Discourse, Ideology, and Power: A Multi-modal Critical Discourse Analysis of Immigrants’ Portrayals in Press Media

Year 2025, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 51 - 72, 05.07.2025

Mohammed El Messaoudi

Abstract

This paper analyses a recent Arab Weekly Newspaper article (Issue 90: Page 21, published by Al Arab Publishing House, London, England) on Morocco's integration of undocumented sub-Saharan immigrants (Guerraoui, 2017). Using a multi-modal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework drawing on Van Dijk’s Social Cognitive Model, Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic Model, and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar Model, and Machin’s Representational Strategies in visual communications model. The paper attempts to investigate how Moroccan media discourse constructs narratives around undocumented Sub-Saharan immigrants using CDA. Distinctly, the purpose of this analysis is twofold: a) to examine the social context and background of the text and how they are related to the external social practices and structures in which the texts were produced, and b) to explore the linguistic features of the text and how they contribute to the overall meaning in order to better understand its overt and covert messages. This research utilizes a specific CDA methodology. The analysis applies a unique framework combining four distinct CDA approaches and their associated analytical tools to systematically uncover implicit ideologies discursively constructed in the news report. This paper underscores how CDA frameworks and tools can lay bare the political issues that contribute to the shaping of public opinion in media discourse. The study framework proposes a lens for inspecting the hidden ideologies and discerning how the lurking hegemony and power dynamics are embedded in the fabric of the media discourse.

Keywords

Critical Discourse Analysis , Representational Strategies , Transitivity , Passivisation , Nominalisation , Distance and Angle

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