Styles of Communication, Vol 6, No 1 (2014)

Abstract

This study compares the coverage of Serbia and Kosova[1] negotiations in the period from September 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 by The New York Times and Al Jazeera English, from the perspective of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The content analyses highlight the profile of the texts in these two outlets, their sources and topics, grammatical features such as word frequency, predication, attribution, classifier role and word relations. The Critical Discourse Analysis uses the concept of recontextualization of social practices developed by van Leeuwen (2008) and analyzes the media recontextualization of the social practice of Kosova and Serbia negotiations from the perspective of three key elements: participants with their roles and identities, the kind of actions they undertake, and the construction of the discursive legitimation for these actions.

This paper raises questions about the linguistic choices of The New York Times and Al Jazeera in presenting the Kosova-Serbia negotiations, questions about knowledge and values these media transmit, and in particular questions about their ideological effects. The findings of this study reveal dominant linguistic elements in journalistic narratives of these two global media, hence revealing the strategic interaction of these media with the audience. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis results correspond and show that The New York Times and Al Jazeera apply dissimilar recontextualizing practices, generating ideologies which influence the social and political reasoning by shaping the way the audience understands the everyday world.

[1] "Kosova" is the Albanian name and "Kosovo" is the Serbian name for the country, which institutionally calls itself the Republic of Kosova. The government of Serbia, which does not recognize the state, calls it Kosovo. The use "Kosovo" by international speakers does not necessarily imply that they believe that Kosova is Serbian. The deliberate choice in this paper is the Albanian form of the lexeme.