Abstract:
Politics has proven itself to be a linguistic activity that utilizes
emotional appeals that mold people’s beliefs and thoughts. This study is an
exploration of the language of politics in two Lebanese newspapers - which are, As-
Safir and The Daily Star. Three different frameworks were chosen to carry out a
critical discourse analysis of the news reports. The frameworks used are that of
Michael Halliday, Teun van Dijk, and Norman Fairclough. Findings show that the
language of politics is never an impartial and objective one. It is structured in a way
that supports respective political beliefs and sustains respective ideologies; hence,
shaping the readers’ thoughts into believing that the “enemy” is hateful and
intolerable. Nonetheless, future research could develop instruments that aim at
analyzing the perceptions of the vast audiences to further objectify the act of critical
discourse analysis.
