Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1973
Thu Jul 1 2004
Review: Discourse Analysis: Richardson (2004)
Editor for this issue: Tomoko Okuno <tomoko@linguistlist.org>
What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum.
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Directory
1. Linnea Micciulla, (Mis)Representing Islam
SYNOPSIS
The author's stated purpose is to study ''the discursive
representation of Islam and Muslims in British broadsheet newspapers,
analysing the ways in which they reproduce anti-Muslim racism''
(p. xvi). The introduction presents racism as a discursive phenomenon,
in which a ''normalized'' racist paradigm is produced and
reproduced. Normalization of racism against a particular group results
when racist stereotypes are accepted as normal by the general public,
and are therefore generally not recognized to be racist. The book
performs an in-depth analysis not only of the representation of
Muslims in British elite newspapers, but also of the social
repercussions of this racist discourse. The corpus consists of
reports from October 1997 to January 1998 from the following British
newspapers: the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the
Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Independent on Sunday and the Sunday
Times.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
This book should be of great interest to those who are well-versed in
Critical Discourse Analysis, as well as to those who are looking for
an introduction to its theory and practice. It draws on a number of
critical theories, and explains them with enough detail to be readily
understood to those who are new to the field.
REFERENCES
Dijk, Teun van. 1998. Ideology, A Multidisciplinary Approach. London
et al.: Sage.
Said, Edward W. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts
Determine How We Should see the Rest of the World. London: Vintage.