconsistent with their beliefs Recipients also accept discourse under obligation for example under education institutions or in a job situation. Discourse, in this case, is defined and interpreted as intended by the institutional authors.  This is because generally there is little or no other situation where other public discourse o media may provide information from which alternative beliefs may be derived. Also, the recipients in many cases also do lack the capacity, beliefs or knowledge that is necessary to challenge the discourses or information provided or channeled to them. 

This is the reason as to why mind control is a form of power and dominance in a situation where such control is in the interest of the elites rulers and the recipients have no other forms of alternatives i.e. writers, speakers, discourses other than to listen and read.  This means that if the definition of freedom is defined as possession the freedom of expression and posting the ability to thinks and does whatever one wants.

Then the deprivation to such alternatives is by virtue a limitation of the freedom of the recipients. The limitation of the freedom of others for one own interest is one of the definitions of power and domination. These conditions of mind control are mainly contextual, however, their inherent conditions within which are discursive i.e. they are a function of the structure and strategies of the text and talk itself. This leads to certain meanings and forms of discourse to have more influence on a groups mind than others given a specific context.

For these reasons, there are two crucial predicaments that critical discourse analysis faces and these are the nature of the language dispensation and the connection between linguistics and multimodal approaches. This is best addressed through an integrated cognitive and multimodal approach to critical discourse analysis to account for the meaning communication in linguistic discourse (Soames, 2015). 

This is because the understanding of language entails the construction of multimodal social semiotics. Therefore, spatial organization and orientation attributes are inherent in the understanding of specific grammatical constructions and in extension, the evaluative purpose these constructions secretly bestow. In normal cases, the directional flow of influence involving linguistics and multimodal approaches to critical discourse analysis is unidirectional where the previous shapes the latter and not vice versa.

2.3.8 Actions, Interactions and Speech Acts

Discourse is a form of social justice, interaction or action, and not merely meaning and expression. Actually, discourse is what language users engage in or actually participate in, especially in spoken dialogue an written communications such as letters, news reports and textbooks. Again, with regard to utterances in certain contexts, we may look at speech acts such as questions, accusations, assertions and promises, all of which are performed through verbal utterances. The dialogue may comprise of more or less orderly exchanges of turns that are control by certain rules of allocating, distributing and appropriating next turns. This may happen in argumentation or storytelling.

In speech acts, discourse may be used or abused to enact, legitimate or express power and dominance. In the action analysis, this is especially evident in the account of direct power abuse such as in speech acts such as orders, threats or commands when used against minority groups such as immigrants. Again, other offensive speech acts could be used against minority groups thereby leading into their exclusion, delegitimation and marginalization, for example, accusations. Discourse may also be manifesten when taking turns in speeches. This is where during conversation and dialogue speakers change turns. Such turn taking may be influenced by power differences as well as institutional rules. For example, some speakers may prevent others from speaking. Other times, the nest speaker may rudely interrupt the current speaker. Again, in more formal dialogues more powerful speakers such as charpersns, professors, may overtly or subtly refuse minority members to speak or may at times curtail the length of their speech. This brings about discrimination.

2.4 Computational Theory of Mind

The theory of the Mind is the cognitive capability of an individual to attribute its mental state to self and others. These cognitive attributions are generally made in the form of either verbal or nonverbal forms.  In reality, all languages have words and phrases that describe mental states which include emotional states, feelings, perceptions and propositional attitudes i.e. hopes, intentions, desires, beliefs and intentions.  People who are actively involved in social or societal life do harbor a lot of feelings, beliefs and thoughts about others as well as on their personal mental states even if these are not verbalized. 

The preoccupation of cognitive science is on how individuals execute these cognitive capabilities i.e. the manner in which their cognitive systems undertake these tasks of generating beliefs and judgments relating to others mental states which cannot be seen directly.  The question of how people self-ascribe mental states and whether these are the same methodology that is applied in relation to both first person and second person ascription (Brown, Barber, & Stainton, 2010).

The computational theory of mind (CTM) asserts that the mind is like a computer and it has been assumed to be the main working hypothesis of cognitive science. It combines an explanation of reasoning together with and explanation of the psychological states i.e. the Representational Theory of the Mind. 

It asserts that the intentional states, for example desire and beliefs are a relationship linking a theorist and the symbolic representation of the substance of the condition.  This means to consider that there is a pen on the table is being in a specific functional relation. This in itself is the feature of the outlook of conviction to a figurative cognitive depiction of semantic worth i.e. “there is a pen on the table.” To possess optimism about the presence of a pen on the table is indeed to be in an indifferent practical relation.

This is a feature of the stance of hope instead of trusting to a figurative cognitive representation with the same semantic worth.  The argument on reasoning referred to as Computational Account of Reasoning is dependent on the assertion that deliberate states entail symbolic representations. These representations, in reference to Computational Account Reasoning, have both syntactic and semantic characteristics and procedures of reasoning which when executed are receptive only to the syntax of the signs.

The lexical and syntactic surface structures may vary as a condition of context that includes the speaker’s opinions. For example in the use of the word terrorist and freedom fighter Traditional critical linguistic focuses on such “biased’ words use of words that is intended to influence and shape the opinions represented in the models of the recipients. This is true in the use of rhetorical figures for example similes, metaphor, and hyperbole that emphasize opinions. Mental states are therefore viewed as representational in the logic of counting as a component symbolic illustration that is characterized by both syntactic and semantic characteristics similar to how symbols are used in mathematical calculations (Chomsky, 2006).

Therefore, reasoning is the process by which the fundamental determinants are syntactic features of the symbols in thought’s language otherwise referred to as mentalese. The practical concept of formalization depicts how semantic characteristics of signs can be present in syntactically anchored derivation convention. These rules permit for the likelihood of deduction that valuable semantics are executed in a manner that is responsive only to the syntax (Soames, 2015).

2.4.1 Cognitive Psychology and Language

The scientific investigation of human cognition is referred to as cognitive psychology. It relates to how humans acquire and apply information and knowledge. To analyze how discourse may control the mind, a detailed mental representation, and cognitive operations needs to be spelled.  There is need to note the difference between episodic memory i.e. personal memory and social memory. Episodic is the storage of experiences that are subjective representations referred to us mental models.

They do consist of the specific knowledge and opinions that an individual may have accumulated over time. Therefore the experiences, of a current situation, interaction and discourse are presented in a mental model that is called as a context model. This second model is comprised of social representations that are general and more abstract socio-cultural knowledge’s, attitude and ideologies that a people do share with other members of a group. This is a more clear distinction although individuals may share beliefs about collective experiences or historical events in a collective manner.  Therefore, daily occurrences of events or communication are perceived in terms of the mental model of a personal experience whereas as racial slogans of a party may be perceived as an expression of a group. Moreover, language users are not just individuals but they may also speak or write as members of a group.

  Their discourse may represent socially shared mental representations of the group where the social representations are presupposed i.e. taken for granted by the group. The discursive mind control may now be defined as the control of the meant models and social representations of other people. Such controls are a form of power abuse where they are in the interest of the powerful and against the best interests of those who are controlled.  

In CDA, the social power and domination and the controls of social representation of a group that is most relevant. These controls do affect both the knowledge i.e. factual beliefs of the group together with the socially shared opinions for example attitudes and ideologies of the group.  As a result, then these constructions are only taking place in the minds of the interacting persons. The factor which plays a role in the differentiation of language processing and linguistics in the field of cognitive psychology is the language acquisition, comprehension, and production.

 Here, language processing plays a key role in the manner in which a person acquires its language-an indicator of the efficacy mental faculties. The focus is on what is presented to the mind and what the mind selectively decides to absorb and repeat. This leads to how an individual perceives its environment, what instructs its actions, memory, reasoning and the manner and extent of its understanding. The comprehension of language is a step in advancement from the phase of language acquisition (Soames, 2015). The circumstance and manner in which a person produces language shapes to a great extent the cognitive psychology.  Language does impact in the manner one thinks and perceives the world. Linguistics is the aspect of language that is concerned with the characterization of linguistics competence which is the abstract knowledge about the structure of language. Language is learned implicitly showcasing that cognition does require language, unlike reading that can be taught later.

The acquisition of language especially in infants is guided by the innate knowledge relating to the possible forms of natural language (Wodak, 2005).  Language shapes a person thinking and in extension influences their personalities.

2.4.2 Representation of words, phrases, sentences are in mind

The control of the mind is generally due to context and the structure of text and talks themselves. Contextually based control occurs as a result of people not only understanding and representing text and talk but to also the whole communicative situation’s people are therefore persuaded by the characteristics of the speakers, writers, for example, their perceived power, authority or credibility. Other factors of the situation for example place; time roles and circumstances also control the mind. Critical discourse analysis also analyzes own the contextual features, for example, the properties of the language users of powerful groups also influence them the manner in which the members of that powerful group define the communicative situation on the preferred context models.  Thus, critical discourse analysis focuses on how discourse structures do shape and influence the mental representations.

From a macro perspective, the topics may shape what people perceive as being important information for text and talk leading to correspondence at their top levels of mental models. An example can be the unambiguous sociopolitical position of a discourse analyst coupled with a focus on the dominance or the relations between and among elite groups; their associated institutions as they have or are being ratified, legitimized or else generated through text and talk. Expressing such topics in the mainstream media news headline may influence in a powerful manner the way an event is defined n relation to the ‘preferred’ mental model.  Also, argumentation may also become persuasive due to social opinions which are hidden in its implicit premises and may be taken for granted by the recipients.

 For example, immigration may be restricted if it is presumed that all immigrants are ‘illegal’ during a parliamentary debate.  Also at the micro level, discourse meaning and coherence may be understood through models that feature beliefs that are implicitly being presupposed in a discourse. I.e. to communicate meaning implicitly without actually asserting them with less hence of them being challenged Local meaning may thus be thus be strategically employed to influence the information of social representations by generalizations of models (Chomsky, 2006). Hence in racist talks communicators will not just talk about a story relating to a specific event but tend to add various forms of generalizations.  Speech acts are therefore largely defined by the context models and the text processing is largely influenced by the interpretation of whether the utterance is perceived as a threat or a good advice.

 The interactional dimensions of discourse, for example, turn taking and sequencing also influence the updating of models. The power and authority the speakers as depicted by turn control may at the same time enhance the perceived credulity of the speakers and the construction of the models as being true. The processing of talk, the way words are read and the manner in which they are produced has to a great extent benefitted from the cognitive science and computational modeling. Therefore, the comprehension of expressions and words does make instantaneous connection with the sensory, motoric and affective information done in a symbolic system that is physically realized in the brain of Humans. It is this feature of language that influences a person’s memory for events and language cannot be ignored in any study of cognition. Language is ever evolving, it is learned and in most of the situations it is utilized in face to face conversations.  It is, therefore, tractable to experiment with language as a result of the dynamic, multifaceted environments. This includes the communications patterns, the environment, and the wider social settings.

2.4.3 Meaning as the representation of the language in mind

The challenge in critical discourse analysis has been on finding out if what one says means something or if what one says inherently represents what the speaker thinks it means. Does what is being said carry its own meaning that is different from the speaker’s intention in stating it. Context is the mentally represented structure of the properties of the social situation that are important for the understanding of discourse (Hirtle, 2007).  It relates to the overall definition of the situation, setting e.g. time and place, ongoing actions, participants and their mental representations. Controlling context relates to the control of one or more of these categories e.g. determining of the definition o the communicative situation, deciding on time and place of the communicative event and or defining of the participants who may or must present and in what role, opinions, and social actions they should undertake the discourse. Representation, in this case, is the production of meaning through language and it is an important part of the process through which meaning is generated and exchanged between and among a group or cultures (Chomsky, 2006).

 The phenomena employ the usage of language, images, and signs that do stand for or represent things. In this context, to represent something means to describe depict it or recall in the mind through the portrayal or depiction of imagination i.e. how abstract concepts are represented.  The phrase to represent also means to symbolize to be a specimen or to stand for or substitute for. This means that it is the connection between the concepts and the language that helps individuals or humans to refer to either the actual world of events, objects, people or in an alternate situation to fantasy world of imaginary, events, objects, or characters (Soames, 2015). Representations are undertaken through two processes or systems.

This involves the presence of the system in which all sorts of events, people or objects are interconnected to a series of concepts that are carried around in the mind.  Without these people suddenly become unable to interpret the world in a meaningful way whatsoever. Therefore, meaning is dependent on the association between the things that are in the world which include objects, people, as well as events which may be real or fictional on one hand; and the conceptual systems that operate as a mental representation of all these i.e. conceptualizations (Hirtle, 2007).  It is this relationship between these things, the concepts and the signs that are at the center of the production of meaning to a language and the procedure which links all these processes together and it is what is referred to as representation. It is the people or humans who do fix the meaning in a firm and fixed manner that with time become natural and inevitable (Soames, 2015). The meaning, therefore, is constructed by the system of representation and it is constructed and affixed through a code that sets up the correlation between the conceptual system and the language system.

Representation of meaning through language, therefore, works in three approaches. The reflective approach where meaning is believed to lie on the object, idea, person  or event in the actual world and language functions as a minor reflecting the true meaning as  it exists in the world. The second approach is where the speaker is the one that imposes his or her own unique meaning on the world through the usage of language.  Words then mean what the speaker intends them to mean. Finally, the third approach that recognizes and appreciates the public social character of language as it admits that neither things by themselves nor an individual user of language fixes meaning in language. Things, therefore, posses meaning that is constructed using representational systems, signs, and concepts i.e. constructionist methodology (Chomsky, 2006). 

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is theoretically diverse. Nevertheless, its efficacy in the use of language is largely restricted to sociolinguist frameworks while its explanation of the impact of texts has largely been in terms of social theory. CDA has not exhaustively dealt with the phenomena of cognitive descriptions of language and cognitive explanations of the impact of texts (Mey, 2009). In the discourse learning of politics, the two main inherent themes in the definition of politics are the fight for power among those who aim to declare and uphold “their power and those who seek to resist it” (Holmes, & Marra, 2010, pp 134, pp 133). Alternatively, it is also described as the “the operation, praises, and institutions that a society has utilized for resolving the clashes of interests over money, power, liberty and alike” (Holmes, & Marra, 2010, pp 134). The first theme is a pointer to the power struggles as the basis of politics while the second definition perceives politics as the administration of disagreeing interest in a peaceful way (Blackledge, 2005).

Discourse has an important role as a mechanism of politics where the supremacy of language in the sphere if politics is instinctively accepted by the common person/laymen. Yet, just like power, liberation, and wealth; text and talk has the potential to be the focal point of the fight for the supremacy of representation. Under speech analysis, representation relates to the language applied in allocating meaning to societal groupings, the community practices,  procedures as well as to communal along with environmental conditions and objects.  Under this perception, the responsibility of language in societal life is that meaning is not entrenched in a veracity that is professed; but in its place, it is interpreted by linguistic illustrations (Holmes, & Marra, 2010). The modes of these representations will change depending on the perceptive from where they are construed, i.e. if it’s socio-cultural, historical, or biographical.

More important to note is that ideology will also manipulate the approach in which societal assemblages do signify issues of importance that have implication in the organization of politics (encompassing also the accomplishment of a tradition of peace). In this respect, linguistics representations do determine the behavior in which people reflect about specific objects, situations or events. In this respect linguistics functions as a standard of action that shapes and influences, actual social practices.  Thus there will be variations between groups about what is considered and viewed as the accurate, appropriate and even preferred representation (Mey, 2009). It is this competition in relation to meaning amid groups that is referred to us the political affairs of representation.  The idea behind these is that talk and text are not present in seclusion and discourse analysis emphasizes the study of the environment in order to understand the various aspects of discourse.

These includes the social domains e.g. politics, ideology, and the universal acts partly attained through text and talk, e.g. teaching, voting, legislation etc. Others include the audience and their numerous forthcoming, communal and specialized roles, as well as the relationship between participants, their setting among others. Moreover, the analysis of context results into some aspects of the cognitive characteristics of the audience, for example, their beliefs, aims, opinions, and knowledge. By advocating for these factors, an understanding of who the individuals are talking or writing to and how they adapt whatever they are writing or saying to the understanding or belief of the receiver is conceptualized. For this reason, not just the mentalist aspires to understand the procedure of concrete discourse conception and construction but also for significant contextual motives; that the learning of the cognitive characteristic of communication is extremely appropriate (Holmes, & Marra, 2010).

2.4.4 Discourse Processing

The learning of sentence dispensation stresses that the psychological procedures of thoughtfulness ought not to be removed from sentences. Humans do understand discourse as a whole and the handling of talk and text should be analyzed as an incorporated part of the process involved in the production and comprehension of discourse (Blackledge, 2005).  A cognitive analysis of conversation is thus different from the grammatical analysis. This is because it does not involve itself with nonfigurative groupings and convention that attempt to define the makeup of conversation; other than with actual mental representation and procedures of speech users (Holmes, & Marra, 2010). Therefore, cognitive analysis attempts to give a more empirical basis to the understanding of discourse whose processing occurs at numerous stages concurrently. This is in the form of a fast yet inadequate progression of mental functions aimed at making sense of the respective words, sentences, phrases, paragraphs etc of discourse.

 Consequently, in the cognitive analysis, the explanation is not stagnant or nonrepresentational procedure. It is a linguistic semantic that is an ongoing process of conveying meaning and purpose to components of discourse. The process of construction and understanding utilizes a wide number of technical concepts that describe the diverse feature of the brain (Kotthoff, & Spencer-Oatey, 2007). These are the long term versus short term memory, semantic versus episodic memory plus even versus situation models and knowledge i.e. scripts etc. The following ten steps summarize the whole progression of premeditated discourse construction.

1.    Text or talk is heard or read and interpreted item by item.

2.    Provisional meaning is assigned to those syntactic structures, expressions, general meaning, discourse, and feature of context on the basis of world knowledge.

3.    The connotation of smaller components is amalgamated and corrected where necessary into bigger units. For example amalgamation of propositions and the sequence of those propositions until when the short term reminiscence barrier is almost full.

4.    This is followed by bigger portions that are amassed in textual representation under episodic memory

5.     In conjunction with this perception of the particular items of the text and the configuration of the Textual Representation in periodic memory; the users of language either activate previous memory or construct new mental models of the proceedings or situations relating to the text or talk.

6.    The understanding of the talk or text that is about the instruction of such a representation i.e. the talk or text is only understandable if the receiver of the communication is in a position to build a replica of it.

7.    These models, apart from the psychological representations are able to be built as a result of knowledge from prior experience and explicit occurrence of common knowledge.

8.    These models are characterized by personal knowledge’s, beliefs and attitude of speech users in addition to the application of the common, communally shared information. Nevertheless, each of these models is unique as the same individual may create a dissimilar model i.e. explanation of the identical text on a different day (Kotthoff, & Spencer-Oatey, 2007).

9.    The whole procedure of comprehension is synchronized by the replica that the language users possess of the communicative circumstances which are mainly context. It is this context model that tells the users of the language what the aspirations of the dialogue are and who the audience is and their roles. It defines what they are familiar with and what they are yet to know and the settings of the discourse understanding etc.

This important information is vital for the undertaking of the diverse characteristic of discourse as its modulation, and a syntactic and lexical style; where meanings are articulated or left hidden and finding out the vocalizations acts that are being executed (Mey, 2009).

10.    Once this replica of a discourse is formed or updated, the users of the language then generalize such replicas and thus may construct a more general, theoretical knowledge composition. This is the process under which the language users learn from past familiarity. Note that the language users may also form false generalizations that may lead to prejudices.

The procedure of speech production is also described in a comparable way but in a dissimilar course as it begins with a mental replica. The phenomenon that one is aware of is thus gradually and in a strategic sequential fashion changed in the meanings of a conversation.  This is subsequently expressed in wording through following the restriction of the situational representation (Blackledge, 2005).  As a result, discourse is created and understood as a purpose of communally shared thoughts, ideologies, principles, and norm as well as other forms of societal cognition.

In summary cognitive analysis relates to semantic structures that include the definition of the situation as overall meanings. This is the examination of important implied meanings of words and sentences, and the analysis of what is being presupposed (knowledge and finding out how the text cohere). This semantics can only be analyzed and audited in term of the personal or socially shared knowledge that requires a relevant knowledge or beliefs to be listed (Mey, 2009).

2.4.5 Components of Cognitive Analysis

The attempt to expand on talk and text analysis that factors in the cerebral representations and processes as defined above might be termed as being ‘mentalist.” This is so because it is viewed as being not concerning text configuration but more about the mental structure that ignores the interactive and societal characteristic of discourse. Nevertheless, the significant features of speech that describe its overall meaning are no less psychological than the type of rational models discussed.  A text or speech meaning is not on in the speech, paper or air, but it is assigned to text by its speech users and therefore a representation of their mind (Kotthoff, & Spencer-Oatey, 2007).

The issue is primarily about the mental representations that are necessary for the mounting for the discourse dispensation and how such a processing occurs exactly. The cognitive analysis does not exclude at all the social analysis as many features of the cognitive representations are by themselves social. Discourse dispensation and conception are analyzed holistically as a component of the unrestrained event and an as form of societal integration where it offers an additional mental foundation. Here action and interactions do derive meaning; purpose and harmonization from the cognitive illustrations that are continuously being monitored. This means that a description of text and talk that is theoretically adequate devoid of a cognitive part is unacceptable.

 Also, a cognitive description is unacceptable without a societal part that gives details about the arrangement of the framework, as together with the attainment, alteration, and uses of communally shared representation (Holmes, & Marra, 2010). Critical discourse is the right methodology for performing an audit of the discourse of text and talk in order to find out the ideologies that are underlying it.  Critical discourse analysis as a branch of text and speech analysis aims at focusing on the relationship between ways of talking and ways of thinking and highlights the important aspects of cultural and ideological meaning inherent in the spoken and written texts (Blackledge, 2005). It broadens the scope of linguistic analysis by incorporating the larger socio-political and social cultural contexts under which discourse is embedded.

 At this macro level of analysis, we are therefore able to unpack the ideological basis of discourse that may have been neutralized with time and is therefore treated as common sense and have become a natural and acceptable feature of discourse. Critical discourse analysis, therefore, becomes valuable when it comes to politics. This is because, demonstrations, presidential campaigns, political debates and parliaments are all field of ideological battles (Kotthoff, & Spencer-Oatey, 2007).  It is here that diverse and conflicting groups, interest, power, and struggles are in the balance. For a person or group to be in a position to contend, they have to be ideologically cognizant and prepared. 

A key factor that is central to a political figures success in attaining their goals and winning public consensus in the continuous power struggle is their ability to persuade and impress the masses (Mey, 2009). The winning team will be the party or person whose language, terms, words and figurative language are overriding once the context and the reality have been identified.  It is this scenario that entails the need where talk and text are felt more than at any other time to realize a reality and how it has been distorted through a delicate and skillful use of language.  Hence people need to dissect the discourse, find out what the distortion is, go through it and discover the reality at last (Kotthoff, & Spencer-Oatey, 2007).

2.4.6 Ideology and Racism

For most people, and probably also for many readers of this chapter, the idea of racism is not necessarily associated with that of discourse (van Dijk, 1993). However, both talk and text play a vital role in the reproduction of contemporary racism. From a more critical perspective and in been more specific, this section will try to understand how ideology, racism and discourse are prominently reproduced by social practices and especially by discourse (van Dijk, 1993).

To understand further how discourse may have contributed to early year’s racism, we first need to examine two ideological properties of political discourse on racism; immigration and minorities in contemporary Europe and America. Whereas racism is often reduced to racist ideology, it is here understood as a complex societal system of ethnically or “racially” based domination and its resulting inequality (van Dijk, 1993).

2.4.7 Aryan – White Superiority – Indo Europeans 

The idea of a racial hierarchy with whites of European decent occupying the top did not begin with Nazism; rather the purported scientific evidence used to support Nazism was produced before the birth of Hitler.  In the early 19^th century, a series of historians, linguist, folklorist and archeologist influenced by the work of Sir Walter Jones who formulated the idea that most of the ancient and modern languages of Europe belong to a family of languages which later scholars termed Indo-Europeans.

 Ultimately, later scholars formulated the theory of categorizing racial groups based on linguistics. The world renowned 19^th century author Arthur de Gobineau, who was known as “the grandfather of modern academic racism and the most influential academic racist of nineteenth century” published his most influential work Essaisur l’Inegalite des Races Humaines(An Essay on the Inequality of the Human races). 

In this book, Gobineau argues that “there was a hierarchy of languages that corresponded with a hierarchy of races”.  Not only did Gobineau’s book feed the development the idea that whites were superior to all other races, but he also claimed that descendants of ancient Germanic tribes coined Aryan were even more superior that to other whites.  

According to Gobineau, the Aryans were the most “noble, intelligent and vital branch of the white race” and proclaimed that the success of civilization was dependent on the purity of Aryan blood within it. This idea of racial purity and the dangers of interbreeding became extremely popular in the United States in the 19^th century and had a direct influence on Madison Grant, an American lawyer and strong proponent in the crafting immigration restrictions and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

            The difficulty of maintaining the various categories of white racial groups in 19^th century Europe based on linguistics coupled with the threat of a unified underclass transformed into nationalistic categories.  The English writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain who moved to Germany in his youth and adopted German culture and language wrote the book Foundations of the Nineteenth Century where he praised the superiority of the Germanic people and attributed the accomplishments of civilization to the Germans whom he believed possessed most amount of Teutonic blood.

Similarly to Gobineau, Chamberlain was concerned with the dilution of German blood by inferior groups who could bring about the degeneration of the Aryan Race.  The science of separating groups into racial categories expanded during the 19^th century thus manufacturing racial groups who shared a language, physical characteristics, culture, etc.  Thus began the rise of referencing racial groups such as the British race, French race and the German race.

            The theories of classifying human based on skin color using a racial hierarchy that positioned Aryans above the purported inferior races expanded beyond the borders of Europe.  The United States with its shared ancestral ties to British Empire that trace back to the landing of the Mayflower in 17^th century which transported a group of English Separatist in search of a new life free from religious persecution or England’s restrictive feudal system. This shared ancestral bond of a shared language, physical characteristics and Anglo-Saxon lineage that was later used to influence the Americans in the context of empire building.

2.4.8 White Man’s Burden

            The religious writings of the Georges Dumezil are believed to have largely fueled the politicized viewpoint supported by Nazis that Aryans whom are also referred to as Indo-Europeans are the master race. For example, these writings are thought to have extended the foundation of misinformation regarding the Indo-Europeans and their supposed physiological and anthropological differences from all other human races.

There is continued debate as to whether other politicized organizations used these writings to promote an underlying ideology of White supremacy. The evidence cited from Dumezil with regard to the formation of an Indo-European master race is in the dissemination of society into segments that include “leaders, warriors, and producers” (Arvidsson, 2010). The application of an underlying master race philosophy based on Indo-European ideology of hierarchy is by which such preexisting measures are used as the designation for such philosophy.

            The belief that much of the Nazi ideology of the Aryan as the master race is rooted in these writings that purport a “Fascist dream of a society that would be harmoniously integrated and, at the same time, hierarchically divided into leaders, soldiers, and workers”. The Nazi ideology, which is an extension of the White Man’s Burden or the belief of a homeland harmoniously ruled by a leader of the master race have been identified as inherent to the Fascist belief of naturalization of society.

The growth of Fascism has been linked to political ideology such as imperialism which gives rise to colonialism or the facilitation of rule by a master race over a colony. Thus imperialistic leadership is potentially the identifier of the promotion of fascism via the tenets of the White Man’s Burden effect on society.

The United States had used White superiority to justify empire expansion during the 19^th century primarily by following the lead from the colonization practices of the British Empire throughout Africa. The United States had entered the world of imperialism in 1898 with the Spanish-American war (Spalding 2006). This expansion into imperialism in the late 19^th century was due to the financial and industrial elite that emerged post Civil War (Spalding, 2006).

 The rise of industrialization within the United States would create the need to expand into foreign markets and to establish its presence as producers within colonized territories. “U.S foreign policy took a more aggressive tone, displaying a willingness to confront other powers, such as Great Britain, engaged in the race for colonies, empire, and trade” (Spalding 2006). The U.S followed the path of colonialism established by the British, which then led to a rivalry in foreign policy regarding colonization of foreign territories.

            The expansion by the U.S was thought to be necessary to promote the ideals of businessmen and politicians. “Influential businessmen and members of Congress argued that national prosperity depended upon commercial expansion, which by definition meant conflicts over markets and raw materials” (Spalding 2006). The expansionist Congress decided to follow through with the economic intentions disseminated by the emergent businessmen and voted to fund such ideas (Spalding 32-33). The identification of White superiority as the means to justify commercial expansion by use of military might for empire expansion is linked to fascism that is identifiable by imperialistic leadership and a war mongering attitude. The U.S expanded on the British ideology of empire expansion, which inherently was present throughout history including the expansion of Asiatic tribes into European and Middle Eastern territories.

2.4.9 Structural analysis of racism and cognitive

Discourses are made up of different structures, which are also categorized in many different ways, in regard to the approach used (interactional, rhetorical, semiotic, pragmatic, linguistic etc.) or even the type of genre in analysis, such as advertisements, poetry, news reports or even conversations.  For the purpose of this resource, it will be assumed that both oral talk and printed/written text may be analyzed along different dimensions or at various levels. Each of these may be directly or indirectly in discriminatory interaction against minorities.

• Non-Verbal structures: this can be a headline size/page layout or a derogatory gesture emphasizing a negative meaning among the minority group “Them”. For example, this statement by The American Present Elects ‘Donald Trump’ speech on Immigration issues

at a political rally in Phoenix. 

This speech, there is a focus on racism and discrimination within the discursive constructs related to immigration which is implying that the speaker language to large extent calls for the strict enforcement of immigration rules with a corresponding restrictive rhetoric from the politicians.

• Sounds: Speaking very loudly or an insolent intonation

 • Syntax: This is (De-) emphasizing accountability on action, for example using passive and active sentence.

• Lexicon: The use of words that may be less or more negative about ‘them’ i.e. “freedom fighters” vs. “terrorist”.

A further analysis of the speech shows further usage of syntactic reduction in the following phrases which end up with a different meaning on the recipients thus shaping their opinions about the facts on the ground.

These are clearly racial and discriminatory  ideology that is being manufactured as a number of people did took stage during before these speech was made, and the speech was refereeing to the victims that are allegedly have been murdered by the illegal aliens. 

These statements ended up bringing about the issue of racial profiling as well as increasing discrimination based on morphological; features to people who are perceived to be illegal immigrants.

These snippets do show that the utterances even though they are shortened are coherent and meaningful. Apart from the obligatory words, the speech needed up omitting the optional words assuming that obligatory words might be sufficient enough to express meanings. But these omissions of the obligatory words negate the tenets of the English language because they also hold meaning and therefore their omission damages their intelligibility.

When these omissions are deliberately made, then the intelligibility of the recipients may be skewed towards adopting an understanding that may favor the politic establishment (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008). Through observation of the deictic expressions, main verb, and the attributive forms may seem to be sufficient enough for the projection of the deleted string of words. The speech made was not structurally rich yet the concurrent exchanges reveal that the recipients somehow night has failed to infer the deleted string of words or they might have been misinformed   for the success of the communication from the recipient’s point of view.

It can, therefore, be argued that instead of the structure, the meaning was assumed to be the primary source for the carrying of the political message inherent in the speech. The minimal linguistic forms, therefore, construed the syntactic expression of mood and overall relevance to racism and discrimination relevance for the formulation of a political ideology for the republican candidate.

For a person or group to be in a position to contend, they have to be ideologically cognizant and prepared. A key factor that is central to a political figures success in attaining their goals and winning public consensus in the continuous power struggle is their ability to persuade and impress the masses (Boellstorff, 2012).

Chapter 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Just like for any researcher dealing with any type of data, dealing with virtual data confronts a research with a number of trivial questions. Many of these questions relate to the size and representativeness of data samples, the data processing techniques, the type and amount of contextual information, the limits if the genres, and the ethical issues, for example,  anonymity and privacy issues. This chapter describes the processes of data collection, the ethical considerations of collecting and handling data, data analysis, and the theoretical underpinnings.

Data Collection

The first phase of the data collection comprised of the selection of a sample of appropriate participants. These sample size consisted of five newspaper articles that wee reacting to republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s speech on Immigration issues to a political rally in Phoenix.  The data collection is specifically on what is written in the comments sections of the four online articles. These comments sections were chosen as they allowed the research to determine, evaluate and manure the interpretation of the article gist by the general public and consumers. These sample sizes are from elite publications and speakers due to the capacity of influence that they hold (Boellstorff, 2012).

The analysis will be starting from lexical units and expanding to the entire organization of information in the text. These posts form the Washington post, Vox media, media matters of America, and the independent journal review.  The sample size included both male and female respondents who were registered on the journals comments section. Th e virtual ethnography is suitable for this sample group almost anywhere in the world. Many of these respondents are young people who bring with them a well-developed practice of e-styles.

As the social networks do comprise mostly of young people as its potential users, this study assumes that they do know how to communicate in formal English. The youths have the capability of taking language into their won possession and are generally active in generating a more general language change. There is always an association between being young and using these patterns of English with the native language (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008). Facebook being a popular forum for conversations among the youth, it was therefore taken to be a good source of the data. In terms of Facebook data, it was confined to the Facebook wall that allows for easy access to the vast subject pool, devoid of violating any one’s privacy. Moreover, it’s characterized by the use of a broad range of traits at its very informal end of the linguistic spectrum like in a natural which is an important aspect in this study.

Participant’s observation

The data gathering included participant observation in an online ethnography research that entailed watching text and images. For this case, it was the comments and the generic texts that encompassed the chat stream of the four publications about Donald Trump’s speech on Immigration. Participant’s observation can be regarded as having five different levels of participation (Hine, 2015). Active participation, passive participation, moderate participation, nonparticipation and complete participation these are today also reflected and applied in virtual ethnography too.

Sample

The sample was drawn from four online media publications from reputable firms, they were the Washington post, the Los Angeles times, etc. the reasons for this was that these are authoritative and widely read few companies that also permit for readers to make their comment from across the nation thus making the comments to be representative enough in terms of academic, linguistic, and cultural background (Boellstorff, 2012).   The comments could be posted on Facebook which also has followings in more or less within the group of the publications. The Facebook forums have the possibility of connecting with people from the different linguistic background. Te participants of this study were mainly English speaking American residents. Their communication was not just limited to American context but it could be referred to international settings too. The participants linked and shared jokes, pictures, and videos that relate to varying themes that included, immigration, racism, discrimination, affirmative action, education which best derived their being(Boellstorff, 2012).

They communication in online context comprised of new creative ways where they identified themselves mostly as either participant, republicans or democrats where the data is mostly in English The corpus used is simple in one language that has been written in the same script. The tone used in the message threads is informal and a lot of words used showed the emotions and feelings that these commentators had for the particular issue of immigration and to both the republican and democrat candidate.

Data processing

In analysis of the gathered data, the analytical framework of Clarke’s situational analysis was utilized. The overview of the data features gave the research the perception that two major discursive constructs represented in relation to racism and discrimination on online new portals. In order to view and investigate the basis of these structures elements, a deconstruction, ordering and categorization of the data was undertaken.  This step was approached through the application of Clarke’s mapping from the steps of the messy situational map to ordered situational map and to the step of the relational map.

 The categories arisen from this task was then applied to the selected source of analysis which is the representation of text  and the speech, and the rich description of the researcher’s experience from the participant’s observation and the data gathered from the online sources. This overall framework is then analyzed to seek out the purpose of the messages in threads associated with the individual postings online i.e. how language was used to express a political ideology, racism, and discrimination. These data processing approaches make it feasible to investigate the interrelationship between political ideology and discourse.

Distribution of sample

The study investigated linguistic postings of the speech itself and the related reaction in the threads of the respective of the online posting over a period of two months since they were posted. This time frame is logical as it allows for the observation of the linguistic features of the participants that were used in the communication. Each posting comprised of more than one utterance making the data being collected to be naturalistic and observational with little o no interference from the researcher (Boellstorff, 2012).

Ethical considerations

By ensuring the pre-existing ethical standards are properly met is crucial to the study. The participants were not informed of the study as these are publicly available information and the respondents were posting under an alias name and not their real names. They were identified through the means f cryptonyms in reporting research. This thus gave assurance concerning confidentiality, unauthorized eavesdropping, security of information that helped safeguard against disclosure relating to information that might identify the participants, institutions, places ad times.

Data analysis

To attempt the research question, minimal linguistic forms and what they communicate in terms of mood was analyzed from the republican presidential contender’s speech on migration. The linguistic features were the best situated as the basis for the analysis of language in a poly language context. These forms were thus classified into lexical and syntactic tiers where word reduction was further unclassified into abbreviations e.g. for example BTW for between, clippings for a pic for pictures, and logograms e.g. some1 for someone.  Logograms were further sub-classified into phonetic spelling u for you, le xo numeric gr8 for great, digital-lexeme i.e. 2morrow of tomorrow and digit word semi homophone 4 for “for” (Hine, 2015). 

The purpose of this classification was to find out the lexical features that relate to the theme of racism and discrimination and analyze the comments to find out how close or r far they are close to the speech given and how far or close they differentiate from the actual, reality and how much this impact has on the perception of the respondents.   The features analyzed included the types of the structures, the deletion of grammatical features and the syntactic expression of mood. These were further classified into the simple, compound, fragmented or complex structure. The messages on the thread will, therefore, be analyzed to elaborate and support the conclusion regarding the research question through triangulation to bring about and increase the credibility and validity of the results (Boellstorff, 2012).

Theoretical underpinning

The procedure for analysis is conceived within much related theoretical work on text analysis where intuition judgment is particularly entitled in respect to the distribution of different forms and meanings of words that relate to racism and discrimination in relation to the speech on migration.

The interaction of the lexis, grammar and meaning will be considered in the current study against invented data of utterances and associated responses that are in the form of explicit data taken from the threads and Facebook. The study is based on a small dataset to address the underlying research question (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008). The actual language of the texts and the speech on immigration duly recorded were the main concern of the current study. Moreover, the interpretation of the cyber linguistic features was base on relying on consistently few examples. This is because there was a belief that a few linguistic features of a text were distributed even throughout the comments. The commonly occurring themes or racism and discrimination were thus brought out through the analysis of commonly occurring lexical as well as syntactic features across the corpus so as to draw emerging patterns.

The corpus was thus used to identify the central and typical issues in the language and how these have been used to manufacture discriminatory ideology (Hine, 2015). Therefore, the linguistic patterns that reside in language use across the threads in this virtual ethnography are best judged when they are studied comparatively across the text corpora. The data were accumulated from four online publications and  two Facebook posting on Trump’s speech on immigration delivered while he has in phoenix during his political campaigns for the white house.  The purpose for these cohorts was to have a comparative standpoint whether the linguistic features are spread across the board or concentrated on one cohort. Generally, the data was organized into lexical and syntactic tiers and the most powerful interpretations of the text emerged with comparisons across the corpora which were combined which were combined with the organization of the specific texts.  The linguistic features were also viewed across the several media genres i.e. social networking and the news feed threads (Boellstorff, 2012). 

Every language is governed by linguistic and selections and restrictions, and the feedback given on the speech are assumed to be in line with the systems of langue more or less where their meaning is what governs their peculiar linguistic choices. The semantic analysis of corpus is the main concern of the Firthian school of thought, where the meaning of a word is known by the company it keeps. The systemic analysis adopts a descriptive approach to language investigation that attempts to answer the question what is language and how does it work?  The present study also gives importance to the description of the characteristics of cyber linguistic features where the priority of meaning over form is prioritized (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008).

Language

The analysis of the language that was verbal and the related nonverbal responses in the form of the threads are taken as a means of communication and are part   of the shaping and staging of identities. The findings showed that there were many respondents who were articulating the values of nationalism, rule of law on one hand and a sizable majority who were advocating for the theme of racism, isolation, and discrimination. For example,

The users mainly indicated these through the written language e.g. 

The extensive use of referring to the racism for many of the commentators can be considered as a specialist language. Another way that language has been used is the way people have used it depending on the social situation.

 On this speech, there is a focus on racism and discrimination within the discursive constructs related to immigration which is implying that the speaker language to large extent calls for the strict enforcement of immigration rules with a corresponding restrictive rhetoric from the politicians. To illustrate how language can indicate social situation and thereby reflect on the identities, the Republican candidate for example in his speech used the phrase,

He only means that his version of events did not quite line up with those of the Mexican president version of events. The social situation is adequately revealed in the social comments that I attributed to this remarks from the commentator of the threads.

In the thread comments associated with the sharing of the republican presidential nominee ideology on immigration and his proposed to mitigating them, the threads do share a similarity of their social satiations and relate to the disruptive constructs that focus on migration. This gives a reader and other users an impression of role models and opinion leaders. The extensive usage of articulation also, also reveals the constitutive and consequential interrelationship between the user’s creation of identities and the discursive constructs that they associate with.

Demographics and the nature of data

Just like in a face to face conversation, the communication between the participants did reflect the physical approximation. The data includes the posting that shows the relationship the participants attach to the issue of immigration and how this shapes their perceptions which translate their behavior into being discriminatory and even racist(Boellstorff, 2012).

Types of exchanges

The major characteristics of virtual ethnography are interactivity which is organized around the threads. A thread is a chain of interrelated messages that do respond to one another where the linguistic postings on the wall can easily be referred to us phrases or fragments or clauses.

The postings of the wall relate to topics that vary in their themes which can be initiated by a single person or followed by his followers or comments. These exchanges can be classified into three part structure of initiation, response, and reflection (IRR).

The two-part adjacency pairs for example question and answers and the nonlinear flow of the conversation were also prevalent. These can also be seen in the above excerpts. Te postings of the data were extrovert in nature and they provided the framework under which the next posting was formulated (Hine, 2015).  Facebook is considered to be an asynchronous technology where it transmits messages in near real time.

 Nevertheless, it was observed that many of the respondents were replying instantly to the postings rendering the technology to be synchronous.  Technological boundaries, generic distinctiveness, and convergence of the old and new media, texting and emailing boundaries are becoming blurred. Dividing the posting on the threads of the online articles or on Facebook, between asynchronous and synchronous modes is, therefore, misleading due to the speed of the communication. The participant’s communication under each thread may be considered as falling under synchronous or asynchronous modes but the Facebook conversations were perceived to be analogous to asynchronous communication (Boellstorff, 2012).

This is because most of the postings by the participants were used to grid a kind of coherent discourse as most of the postings is in response to a single reflection on the speech on the immigration issues by the republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Communications on the threads therefore generally occurred as a one to one communication or as one too many which is some form of interpersonal communication. The internet, therefore, can be used to distribute information to any direction i.e. either one to one, or one-to-many.

Minimal linguistic forms

Word reduction

A good number of the comments did reduce the English words through both conscious and subconscious efforts through compounding a number, lexeme or morpheme. For example

Example include some1, Cuz for cause, 100k for a hundred thousand as digit word homophones making the  logograms to be one of the most frequently occurring features in virtual communication.  The ambiguity that was first generated due to these minimal linguistic forms was subsequently compensated through extra-linguistic features. Te reduction of these English words is characterized by the phonological and morphological properties which conform to fixed phonological patterns. The vowels sound does behave like the filler in this case, where there is no incidence of reduction in the consonant sounds.

Types of structures

The participants who were surveyed generally used fragments and sentences to undertake their conversation. A fragment is a segment of a sentence that may consist of either a single or a string of words. The sentence used to fall in the range of either simple or compound sentences. Simple structures do contain a subject and a predicate and this was the most widely used. Compound sentences were relatively low in their frequency of usage (Hine, 2015).

Syntactic reduction

For rational users of language, they might decide to structure their speech in a manner that optimizes the communicative properties. Of importance are the information theoretic ad psycholinguistic considerations that suggest that this includes the maximization of the uniformity of information density in an utterance (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008).

 This possibility is what is investigated in the analysis of the speech made on immigration by the republican candidate in the context of syntactic reduction. This is where a speaker has the option of either marking a higher order phase or unit with an extra word or simply decides to leave it unmarked. Many speakers prefer to reduce the less information dense phrases whose meaning may not mean the same to the audience in the manner the speaker anticipates or it may not b the exact meaning the listeners believe it is. Structural properties of a language are susceptible to deletion and the resulting communication becomes a reflection of short structures supported by linguistic nexuses.

Hence the omission of linguistic feature means that the comments made are therefore as a result of the pragmatic knowledge to presuppose that the receiver would know how to map out deleted expressions in the utterances. Nevertheless, the recipients do go ahead to form their own impression of what the understanding is that may be subjective or biased towards discrimination or racism.  The excerpts show the utterances from the speech made in phoenix about immigration, which although shortened are coherent and meaningful (Boellstorff, 2012). The participant’s comments show that they did omit optional words by assuming that the speaker’s obligatory words might be sufficient to express meaning. They thus ended up misunderstanding what message the speaker was trying to pass across. For example, the excerpt below is a quote from Donald Trump speech about his stand on immigration

 

He is attacking his opponent the democratic candidate but at the same time, he is differentiating on a more narrow fashion his own approach towards the issue o f immigrants from that of the traditionally moderate wing of his party which advocates for a path to citizenship to anticipating that the illegal immigrants in the country depot themselves. The 5readers reacted to these assertions in the following way (Hine, 2015).

Many of the respondent’s feelings were stirred up by this comments that brought about feelings of resentment, racism, and discrimination not only against immigrants but also to Trump himself who other people viewed him as a racist.  Trump himself aligned him to the working class even though he is top most elite in the country. His stance on immigration had a huge influence on the interior red states.  This shows that the republicans elite rhetoric’s on the issue of migration did lead to a more restrictive immigration preferences among the voters. The following is another excerpt from his speech in reaction to dialogue about immigration.

The following is a clip from one of the comments on the thread.

The sentiments from the participants were that there was no adequate data from the illegal immigrants because whom they believe have a lower rate of unemployment in comparison to the American citizens. To them this is unfair and they associate it to their entrepreneurship endeavors’.  Yet a more factual manner is that the fear of deportation generally affects the illegal immigrant’s desire to work with the police (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008).

By the state always endeavoring to control the income, education and citizenship status,  the illegal immigrants who generally have a greater fear of deportation are significantly less confidence in the law enforcement officers, are skeptical that the police will not discriminate against them hence do not expect to b treated fairly. They are also less confidence that the courts would treat them fairly hence are rarely willing to report a violent crime.  A further analysis of the speech shows further usage of syntactic reduction in the following phrases which end up with a different meaning on the recipients thus shaping their opinions about the facts on the ground (Boellstorff, 2012).

The following is a comment made by two of the participants in one of the threads of the post.

These are clearly racial and discriminatory  ideology that is being manufactured as a number of people did took stage during before these speech was made, and the speech was refereeing to the victims that are allegedly have been murdered by the illegal aliens. 

These statements ended up bringing about the issue of racial profiling as well as increasing discrimination based on morphological; features to people who are perceived to be illegal immigrants.

The participant’s comments were as follows;

These snippets do show that the utterances even though they are shortened are coherent and meaningful. Apart from the obligatory words, the speech needed up omitting the optional words assuming that obligatory words might be sufficient enough to express meanings.  But these omissions of the obligatory words negate the tenets of the English language because they also hold meaning and therefore their omission damages their intelligibility. When these omissions are deliberately made, then the intelligibility of the recipients may be skewed towards adopting an understanding that may favor the politic establishment (Fielding, Lee, & Blank, 2008). 

Through observation of the deictic expressions, main verb, and the attributive forms may seem to be sufficient enough for the projection of the deleted string of words.  The speech made was not structurally rich yet the concurrent exchanges reveal that the recipients somehow night has failed to infer the deleted string of words or they might have been misinformed   for the success of the communication from the recipient’s point of view. It can, therefore, be argued that instead of the structure, the meaning was assumed to be the primary source for the carrying of the political message inherent in the speech. The minimal linguistic forms, therefore, construed the syntactic expression of mood and overall relevance to racism and discrimination relevance for the formulation of a political ideology for the republican candidate.

For a person or group to be in a position to contend, they have to be ideologically cognizant and prepared.  A key factor that is central to a political figures success in attaining their goals and winning public consensus in the continuous power struggle is their ability to persuade and impress the masses(Boellstorff, 2012).  The winning team will be the party or person whose language, terms, words and figurative language are overriding once the context and the reality have been identified.  In the quest to express themselves, the participants did exchange utterances in relation to the speech and performed some structural moods. They did put together, a linguistic feature that was a success of communication. The structure alone I not sufficient enough to perceive the communication function in digital discourse as the successive discursive practices that were carried out did uncover the success of the speech communication in achieving is intended political purpose. Through conducting of thesis qualitative study through the usage of virtual ethnographic methods, focusing on inline data gathering alone.

The research found this methodology applicable in capturing the scenario that entails the need where talk and text are felt more than at any other time to realize a reality and how it has been distorted through a delicate and skillful use of language. Hence people need to dissect the discourse, find out what the distortion is, go through it and discover the reality at last.

Chapter 4

Research Findings

Introduction

The chapter focuses examining the research findings based on the sample of data collected from the two online news agencies. This chapter dealt with the analysis of data and presented the conclusions from the data analyzed while providing a brief discussion on the issue. The analyzed data was presented in charts, tables, figures, and graphs so as to make it more presentable and clear to those who will use it. During the analysis, the data was filtered and screened to ensure the maintenance of the quality of data. Data analysis followed a combination of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The data obtained for the research study includes ten articles from The Washington Post and The New York Time online editions while examining five articles for each article. The Qualitative data allowed the researcher to investigate the penetration of the racial ideology in the comments through reader-response methodology an aspect of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis. On the other hand, quantitative analysis evaluated the extent to which the commentaries were for a discriminatory discourse or against the discussion.

The selected scope of data for the study is limited since it the research is on qualitative information. The amount of data would not provide a holistic perspective of the research since the information is limited. However, the sample size is adequate to indicate the existence of a trend towards the manufacturing of discriminatory ideology through mediated discourse. The findings indicate the existence and continuous use of words to indicate discriminatory ideologies. The research examined for the inclusion of words and phrases that are considered to enforce discrimination, such as the utilization of the term “illegal,” as opposed to “undocumented,” to describe immigrants. The study data were placed in screenshots to authenticate the process and act as prove or evidence is indicating the influence of media on discriminatory ideologies. 

The study finding is an indication of the role of politics and the media on the development of discriminatory discourse. Various words were flagged to evaluate the editorial’s choice of words and their implications for the readers through the comments section. Each article had its comments, which were randomly selected for a balanced and fair sample that is void of bias. Teddlie and Yu (2007) assert that random sampling provides an equal chance for every member of the population to participate. In this case, the sample comments indicate the general population’s perspective and how the media article influences their responses. The findings discuss each article as a separate source of data while using CDA to evaluate the extent to which the commentaries have been influenced.

Findings organized by Research Hypotheses

Hypothesis One: The media wordings in article influence the commentaries from readers.

Van Buren (2017) points out that today’s’ media articles is opinionated and is inclined to influence people’s perceptions. The research study tested the hypothesis by examining the comments made by the original article published in either of the two online news agencies (New York Times & Washington Post). The hypothesis articulates that the choices of words used by editors in their articles on discriminatory ideologies by leaders influences individuals’ responses and possibly their perspectives. Most articles points towards directional influence that is accepted by the company in question (Van Buren, 2017). The findings are based on a comparison between the articles and the commentaries and establishing a pattern that indicates a relationship. Essentially, discourse is related to the production of a discriminatory attitude and understanding in the public domain.

Article One: Not Like Us by Timothy Egan JULY 10, 2015: New York Time

The article points to an anti-discriminatory perspective while arguing against sentiments that are oppositional to political ideologies linking crime with immigrants. Eagan (2015) avoids the use of the discriminatory words such as illegal immigrants; the author shy’s away from pushing an ideology by being objective. However, the article subjects Trump’s perception on crime and immigrants in the United States. Despite the articles ideologies, the discriminatory sentiments echoed by politicians are reflective of the comments by readers. The comments point towards an anti-immigration lobby in public with sentiments of ethnic discrimination and racial tensions in the country.

Article Two: Donald Trump calls for ‘total’ ban on Muslims entering the United States by Jenna Johnson and David Weigel December 8, 2015: Washington Post

The article articulates on Donald Trump’s political ideology on Muslim immigrants entering The United States. His sentiments are discriminatory by religion and origin of the people. Despite, the hypothesis statement on the influence of wordings and language use on the response, the article received negative reception with the five comments that were randomly selected arguing against the discriminatory sentiments held by the leaders in question. The responses in this article indicate a null hypothesis since there is no evidence of any support towards the biased ideas; however, the authors are subjective of the discriminatory plans by angling against one side of the political divide. The findings from the article indicate the choices of words such as “a fascist demagogue” may have influenced the response, which is a quote from an opposing political faction. In spite of the articles alignment, the political rhetoric is strongly against Muslim immigration into the United States of America, which shows the development of discriminatory ideas. In one of the comments, a reader points to the existence of discriminatory laws and that the political ideologies have no harm.

Article Three: Donald Trump Paints Republicans into Corner with Hispanics by Trip Gabriel and Julia Preston AUG. 18, 2015: New York Times

The article paints a picture in which the political ideologies propagating ethnic discrimination are being opposed by the public. The choices of words by the editors demonize discrimination and anti-immigration rhetoric; however, the most of the comments on the article indicate support for discriminatory ideology. The article uses both undocumented immigrants (non-discriminatory) and illegal immigrants (perceived as discriminatory); the choices to use both words do not portray the authors’ ideology. The choices of words by politician and other organizations fronting the anti-Muslim thoughts are influential to the public. Gabriel and Preston (2015), in more than one case continuously quote leaders with discriminatory views, which have an aspect of influence to the audience. The choice of words and quotes develops an ideology, especially, for political texts (Orwell, 2013). There are some passages in the article indicating the American people’s fears of Muslims due to their possible involvement with violent tendencies. Such justifications in the article are proponents for the construct of discriminatory ideologies since they act as a backing to the political beliefs. The article has an influence on the perception of people towards Muslims; the portrayal as a violent religion is an example of the media being a discourse for the procession of bigoted views to the public. Politics has influence and the words chosen by leaders make it hard for editorials to eliminate the negative vibe being distributed. Despite the objectivity of the article, the numerous cases and choice of words such as illegal point to a different direction.

Article Four: In Va., lawmakers want to tighten stance on illegal immigration By Jenna Portnoy March 5, 2015: The Washington Post

The editors’ choice of words is establishing that the hypothesis is correct; editorials and news articles are manufacturers of a discriminatory ideology. Potnoy (2015) uses the word “illegal” in describing immigrants, which is among the discriminatory words. A choice to use undocumented would have been less prejudicial. The comments from the audience indicate the deep-rooted aspects of racial discrimination since most comments are profoundly radical. Some of the commentators go far as to use the word “anti-Whites” in response to a comment against the laws on illegal immigration. Most commentaries after the article are indicative of a discriminatory tone against immigrants by the locals. The political rhetoric is in line with people’s view and faces lots of support. In essence, the audience of the political-intolerant ideas contributes to the perception of people and their comments indicate a negative vibe. The political elites wording point to the disadvantages and negative effects of having illegal immigrants. The discriminatory views of the politicians are accepted by the audience, which according to the Critical Discourse Analysis is indicative of the role of media in the distribution of bigoted ideologies.

Article Five: The Anti-Immigrant Binge in Congress by Editorial Board July 24, 2015: New York Times

The article also points to leaders sentiments about the issue of both legal and illegal immigrants. The choice of words by the editorial is delicate such as the use of unauthorized immigrants; however, the political rhetoric is far much distinct and influential. The commentary points to a negative notion against both legal and illegal immigrants. Most feel that immigrants put stress on the country’s resources and limit their access to deserved services and jobs. The ideology of the politicians is to limit or eliminate both illegal and legal immigrants. Van Dijk (1995) on power and its influence on ideology assert that the media’s constant reporting of prejudicial philosophies provides access to the negative ideologies. In essence, the articulation of the intolerant messages as put down by the media assists in the manufacturing of discriminatory tendencies.

In the article, the media editorial does not identify its racial perspective; it only acts as a neutral. The media in most cases uses the neutral sentiments to protect their humanitarian perception; although, it provides racists with a platform to express and manipulate discriminatory ideas to the public, which may be unwittingly or intentional. The comments from the readers point to an anti-immigration movement that even challenges the legality of children born to illegal immigrants. The rhetoric is aligned to a discriminatory tone that is shared with the political elite proposing intolerant laws.

Article Six: Donald Trump’s false comments connecting Mexican immigrants and crime by Michelle Ye Hee Lee July 8, 2015: Washington post.

This article by Lee (2015), condemns the discriminatory tone by politicians on immigrants claiming that the facts indicate different perspective when it comes to crimes committed. This particular article portrays an anti-biased tone by trying to use facts as the basis of the article; although, the choice of words such as “incomplete data” provides the public with questions about the authenticity of the findings. The article is well articulated with careful choices of the words used to indicate dissatisfaction with the discriminatory tone set by the political elite. In contrast to the article, the commentators’ choices of words portray a public that is supportive of the intolerant behaviors. The responders feel that the writer is subjective rather than objective and their responses indicate their dissatisfaction either her explanation; some term her arguments as biased since she argues against the anti-immigration rhetoric. The media is entangled in the discriminatory ideology debate, with the public dogma indicating the spread and acceptance of the political-racial delusive ideology.  Other comments indicate a distaste for the media, while some oppose the racial texts of the leaders. The article is in support for the hypothesis on the link between mediated discourse and the development of discriminatory or bigoted views by political leaders.

Article Seven: Marco Rubio’s Immigrant Story, and an Aging Party in Search of a Spark by Jonathan Martin And Ashley Parker MAY 7, 2015: New York Times.

The article portrays the move by political leaders to shift party values from those indicative of discriminatory ideology by allowing persons from other races. The choice of words terming Rubio as a son of an immigrant shows the existence of racial and ethnic discrimination in the public domain. Martin and Parker (2015), point to Rubio (Hispanic Politician) as a means to an end to stop the dissatisfied voters who view the party as a racist movement. The choice of words by the authors such as an aging party in search of a spark outline the existence of racial discrimination in the country. On the commentary section, the audience contains racial sentiments such as too white or too Hispanic; there is the picture of a racially divided country with ideologies in media of political affiliation. The comments are quite discriminatory with other arguing that racial affiliation rather from political ideologies.

Article Eight: Where to Go for Real Immigration Reformby ROBERTO SURO SEPT. 15, 2015: New York Times

The article argues in support of the advantages of immigrants to the economy of a country since it provides labor for the market. The existence of the story on immigrants received lots of comments with four of the five disputing the facts portrayed by the article. The critical findings of the study indicated the push of the media for a discriminatory dialogue. The level of discriminatory tone in the comments portrays the mood in existence in the public domain. The real ideology debate is in public with political –racial tension rising. The comments and choices of words by the readers points to public dissatisfaction with existing immigration laws. “Decrepitude” is among the words the authors point to the anger on the laxity of federal laws on immigrants. The style indicates a failure of the system to establish clear guideline on laws, which has given states the power to impose discriminatory regulations.

Article Nine: How anti-immigrant attitudes are fueling support for Donald Trump by Michael Tesler November 24, 2015: Washington Post

The choice of words in the article are proponents to the development of a discriminatory ideological perspective by the readers since it uses terms such as fueling support. The attitude of the article when critical discourse analysis is involved indicates the author’s stance on the issue. Both legal and illegal immigrants are classified as immigrants while pushing for racial and divisive agenda. The commentaries are in support of the discriminatory tone; some of the readers support the anti-immigration stance of political leaders, while others find the author racist. Based on the Critical Discourse Analysis it is clear that the media has a substantial impact on the cognition of readers. Social or political analyses are context-sensitive which implies the authors’ choice of wording influences the readers’ comments (Fairclough & Wodak, 2005). At the time of the article political-discriminatory sentiments echoed in most of the campaigns, the continuous and acknowledgment of support for racism fuels the readers’ perspective and discriminatory ideology. The level of influence portrayed by the comments indicates the process to which the media propagates discriminatory ideas to the public. The article provides an example that supports the hypothesis that wording is a key tool in the manufacture of discriminatory ideas through a mediated discourse.

Article Ten: America has always been hostile to immigrants by Catherine Rampell. Opinion writer August 27, 2015: Washington Post

Terming a country as hostile to immigrants sends to the public a message that would receive both negative and positive understanding. The writer points in the article that the country is an immigrant nation, which is contrary to the hostility politicians have on immigrants. The article’s stand against the elite political sentiments received most comments supporting the resolve while condemning discriminatory views. The Media manufactures either a positive or negative connotation in light to the discussion. The anti-discriminatory article has posted positive comments with many arguing that it is senseless to outlaw immigration while most Americans are immigrants. The political ideology on the comments points to a siding with a certain function. The understanding of the readers in this article is relevant when assessing discourse analysis. However, there are some sentiments that portray alignment to the discriminatory values. The text is evidence for the hypothesis that politics manufactures discriminatory ideas through a mediated discourse. The findings indicate the use of media to articulate or spread an analogy that is based on either part of the political wing.

Summarizing the findings is evidence of a positive hypothesis that indicates support for a notion that articulates the manufacture of discriminatory values through a mediated discourse. The media is often employed as a discussion for the propagation of a racist, ethnic or political ideology. The continued reproduction of political sentiments to the public enforces the negative discriminatory attitudes to the public, which results in increasing the number of followers or readers with a negative attitude or a divisive ideological perspective. The findings are in line with the study objective of examining the relationship between the media, political ideology and discriminatory tendencies in public. The ten articles and five comments for each are revealing and point to a society with a negative attitude towards immigration.

Hypothesis Two: Discriminatory ideologies from politicians influence comments

The study found a link between discriminatory ideas and the kinds of comments that were made in by the readers. The political rhetoric changed the readers’ responses with many aligning with the divisive sentiments. The findings focus on each article by examining the response each item got from the readers. To determine the discriminatory comments influence each article is categorized by its observations, which were randomly selected to avoid any form of bias attitude or perception.

Assessing whether discriminatory ideology influences the comments and their portrayal of readers’ comments

	Comment 1	Comment 2	Comment 3	Comment 4	Comment 5
Article One	Portrays no trust in media; however is against the discriminatory tone of politicians.	The comment is against immigration, since it only helps corporates lowers their expenditures, but fails to help the Americans.	The reader questions the media resolve and views that people should accept the editorial version of immigration.	Does not support immigration; however, argues against the political class stance that seems discriminatory.	Support the biased political ideology, although, argues that it is not racists, a factor that must be examined.
Article Two	The comment compares the current political philosophy in the US to that of the Nazi in Germany in the 1930s.	Feels that one leader is crude and racists and shouldn’t be allowed to vie.	Supports the rhetoric pointing to the opponent’s values that the reader considers discriminatory.	Believe the political ideology is wrong and questions the resolve of others in the party.	The reader is against the rhetoric and feels it should not be published in the media.
Article Three	Is in support of the ideology since it exposes the mistakes of the previous regime, despite the discriminatory tone.	Believes that allowing the children of illegal immigrants is a wrong idea. The author accepts the divisive ideas of the politics.	Feels that the discriminatory ideologies would receive less or no support from the public.	Feels that the political elite is doing nothing to stop the divisive ideologies.	Feels that the negative political rhetoric is igniting a political movement.
Article Four	Support the biased opinions since immigrants strain housing and other infrastructures.	Argues that the contrary positions are reflective or existing laws.	Feels that sentiment supporting illegal immigrants is distorted since they already broke the law.	Compares the leaders to terrorist groups.	Believes that the anti-immigration proponents are hypocrites.
Article Five	Is against illegal immigration and feels the article is misleading and advocating for illegal immigrants.	Supports the political rhetoric since immigration strains the countries resources.	Feels that the political rhetoric does not amount to discrimination or racist acts since the reader supports the views.	Feels that support for illegal immigrants is ignorance of the existing laws.	Question the resolve on the status of the illegal immigrants’ children.
Article six	Feels that the writer is politically affiliated and provides a biased perspective.	Terms the article as malicious	Questions the facts as claimed by the writer. The reader views the facts as misleading and incorrect.	Believes that the article is out of context and should stop negating the political rhetoric.	Points to the article as misleading and argues for the political elite’s views.
Article Seven	Find the political discussion hypocritical as it opposes laws that would protect immigrants.	Argues that the existence of racism existents and an individual cannot change the perception.	Believes that it is only a strategy to lure people to vote rather than address the political discriminatory philosophy.	Views the moves as cheap politics that would not influence voters.	Argues against the use of racial profiling to judge politicians but rather the use of ideologies.
Article Eight	Against immigration and proposes the closure of borders. This comment portrays a discriminatory attitude towards foreigners.	Supports the move by states to deal with immigration since the federal government is failing in its duties.	Feels that the article is full of lies when it comes to Americans’ resolve on immigration.	Is also against illegal immigrants are proposes stringent measures to deter those employing them.	Feel that the political ideas being termed as discriminatory are actually going to bring order to the system.
Article Nine	Supports the ideologies that are considered discriminatory by the article.	Argues that those against anti-immigration laws want to use foreigners in order to get to power.	Slams the article as racist since it does not separately define illegal and legal immigrants.	Believes that the article has the story out of context and is misquoting the political elite.	Slams corporates has the force behind the moves to make some politicians infamous since they do not support uncontrolled immigration; the immigrants are a source of cheap labor.
Article Ten	Points to the history of the US as a migrant country, but asserts the need for laws.	Asserts that illegal immigrants should be distinguished from those who are legal by the writer.	Points to the dangers of immigrants overrunning a country.	Feels disappointed with those supporting the anti-immigration movements.	Point to inferiority complex as a source of discriminatory ideologies as a means for compensation.

The summarization of the fifty comments is among the findings on how people understand articles as portrayed by editorials. The articles push for an agenda to the public and the readers react based on their understanding of the ideas being peddled. The findings point to many cases in which the political ideology has influenced the discussion in comparison to the editorials tone and style. In essence, the media is being used as a discourse for the distribution of the discriminatory ideology to the public.

Conclusion

Political ideologies are influential in determining the manufacture of biased perceptions through mediated discourse. In essence, the media is being used as a tool for the propagation of discriminatory tone among the public. The choices of words use in articles and comments point to the real perspective that engulfs the mindset of individuals. On the other hand, discourse influence is not always positive in some cases it is negative. Words are essential tools for ideological and mindset manipulation, and politicians employ them to alter their perspective. In most cases, politicians are responsible for the reproduction of discriminatory tendencies revolving around ethnicity, race, gender, and origin. In this particular case, it is evident to the extent that the media and politics influence personal ideologies or are a representation of publicly-hidden sentiments.

The choices of words use in articles and comments point to the real perspective that engulfs the mindset of individuals. On the other hand, discourse influence is not always positive in some cases it is negative. The articles with discriminatory sentiments from political leaders provide a chance from people to truly express themselves. Other aspects also influence the discriminatory tendencies from culture to social upbringing and self-interests. The interpretation of the data from the articles and comments indicates the existence of racial discrimination; however, the limitations of the CDA make it hard to stick to one finding conclusively. However, the findings indicate the point to how the media sources are used to produce and reproduce discriminatory ideologies to the public.

Manufacturing discriminatory beliefs through a mediated discourse is a common aspect, especially when dealing with politics. The political ideas that are spread through the media are indicative of the level of discrimination existing by examining the comments posted by readers. The editorials act against discrimination, but the politics and leaders sentiments shape much of the commentaries on the articles.

By using the Critical Discourse Analysis, it is evident that the media is a tool that politicians use to pass discriminatory dogmas to the public. The study established that media is a discourse for the propagation of both positive and negative philosophies. The commentaries and the strong wording indicate the existence of racial tensions with many feeling short-changed by immigrants. The further research study into the manufacture of discriminatory ideology through mediated discourse is vital for the understanding of the role of politics and the media. In essence, the media has become a tool for the reproduction discriminatory tendencies and enforcing them to people.

The contexts of the discussion on many forums or commentaries are influenced by the content of an article. From the findings it is evident that the responses to the posts are a result of the rhetoric or information the editorial chooses. To analyze the intentions of the article in some of the cases is to act as a neutral or opposition to the radical racial ideologies. However, the political sentiments seem to have much control on the position of the people on the immigration issue. Many align with the political ideology despite its discriminatory tone in comparison to the editorial.

Chapter 5:

Conclusions, Discussion, and Suggestions for Future Research

Study Limitations

The study is limited to focus on the scope of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (CCDA) of political ideology. According to Pager and Shepherd (2008), the context of discrimination is a vast topic with different sub-contexts that make it complicated. The research focuses on political ideology while examining mediated discourse, which is a broad topic involving more than one form of discrimination including racial, foreign, gender or other forms. The study uses 20 articles from two media agencies; there is the possibility of bias based on the editors of the companies in question. The sample size is small as compared to the scale of the topic in question, which makes it a vital aspect of the research. Huberman and Mathew (1994) point to the importance of sample size; they articulate that for a quantitative research study, a small sample size is effective unlike in quantitative studies. The selected scope of data for the study is limited since it the research is on qualitative information. The amount of data would not provide a holistic perspective of the research since the information is limited.

The use of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis like any other form of methodology is limited and contains weaknesses. CCDA faces criticism despite its role in social context based research studies. Breeze (2011), points out that some critics find the Critical Discourse Analysis as limited since it does not look into the morphological characteristics of interaction, but tends to focus on the macro-context. The limitations of the CCDA may affect the acceptance of the research. However, the weaknesses of the methodology do not necessarily amount to study limitations. Essentially, the method of analysis is subjective to the responses rather than focusing on the origin of perception. The methodology construct provides a guideline to examining the social context of discrimination through mediated discourse; however, it is limited to showing the perspective based on reaction rather than ideological perspective.

The use of reader responses from magazines is not conclusive for the best findings of a research study on discrimination or any other field. The study limits its data collection and analysis to information from articles and audience responses. In light of the replies, Green (2011) argues that they do not provide accurate information since magazines focus on marketing and would publish an article that concentrates on the readership. Because media companies are business oriented, censorship of comments is vital for moral, legal, and social purposes. Media companies control the audience responses and have the ability to accept an explanation of censor it based on their understanding and power to moderate. According to The Guardian (2016), media houses are focusing on moderating audience responses to avoid extreme cases of social injustices.

Posts from fans that respond to articles is thereby affected by the bias which is unlike face-to-face engagement or anonymous interaction (Green, 2011). Therefore, the quality of the data collected depends on the integrity of editors and the media company articles. The limitations of the research study provide weaknesses that propagate a bias conclusion to the study in particular. The study contains numerous other limitations like time, scope and financial resources to conduct a holistic research. Findings are also limited to the data collected from the two media outlets, which is a small range as compared to the numerous news agencies in existence.

Alternative Interpretation

Interpretation data especially qualitative information usually contains alternative methods. In this case, the plan is to employ the use of both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques. Quantitative methods will be used in the collection and analysis of the statistical distribution of the information. This will help the researcher come up with a list of items that can influence racial ideology that come up frequently. Qualitative analysis will allow the researcher to investigate the penetration of the racial ideology in the comments through reader-response method. According to Maynard (2011), when employing qualitative data for analysis, there is the need to have an alternative interpretation technique to ensure the transparency and accuracy of conclusion. In this study, an alternative interpretation technique is vital for testing the viability, and credibility of the data and conclusions. Four aspects are considered when dealing with quantitative data; thus, credibility, conformity, dependability, and transferability.

Credibility articulates the integrity of the qualitative data findings and their consistency to the data collected at the beginning of the study.  The research study involves examining the alternative explanations to the conclusions by working on every possible variable. To ensure a credible study, the interpretations of the data is aligned with the comments to editorials and news articles on discriminatory political sentiments.

To eliminate the possible sources of bias interpretation, the data comes from two news agencies. Using two agencies limits the possibility of editorial or agency biased based on personal or company affiliation. The use of both qualitative and quantitative research analysis techniques also limits the possibility of bias interpretation by the researcher.

Dependability also infers to the possibility of replicating the findings and interpretation. It also entails the ability to replicate the process by other researchers. Using online news agencies and comments provides a means that can be replicated provided the existence of the links to the data collected. Qualitative data collection provides a pathway that is easily replicated and the possibility of similar or exact findings or interpretation.

Conformability in this research means that other researchers redo the research is they have access to the result and have the ability to conduct their test of the findings. The concept focuses on the ability to audit the results of the research study. Essentially, the researchers would find the same or similar results that do not contradict the original study. For conformability, the research study documents sources of data since most of them may end up being deleted especially for comments. To ensure conformability, the research study used existing and traceable data that would conform in any other project.

Transferability, In this case, means that the findings can be inferred to the general population or have the potential for other studies. However, the use of qualitative data in the research limits the transferability of the survey since such sources deal with contextualized setting or scope. Data collected from the two media agencies does not conform to other countries, its dependent on the people and the context of the situation. However, the methodology of the study may be inferred in another research on the same topic. By aligning the research to the four principles of quantitative studies, the research ensured the validity of its interpretation that is without prejudice. The viability of the interpretation is protected with the existence of material evidence of the responses from the audience.

The research conforms to the ethical morals during the study process; in light of this, the researcher ensured the abiding to legal and moral requirements. The use of already qualitative data for the study points out the possible ownership and recognition issues that may arise. The guidelines of ethical conduct, as outlined by The Economic and Social Research Council (2015), guided to study. These principles govern research studies from their inception to completion. Ethical conformity is done to avoid breaking any ethical code of conduct or infringement of any guidelines about content ownership, as well as to ensure the authenticity of the data collected is preserved while acknowledging the sources used in the study. The Economic and Social Research Council (2015) outlines that the authors, for one to employ the work of others, they are required to acknowledge them through referencing formally. This research study worked under the guideline and ensured that all sources were acknowledged.

Potential for Further Analysis

The research scope is limited despite the conformity to ethical conduct and regulation of the study. However, the limitation provides the potential for further analysis of the data findings since the CCDA method focuses on the macro-interaction of talk and thought processes. There is also the weakness of qualitative data in research studies, which introduces the need for further analysis (Becker, 2015). Despite the use of both qualitative and quantitative techniques, the data can further be analyzed to determine the potential risk factors or attributes that contribute to racial and discriminatory political ideology. In essence, the content of the responses provides a one phased finding the articles; further analysis can be done on the perspective of other readers.

There are numerous types of analysis techniques, which contribute to the study findings and conclusions (Gibbs, 2002). In this particular case, other study analyses have the potential to give a better understanding of social aspects of political rhetoric further. The subject in question is vast, and analysis of sentiments is dependent on language and cognition; thereby, further analysis of the comments and article provides insight and valuable information. However, further acquiring of further information is constrained by ethical regulation. Further analysis of the data might depend on understanding the commentators, but ethical guidelines protect their privacy and anonymity. The potential to further analyse the data exists, although, the viability is an impractical suggestion.

Summary

Ideologies are a powerful tool for discourse and personal talk and thinking. Words, on the other hand, have the power to influence society. The news media is a vital player in the delivery of ideologies to the people. Since mass media has a great role in shaping public opinion and influencing collective attitude, the study focuses on examining the responses to discriminatory ideas by leaders that have been published. Thereby, the study examines the effects of discourse phrasing of discriminatory ideologies that is transmitted through media channels by analyzing the responses from the audience. Negative political ideas are common in today’s’ media outlets and influences the perspective of the people (Happer & Philo, 2013). The choice of editorial wording is also important in determining the response from the audience and contributes to their discourse. The study examines the different use of language and how the audience understands through their responses. According to Harts and Lukes (2009), linguistic wording and style contribute to the difference in understanding of readers.

The study employs the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the role of text and talk in abuse of social power, the creation of dominance and facilitation of inequality in political and social situations. This prospectus seeks to define how one can engage in a CDA, with a specific focus on the comments in online articles. The main reason for the approach is to evaluate the level of influence the article have on the audience and how they spark a reaction. According to Breeze (2011), the CDA offers an efficient paradigm for identifying and interpreting perceptional influences through discourse. It is also informative when examining the play between political ideology and the form of language employed in the articles. The use of the comments section allows the research to understand the audiences’ perspective and interpretation and how the material influence their thinking.  

The study employs the use of Cognitive psychology and critical discourse analysis of contemporary mediated discourse, with the goal of describing how attitudes of racism and discrimination are perpetuated through public discourse. This quantitative data in this particular case point to a negative ideological influence. However, there is a diversified perspective from the audience of the news agencies. The data points to the existence of great influence by political sentiments with audience responses. Based on the observations, the public discourse of discrimination is highlighted through their support for political ideologies. The comments from the articles point towards a divided ideological discourse that contains racial, discriminatory and hate-based words. There are numerous articles on negative political discourse in comparison to the positive aspects. Readers based on the number of comments summate the conclusion on the influence of ideology on individual perspective.

The use of qualitative data is the basis of the research and employ the use of 20 articles from two different news sources and comments on the articles. For accurate results, when employing qualitative data for analysis, there is the need to have an alternative interpretation technique to ensure the transparency and accuracy of conclusion. The study focused on upholding its credibility by providing evidence of the sources of information. The study also aligned itself with the Ethical Codes outline by the ESRC and maintained its moral standards. The research study does have limitations and biases; however, the study focused on eliminating any factor that would divert the quality and integrity of data. The data collected provides a basis for initial data analysis using both quantitative and qualitative means; this is to ensure the reliability and conformity of findings.

Data interpretation has alternatives when dealing with Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis; the meaning of words depends on contextual meaning. Breeze (2011) argues that critical discourse analysis is defined by the political goals it desires to achieve. Thereby, the interpretation of data should conform to set guidelines since researchers are affected by the bias of opinion and affiliation. The data collection, analysis, and presentation conform to the prerequisite of Critical Discourse Analysis to avoid misrepresentation and ensure clarity of data. The use of guidelines is a result of the complexity of evaluating political ideologies in society. The results indicate the existence of discriminatory aspects such as racism. Implicitly, the combination of qualitative and quantitative intends to cater for the parity and testing of the differences in findings.

The results of the survey have a different interpretation and the potential for further analysis; however, ethical rules limit the ability of the researcher to contact respondents for the evaluation of their perspectives. The study is further confined to the two new agencies, which limits its scope and ability for transferability. It is evident that discrimination is produced by mediated discourse when examining political ideology; although, it is impossible to consider whether the articulated perspective is the origin of the ideas. In essence, a holistic study would provide better information on the topic and explore the role of mediated discourse on political ideology.

Conclusion

Discrimination exists despite the numerous campaigns against the attribute. On the other hand, the media has both a positive and negative role in the distribution of discriminatory ideologies. Politics acts as catalysts for the manufacture of negative perspectives such as racism and discrimination. By examining editorials and news articles, the wordings indicate the propagation of negative attitudes by editors, those in power and the audience. The particular choice of words by writers’ point to an ideological perception being traded to the people. With the existence of media influence on the audience perspective there arises evidence on the use of mediated discourse to influence discriminatory attitudes. In particular, political ideologies have propagated anti-integration sentiments with comments that support racism and other form of discrimination especially for foreigners.

The use of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis provides a mechanism for the evaluation of data that explain social context. In this case, the use of CDA enables the deconstruction of data by examining the ideological perspective being peddled through media outlets. The interpretation of the data from the articles and comments indicates the existence of racial discrimination; however, the limitations of the CDA make it hard to conclusively stick to one finding. It is impractical to hold to one result since the interpretation of statements is based on context and makes the meaning of word ambiguous. In essence, meaning contained in words can only be asserted by the author and may not necessarily outline ones thoughts. However, the negative responses are typical when an article has negative or discriminatory political ideas. The audience reaction is either in support or against the sentiments, buts it is evident that many support discriminatory ideologies.

According to the findings, the media participates in the developing of discriminatory ideologies, especially, when politics is involved. Despite the contributions of media, another social contextual aspect determines a person’s alignment or conformity with the issues being peddled. Politics is a complex part of the coin of developing discrimination since it acts as a contributor and reflective of the people. Using posts and responses acts a means for either adoption of ideology or distribution of the ideas. The CDA in such a case may fail to provide information on the role of the media as a tool for constructing discriminatory ideology. It also does not cater for the role of politics and culture; however, the findings are indicative of a link between the developments of biased thematic through mediated discourse.

The further research study into the manufacture of discriminatory ideology through mediated discourse is vital for the understanding of the role of politics and the media. Social context is also another aspect that should be considered in examining the perceptional changes and circumstances. Discriminatory ideologies have existed for a very long time despite modesty of people in public. Politics and ideas generated by leaders point to the hiding of discriminatory values by individuals; this does not change their mental perspective and the analysis of their responses acts as evidence. Words provide a pathway to one’s thoughts and views, which are both positive and adverse. The articles with discriminatory sentiments from political leaders provide a chance from people to truly express themselves. Other aspects also influence the discriminatory tendencies from culture to social upbringing and self-interests. Essentially, the study proposes further examination of other factors in a multi-facet research that is inclusive of all factors that help in the manufacture of discriminatory idea.

Politics and its ideologies are influential in determining the development of biased perceptions through mediated discourse. In essence, the media has become a tool for both venting discriminatory tendencies and enforcing them to people. The choices of words use in articles and comments point to the real perspective that engulfs the mindset of individuals. On the other hand, discourse influence is not always positive in some cases it is negative. Words are essential tools for ideological and mindset manipulation, and politicians employ them to alter their perspective. In most cases, politicians are responsible for the reproduction of discriminatory tendencies revolving around ethnicity, race, gender, and origin. 

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