Meta Discourse Abortion Analysis

FACULTY OF ARTS
Critical Discourse
Analysis of the
Abortion Debate in the
USA
Master’s Thesis
BC. VÍT MĚŘIČKA
Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.
Department of English and Literature

Programme English language and Literature
Brno 2022
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE ABORTION DEBATE IN THE USA
Bibliographic record
Author: Bc. Vít Měřička

Faculty of Arts
Masaryk University
Department of English and Literature
Title of Thesis: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Abortion Debate in the USA
Degree Programme: English language and Literature
Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.
Year: 2022
Number of Pages: 997
Keywords: Critical Discursive Analysis, American media, ideology,
nomination, prediction, argumentation
2
Abstract
This thesis analyzes the discursive strategies utilized by the activists of the two opposing
ideologies in the USA, regarding particularly one of the most recent and most controver-
sial heartbeat bills, namely the Texas Heartbeat Act. This study will indicate how activists
from both of these ideological movements formulate their arguments and set of beliefs in
the US media by applying the referential, predication and argumentation strategies. The
main goal of the study is to unveil how activists from both of the ideological movements
achieve positive-self representation and negative-other representation.
3
Declaration
I hereby declare that the thesis titled Critical Discourse Analysis of the Abortion
Debate in the USA that I have submitted for assessment is entirely my original work, and
that no part of it has been taken from the work of others unless explicitly cited and acknowl-
edged within the text of my thesis.
Brno April 15, 2022 .......................................

Bc. Vít Měřička
5
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to my supervisor prof. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. for his support,
advice, insightful comments and valuable suggestions.
Šablona DP 3.4.1-ARTS-dipl-program-english (2022-03-15) © 2014, 2016, 2018–2021 Masarykova univerzita 7

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 11
2 Previous research 15
3 Critical Discourse Analysis 18

3.1 Ideology ................................................................................................................................ 24
4 Abortion Ideology and Discourse 28

4.1 Background of the abortion debate ........................................................................... 31
5 Texas Heartbeat Act 36
6 Metodology 41
6.1 Data and Analysis .............................................................................................................. 42
7 Analysis 45
7.1 Key Social Actors ............................................................................................................... 46
7.2 Description of the law ..................................................................................................... 52
7.3 Object of pregnancy ......................................................................................................... 55
7.3.1 Unborn ........................................................................................................................ 56
7.3.2 Cells .............................................................................................................................. 59
7.3.3 Embryo ........................................................................................................................ 61
7.4 The usage of emotive rhetoric ..................................................................................... 63
7.4.1 Protecting rights ...................................................................................................... 66
7.4.2 Protecting lives ........................................................................................................ 68
7.4.3 Protecting woman .................................................................................................. 70
7.4.4 Protecting unborn................................................................................................... 72
7.4.5 Protecting babies .................................................................................................... 74
7.5 Verb save .............................................................................................................................. 75
7.6 Metaphor of an Attack ..................................................................................................... 78
7.7 Metaphor of War ............................................................................................................... 81
8 Conclusion 85
9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bibliography 89
Summary in English 94
Summary in Czech 95
10
INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction
Abortion has always been and still is an intensively sensitive moral issue all around the
world. However, in the USA it has become a country dividing topic in both political and
public spheres, especially since the year 1973, in which The Supreme Court ruled a land-
mark decision of Roe v. Wade, which assures the woman’s right to terminate pregnancy
without any excessive government restrictions. The contemporary controversy over abor-
tion in the USA reveals conspicuous differences in the perception of life and liberty among
the American citizens. As a result of this, the gap between the two most prevalent ideolo-
gies in the USA, namely pro-choice and pro-life, has become part of the national, political
and social consciousness. The most contrasting aspect in which these contrasting ideolo-
gies differ from each other is in the way they perceive the relationship between pregnant
women and the unborn baby and the point at which the unborn baby becomes a fully de-
veloped legally protected human being. While on the one hand, the members of pro-life
ideology not only denounce abortion but they also attempt to essentially illegalize it, on the
other hand the members of pro-choice ideology support the idea of abortion and they at-
tempt to preserve women’s constitutional rights to terminate pregnancy. Despite the fact
that the contrast between those two ideologies is immense, members of both the ideologi-
cal movements that are involved in this abortion controversy have many things in com-
mon. To give an illustration: both of the movements view abortion as an important issue
not only from moral perspective, but also from social and political one, and they believe
that it should be managed by legislations.
11
INTRODUCTION
The sources data analyzed in this thesis are articles from two American online daily
tabloid newspapers, namely New York Post and Washington Post, and two American ca-
ble news television channels providing transcript on the internet, CNN and Fox News. The
reason why news media were chosen as a medium for analysis is because news media play
a crucial role in our modern society as they serve as one of the main source of knowledge
from which people acquire information about the current events in the world. News is, as
Ekström (2002) states, "reliable, neutral and current factual information that is important
and valuable for citizens in democracy" (p. 274). However, despite the fact that news are
often considered to be an objective media source that provide unbiased reports and opin-
ions, the news discourse often contains ideological content that might manipulate with the
audience’s opinion. To put it differently, as a result of this, news media effectively have
the potential to influence the public opinion based on the discourse that it uses. Ever since
the announcement of the Texas Heartbeat Act in the first quarter of 2021 it has become
one of the most covered issues in the vast majority of American news media.
The foundation for the theoretical part of this thesis is based on Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA), which is a framework that does not consist of a singular specific theory
nor does it provide a definite methodology, since it has been utilized by various fields of
research, such as sociology or linguistics, that adapt CDA in accordance with the essential
scope of overall study. However, regardless of the field of study in which CDA is utilized,
the most important concepts of CDA are critique, power and ideology.
This thesis analyzes the different discursive strategies utilized by the activists of the
two opposing ideologies in the USA, which were introduced earlier, regarding particularly
one of the most recent and most controversial heartbeat bills, namely the Texas Heartbeat
12
INTRODUCTION
Act, which has been introduced on March 11, 2021 and unlike other similar heartbeat bills
is currently the only one that is still in effect. This study will indicate how activists from
both of these ideological movements formulate their arguments and set of beliefs by apply-
ing three discursive strategies introduced by Reisigl and Wodak (2009), specifically the
referential, predication and argumentation strategies. The main goal of the study is to un-
veil how activists from both of the ideological movements not only proclaim themselves as
the protectors of either the women and their constitutional rights, or the potential life of
unborn children, while simultaneously depicting the opposing side of the argument nega-
tively as a threat to their own moral values and ideological set of beliefs, but also how they
present justification for their presented arguments. The primary research questions of this
thesis are:
RQ1: What characteristics and qualities are attributed to the social actors (women,
object of pregnancy)?
RQ2: What linguistic attributes characterize the confronting ideological perspec-
tives about abortion?
RQ3: What arguments do the members of each side of the abortion debate employ
in the justification of their ideological set of beliefs?
The practical part of this thesis is going to be based on combination of two ap-
proaches that in fact complement each other when they are combined, as for example Paul
Baker et al. (2008) and Mahmoud Samaie & Bahareh Malmir (2017) have demonstrated,
namely CDA and corpus linguistics (CL). As it has been already stated above, CDA is an
academic movement that does not constitute of only one specific theory or methodology,
since it has been adopted by various disciplines, such as for example: linguistics or sociol-
13
INTRODUCTION
ogy. Hence, CDA is tailored by the researchers to adequately comply with the needs and
scope of their studies. Studies utilizing CDA approach are generally qualitative in nature,
as it is best suitable for analyzing particular section of texts at different levels.
Similarly to CDA, CL does not provide only a singular methodological approach
for research, but it rather utilizes various different methodologies, which the researchers
adopt based on their research goal. The combination of these two methodological ap-
proaches is not particularly uncommon, despite the fact that both of them are rather mod-
ern approaches in linguistic field. By utilizing both of these theoretical approaches, this
thesis analyzes the ways in which members from each side of the contemporary abortion
controversy express their ideological set of beliefs in mainstream newspapers in the USA.
The thesis is divided into a theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part is fur-
ther subdivided into five sections. The first section provides a concise description of the
previous studies that have been conducted regarding the abortion debate in the USA; the
second section focuses on describing CDA and ideology. Furthermore, the third section
specifically introduces the discursive strategies utilized by the confronting ideological
movements in the abortion debate and it also briefly describes the historical background of
the contemporary controversy. The last section of theoretical part specifically focuses on
describing the controversial characteristics of the Texas Heartbeat Act. The practical part
analyzes the different ways in which the members of each ideological movement achieve
positive-self representation and negative-other representation. The findings of the exami-
nation are specified in the Concluding section of the thesis.
14
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
2 Previous research
There is an extensive body of research that has investigated various aspects of the
abortion issue in the United States. However, only a limited amount of studies have fo-
cused on the public discourse surrounding abortion. In this chapter some of the previous
studies that have been similarly oriented as this thesis and thus they are related to the cur-
rent research will be introduced and briefly described.
For instance, a study by Brenda Danet (1980) studies the relationship between lan-
guage and reality, as she focuses on the question of when a person could be considered as
alive or dead. The objective of this study is to examine how participants in the legal pro-
cess manipulate language by using certain terms referring to the object of pregnancy. The
findings indicate that on the one hand the supporters of the law most frequently utilized the
post-natal terms baby and child to describe the object of pregnancy, while on the other
hand the opponents of the law rather used pre-natal terms fetus and products of conception
to refer to the same entity. To put it differently, this study suggests that even more than 40
years ago members of each ideological movement chose to use terms that most efficiently
reflect their personal attitudes.
Michele Dillon (1993) studied the complexity of structure of arguments related to
abortion debate articulated by both pro-life and pro-choice organizations between the years
1989 and 1991. On the one hand, the findings of her study indicate that the integrative
complexity of both single-issue pro-choice and pro-life organizations in fact does not dif-
fer from each other and the both of them display similar argumentative simplicity. On the
other hand, the argument that multi-issue organizations are more complex compared to
15
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
single-issue organizations was supported by the findings. In other words, Dillon observed
that the organizations in general utilize rather simple and straightforward arguments in
order to promote their own point of view Nevertheless, since this study analyzes data that
have been compiled prior to the most recent surge of anti-abortion legislation in the USA,
the result is rather outdated and thus it might not be as accurate as it was in the past.
Dawn McCaffrey and Jennifer Keys (2000) focus exclusively on the ideological
clash around abortion and they analyze the rhetorical strategies, specifically polarization-
vilification, frame debunking, and frame saving, used by the New York National Organiza-
tion for Women in its newsletters from 1970 to 1980. First of all, it is discovered that the
polarization and vilification is in majority of cases achieved by using emotionally intense
terminology, such as describing the pro-choice activists in a negative light while depicting
women as harassed victims. Second, frame debunking is indicated to be established by
advancing the pro-choice ideology by undermining the opposing pro-life ideology. Lastly,
the pro-life activists labelled the pro-choice movement as “pro-abortion”, which is rather
inaccurate since it implies that they prefer abortion over the birth of a child and thus the
pro-choice activists had to defend their ideology in order to preserve their desired public
perception.
The study of Małgorzata Mikołajczak, M. Bilewicz (2014) examined to what extent
could the language of abortion discourse influence people’s opinion based on the attributed
personhood of the object of pregnancy. Specifically they focus on the usage of pre-natal
and post-natal terms, since both of them trigger a different cognitive mechanism. First of
all, this study suggests that the lexical markers of fetus and child are in fact closely related
to the individuals support or opposition of abortion. Second, it is unveiled that individuals
16
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
ascribe significantly more human attributes to the object of pregnancy when they refer to it
as a child. In other words, this study indicates that the terms in which the object of preg-
nancy is described in fact affects people’s attitudes related to abortion as well as the rights
of the unborn upon confronting them in public discourse.
Sharma et al. (2017) examine the ideological discourse on social media, specifical-
ly Twitter, relating to abortion debate. Their research of over 700 thousand tweets unveiled
that the pro-life tweets have significantly higher lexical density, which indicates greater
linguistic intricacies of the pro-life ideological arguments. In other words, this study is
consistent with Dillon’s findings and thus it indicates that even after almost 25 years the
justification of pro-life arguments in abortion debate is still significantly more complex in
comparison with the pro-choice arguments. Furthermore, this study indicates that the
members of each ideological movement accentuate the negative characteristics of the op-
posing movements, which they perceive as threatening to their own set of beliefs, in order
to justify their own ideology.
17
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
3 Critical Discourse Analysis
The foundation for the practical part of this thesis is going to be Critical Discourse
analysis, which will be abbreviated as CDA, which has proven to be an effective method-
ology that provides an interesting insight into the relationship between ideology, language
and society. As Wodak (2013) suggests, the origin of CDA could be traced back to 1980s
when it has become a well-established field in the social sciences (p. xix). CDA is in fact a
rather complicated term to achieve a clear definition of, and the reason why it is difficult to
clearly define CDA is because it is not necessarily a singular method, but it is in fact a di-
verse field of research that contains methods from various disciplines and fields. CDA is
thus a multidisciplinary approach, which might be applied in various areas of interest, such
as: linguistics, sociology, politics or psychology (Al Maghlouth, 2017, p. 20).
However, despite the fact that CDA could be regarded as a multidisciplinary ap-
proach, it is in its most general nature tightly stationed in the field of Applied Linguistics.
What separates CDA from other methods of analysing discourse is that, as Wodak and
Meyers (2009) propose, “in general, CDA asks different research questions, and some
CDA scholars play an advocatory role for socially discriminated groups” (p. 19). To put it
more simply, in comparison to other discourse studies, CDA is neither impartial nor unbi-
ased in its analysis. This characteristic applies equally to all kinds of social discrimina-
tions, such as race, sexuality or gender, which is the case in this thesis. CDA researchers
thus study particular fields of discrimination, inequality, predisposition and the like, de-
spite the fact that majority of these fields may be considered as controversial. Bloor and
Bloor (2013) propose that the main objectives of CDA are:
18
to analyse discourse practices that reflect or construct social problems; to investi-
gate how ideologies can become frozen in language and find ways to break the ice;
to increase awareness of how to apply these objectives to specific cases of injustice,
prejudice, and misuse of power (pp. 1-13).
The term critical in CDA is also rather misleading, since in its common usage it suggest a
negative evaluation. However, as Wodak and Meyers (2009) suggest, “the objects under
investigation do not have to be related to negative or exceptionally ‘serious’ social or polit-
ical experiences or events – this is a frequent misunderstanding of the aims and goals of
CDA and of the term ‘critical’” (p. 2). On the one hand, non-critical approaches of dis-
course analysis simply identify and characterize different ways in which people use lan-
guage for communication and to establish theories about the ways in which communica-
tion transpires. On the other hand, CDA approaches discourse critically, which means that
it investigates deliberate linguistic choices of either the text authors or speakers participat-
ing in a discussion, which they used in order to accomplish their desired objectives. As
Michael Stubbs (1992) acknowledges, “if particular lexical and grammatical choices are
regularly made, and if people and things are repeatedly talked about in certain ways, then it
is plausible that this will affect how they are thought about” (p. 92). To put it differently,
the opinion of general public is notably influenced by the linguistic choices made by the
authors of the texts. Wodak (2013), linguist scholar who profoundly contributed to the
advancement of CDA, states that, “the critical analysis of discourse can imply to ‘make the
implicit explicit’. More specifically, it means making explicit the implicit relationship be-
tween discourse, power and ideology, challenging surface meanings and not taking any-
thing for granted.” (p. xxiv). To put it another way, instead of focusing on basic structural
19
level of either text or speech, CDA expands beyond this field of research and it analyzes
specific usage of language within a given context. Van Dijk (2012) declares that:
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is discourse analytical research that primarily
studies the way social-power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced, legiti-
mated, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such
dissident research, critical discourse analysts take an explicit position and thus want
to understand, expose, and ultimately challenge social inequality. This is also why
CDA may be characterized as a social movement of politically committed dis-
course analysts. (qtd. in Wodak 2013, 466)
Van Dijk’s definition of CDA implies that CDA studies primarily focus on the power
abuse and inequality within social orders, which is one of the central points of this thesis.
Furthermore, it also implies that CDA researchers are not necessarily impartial, as the goal
of their studies is usually not only to expose the inequalities that are present within the
social orders, but also to confront them and conceivably prevent them. Therefore, dis-
course scholars utilize CDA in order to provide assistance to the oppressed minorities in
given society by actively opposing the prejudicial and discriminatory ideologies. Bloor and
Bloor (2013), propose that:
Central to CDA is the understanding that discourse is an integral aspect of power
and control. Power is held by both institutions and individuals in contemporary society and
any challenge to the status quo challenges those who hold power. Thus a commitment to
‘social equality, fairness and justice’ is itself a challenge to those who are responsible for
maintaining the inequalities, unfairness and injustice in contemporary society and must be
of major concern to those who challenge the status quo (p. 4)
20
Nevertheless, not all discourse scholars share the same attitudes, to give an illustra-
tion: Theodoor van Leeuwen (2006) predominantly focuses on the utilization of CDA re-
sults as he states that:
Critical discourse analysis is founded on the insight that text and talk play a key
role in maintaining and legitimating inequality, injustice and oppression in society.
It employs discourse analysis to show how this is done, and it seeks to spread
awareness of this aspect of language use in society, and to argue explicitly for
change on the basis of its findings (p. 294).
To put it another way, as a result of identifying and challenging the disproportionate social
factors, it is possible to assume that research based on CDA might be capable of achieving
a positive change within the researched society. However, CDA methodology is frequently
criticized for this particular reason, since researchers are able to choose specific data that
would validate their already preconceived objectives. In other words, there are two funda-
mental aspects that the CDA academics ought to acknowledge in order to accomplish ade-
quate research findings. First of all, their research is generally motivated by either political
or social reasons, which means that they do not operate outside of the social hierarchy, but
they are in fact part of it. Second, they do not necessarily hold a superior position within
the society and thus their ethical principles and critical stance are not unequivocally cor-
rect.
Reisigl and Wodak (2009) introduce five discursive strategies, which are concerned
with the positive-self presentation and negative other-presentation based on the construc-
tion of Us vs. Them, namely: Referential/nomination; Predication; Argumentation; Per-
spectivisation and Intensification/Mitigation. It is important to emphasize that these discur-
21
sive strategies may be utilized to resolve certain goals, such as social or linguistic. Howev-
er, this study will be limited to only the first three strategies, since they are significantly
more frequently utilized in comparison with the last two strategies. The following table
introduces the three discursive strategies utilized in this study:
Table 1. Reisigl’s and Wodak’s Discursive Strategies
Strategy Objectives Devices

Referential/Nomination Discursive • membership categorization
construction of devices, deictics, anthroponyms,
social etc.
actors, • tropes such as metaphors,
objects/phenomena/ metonymies, and synecdoches
events, and (pars pro toto, totum pro parte)
processes/actions • verbs and nouns used to denote
processes and actions
Predication discursive • stereotypical, evaluative
qualification of attributions of negative or
social actors, objects, positive traits (e.g. in the form of
phenomena, events/ adjectives, appositions,
processes and prepositional phrases, relative
actions clauses, conjunctional clauses,
(more or less infinitive clauses and participial
positively or clauses or groups)
negatively) • explicit predicates or predicative
nouns/adjectives/pronouns
• collocations
• explicit comparisons, similes,
metaphors and other rhetorical
figures (including metonymies,
hyperboles, litotes, euphemisms)
• allusions, evocations, and
• presuppositions/implicatures,
etc.
Argumentation justification and • topoi (formal or more content-
questioning of related)
claims of • fallacies
truth and normative
rightness
22
To put it more simply, referential/nomination strategy focuses on the speaker’s ef-
fort to linguistically categorize social actors or objects into in-groups (us) and out-groups
(them). In case of the current study the speakers of each ideological movement generally
attempt to accentuate support for their respective ideology and to weaken the potential of
the contradictory ideology by differentiating between the positive and negative characteris-
tics of each side of the abortion debate. The primary issue that distinguishes between the
two opposing ideologies is the way in which they refer to the object of pregnancy, since
the pro-choice activists would use post-natal terms, such as fetus or embryo, while the pro-
life activists would prefer pre-natal designations, such as child or baby.
The predication strategy is concerned with speaker’s intention to label and charac-
terize social actors either in positive or negative manner, depending on whether they are
members of the in-group (us) or the out-group (them). In other words, by attributing cer-
tain characteristics to the actors, objects, phenomena or events the members of each ideo-
logical movement has the ability to represent it either as a negative threat or positive op-
portunity for their respective cause. Therefore the examination of both referen-
tial/nomination and predication strategies is anticipated to expose how the different ways
of characterizing social actors as well as the difference between the in-groups (us) and out-
groups (them) might unveil the contradictory assumptions of the speakers relating to the
main topic in question, which is the abortion debate in the USA.
The last argumentation strategy uncovers the moment in which the speakers at-
tempts to validate or legitimize the either positive or negative claims that they present. It is
reasonable to assume the abortion discourse in USA is strongly dependent on the use of
topoi, which are rhetorical devices, which as Wodak (2006) claims are a “content-related
23
warrants or ‘conclusion rules’ which connect the argument or arguments with the conclu-
sion, the claim. As such, they justify the transition from the argument or arguments to the
conclusion” (p. 74). Wodak (2009) also introduces the most common topoi utilized by
speakers in order to influence the audience’s opinion about certain viewpoints or positions,
and among those belongs the topos of: number, authority and threat. To put it differently,
by examining argumentation of both ideological movements it is expected to demonstrate
how they apply various topoi in order to validate and their statements.
3.1 Ideology
Even though ideology might seem to be a self-explanatory term, it is in fact a rather
difficult to attain an accurate description of it, since the meaning of this concept has
changed significantly over the course of time. Customarily, the core definition of ideology
has always been regarded as a comparatively stable set of beliefs, values and ideas that is
pertaining to either individuals or groups. To put it differently, ideologies construct the
mental outlook of social groups, which consist of general opinions about certain public
concerns, such as abortion in case of this thesis. Every group chooses the most suitable
values and beliefs that would assist them in achieving their objectives from the generally
available repertory and then they utilize them as the foundation for their respective ideolo-
gies. Wodak and Meyer (2009) propose that:
It is, however, not that type of ideology on the surface of culture that interests
CDA, it is rather the more hidden and latent type of everyday beliefs, which often
appear disguised as conceptual metaphors and analogies, thus attracting linguists’
attention (p. 8).
24
Similarly to CDA, the concept of ideology is also perceived differently by every discourse
scholar and as a result of that their interpretations of it varies from each other. Nonetheless,
one of the most the prevailing approaches in studies of ideology among the CDA scholars
focuses on the dominant essence of ideology, which means that it is an essential tool for
the dominant groups to abuse their power over the inferior groups.
Wodak (2013) further identifies that, “dominant ideologies seem ‘neutral’, with as-
sumptions that stay largely unchallenged. When people in a society think alike about cer-
tain matters, or even forget that there are alternatives to the status quo, one arrives at the
Gramscian concept of hegemony” (p. xxvi). The concept of hegemony is fundamental to
the Marxist philosophy and it essentially defines the manipulation of power in Western
capitalist societies, however it is not necessarily limited to it and therefore it could be ap-
plied to other societies, such as for example the current situation in the USA. This concept
has also been endorsed by various discourse scholars who assimilated it into their studies.
To give an illustration, Fairclough’s (2003) view on ideology has been greatly influenced
by Gramsci’s works and he remarks that, “ideologies are representations of aspects of the
world which contribute to establishing and maintaining relations of power, domination and
exploitation” (p. 218). To put it more simply, Fairclough believes that institutions exploit
ideologies in order to create universally accepted practices that would preserve the unequal
power relations within society. To encapsulate this theory of ideology, which consists of
combination of hegemony, discourse and ideology, it presupposes the presence of a domi-
nant group that seeks to preserve its power and status by using it to alter the attitudes of
other groups for the sake of its own interests. However, since the dominant group uses
25
discourse as main instrument for the application of its power and control, it is apparent that
it is a non-violent practice.
Nevertheless, not all discourse scholars share this particular attitude towards the
concept of ideology. To give an illustration: van Dijk (2006) thinks of ideologies from a
social- cognitive stance and he notes that, “an ideology is the foundation of the social rep-
resentations shared by a social group.” (p. 728). First of all, this comment implies that ide-
ology could potentially relate to any social group, classes or communities, since van Dijk
comprehends it as a set of belief that is socially shared by all of the individuals within a
social order. Second, ideology influences language and discourse, because they are both
social practices in nature, and thus people communicate ideologically based ideas whenev-
er they speak, despite the fact that it might be unintentional, since they unknowingly ac-
quire them throughout their entire life.
However, van Dijk also explores different notion of ideologies in his studies focus-
ing on political discourse and political ideology, in which he introduces four general strat-
egies that are frequently present in ideological discourse. Van Dijk (2006) conceptualizes a
framework known as ideological square, which consists of these four strategies: Empha-
size Our good things, Emphasize Their bad things, De-emphasize Our bad things, De-
emphasize Their good things. (p. 734)
The last two strategies indicate that ideologies organize people within society in
opposing terms, since the set of beliefs are not valued equally. Usually the organization is
based on intensification of negative attributes of one social group, while at the same time
intensifying positive attributes of other social group. This framework is particularly no-
ticeable in the manner in which the two most prominent ideologies refer to each other, as
26
Dawn McCaffrey (2000) asserts that, “the ‘pro-life’ concerns of abortion foes are only for
fetal lives, not the lives of women or unwanted babies. ‘Pro-life’ is a term used to make
anti-abortion and anti-choice seem positive and good” (Mid Suffolk NOW, June 1987)
McCaffrey further points out that, “right-to-life groups often refer to those who support the
right to safe, legal abortion as “pro-abortion.” The pro-choice rebuttal was that “We are
prochoice. ‘Pro-abortion’ is inaccurate, as it implies favoring abortion over childbirth.” (p.
55)
As stated above, in order to achieve a meaningful CDA it is necessary to thorough-
ly focus on ideology, particularly in case of studies dealing with socio-cognitive approach,
such as is the case of this thesis. According van Dijk (2006) the socio-cognitive theory
means that, “ideologies are accounted for in socio cognitive rather than in emotional terms,
because they are by definition socially shared, and in our definition of emotions, only indi-
vidual persons and not groups can have, bodily based, emotions” (p. 731). The reason why
abortion has triggered the ideological discourses is because it is a controversial issue that
holds a certain societal significance.
27
ABORTION IDEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE
4 Abortion Ideology and Discourse
Abortion has always been and still is an intensively sensitive moral issue all around
the world. However, in the USA it has become a country dividing topic in both political
and public spheres, especially since the year 1973, in which The Supreme Court ruled a
landmark decision of Roe v. Wade, which assures the woman’s right to terminate pregnan-
cy without any excessive government restrictions. Virtually everyone has their individual
conviction about abortion, and people often uphold and endorse their attitudes regarding
the controversy passionately. However, it is important to realize that people in general do
not solely endorse or oppose abortion. While one person who mainly disputes abortion
might be willing to make an exception for a woman whose life is threatened, another per-
son who generally approves of abortion might in certain cases not comply with it. Never-
theless, as Bloor and Bloor (2007) declare, “as critical discourse analysts, it is important to
be aware that most discourse used by members of a group tends to be ideologically based.
However, the beliefs or attitudes that stem from ideology may not always be held con-
sciously by individuals” (p. X). This statement is further supported by van Dijk (2006),
who comments that:
Ideologically based social representations (such as feminist attitudes about abortion
or glass ceilings on the job), are general and abstract. In order to relate to concrete
social practices and discourses about specific events, they need to become contex-
tualized and specified in mental models (p. 730).
The two most eminent ideologies when it comes to the abortion debate in the USA are the
pro-life ideology, which not only denounces abortion but also attempts to illegalize it, and
28
the pro-choice ideology, which supports the idea of abortion and advocates women’s rights
to choose whether they want to terminate the pregnancy or not. In other words, the pro-life
activists present themselves as the protectors of moral righteousness whereas the pro-
choice activists rather present themselves as the advocates of social order. Based on this
rather brief description it is evident that these two ideological movements have different
moral and ethical values and as a result of that these two ideological movements are con-
stantly in competition with each other.
Furthermore, members of each ideological movement utilize specific terms and
phrases in the ongoing debate that endorse their own viewpoints about the controversy
while simultaneously invalidating the opposing side of the argument. To give an illustra-
tion, the pro-life and pro-choice designations of the ideologies themselves are in fact not
completely unbiased. On the one hand the label pro-life implies the ideological move-
ment’s support of life in general, while it also indicates that the opposing faction is auto-
matically anti-life. On the other hand, the pro-choice designation suggests the advocacy for
women’s liberty to make choices about their own bodies; it also implies that the opposing
party is strictly anti-choice. To put it differently, both of these designations are actually
prejudiced, since they evoke the desirable positive characteristics of each ideological
movement. However, these terms are not necessarily all-encompassing and as Planned
Parenthood suggests, the more appropriate labels to describe individual’s ideology and
beliefs regarding to abortion would be pro-reproductive rights and anti-abortion, because
they provide more space for a diverse range of beliefs, while the access to abortion is spe-
cifically conserved. (Planned Parenthood, 2019)
29
Moreover, the moral integrity of the controversial abortion debate is induced by the
different terms used to designate the object of pregnancy by each ideological movement.
One of the most central differences between the rhetoric of pro-life and pro-choice move-
ment activists is in the usage of the descriptive terms regarding the object of pregnancy.
The terms child and foetus are both appropriate for the desired description and they could
also be mutually interchangeable in certain contexts. However, each of the terms invokes
completely different mental framework in people’s minds and it provides the audience
with various different information. This particular classification is heavily dependent on
the attributes that the person wishes to accentuate. It is important to realize that these at-
tributes are closely related to the individual’s set of values and beliefs. As a result of this,
the way in which the interlocutors of the abortion debate, whether they belong to the pro-
life or pro-choice movements, define the object of pregnancy expresses their individual
perspective of the issue. On the one hand, in case of the pro-choice activists the term of
choice to refer to the unborn would be either foetus or embryo, since they generally do not
think of it as a fully developed human being and these medical terms are more suitable for
this particular perspective. On the other hand, the pro-life activist would generally refer to
the object of pregnancy as either child or baby, because it attributes a certain degree of
humanness to it and as a result of that it raises people’s moral sentiment to it. As Kumar
(2018) suggests, “this is also not to suggest that embryos or fetuses have legal, social, or
political standing, but that the fact that they are ‘‘not nothing’’ is the very reason that
women’s moral agency must be respected” (Kissling, 2004, p. 14).
To put it differently, the overall disagreement and controversy about the way in
which the respective ideological movement interprets and perceives the issue of abortion is
30
essentially a discursive and ideological struggle. The fundamental goal of this particular
controversy is to establish hegemony by either ideological movement in order to have the
ability to authorize the desired interpretation of reality that would ultimately be regarded as
natural and commonsense. Nevertheless, regardless of which ideological movement would
manage to achieve the hegemonic status quo, it is reasonable to assume that it would still
be confronted by the opposing ideological movement and therefore its position would nev-
er be firmly fixed. This claim is based on the fact that in 1973 the pro-choice movement
and its ideology has essentially reached hegemony, as the Supreme Court acknowledged
that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in fact supports women’s right to
choose whether they terminate pregnancy, yet the pro-life movement is still unable to ac-
cept this decision and it is attempting to overturn it. However, the background of the con-
temporary abortion controversy in the USA will be briefly introduced in the following sec-
tion.
4.1 Background of the abortion debate
Even though the controversial battles over reproductive and sexual health and
rights in the USA have become especially covered in main stream media, and as a result of
that also discussed by the general public, only during the last couple of years, they have
been in fact fought for several decades.
It is important to emphasize, that prior to the Roe v. Wade ruling neither the rights
of women nor fetuses were the fundamental aspects of the abortion debate, since medical
science at that time was not advanced enough in this field to scientifically prove, whether
it is possible to consider the object of pregnancy as alive or not. Kristin Luker (1984) char-
31
acterized the period prior to 1960 as the “century of silence,” during which there was little
organized challenge to the status of abortion as regulated primarily by doctors. (qtd. in
Cook 1993, p. 35).
During the 1960s women’s right movement was prosperous in the USA and it pur-
sued not only equal rights and opportunities, but also greater personal freedom for women.
As a result of this movement abortion reappeared in the public discourse after almost a
century, as Cook (1993) declares that, “in the 1960s, however, abortion reform forces be-
gan to push for easier access to abortion. The claim that women had a “right to control
their bodies” was made during this period.” (p.35). This statement suggests that the 1960s
mark the origin of the contemporary pro-choice movement’s resistance against the then
dominant pro-life movement in the USA. Schneider (1996) further emphasizes that:
During this period (1960s to early 1970s), two significant changes occurred with
regard to public discourse concerning abortion. First, women’s voices became, for
the first time, a significant part of the discourse. Second, the discourse began to fo-
cus on rights, contrasting the rights of women to the rights of embryos (p. 378).
First of all, the fact the women’s voices were heard for the first time in abortion discussion
suggest that the unequal power relations based on gender, which were until this point of
time considered as normal, have significantly changed. Second, abortion was no longer
perceived simply as a medical problem, but it rather became to be perceived and chal-
lenged as moral and most importantly legal issue. However, the most significant change
that influenced both the abortion laws in the USA and the public discourse concerning
abortion is unquestionably the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
32
Roe v. Wade remains to be arguably one of the most contentious topics in the re-
cent politics of the United States. To put it simply, Roe v. Wade is Supreme’s Court deci-
sion that in 1973 ultimately legalized the abortion procedure across the entire USA and it
became the law of the land that has created the contemporary abortion laws in the USA.
However, in order to understand why this particular case is generally claimed to be one of
the most controversial laws in the modern history of USA, it is important to introduce the
context behind it. In the ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged for the first time that:
State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality
only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of
her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, in-
cluding a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. (Roe v. Wade, 1973)
To put it differently, the Supreme Court recognized that women’s right to make their own
decisions regarding their bodies in fact is entitled to the highest constitutional protection.
However, the Supreme Court also decided that despite the fact that the state’s government
cannot override this right, it still has legitimate interest in protecting the lives of both preg-
nant women as well as potential human life. Therefore it established a framework in which
the state regulations and the women’s rights to abortion vary:
During the first trimester, the decision to terminate the pregnancy was solely at the
discretion of the woman. After the first trimester, the state could “regulate proce-
dure.” During the second trimester, the state could regulate (but not outlaw) abor-
tions in the interests of the mother’s health. After the second trimester, the fetus be-
came viable, and the state could regulate or outlaw abortions in the interest of the
33
potential life except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
(Roe v. Wade, 1973)
It is important to emphasize that the Supreme Court not only referred to the object of preg-
nancy as “fetus”, but it also describes the object of pregnancy only as a “potential life”.
This indicates that the Supreme Court did not acknowledge the fetus as a fully developed
human, which is the reason why it unequivocally preferred the basic constitutional rights
of the women. This is the underlying reason why the law is considered as controversial,
since the central argument of pro-life activists is that the fetus is a living being ever since
conception. During the period of time when the decision was enacted vast majority of
states in the USA have banned abortion with the exceptions for victims of rape, incest or
health risks. However, this decision has declared all of those laws as unconstitutional and
as a result of that abortion services became significantly more accessible and safer across
the entire country.
Prior to the Roe v. Wade, the object of pregnancy was perceived as inanimate ob-
ject rather than living being, however, during the 1970s ultrasound was introduced and it
became widely used in American hospitals, which meant that the object of pregnancy be-
came actually visible to the general public for the first time. As a result of the insight that
ultrasound provided together with the legislation that authorized abortions across the Unit-
ed States, the foetuses became to be recognized as living beings for the first time and sub-
sequently it was possible to for pro-life activists to assign basic human rights to them.
Strikingly, the rights of the unborn were becoming more prominent in the abortion debate
in accordance with the rights of women that they were granted by the progressive abortion
laws. Ultimately, the woman’s right to terminate pregnancy was positioned against the
34
unborn children’s right to live, which meant that their individual concerns were essentially
portrayed as contradictory to each other. Therefore, this could be regarded as the root of
the contemporary abortion debate, since this particular aspect of the abortion discourse is
still prevalent in the contemporary debate after approximately 50 years.
35
TEXAS HEARTBEAT ACT
5 Texas Heartbeat Act
First of all, it is important to preface that, as Elizabeth Nash (2021) points out,
“more abortion restrictions—90—have already been enacted in 2021 than in any year
since the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973.” Texas Heartbeat Act, which is
also often referred to as Senate Bill 8 or House Bill 1515, was introduced for the first time
on March 11, 2021. The law was signed on May 19, 2021 by Texas governor Greg Abbott,
who stated that, “our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children
lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those
lives” (Kelly, 2021d). It is important to emphasize, that in this statement Abbott not only
mentions our creator in order to evoke his religious faith and values, but by indicating that
the law is essentially meant to protect the endowed lives he also portrays himself and law
as the protectors of the sacred lives. The law came into effect on September 1, 2021, be-
cause the Supreme Court did not accept the appeal for emergency relief from the abortion
providers in Texas.
The primary feature of this law is that, “a physician may not knowingly perform or
induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the
unborn child” (SB8, 2021). In other words, what this means is that the law effectively pro-
hibits abortion after approximately six weeks of abortion, during which the vast majority
of women is not even aware of being pregnant. However the law specifically uses the
phrase fetal heartbeat as an indicator of the beginning of human life, which is in fact one
of the most controversial feature of the law, since this claim is actually not necessarily
supported by the modern medical society. According to Planned Parenthood, America's
36
TEXAS HEARTBEAT ACT
oldest and largest family planning organization which has been active in pro-choice lobby-
ing since 1973, “approximately 85 to 90 percent of people who obtain abortions in Texas
are at least six weeks into pregnancy.” In this particular regards, the SB8 is not a ground-
breaking law, since many other countries in the United States also introduced similar
heartbeat bills that somehow attempted to restrict access to abortion. Nevertheless, SB8
introduces several other unique features that make it an unparalleled heartbeat bill.
Among the main reasons why this particular heartbeat bill is unprecedented is be-
cause all of the preceding heartbeat bills that were introduced in other countries have been
enjoined by the courts as unconstitutional. In other words, Texas Heartbeat Act is the first
law that has managed to successfully institute a six week abortion ban since the ruling of
Roe v. Wade in 1973, which means that access to abortion in Texas has essentially been
prohibited. However, there is a reason why not only Supreme Court, but any court in gen-
eral was unable to act in a similar manner as it did with the all of the precedent laws. As
Howard Wasserman (2021) examines:
Texas and SB8 were outliers in the method of enforcement, seeking to avoid
that fate. SB8 prohibits public enforcement of the new ban—no state government
or officer can bring a civil, criminal, or administrative proceeding for a violation.”
Instead, the law creates a private cause of action empowering “any person,”
regardless of his personal connection to any abortion, to sue a provider or other
person who performs or aides-or-abets any post-heartbeat abortion (p. 3).
The Supreme Court therefore was not ruling on the constitutionality of the law, but the
reason why it allowed the law to into effect was because of the complex legal questions
that the law introduces. Considering the fact that the hardship of enforcement is placed on
37
TEXAS HEARTBEAT ACT
individual citizens rather than on government officials, it is virtually impossible for the
courts to legally counteract this law. To put it differently, SB8 was devised specifically in
such a way that would guarantee it not being challenged by courts, since there is essential-
ly no one who could be sued in order to challenge the law. This particular aspect of the law
makes it exceptional in comparison with all of the preceding heartbeat bills and as a result
of that it is one of the most controversial heartbeat bills. However, this particular aspect of
the law also essentially suggests that the proposers of the law were almost certainly aware
of the fact that it is in fact unconstitutional. Another reason why SB8 is concerning for the
future of abortion laws in the United States is the fact that the Supreme Court did not in-
tervene to forestall this law from coming into effect and therefore it is possible that the law
will become a template for other states to institute similarly drafted laws that the courts
would not be able to directly challenge. In other words, the final verdict of this case could
potentially indicate not only the future of abortion laws in the United States, but also over-
all legitimacy of the Supreme Court and te U.S. Constitution.
Needless to say, this law has been substantially criticized because of the fact that it
directly opposes the Supreme’s Court decision established in Roe v. Wade case that creat-
ed a concept of so-called fetal viability, which is the ability of fetus to survive outside of
the uterus. Generally, foetuses are not considered to be viable until the 24th week of gesta-
tion, which approximately corresponds with the beginning of third trimester. However,
Texas Heartbeat Act forbids abortion significantly earlier than that and thus it not only
undoubtedly and straightforwardly challenges the legal jurisdiction of Roe v. Wade, but it
also effectively threatens the authority of the Supreme Court.
38
TEXAS HEARTBEAT ACT
Furthermore, the law also allows any individual to sue not only doctors who per-
form the procedure, but also anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets
the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the
costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise” (SB8, 2021). However, since the
statutory language is rather obscure in its description, it could potentially cover literally
anyone who is either directly or indirectly associated with the procedure, ranging from
family members who counsel the woman to taxi drivers who transport them to the abortion
clinic or even complete strangers.
Additionally, if the complainant prevails the in the civil lawsuit, the defendant is
required to pay statutory damages of not less than $10,000. However, if the civil case was
to be dismissed the complainant would be protected by the law and therefore it would not
be necessary to pay for the legal fees. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that these ar-
rangements were presumably implemented to incentivize the population to take law into
their own hands. It is nevertheless important to acknowledge the fact that the law does not
authorize legal action against the women themselves who seek abortion. In other words,
the SB8 leaves the burden of law enforcement to the individual citizens, who are monetari-
ly rewarded for their actions, rather than to the state officials. Nevertheless, the contempo-
rary president of the United States Joe Bide openly criticizes this feature of the law by say-
ing that, “the most pernicious thing about the Texas law, it sort of creates a vigilante sys-
tem.” (Watson, 2021)
Furthermore, there are no exceptions for victims of either rape or incest, despite the
fact that medical emergencies are allowed if they are documented in writing. SB8 could be
39
TEXAS HEARTBEAT ACT
described as a direct attack not only on women’s right, but also on medical practice in gen-
eral.
40
METODOLOGY
6 Metodology
The practical part of this thesis is going to be based on combination of two rather
opposite approaches, namely CDA and corpus linguistics (CL). As it has been already stat-
ed above, CDA is an academic movement that does not constitute of only one specific the-
ory or methodology, since it has been adopted by various disciplines, such as for example:
linguistics or sociology. Hence, CDA is tailored by the researchers to adequately comply
with the needs and scope of their studies. Studies utilizing CDA approach are generally
qualitative in nature, as it is best suitable for analyzing particular section of texts at differ-
ent levels.
Similarly to CDA, CL does not provide only a single method for research, but it ra-
ther utilizes various different methods, which the researchers choose based on their re-
search goal. As Kim (2014) claims, “a corpus-based approach is illuminating for describ-
ing collocational and other recurrent patterns associated with specific lexical items across
an entire corpus” (p. 222).
The combination of these two methodologies is not particularly uncommon, despite
the fact that both of them are rather modern approaches in linguistics. According to Baker
(2008), “the combination of methodologies traditionally associated with CDA and CL in
research projects, and their potential theoretical and methodological cross-pollination seem
to benefit both CDA and CL” (p. 247). By utilizing both of these theoretical approaches,
this thesis analyzes the ways in which mainstream newspapers in the USA influences the
public opinion with their discursive practices.
41
METODOLOGY
6.1 Data and Analysis
All data analyzed in this thesis were collected from a corpus created in the text
analysis software called Sketch Engine. The sources of the data in the corpus are articles
from two online daily tabloid newspapers, namely New York Post and Washington Post,
and two cable news television channels providing transcript on the internet, CNN and Fox
News. The corpus is constructed in such a way that includes different types of media. As a
whole, the corpus consisted of 234 articles and 214,095 tokens and New York Times (58
articles; 62,521 tokens); Washington Post (57 articles; 61,454 tokens), CNN (52 articles,
53,549 tokens); Fox News (67 articles, 36,571 tokens). The articles in the corpus were
collected between March 11, 2021 and December 31, 2021. There was only one criterion
necessary for an article to be included in the corpus: the central focus of the articles was
specifically Texas Heartbeat Bill. By integrating both of the methodological approaches
described in the previous chapter, this thesis analyzes news articles published in US main-
stream media in order to identify distinct discursive strategies used by the members of
each ideological movement related to the abortion debate in the USA.
New York Times is an American daily newspaper that has been publishing since
1851 and it was selected because it not only covers an expansive range of topics but it is
also one of the most popular daily newspapers in all of the USA (Kim 2004). The articles
are also easily accessible online, however, in order to access them it is necessary to sign up
for a subscription, since they are not free to read.
Washington Post is another American daily newspaper that publishes since 1877. It
is also one of the most widely circulated newspapers that has won the second most Pulitzer
42
METODOLOGY
prizes, right after New York Times. Similarly to New York Times, the readers are required
to pay for subscription in order to access all of the articles available on the network.
The CNN, or Cable News Network, is an American cable news channel located in
Atlanta. The reason why it was chosen for this thesis is because of its high viewing rates in
the USA. Furthermore, CNN itself claims to be the most trusted name in news. The CNN
website was launched in 1995 and it is currently among the most popular news website in
the world. Unlike the previous two sources, CNN is completely free to access and no sub-
scription is necessary in order to read the articles.
Lastly, Fox News is another American cable news channel, whose headquarters is
located in New York City. However, in comparison to the CNN, Fox News are generally
known to produce a rather biased reporting, since its original purpose is to appeal primarily
to conservative audience. Therefore, it generally portrays the Democratic Party and every-
thing related to it in a negative manner. Similarly to the CNN, all of the articles on the
website are free to read and no subscription is needed.
Sketch Engine, which is the software utilized for the text analysis in this thesis,
presents various functions and features that examine how the language of the texts works.
To give an illustration: Word Sketch, Concordance, and Wordlist are the three primary
functions that are particularly intended to assist in carrying out linguistic research. Howev-
er, this thesis makes primarily use of the Concordance feature, which allows the user ac-
cess to the Collocation tool. By analyzing collocations, which are either sequences or
combinations of words that often occur together, it is possible to examine a list of colloca-
tions organized by different measuring methods, such as T-score, MI Score or LogDice, all
of which are frequently used by researchers in their studies. However, in order to deter-
43
METODOLOGY
mine the most appropriate measuring method for this thesis, a sample analysis using all of
the three methods was performed and all of the various collocations were analyzed. Con-
clusively, LogDice was selected as the most convenient measuring method for this thesis.
The list of collocates that are affiliated with the searched term therefore functions a valua-
ble starting point for the linguistic analysis of the texts. Moreover, the collocation tool also
makes it possible for the researcher to manually regulate the appropriate range of words
that either precede or follow the searched keyword as well as the minimum frequency of
the collocations throughout the entire corpus in order to exclude low frequency items that
are not linguistically relevant. For this thesis the range is fixed to -3 and 3, while the min-
imum frequency in the corpus is fixed to 5 and the minimum frequency in given range is
set to 3.
44
ANALYSIS
7 Analysis
The primary goal of this thesis is to analyze and examine the articles related to the
contemporary controversy in Texas from four of the most mainstream media in the USA,
which were introduced and described in the previous section, since the introduction of the
Texas Heartbeat Act in March 2021 till December 2021. The articles included in the cor-
pus created specifically for this study introduce some of the most substantial changes that
were implemented in Texas by the law that not only restrict women from exercising their
rights to control their own bodies, which are protected by the U.S. Constitution, but the
law also directly challenges the U.S. Constitution and it attempts to undermine its legiti-
macy. Nevertheless, the proposed law and the changes that it implemented in Texas have
been met with strong criticism and resistance on various levels by the inhabitants of Texas
as well as the population from the rest of the USA. Because of the controversial nature of
the overall issue, the articles present diverse range of individuals that are either directly
involved in the controversy or that are affected by it, and as a result of that they provide
perspectives that are varying and sometimes even contradictory. In order to earnestly ana-
lyze such a diverse representation it is important to take into consideration the various lev-
els of discourse that are present in the articles. Therefore, it is important to examine not
only the linguistic and textual level of discourse, but also the socio-cognitive and inter-
textual ones. The primary research questions of this thesis are:
RQ1: What characteristics and qualities are attributed to the social actors (women,
object of pregnancy)?
45
ANALYSIS
RQ2: What linguistic attributes characterize the confronting ideological perspec-
tives about abortion?
RQ3: What arguments do the supporters of the law employ in the justification of
their ideological set of beliefs?
7.1 Key Social Actors
The reason why this specific question is important to this study is because this the-
sis aims to observe how the opposing ideologies regarding abortion are portrayed in the
US media. Since the main topic of this thesis, the Texas Heartbeat Act, is a legal issue in
nature it is reasonable to assume that the main social actors represented in the articles are
politicians or judges that are either directly or indirectly involved in the contemporary con-
troversy, since they are not only the most qualified and experienced individuals to address
the issue. To put it differently, they are influential figures whose statements and view-
points might influence the public opinion the most because of their expertise and status.
Due to the controversial nature of the issue it is also presumable that the ideological stand-
points of the most frequently included individuals are going to vary and contradict each
other. However, because of the potential influence that the individuals might have over the
public opinion it is essential to analyze their comments regarding the contemporary con-
troversy.
As it has already been specified in the theoretical part of the thesis, the relationship
between context and discourse is in fact complementary. In other words, what this implies
is that the approach to this particular question has to be performed on the most concrete
manifestation of discourse, which is the textual level. To answer the first research question
46
ANALYSIS
of this thesis, it is necessary to first of all identify the main social actors that are represent-
ed in the corpus. In order to do so, the Wordlist tool of Sketch Engine will be utilized, be-
cause it allows to generate frequency lists of various kinds, it is possible to generate a word
list that represents how many times specific terms occur throughout the entire corpus. To
generate the desired list, the corpus has to be sorted by proper nouns, which altogether
occur 18,372 times in the corpus, however, in order to narrow it down and specifically
identify the proper nouns of the individuals, it is necessary to generate the frequency list of
all the proper nouns and manually find them out. The following table showcases the five
most frequently included individuals in the corpus as well as the number of times they are
mentioned.
Table 2. The frequency of public individuals
Word Frequency Relative

Biden 231 942,53
Roberts 140 571,23
Pitman 89 363,14
Sotomayor 89 363,14
Abbott 86 350,90
As it was estimated earlier, the five most frequently included individuals in the
corpus are either high-ranking politicians or judges that are closely associated with the
controversy. First of all, all of the individuals will be briefly introduced in order to provide
context why they are so frequently included. The most frequently included individual is
the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, whose name appears almost signifi-
cantly more often than the remaining four individuals. The second most frequently men-
tioned individual is John Roberts, who currently serves as a chief justice of the United
States since 2005, which in other words means that he is the chief judge of the Supreme
47
ANALYSIS
Court and thus the highest-ranking officer of the U.S federal judiciary. The third most fre-
quently mentioned individual is Robert Lee Pitman, who currently serves as US District
Judge in Texas. The fourth individual is Sonia Sotomayor, who currently serves as one of
eight associate justice of the Supreme Court. The fifth and last individual is Gregory
Wayne Abbott, who currently serves as the governor of Texas since 2015.
Second, it is important to classify all of the include individuals into two groups, the
pro-life and pro-choice, according to their stance towards the controversy. Remarkably, the
first four individuals are all in opposition to the law and thus they could be labelled as sup-
porters of the pro-choice ideology. Unsurprisingly, only Gregory Abbott, the fifth individ-
ual, supports the law, since he was the one who signed the Texas Heartbeat Act into effect,
which means that it is reasonable to label him as a supporter of pro-life ideology. This un-
equal representation suggests that the most influential opponents of the law are provided
with significantly more space to express their opinions and arguments regarding the con-
troversy than its supporters. However, in order to determinate how specifically each of the
individuals describe the law in question it is necessary to analyze their statements that are
presented in the articles. First of all, the opinions of the four pro-choice individuals will be
introduced and analyzed.
1)
a) President Joe Biden said Friday the Texas state law that bans abortion after
as early as six weeks into pregnancy is "almost un-American," pointing spe-
cifically to a provision allowing individuals to take civil action against peo-
ple who help a woman get an abortion.
48
ANALYSIS
b) Roberts said he would stop the law from taking effect because it is so novel
and far-reaching.
c) Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Texas law "a breathtaking act of defi-
ance -- of the Constitution, of this Court's precedents, and of the rights of
women seeking abortions throughout Texas."
d) Pitman said Wednesday that Texas had "contrived an unprecedented and
transparent statutory scheme to" deprive its residents of their abortion
rights.
On the one hand, the first three speakers all expressed their denunciation of the law by
using various expressive vocabularies. Arguably the most negative description of the law
was expressed by Joe Biden in example (1a), who depicts the law as “un-American”,
which indicates that the law itself is opposed to the core American values of USA, such as
freedom, equality and justice, all of which the law directly challenges. Sonia Sotomayor’s
and Robert Pitman’s comments in example (1b-c) both convey essentially the same mean-
ing, despite the fact that they employ different linguistic expressions. Both of these speak-
ers primarily focus on the controversial social change that the law implement, which is
restricting the women’s access to abortion and as a result of that the law is portrayed as
hurtful to the residents of Texas. Moreover, Sotomayor specifically identifies that the law
essentially defies the U.S. Constitution and all the precedents of the Supreme Court, which
even further incites the detrimental character of the law. On the other hand, Roberts in ex-
ample (1d) does not necessarily criticize the law despite the fact that he clearly does not
support it, since he describes the law as “novel and far-reaching”, which is significantly
more neutral characterization in comparison with the previous three examples. However, it
49
ANALYSIS
is important to acknowledge the fact that this example is only a paraphrase of Robert’s
comment, which means that this statement is significantly less credible than the previous
ones. The reason why this example was included is because it is the occasion in which
Robert’s opinion of the law is expressed.
Second, the opinion of the only remaining individual, Gregory Abbott, who sup-
ports the law will be introduced and examined.
2)
a) As Gov. Greg Abbott signed the new law in May, he declared that "our cre-
ator endowed us with the right to life and millions of children lose their
right to life every year because of abortion," and said the bill would "work
to save those lives."
While the opponents of the law in previous examples indicated that the law is either un-
constitutional or un-American, Abbott introduces the law from a substantially different
perspective. The most recognizable difference is that Abbott depicts the law and its objec-
tive in a positive manner. The way in which Abbott achieves this is by appealing to the
religious values as he refers to our creator who endowed us with the right to live. To put it
differently, Abbott essentially conceptualizes that the life of the unborn is sacred ever
since it is conceived and as a result of it he depicts the procedure of abortion negatively,
since it challenges both the moral order of people as well as the holy order of religion. Fur-
thermore, by using the possessive pronoun “our” in his statement Abbott evokes similitude
between him and the rest of American population, since he implies that they are all equal
in this sense. However, Abbott simultaneously imposes ideological assumptions, which are
based on his personal set of beliefs, on the public, since he essentially declares that life
50
ANALYSIS
begins at the moment of conception. Abbott attempts to validate the prominence of the law
and its main objective by justifying that it was enacted in order to protect the lives and
rights of the millions of unborn children that die every year as a result of abortion, which is
in accordance with the general goal of pro-life movement.
To summarize the first section of the practical part, the main social actors are all
highly-ranking political figures that are associated with the law. However, their representa-
tion is not equivalent, since four out of the five individuals are in fact opponents of the
law, while only the remaining fifth individual supports the law. Furthermore, it is im-
portant to emphasize that only one opponent of the law is female while the remaining op-
ponents are all male, which indicates that men sympathize with women despite the fact
that the law does not directly affect or focus on them. On the one hand, the opponents of
the law primarily focus on emphasizing the negative characteristics of the SB8 law and its
supporters rather than openly describing themselves in positive way. However, by specifi-
cally portraying the law as “un-American” and hurtful to women the opponents of the law
indirectly suggest that unlike the SB8 law and its supporters, they not only in fact revere
the core American values, the legal authorities of USA and women living in Texas, but
also that their goal is to prevent women from being hurt and discriminated against. On the
other hand, the supporter of the law focuses specifically on positive-self representation by
claiming that the law is an instrument meant to protect the sacred lives of the unborn chil-
dren that lose their lives. However, by stating that the contemporary abortion laws in the
USA are the culprits that are responsible for the essential mass murder of the unborn chil-
dren, Abbott also indirectly achieves the negative-other representation.
51
ANALYSIS
7.2 Description of the law
As it was already established in the theoretical part of the thesis, one of the main
reasons why the SB8 bill is perceived as controversial and disturbing is because it is the
only anti-abortion law that has successfully managed to be enacted since the landmark case
of Roe v. Wade in 1973, despite the fact that it is in direct opposition to most, if not all,
United State Supreme Court precedent including Roe v. Wade, as it effectively denies
women the right to an abortion in Texas after six weeks of pregnancy. In other words, the
SB8 bill challenges the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law in the
United States of America that delineates the national frame of government. Due to this
fact, one of the most frequent adjectives that the opponents of the SB8 law use in their
statements when describing it is unconstitutional, since it qualifies the law negatively. First
of all, the following table list the most frequent collocations with the term unconstitutional
in the corpus.
Table 3. Typical collocates of unconstitutional
Word Cooccurrences Candidates T-score MI LogDice

Flagrantly 33 34 5.74 10.14 12.11
Blatantly 24 33 4.89 9.72 11.65
Clearly 17 42 4.11 8.88 11.10
Plainly 14 14 3.74 10.18 10.99
Table 3 demonstrates a certain pattern of collocates with the term unconstitutional,
which indicates that the most recurrent collocations are all expressive adjectives that in-
herently evaluate the constitutionality of the SB8 law negatively. Therefore it indicates that
the opponents of the law are attempting to convey in their comments the impudent nature
of the SB8 law. However, in order to examine the usage of the term unconstitutional in the
52
ANALYSIS
articles more in depth, it is necessary to observe the concordance lines, which are demon-
strated in the following examples:
3)
a) The law is "clearly unconstitutional" and allowing it to remain in effect
would "perpetuate the ongoing irreparable injury to thousands of Texas
women who are being denied their constitutional rights,"
b) “Every day without a ruling from the Court is another day a blatantly un-
constitutional law prevents people in Texas from fully accessing their right
to abortion–and it's way past time to put an end to this attack on equality,"
c) "We urge you to take legal action up to and including the criminal prosecu-
tion of would-be vigilantes attempting to use the private right of action es-
tablished by that blatantly unconstitutional law"
Example (3a) introduces an argument of the Department of Justice (DOJ), in which the
institution presents its opinion about the SB8 law. It is important to emphasize not only
that the DOJ represents the U.S. government in legal cases, but also that among its main
goals is to defend the interests of the U.S. and to safeguard public safety from both foreign
and domestic threats. Therefore, the fact that such an authority declares that the SB8 law is
“clearly unconstitutional” indicates that the legal legitimacy of the SB8 law is undoubtedly
insufficient and that it is perceived as a threat to the U.S Constitution. Furthermore, the
DOJ describes that the enactment of the SB8 law has led to an “irreparable injury to thou-
sands of women in Texas”, which not only portrays the SB8 law as a hostile act that causes
both physical and psychological suffering to women that are depicted as its victims. In
other words, it essentially justifies the reason why the DOJ perceives the SB8 law as a
53
ANALYSIS
threat to public safety. Lastly, the fact that the entire statement is credited to the DOJ in
general rather than to an individual speaker representing it suggests results in an indirect
formulation of an in-group (us), referring to the DOJ, and out-group (them), regarding to
the SB8 law.
Example (3b) is a comment of Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional
Accountability Center, which is a non-profit organization advancing progressive interpre-
tation of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore it is unsurprising that Wydra openly disapproves
the constitutionality of the SB8 law. Similarly to the previous example Wydra specifically
characterizes the SB8 law as “blatantly unconstitutional”, which results in a significantly
more negative description of the law. Furthermore, Wydra indicates that the SB8 law is an
“attack on equality”, which once again portrays the SB8 law as a harmful measure that
results in a direct discrimination against women and their constitutional rights.
Last example (3c) is a statement of Jerrold Nadler, a chairman of the House Judici-
ary Committee, which has jurisdiction over all proceedings regarding the amendments of
the U.S. Constitution. Unlike the previous two examples that focus primarily on the fact
that the SB8 law restricts women from exercising their constitutional rights, Nadler rather
focuses in his comment on the other controversial and unconstitutional aspect of the SB8
law, the empowerment of the private citizens to sue people for performing illegal abor-
tions. Furthermore, by including the inclusive pronoun “we” at the beginning of his com-
ment Nadler indicates that he speaks on the behalf of the entire House Judiciary Commit-
tee and as a result of that he establishes the in-group (us) that opposes the out-group
(them), which in this case are Greg Abbott and the supporters of the SB8 law. Similarly to
54
ANALYSIS
the previous example, Nadler also chooses to characterize the SB8 law as “blatantly un-
constitutional”, in order to denounce its legitimacy.
To summarize, the opponents of the SB8 law who express their denunciation of it
do not consists of only private individuals, but also statutory authorities. However, in both
of these cases the speakers use evaluative language when referring to the SB8 law in order
to emphasize the negative characteristics of it. In fact, all of the presented examples strictly
focus on negative-other representation and neither of them addresses any positive charac-
teristics of themselves, despite the fact that the “us” and “them” division is clearly observ-
able in the statements. The fact that the opponents of the law do not feel the need to posi-
tively describe their own characteristics while simultaneously stressing the negative char-
acteristics of the SB8 suggests that they deem their viewpoints as unquestionably morally
superior.
7.3 Object of pregnancy
There are various ways in which the object of pregnancy might be presented, such
as: fetus, embryo, cells and unborn child or baby. Despite the fact that all of these terms
refer to the same object and they are also interchangeable in certain contexts, it is im-
portant to realize that each term in fact invokes a completely different mental framework
in people’s minds and it provides the audience with various different information, as it has
been already mentioned in the theoretical part of the thesis. On the one hand, fetus and
embryo are both medical terms that are generally used to refer to the developing object of
pregnancy at its earliest stages and these terms do not particularly evoke any sense of per-
sonhood. On the other hand, the term unborn baby or child is usually specifically used in
55
ANALYSIS
order to evoke the feeling that the object of pregnancy is a living human being, despite the
fact that it is not fully developed yet. In the articles related to the Texas Heartbeat Act all
of these terms can be found.
7.3.1 Unborn
First of all, Table 4 illustrates the most frequent collocations of the term unborn in
the articles:
Table 4. Typical collocates of unborn
Word Cooccurrences Candidates T-score MI LogDice

Protecting 13 30 3.60 11.02 12.36
Children 12 53 3.46 10.09 11.88
Child 13 64 3.60 9.93 11.85
Innocent 6 11 2.45 11.36 11.63
Life 9 127 2.99 8.41 10.69
Babies 4 32 2.00 9.23 10.62
The most striking finding revealed in Table 4 above is the fact that the term unborn most
frequently collocates with protecting. This indicates that one of the primary goals of the
supporters of the SB8 law is to portray the object of pregnancy as the discriminated minor-
ity that is in need of protection, which the SB8 law provides for them. Generally, the vast
majority of collocates, specifically children, child, babies and life. simply ascribe human
characteristics to the object of pregnancy, which the speakers presumably use in order to
evoke moral response in the audience. The last remaining collocate innocent is different
from the rest, since it is an evaluative adjective which has a strong positive connotation, as
it depicts the object of pregnancy as free of all guilt that essentially does not have a
knowledge of wrong. The following examples illustrate the way in which the term unborn
56
ANALYSIS
is used in the articles, and they will be commented on and analyzed.
4)
a) "The only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is the fact that we have
people, right here in Texas, who are fighting to end the lives of innocent
unborn children."
b) "The American people are eager to humanize our extreme, outdated abor-
tion laws. This law reflects the scientific reality that unborn children are
human beings, with beating hearts by six weeks."
c) We're talking abortion here, and since there is nothing in the Constitution
about abortion, and certainly no RIGHT to terminate the lives of unborn
children, the Left has for a half-century substituted stridency for jurispru-
dence.
d) "The Texas legislature, acting on the will of the people, debated and passed
this law with the very simple goal of protecting unborn children with beat-
ing hearts from death in the womb.
The speaker in example (4a) is Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas,
who publicly expresses his support of the law in his comment. Dickson deliberately de-
scribes the unborn children as “innocent”, which once again indicates his intention to por-
tray them as the defenceless victims of the contemporary controversy. However, rather
than specifically depicting the positive characteristics of the law Dickson focuses on criti-
cizing the opponents of the law by indirectly altering their main goal. Dickson essentially
states that the main goal of everyone who is opposing the law is to only have the possibil-
ity of ending the lives of the innocent unborn babies. By doing so, Dickson simultaneously
57
ANALYSIS
portrays the opponents of the law as the bad guys who are mercilessly murdering unborn
babies and the supporters of the law as the good guys who are attempting to put an end to
this tyranny. Nevertheless, this is evidently not the case, since there are various reasons
why people in Texas are opposing the law and it is reasonable to assume that the one de-
picted by Dickson is not one of them. Furthermore, there are various underlying reasons
why pregnant women would choose to have an abortion, such as being victim of rape or
incest, which Dickson entirely excludes from his statement, because the inclusion of such
information would be contrary to his personal set of beliefs and it would also not result in
such a negative portrayal.
The example (4b-c) presents comments of Marjorie Dannenfelser, who is the Presi-
dent of the Susan B. Anthony List. In example (4b) Dannenfelster defines the contempo-
rary abortion laws in the USA as “extreme and outdated”, which indicates that she is op-
posed to them. Furthermore, Dannenfelser insists that “unborn children are human beings,
with beating hearts by six weeks” and she declares that this statement is supported by sci-
entific reality in order to enhance credibility of her claim. In example (4b) Dannenfelser
states a very similar claim, however, in this case she does not indicate that it is supported
by a scientific reality, which makes the claim significantly less plausible. Nevertheless, as
the ensuing examples will showcase, this claim is in fact not supported by science and as a
result of that Dannenfelser actually diminished the overall credibility of her statement,
since her statements are thus not scientific facts but rather her own beliefs that she imposes
on to the general public. Moreover, in example (4c) Dannenfelser emphasizes that the
Texas legislature was “acting on the will of the people” in order to indicate that the politi-
cians supporting the law are not only listening to the public opinion but also that they are
58
ANALYSIS
fulfilling the wishes of people living in Texas. In other words, by including this phrase in
her statement Dannenfelser successfully accentuates the positive qualities of the politicians
supporting the law.
Contrary to the previous examples, which were comments of individuals who are
directly associated with the law expressing their support of the law and the pro-life ideolo-
gy in general, the last example (4d) presents a statement made by Andrew C. McCarthy,
who is the editor of the article. In general, the news writers themselves do not express their
personal believes or opinions in order to maintain the objectivity of the report. However,
there is a type of articles that are an exception to this rule referred to as opinion pieces,
which as the title suggests primarily reflects the opinion of the author about certain sub-
jects, which is precisely the case in this example. In his comment McCarthy does not nec-
essarily attempts to portray the unborn babies in an emotive manner in order to appeal to
the affectionate side of the readers as all the previous examples did. However, McCarthy
discloses his support of the law and the pro-life ideology by openly criticizing the left-
wing politics and its system of law.
7.3.2 Cells
First of all, it is important to state that the designation of cells, when used in context of
abortion debate, is the total opposite of for example child or baby, since it ultimately de-
ducts the status of personhood from the object of pregnancy. Therefore it is reasonable to
assume that this term would be used primarily by either the pro-choice activists or by med-
ical professionals. The following examples illustrate the way in which the designation cells
is used in the articles:
59
ANALYSIS
5)
a) The College Fix's associate editor Matt Lamb highlighted a few of
the instances in which the media have quoted medical professionals
to suggest the six-week heartbeat mark is misleading. "What we're
really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some elec-
trical activity,"
b) But there is no heart at this stage of development, only electrical ac-
tivity in developing cells. The heart is not fully formed until later in
pregnancy.
While the first example (5a) introduces a comment of Professor Jennifer Kerns of the Uni-
versity of California San Francisco, the example (5b) once again presents the personal as-
sumption of the author of the article rather than some medical expert. In both of these ex-
amples the speakers explain the rather inaccurate and predominantly ideological assump-
tion that the pro-life activists frequently use in their commentary, that the object of preg-
nancy is essentially fully developed and living human being at the six-week mark of preg-
nancy, since it is possible to detect its heartbeat. The reason why the speakers use the
phrases “grouping of cells” and “developing cells” to describe the object of pregnancy
around the sixth week of pregnancy is to indicate, that it is according to modern science in
fact not yet as fully developed as the pro-life activist claim it to be. Furthermore, both of
the speakers describe the supposedly detectable heartbeat, which again pro-life activists
use as a fundamental signal of life, as “electrical activity”. By doing so, the speakers es-
sentially disproves one of the arguably most essential reasoning utilized by pro-life activ-
ists and because of her status of university professor her claim is fairly credible. Further-
60
ANALYSIS
more the author in example (5b) specifically justifies their presented argument by accentu-
ating that the heart of the object of pregnancy is not even completely shaped during that
point of pregnancy, which therefore indicates that it is in fact not only imprecise, but also
impossible to refer to the detectable phenomenon as heartbeat.
7.3.3 Embryo
Similarly to the designation cells, the term embryo is also used primarily by either
the opponents of the SB8 law or by medical professionals, as it regards the object of preg-
nancy at the earliest stages of its development and as a result of that it does not particularly
evoke any sense of personhood. The examples below contain the term embryo.
6)
a) But Abbott's anti-abortion and Covid rules taken together paint a stark por-
trait of what it now means to be "pro-life": Willing to go to great lengths to
preserve the life of a 6-week-old embryo, but refusing to take basic steps to
protect the well-being of women and girls, or the lives of Texans after
they're born.
b) Supporters of the law say their goal is to save the life of every embryo, re-
gardless of the circumstances of conception.
c) Really. No more abortions after six weeks. The lawmakers’ theory is that
that’s when a fetal heartbeat begins — something that perplexed many in
the medical community, where people seem to believe a six-week-old em-
bryo is a tiny speck that doesn’t yet have a real heart. In fact, it isn’t even a
fetus until week 9.
61
ANALYSIS
The example (6a) introduces an opinion of Jill Filipovic, an American author, lawyer and
journalist. In her comment Filipovic openly denounces both the Texas Governor Greg Ab-
bott and the pro-life movement in general by emphasizing specifically the ill-conceived
Covid-19 rules, because of which many people lost their lives, and comparing it to the con-
temporary abortion law controversy. Furthermore, Filipovic essentially implies that the
main goal of pro-life movement to protect all life is in fact rather hypocritical than accu-
rate. He achieves this by depicting the contrast between the extent to which Abbott is will-
ing to go in order to safeguard the potential life of a 6-week-old embryo and his lack of
interest in providing the same effort to protect of the welfare of the women, girls and gen-
eral population of Texas. The fact that Filipovic specifically mentions the 6-week-old em-
bryo phrase indicates that at such an early stage of pregnancy she does not recognize it as
fully developed human being, and as a result of it she essentially deprives it of any human
characteristics.
The second example (6b) is a statement of Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times
health writer. Unlike Filipovic, Rabin does not necessarily openly indicate her personal
stance towards the controversy in her comment. To put it differently, Rabin attempts to
provide a more objective report of the situation, since she does not portray either side of
the argument in negative nor positive light. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that
Rabin is on the side of pro-choice movement, since she not only specifically describes the
object of pregnancy as embryo, which suggests that she does not consider it to be a living
human being, but also she depicts the “supporters of the law” in third person, which indi-
cates that she personally does not rank among them. Furthermore, by stating that the main
62
ANALYSIS
goal of the supporters of SB8 law is to save life of every embryo rather than every life in
general Rabin supports the aforementioned hypocrisy of the pro-life ideology.
The last example (6c) introduces a comment of Gail Collins, a New York Times
Op-Ed columnist, who openly criticizes not only the proposers of the SB8 law, but also the
pro-life ideology in general. Collins essentially suggests and argues that the heartbeat that
is possible to detect around six weeks of pregnancy, which the supporters of the SB8 law
use as an indication of life, is in fact inaccurate and she legitimizes her claim by providing
scientifically supported explanation. Furthermore, Collins uses various terms to describe
the object of pregnancy in her statement, such as: embryo, fetus and tiny-speck, all of
which completely negate its personhood. To put it differently, by refuting the justification
that the pro-life activists use in order to legitimize their argument that the object of preg-
nancy is alive at six weeks of pregnancy, Collins achieves the negative other representa-
tion.
7.4 The usage of emotive rhetoric
As it was stated and established in the previous section, media in general tend to refrain
from using emotive rhetoric in order to provide as objective report as possible. However,
this custom does not necessarily apply to the individual speakers whose opinions are in-
cluded in the text. Therefore, the speakers often deliberately employ in their speech emo-
tive rhetoric in order to influence the opinion of the audience. The speakers generally not
only communicate and justify their personal ideological assumptions by portraying them in
a positive way, but they also simultaneously criticize and undermine the opposing ideology
by accentuating its negative characteristics and overall portraying it in a negative light.
63
ANALYSIS
Since one of the main dividing aspects of the contemporary abortion debate among the
members of each ideological movement is whether the rights and lives of the objects of
pregnancy should be recognized and essentially prioritized over the already existing rights
and lives of women, the speakers often utilize emotive terms such as protect, save or at-
tack in their speech, since all of these terms precisely comply with one of the main inten-
tions of the speaker mentioned earlier. The following table portrays the frequency of each
term in the corpus.
Table 5. Frequency of emotive terms
Lemma Frequency
Protect 211
Attack 54
Save 49
The table presents that the term protect is unequivocally the most frequently uti-
lized term out of the three, while the remaining two terms attack and save occur almost
equally as often. Presumably the reason why this is the case, is because the term protect
could potentially be utilized by both supporters of the law and its opponents, while the
term save would in majority of cases be used by the supporters of the law to indicate their
goal to save the unborn children and the term attack would be primarily used by the oppo-
nents of the law to indicate the ruthlessness of the SB8 law. In cases of protect and save it
is most important to focus specifically on the object following the term, since it most accu-
rately indicates the ideological viewpoint of the speaker. Therefore, the following table
showcases the most frequent objects following the term protect.
64
ANALYSIS
Table 6. Frequent objects following the term protect
Object of “protect” Frequency

Right 59
Lives 13
Women 12
Unborn 9
Baby 4
The table indicates that in the articles, the objects following the term protect vary
rather considerably. The most frequent objects indicating certain ideological viewpoint
following the term are: right, unborn, life, woman and baby. The reason why this is intri-
guing is because the verb protect implies that the object following it is essentially in dan-
ger and it is unable to defend itself on its own, and as a result of that it needs to be safe-
guarded. This is precisely the case in the SB8 controversy, because on the one hand, the
supporters of the law are generally of the opinion that the law is supposed to protect not
only the rights of the unborn babies, but also their potential lives, while on the other hand,
the opponents of the law consider it a threat to the women’s right to make their own choic-
es about their own bodies. To put it differently, the object following the term protect is
presumably dependent on the ideology of the speaker. This is also correspondent with
Wodak’s and Reisil’s rhetorical strategies introduced in the previous chapter, since by por-
traying certain entity as the protector of the weak strongly emphasizes the good things of
the entity and it also simultaneously emphasizes the bad things of the entity that is threat-
ening the vulnerable ones.
65
ANALYSIS
7.4.1 Protecting rights

In order to examine the various ways in which the verb protect is used the concord-
ances of all the five objects are going to be analyzed. The following examples illustrate the
object right:
7)
a) "It is time for Texas to protect the natural right to life for the tiniest and
most innocent Texans, and this bill does just that," Slaton said in a state-
ment Tuesday.
b) "We will continue to protect constitutional rights against all who would
seek to undermine them."
c) "Today, because the court once again failed to protect our most basic hu-
man rights, more people will continue to suffer as this case winds its way
through the legal system,"
First of all, it is important to emphasize that only 4 out of the 59 concordance lines of the
verb protect following with the object right mention the rights of the unborn babies, while
the rest focuses either on women’s constitutional rights or basic human rights. Further-
more, the reason why all of the provided examples are someone’s quotations is to be able
to determine the potential speaker’s intentions.
The first example (7a) is one of the few exceptions that focus specifically on the
rights of the unborn babies. The author of the quote is Texas State Representative Bryan
Slaton, who is a Christian Conservative and also a member of Republican Party. The fact
that Slaton is not only religious but also member of the Republican Party per se explains
why he would support pro-life ideology rather than pro-choice. In his statement Slaton
66
ANALYSIS
declares that the state Texas itself, which in fact most probably means the government of
Texas and its legislatures, is the entity that should protect the rights of the unborn babies.
This suggests that according to Slaton the federal government of the United States, whose
power is vested in the U.S. constitution, fails to recognize and protect the rights unborn
babies and because of that he believes that the individual states should be able to regulate
their own laws regarding this issue. Furthermore, Slaton attempts to appeal to the general
public’s emotional side by specifically adding the phrase “tiniest and most innocent Tex-
ans” to his description of the unborn babies. However, by introducing the unborn babies as
particularly Texans instead of generally Americans implies that Slaton and the bill are in
fact only interested in protecting the rights to live of only Texas unborn babies rather than
all of the babies across the entire USA.
The second example (7b) on the contrary addresses that it is essential to protect the
constitutional rights of women rather than the unborn babies. The author of this quote is
attorney general Merrick Garland, who is not only the chief lawyer of the federal govern-
ment of the USA, but he also serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United
States on all legal terms. His position explains why Garland is in opposition to the SB8
bill, since the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in the legal case of Roe v. Wade in 1973
that the Constitution protects the pregnant women’s liberty to choose whether she wants to
undergo abortion or not and the government should not be able to restrain them in their
decision. However, the SB8 bill directly challenges this decision, which means that the law
is essentially unconstitutional, and thus the U.S. Supreme Court, who has the ability to
invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution, is the only potential legal
adversary to the law. It is reasonable to assume that the pronoun we used by Garland in his
67
ANALYSIS
statement is presumably supposed to refer to not only him personally, but also to the agen-
cy of Department of Justice itself. Furthermore, the fact that Garland speaks about consti-
tutional rights in general, rather than specifically mentioning the constitutional rights of
women suggests that the Department of Justice protects everyone equally. By protecting
the constitutional laws against all who would seek to undermine them portrays not only the
Texas law and its supporters as direct adversaries of the U.S Constitution.
The last example (7c) is a comment by Dr. Bhavik Kumar, an abortion provider in
San Antonio, who similarly to the previous example focuses on the basic human rights
rather than the unborn babies, which is reasonable considering his profession. Since Ku-
mar uses the phrase “our most basic human rights” instead of mentioning specifically
women’s rights, it indicates that the SB8 law essentially violates rights of everyone living
in Texas. Furthermore, Kumar achieves the depiction of Texas inhabitants as victims by
stating that the “people will continue to suffer”, which results in the portrayal of the SB8
law as an aggressor who constrains essentially all people living in Texas. Especially im-
portant word that Kumar uses is “suffer”, since it is not only an emotive and hyperbolic
verb, but it also has a strong negative connotation.
7.4.2 Protecting lives

The second most frequent subject following the term protect is life, which is in vast
majority of cases primarily related to the lives of unborn babies rather than women’s, as
the following examples demonstrate:
68
ANALYSIS
8)
a) Republican state Rep. Shelby Slawson introduced the bill in the House to
applause and whoops, saying it would "protect the lives of our most pre-
cious Texans, starting at the moment their heart begins to beat."
b) "This is a law designed not to 'protect life' (a farce, given that protecting
innocent life has taken a back seat when covid-19 restrictions were at issue),
but rather to create fear and uncertainty for women and health-care provid-
ers," Rubin wrote.
Example (8a) introduces a comment of Republican state Representative Shelby Slawson,
who filed a companion bill HB 1515 that authorizes the private civil right of action and as
a result of that it, the law is shielded from judicial review. The fact that Shelby is a mem-
ber of the Republican Party clarifies her viewpoint of the controversy and similarly to the
statement of Bryan Slaton in previous example, Slawson also decides to refer to the unborn
babies in an emotional manner by introducing them as “our most precious Texans”. Fur-
thermore, Slawson communicates her personal ideological assumptions in her speech,
since she asserts that the life of the object of pregnancy begins once its heart begins to
beat. As it was established in the theoretical part of the thesis, this is one of the most com-
mon and core presumption of the pro-life activists, however, it is in fact not supported by
the scientific professionals and thus it is important to realize that this is not necessarily
factual information.
Contrary to this, the example (8b) portrays a comment of Jennifer Rubin, who is an
opinion columnist covering American politics for Fox News. In her speech, Rubin criti-
cizes the SB8 law by stating that it is not specifically designated to protect life, as its sup-
69
ANALYSIS
porters claim. The way in which she supports her claim is by making a comparison be-
tween the contemporary controversy and the Covid-19 pandemic, during which people’s
lives were not protected and cared for, since many innocent lives were lost as a result of it.
Rubin describes the negative characteristics of the law by stating that its main goal is to
“create fear and uncertainty for women and health-care providers”. Since Rubin also spe-
cifically includes health-care providers in her comment she emphasizes that women are not
the only victims that are directly affected by the SB8 law, despite the fact that it is general-
ly perceived this way.
7.4.3 Protecting woman

The third most frequent object following the term protect is women, which is prob-
ably in a vast majority of cases used by the opponents of the law to indicate that the rights
and lives of women are superior to the unborn babies. By suggesting that women are in
need of protection from the SB8 law the speakers essentially indicate that the SB8 law is
inherently wrong and unreasonable. Furthermore, by doing so the speakers are also able to
portray women as vulnerable victims of the repressive pro-life society. The following ex-
amples demonstrate how it is used in the articles:
9)
a) Marjorie Dannenfelser: Left's outcry over Texas abortion ban has little to do
with science, protecting women. Rooted at the very core of Texas's Heart-
beat Act is the concept of basic humanity, informed by science.
70
ANALYSIS
b) “Let's do everything we can to hold people accountable who do something
like that, to protect women from that," adding, "Let's harshly punish the
rapist, but we don't, we don't punish the unborn child.”
c) "For the second time, the court declines to act immediately to protect these
women from grave and irreparable harm."
The first example (9a) is in fact a headline of an article published in Fox News, and it is
the only instance in which the speaker is a supporter of the SB8 law. The author of the
article Marjorie Dannenfelser, who is the President of the Susan B. Anthony List, which is
a non-profit organization that fights for laws that would ultimately end abortion in the
USA. On the one hand, Dannenfelser criticizes and undermines the opponents of the law
by commenting that their main goal is apparently neither protecting women nor is their
ideology supported by science. From this comment follows that that according to Dannen-
felser, the pro-choice Left has indoctrinated the opponents of the law with its ideology ever
since the Roe v. Wade ruling and as a result of that they are unable to accept the anti-
abortion ideology. On the other hand, Dannenfelser commends the Texas's Heartbeat Act
by stressing that it is founded on “the concept of basic humanity, informed by science.”
Due to this contrast that she established in her comment, Dannenfelser successfully de-
nounces the opponents of the law while she simultaneously praises the law.
The second example (9b) introduces comment of Bryan Hughes, who is a Texas
state senator supporting the SB8 law. In his speech Hughes clarifies the lack of exception
for victims of rape or incest in the SB8 law, and while he is evidently supporter of the law,
he declares that he would do everything he can in order to hold the assailants accountable
and consequently to protect women from rape or incest. This undoubtedly emphasizes his
71
ANALYSIS
sympathy for women and the suffering they experience due to the rape or incest. However,
at the same time Hughes remarks that the unborn children should not be punished for the
crimes of their father, regardless of the consequences during which they were conceived.
As a result of this, Hughes essentially contradicts himself, since despite the fact that he is
supposedly determined to protect women in any way possible, he is not willing to priori-
tize their lives and well-being at the expense of the unborn babies, which is a rather com-
mon stance among the pro-life activists.
The last example (9c) is in fact the only presented comment from an actual oppo-
nent of the law, namely Sonia Sotomayor, who was introduced earlier in the practical part
of the thesis. In her statement, Sotomayor criticizes the Supreme Court for not fulfilling its
obligations to invalidate the laws threatening the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, So-
tomayor describes the repercussions of the changes that SB8 law implemented by using
expressions with strong negative connotations, specifically “grave and irreparable harm”,
in order to depict the law in as negative light as possible.
7.4.4 Protecting unborn

The fourth most frequent object following the term protect is unborn, which is pre-
sumably in a majority of cases used by the supporters of the law in order to indicate that
the unborn are obliged to be protected. The following examples illustrate the way in which
it is used in the articles:
72
ANALYSIS
10)
a) "Unfortunately, President Biden and his Administration are more interested
in changing the national narrative from their disastrous Afghanistan evacua-
tion and reckless open border policies instead of protecting the innocent
unborn," Eze said in a statement.
b) Paxton on abortion law criticism: 'All Texas is trying to do is protect the
unborn'
Example (10a) introduces a comment of Renae Eze, press secretary for Texas Gov. Greg
Abbott in which she criticizes President Biden and his Administration for their actions and
priorities. The fact that Eze emphasizes President Biden’s supposed lack of interest about
the unborn she essentially portrays him as unsympathetic and inhumane. Furthermore, by
mentioning the “disastrous Afghanistan evacuation” which is a rather controversial issue
for President Biden is criticized, Eze attempts to undermine his competence as a President.
As a pro-life activist, Eze also uses the emotionally loaded term “innocent” when she talks
about the unborn, since it portrays them as vulnerable and defenceless and by doing so she
attempts to evoke sympathy for them among the audience. However, since Eze uses gen-
eral term “unborn” and she does not specify the noun modifying it, such as; children or
babies, the statement does not ascribe such a strong sensation of personhood as it potential-
ly could. Nonetheless, Eze primarily focuses on depicting the negative attributes of Presi-
dent Biden rather than justifying and advocating the SB8 law, which is generally more
common among the pro-life activists.
Example (10b) is in fact fairly similar, since Ken Paxton, who is the Texas attorney
general, also primarily focuses on criticizing President Biden for his actions. However,
73
ANALYSIS
Paxton specifically uses the term “un-American” in his description of the President, since
it is the exact same term that Biden used in his depiction of the SB8 law, which has been
analyzed and commented in the earlier section of the thesis. It is undeniably a significantly
more negative and harsh expression, especially when it is used for characterization of the
President. As a result of it, Paxton essentially denounces the competency of Biden and his
Administration for their actions and stance. Similarly to Eze’s comment, Paxton also spe-
cifically focuses on the issue of border policy and the Afghanistan evacuation to empha-
size Biden’s negative attributes. However, Paxton further provides an explanation and jus-
tification of the main intention of the SB8 law, by stating that it is meant to “protect the
unborn”. As a result of thaht, Paxton accomplishes presenting adverse characteristics of
the opponents of SB8 law while simultaneously defining the positive intentions of the SB8
law and its supporters.
7.4.5 Protecting babies

The fifth most frequent object following the term protect is babies, which is pre-
sumably in a majority of cases used by the supporters of the law in a similar way as in the
previous examples, however the term baby has a significantly stronger connotation in
comparison with the term unborn. The following examples illustrate the way in which it is
used in the articles:
11)
a) “March for Life celebrates the Supreme Court's decision to allow -
for now – the state of Texas to protect babies who have a detectable
heartbeat.”
74
ANALYSIS
b) “The Supreme Court's ruling allows Texas to protect unborn babies
with beating hearts while litigation continues"
The example (11a) introduces a comment of Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for
Life Education and Defense Fund, which is a pro-life organization dedicated to promoting
the dignity of every human life and the example (11b) presents a statement of Marjorie
Dannenfelser, who has been introduced earlier. Unlike the previous examples, neither of
the speakers do not present any negative attributes of the opponents of the law nor do they
mention any positive characteristics of the supporters of the SB8 law. Both of the speakers
rather express their appreciation of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the SB law that
approves it to remain in effect. However, both of the speakers do in fact express an ideo-
logically based assumption in their speech by emphasizing the fact that the object of preg-
nancy has a detectable heartbeat. First of all, the term baby is generally used for already
newly born infants, which is not whom the SB8 law is supposedly meant to protect, and
Mancini presumably uses this term to ascribe personhood to the object of pregnancy. Sec-
ond, the speakers use “detectable heartbeat” in order to further indicate the personhood of
the object of pregnancy, which is in fact not supported by the medical science, as it was
mentioned in the preceding examples. Furthermore, the speakers also specifically portray
the state of Texas as the fundamental protector of the unborn babies, which results in its
positive portrayal.
7.5 Verb save
Another verb that functions in a similar manner as the previously mentioned verb
protect is save, since both of these verbs clearly emphasize the process of safeguarding
75
ANALYSIS
someone or something from a potential threat. It is possible for both sides of the argument
to use this verb in order to portray themselves in a positive way while at the same time
depicting the other side of the argument in a negative way. Altogether there are 48 occur-
rences of the verb save within the corpus and expectedly in the vast majority of cases it is
used by the advocates of the SB8 bill in order to accentuate and justify their intentions of
saving the lives of the unborn babies. However, the way in which the individual speakers
choose to use the verb save differs and thus in the following section some examples of the
verb save will be introduced and analyzed.
12)
a) "Meanwhile, every day the Texas Heartbeat Act is in effect is a victory be-
cause the law saves an estimated 75-100 babies from abortion per day,"
b) They work together on a bipartisan basis to pass a bill that I'm about to sign
that insures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be
saved by the ravages of abortion."
c) Pregnant women have to risk their lives to travel out of state to manage ec-
topic pregnancies; the law's narrow medical emergency exception scares
physicians away from providing necessary care. Blocking SB8, or striking it
down, would save Texas women from this nightmare.
Example (12a) presents a comment of Kimberlyn Schwartz, who is a spokeswoman for the
anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, in which she openly expresses her support and
appreciation of the Texas Heartbeat Act. In order to emphasize the positive things about
the law itself, Schwartz purposefully mentions an estimated amount of babies that are pro-
tected from abortion on daily basis. However, this statement simultaneously suggests that
76
ANALYSIS
exactly the same amount of woman is deprived of their constitutional rights on daily basis
as a result of the law. By not mentioning this undeniable information Schwartz successful-
ly de-emphasizes ours bad things. This indicates that the main goal of anti-abortion activ-
ists is indeed to strictly prioritize the safety of the unborn babies rather than saving all
lives, including the baby’s mother.
Example (12b) introduces comment by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in which he
suggests the bill is supposed to serve as the protector of the unborn babies. As it has been
already established, the supporters of the SB8 bill consistently refer to the object of preg-
nancy as unborn babies or children and they often add some emotive expression. In Ab-
bott’s statement he uses the term “heartbeat”, which in this case functions as a lexical
bridge that not only indicates but also attributes personhood to the object of pregnancy at
its earliest stages of development. Abbott also asserts that the abortion procedure is the
main opponent against which they are clashing in the same way as Schwartz did in the
previous example. However, Abbott also adds the descriptive noun “ravages”, which
evokes even significantly more negative connotation to abortion, as it implicitly indicates
that abortion causes great damage to the unborn babies.
On the contrary, the last example (12c) expresses opposition to the law and it also
focuses on women rather than on unborn babies. The author of this comment is Mary Zieg-
ler, who is a law professor at Florida State University College of Law. While the previous
two examples strictly focused on the saving the unborn babies from abortion, this com-
ment prioritizes the safety of women. Ziegler addresses various negative aspects of the
SB8 bill as well as repercussion that it inflicted on pregnant women and physicians. By
depicting the SB8 bill as the main causation of the current situation in Texas, which Zieg-
77
ANALYSIS
ler describes as “nightmare” for women from which they need to be saved, she indicates
that the law in fact harms women at the expense of the safety of unborn children. As a re-
sult of this, the negative effects of the SB8 bill that the previous two examples attempted to
conceal by focusing specifically on the positive outcomes of it have come to light.
7.6 Metaphor of an Attack
In the framing of an attack, there is always a side that is perceived as an assailant
and a side that is identified as a victim, depending on the point of view. In case of the con-
temporary situation in the USA the role of the assailant is primarily assigned to either the
SB8 bill itself or the politicians who support the law. However, the role of the victim that
is under an attack varies significantly from the constitutional rights and the procedure of
abortion to women themselves. While the assailants are generally presented in a negative
light by attributing expressive characterizations to them, the victims of the attack are fre-
quently portrayed in a positive light. The following examples illustrate the ways in which
the opponents of the law describe the asserted attack.
13)
a) "By attacking well-established constitutional rights through a scheme de-
signed to evade judicial review, S.B. 8 represents a challenge to the rule of
law, our system of constitutional government, and the Constitution's Su-
premacy Clause,"
b) "This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one
that all Americans -- whatever their politics or party -- should fear," Garland
78
ANALYSIS
said, warning that Texas' approach could become a model for other states as
well as other kinds of attack on other constitutional rights.
c) "Anti-choice politicians in Texas are launching their attacks on abortion
access from every angle imaginable,"
d) "What is happening in Texas is a deliberate attack by far-right politicians
who will do anything to quell Black, brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ com-
munities both in Texas and other Republican-controlled states across the
country,"
Examples (13a-b) both portray the SB8 bill as the aggressors who are attacking the Consti-
tution of the United States. The fact that both of the examples also describe the law as a
“scheme” suggests that the speakers perceive the law and the way in which it achieved its
goal of restricting abortion as devious and essentially illegal. Furthermore, the speaker in
example (13a) establishes a contrast of good and bad between the aggressor and the victim
by defining the constitutional rights as “well-established”, which indicates that they are
firmly accepted because of their long existence, and directly after it describing the SB8 as
a “scheme”. However, by stating that “our system of constitutional government, and the
Constitution's Supremacy Clause” are essentially at stake the speaker signals arguably the
most threatening aspect of the SB8 bill, which is the fact that it effectively destabilizes the
legal system of the USA. Garland’s statement from example (13b) reinforces this notion,
as it he directly appeals to all Americans and warns them to be wary of this law as well as
the potential successors that might follow.
Unlike the previous two examples, Adrienne Kimmell, who is NARAL Pro-Choice
America acting president, in example (13c), focuses on the conflict between the politicians
79
ANALYSIS
who support the law and the procedure of abortion. However, Kimmell in her comment
chooses to describe the politicians as “anti-choice” rather than pro-life, which indicates her
intention to portray the opposing party and its representatives in a negative light. Moreo-
ver, the fact that Kimmell uses the phrase “launch an attack”, which is generally used in
context of an actual military battle, even further evokes the feeling of an aggressive and
violent act.
The example (13d) introduces a completely distinctive point of view compared to
the previous examples. The speaker is Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United
We Dream, which is a non-profit organization offering immigrant advocacy, also depicts
the politicians as the aggressors, however, instead of the Constitution of the United States
or the abortion procedure itself Rosas describes the minority groups living in the USA as
the victims of the attack. First of all, Rosas’ portrayal of the politicians supporting the law
is arguably more extreme than the preceding example, since “far-right” politics connote a
substantially more negative connotation than “anti-abortion”. The reason why this is the
case is because “far right” was once a term used to represent Nazism and fascism, which
are both closely related to Adolf Hitler and his regime, and nowadays it is still used to de-
fine ideologies and organizations that exhibit forms of racist, xenophobic or homophobic
views, among many other extremes. These specific views were specified because Rosas in
her comment defines “Black, brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities” as the main
targets of the attacks, all of which are associated with the discriminations. The verb
“quell”, which means to thoroughly overwhelm and reduce to submission or passivity ac-
cording to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, further emphasizes the malicious intentions of
the politicians that Rosas attempts to evoke in her speech. By establishing the link between
80
ANALYSIS
the pro-life movement and Nazism, Rosas essentially indicates that the SB8 law and its
supporters constitute a significant step back for the American culture and society. Fur-
thermore, as a result of this suggestion Rosas also portrays the pro-life movement and SB8
law negatively and thus she buttresses the opposition towards them.
7.7 Metaphor of War
In the compiled articles the contemporary controversy in Texas is rather frequently
referred to as war. The presumable reason why this specific term is utilized is because it
signifies the urgency of the situation and it also simultaneously raises awareness of the
population about the potential instability that might come as a result of that. However, in
this case the term “war” does not allude to the violent military conflict between nations,
but it rather refers to the struggle between two opposing and confronting ideologies. Fur-
thermore, it is a rather extraordinary dispute, since members of each ideology perceived
themselves as human right activists who fight for equality and freedom. However, in rep-
resentation of war it is common to portray one side of the conflict as the aggressor and the
other side as a victim, which effectively influences the opinion of general public. The fol-
lowing examples demonstrate the usage of the term “war”:
14)
a) “I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace, when
there is a war on my body and a war on my rights," she concluded. “A war
on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on
the rights of your daughters.”
81
ANALYSIS
b) "The cruelty of the #GOP is endless,"… "This isn't about guns, speech,
money or war. It's about women, their lives, their bodies and their autono-
my,"
c) The Fugitive Slave Act, together with a racist Supreme Court that refused
to recognize the constitutional rights of enslaved people such as in Dred
Scott, so divided the nation that it led to a bloody civil war. Let's hope that
Texas and today's Supreme Court majority don't lead our nation to a similar
disaster.
The first example (14a) introduces a graduation speech of Paxton Smith, the valedictorian
at Dallas high school, in which she publicly denounces the SB8 law. The fact that Smith
uses the word war five times in two consecutive sentences indicates that, as it was been
mentioned earlier, Smith’s goal is presumably to only to apprise the audience of the con-
temporary controversy in Texas, but also to express her personal opinion about it. In the
first sentence, Smith uses the possessive pronoun “my” when she describes the situation as
“a war on my body and a war on my rights”, which results in her portrayal as a victim of
the SB8 law. However, in the second sentence Smith shifts her focus from herself to prac-
tically every other women living in Texas by using the possessive pronoun “your”, which
refers to the audience, when she mentions “your mothers…, your sisters and your sisters”.
As a result of that Smith evokes similitude between her and other women living in Texas
and she indicates that they are all martyrs of the changes that the SB8 law implemented.
The second example (14b) presents a statement of a Golden Globe winner Bette
Midler, in which she similarly to Smith expresses her opposition to the SB8 law. However,
unlike Smith, Midler openly criticizes the GOP, which is an abbreviation referring to the
82
ANALYSIS
Republic Party, by depicting them as cruel. Furthermore, Midler claims that at the core of
the controversy is the autonomy of women, their lives and their right to make decisions
about their own bodies. As a result of that the Midler portrays Republicans and the SB8
law itself as the cold-blooded aggressors and the women living in Texas as the vulnerable
victims.
Contrary to the previous examples, the last statement in (14c) introduces an opinion
of the article’s editor, who neither criticizes nor expresses support for the SB8 law, but it is
rather meant to caution and advise people of the possible consequences that might follow.
The author makes a comparison between the contemporary Texas Heartbeat Act and The
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. There are in fact various factors that these two acts have in
common, such as: the fact that both of them monetarily reward private individuals for de-
nunciation of people to the state’s officials. As a result of that, essentially a vigilante sys-
tem is established in which the rights and lives of certain minorities, specifically the Afri-
can Americans in case of The Fugitive Slave Act and women in case of the Texas Heart-
beat Act, are threatened and exploited by the dominant group. Furthermore, the author
emphasizes that both of these acts that violate human rights were not abolished by the Su-
preme Court, which has led to the division of the nation. However, the main forewarning
of this statement is that the Fugitive Slave Act is considered to be one of the most influen-
tial factors leading to the American Civil War and since the contemporary Texas Heartbeat
Act is fairly comparable with it, the author indicates the possible impact that might come.
Overall, when individuals refer to the current situation in Texas by using the term
“war”, they present the SB8 law and its supporters in a negative light while depicting
women as the oppressed victims, which creates and highlights the contrast between us and
83
ANALYSIS
them. Furthermore, the utilization of the war metaphor is used not only to portray the cur-
rent situation in Texas as pressing social issues, but also as potentially dangerous political
issue that might potentially threaten the entirety of the USA.
84
CONCLUSION
8 Conclusion
The main research objective of this thesis was to identify and analyze how mem-
bers of the two most prominent ideological movements concerning abortion in the USA,
namely pro-choice and pro-life, utilize different discursive strategies in their statements
regarding one of the most recent and most controversial heartbeat bills, the Texas Heart-
beat Act, in online articles published in mainstream USA news from the announcement of
the law on March 11, 2021 till December 2021. As it was introduced in the theoretical part
of the thesis, the two opposing ideological movements have been at war with each other
for more than 50 years, ever since the landmark ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973, in which
the Supreme Court resolved that women’s right to terminate pregnancy is protected by
U.S. Constitution. Since the Texas Heartbeat Act is effectively the first law that has suc-
cessfully managed to directly challenge Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement supporting
the law is essentially perceived as the initiator of the contemporary controversy. The anal-
ysis was performed by utilizing CDA in order to investigate the three discursive strategies
introduced by Wodak and Reisigl (2009), specifically nomination, predication and argu-
mentation, which not only indicate how members of both ideological movements achieve
positive-self representation and negative-other representation, but they also present the
ways in which the members of each ideological movement express their respective as-
sumptions regarding abortion.
Firstly, the nomination strategy focuses on how social actors, objects, phenomena
and events are referred to linguistically (Kader 2016, p. 29). The main social actor that is
discussed in the abortion debate by both sides of the argument is the object of pregnancy.
85
CONCLUSION
The reason why the ways in which people choose to articulate the object of pregnancy in
their statements is significant is because each term evokes a completely different cognitive
and affective meaning in the audience’s mind, and as a result of that it is possible to influ-
ence the audience’s stance towards the overall issue. Therefore, members of each ideologi-
cal movement choose from a set of terms to refer to the object of pregnancy that are tai-
lored to based on their personal perspective. On the one hand, it is observed that the mem-
bers of pro-choice movement use terms such as fetus, embryo, or cells. The reason why
they choose to use these specific designations is because they denounce human character-
istics from the object of pregnancy, and as a result of that they prevent the assignment of
emotional and moral attributes. On the other hand, it is recognized that the opposing pro-
life movement uses terms such as: child, baby, unborn or Texans to refer to the object of
pregnancy, since these terms evoke and accentuate particularly strong emotional feeling of
personhood. This finding is in accordance with what has been claimed by Brenda Danet
(1980) as the designations used to refer to the object of pregnancy are closely connected
with the individual’s ideological perspective.
Secondly, the predication strategy analyzes which characteristics and features
speakers attribute to the actors, objects, phenomena or events (Kader 2016, p. 29). On the
one hand, the strategy utilized by the pro-choice activists for describing the SB8 law nega-
tively is based primarily on the representation of the law as a threat not only to women and
their fundamental human rights, but also to the authority of the U.S. Constitution and the
Supreme Court, and as a result of that as a potential danger for the entire nation. Addition-
ally, they use metaphors such as an attack or war to depict the actions of the pro-life poli-
ticians and they describe the consequences for women as irreparable harm or nightmare,
86
CONCLUSION
which are all emotionally charged expressions used in order to further emphasize the nega-
tive characteristics of the opposition. On the other hand, the strategy used by the pro-life
activists is significantly different; since they primarily focus on attributing the object of
pregnancy with adjectives, such as: innocent or precious, and they also frequently empha-
size the detectable heartbeat in order to evoke an affective representation in the audience’s
mind. In other words, while the pro-choice attributes result in negative other representa-
tion, the pro-life attributes rather achieve positive-self representation.
Lastly, the argumentative strategy is a process used to justify claims of the speakers
and it is used to connect the premise of an argument to its conclusion (Kader 2016, p. 29).
The most prominent interpretation of the abortion controversy, which is contended by both
pro-life and pro-choice activists, is the conflict between the object’s of pregnancy right to
live, which is advocated by the pro-life activists, and women’s right to make decisions
about their own bodies, which is advocated by the pro-choice activists. On the one hand, it
is observed that the pro-life activists argue the main goal of the SB8 law is to protect the
potential lives of the unborn children. They justify this claim by providing either the num-
ber of lives that are saved as a result of the law, or the number of lives that are lost as a
result of the abortion procedure. Furthermore, the pro-life activists also argue that the ob-
ject of pregnancy is a living human being. This claim is justified by stating that during the
sixth week of pregnancy it is possible to detect the heartbeat of the object of pregnancy.
On the other hand, the pro-choice activists argue that the heartbeat that is detected during
this period of pregnancy is in fact only an electrical activity of a developing group of cells
in the womb. It is important to emphasize, that the claims of the pro-choice activists are
actually supported by modern medical professionals. Furthermore, the fact that some of the
87
CONCLUSION
key social actors, such as the president of the United States and the Supreme Court justic-
es, present the SB8 law as a threat to the American legal system indicates the overall dan-
ger of the contemporary situation in Texas. However, arguably the most noteworthy ob-
servation is that the members of the pro-choice ideological movement in their statements
focus primarily on the negative-other representation, but they do not directly emphasize
their own positive characteristics in order to portray themselves and their goal in positive
light. Contrary to this, the pro-life activists in fact usually provide a positive-self represen-
tation when they emphasize negative characteristics of the out-group in order to provide
justification of their actions.
88
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Summary in English
The presented thesis focuses on the way in which the members of the two most
prevalent ideological movements related to the abortion controversy achieve positive-self
representation and negative-other representation in American mainstream news media. The
thesis adapts a Critical Discourse Analysis approach in combination with Corpus Linguis-
tics. The main focus of the thesis is specifically three discursive strategies introduced by
Reisigl and Wodak (2009), namely the referential, predication and argumentation strate-
gies.
The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical parts. The first chapter of the
theoretical part introduces a succinct description of the previous research related to the
main topic of the thesis. The second chapter focuses on describing the CDA and ideology.
Third chapter presents not only the discursive strategies of each ideological movement, but
also a brief description of the historical background related to the contemporary controver-
sy. The last chapter of the theoretical part focuses on presenting the controversial aspects
of the Texas Heartbeat Law. The analysis of the selected concordance lines from the cor-
pus is presented in the practical part of the thesis. The analysis concludes that the pro-
choice activists mainly focus on emphasizing the negative characteristics of the SB8 law
by using significantly more expressive and evaluative expressions. As a result of that, the
SB8 law is primarily not only portrayed as a threat to women in Texas and their rights, but
also to the authority of the Supreme Court and U.S. Constitution.
94
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Summary in Czech
Prezentovaná diplomová práce se zaměřuje na způsob, jakým příslušníci dvou nej-
rozšířenějších ideologických hnutí souvisejících s polemikou o potratech dosahují pozitiv-
ní prezentace sebe sama a negativní presentace ostatních v amerických mainstreamových
zpravodajských médiích. Práce zpracovává přístup Kritické diskursivní analýzy v kombi-
naci s Korpusovou Lingvistikou. Hlavním zaměřením disertační práce jsou konkrétně tři
diskursivní strategie, které představili Reisigl a Wodak (2009), a to referenční, predikační
a argumentační strategie.
Práce je rozdělena na teoretickou a praktickou část. V první kapitole teoretické čás-
ti je představen stručný popis předchozího výzkumu souvisejícího s hlavním tématem této
diplomové práce. Druhá kapitola se zaměřuje na popis CDA a ideologie. Třetí kapitola
představuje nejen diskursivní strategie každého ideologického hnutí, ale také stručný popis
historického pozadí souvisejícího se současnou kontroverzí. Poslední kapitola teoretické
části se zaměřuje na představení kontroverzních aspektů texaského zákona o srdeční čin-
nosti. Analýza vybraných shodných linek z korpusu je prezentována v praktické části di-
plomové práce. Analýza dospívá k závěru, že aktivisté pro-choice hnutí se zaměřují přede-
vším na zdůrazňování negativních vlastností zákona o SB8 použitím výrazně expresivněj-
ších a hodnotících výrazů. V důsledku toho je zákon SB8 primárně vykreslován jako hroz-
ba pro ženy v Texasu a jejich práva, ale také pro autoritu Nejvyššího soudu a Ústavy Spo-
jených států amerických.
95

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FACULTY OF ARTS

BC. VÍT MĚŘIČKA

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.

Department of English and Literature

Author: Bc. Vít Měřička

Brno April 15, 2022 .......................................

Šablona DP 3.4.1-ARTS-dipl-program-english (2022-03-15) © 2014, 2016, 2018–2021 Masarykova univerzita 7

3 Critical Discourse Analysis 18

4 Abortion Ideology and Discourse 28

5 Texas Heartbeat Act 36

that it should be managed by legislations.

RQ2: What linguistic attributes characterize the confronting ideological perspec-

tives about abortion?

in the justification of their ideological set of beliefs?

as it is best suitable for analyzing particular section of texts at different levels.

Similarly to CDA, CL does not provide only a singular methodological approach

specifically introduces the discursive strategies utilized by the confronting ideological

positive-self representation and negative-other representation. The findings of the exami-

nation are specified in the Concluding section of the thesis.

rent research will be introduced and briefly described.

reflect their personal attitudes.

Michele Dillon (1993) studied the complexity of structure of arguments related to

polarization and vilification is in majority of cases achieved by using emotionally intense

women as harassed victims. Second, frame debunking is indicated to be established by

The study of Małgorzata Mikołajczak, M. Bilewicz (2014) examined to what extent

to the individuals support or opposition of abortion. Second, it is unveiled that individuals

of the unborn upon confronting them in public discourse.

justification of pro-life arguments in abortion debate is still significantly more complex in

to justify their own ideology.

3 Critical Discourse Analysis

as: linguistics, sociology, politics or psychology (Al Maghlouth, 2017, p. 20).

Bloor (2013) propose that the main objectives of CDA are:

to analyse discourse practices that reflect or construct social problems; to investi-

to increase awareness of how to apply these objectives to specific cases of injustice,

prejudice, and misuse of power (pp. 1-13).

investigation do not have to be related to negative or exceptionally ‘serious’ social or polit-

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is discourse analytical research that primarily

CDA may be characterized as a social movement of politically committed dis-

course analysts. (qtd. in Wodak 2013, 466)

Bloor (2013), propose that:

Central to CDA is the understanding that discourse is an integral aspect of power

of major concern to those who challenge the status quo (p. 4)

sults as he states that:

role in maintaining and legitimating inequality, injustice and oppression in society.

change on the basis of its findings (p. 294).

tion of Us vs. Them, namely: Referential/nomination; Predication; Argumentation; Per-

spectivisation and Intensification/Mitigation. It is important to emphasize that these discur-

introduces the three discursive strategies utilized in this study:

Table 1. Reisigl’s and Wodak’s Discursive Strategies

Strategy Objectives Devices

To put it more simply, referential/nomination strategy focuses on the speaker’s ef-

life activists would prefer pre-natal designations, such as child or baby.

main topic in question, which is the abortion debate in the USA.

by examining argumentation of both ideological movements it is expected to demonstrate

Even though ideology might seem to be a self-explanatory term, it is in fact a rather

pertaining to either individuals or groups. To put it differently, ideologies construct the

gies. Wodak and Meyer (2009) propose that:

appear disguised as conceptual metaphors and analogies, thus attracting linguists’

attention (p. 8).

Gramscian concept of hegemony” (p. xxvi). The concept of hegemony is fundamental to

combination of hegemony, discourse and ideology, it presupposes the presence of a domi-

quire them throughout their entire life.

emphasize Their good things. (p. 734)