This study questions the sincerity of Turkish media concerning its support for the struggle against
substance use and addiction within the framework of the concept “baron” and aims to reveal with
which lingual and discourse-related strategies the concept of “baron” is circulated. In this scope, news
about people who smuggle a massive amount of drugs, published between January-November 2006 on
the websites of the three top-seller newspapers, Hürriyet, Sözcü, and Sabah, are analyzed within the
framework of the critical discourse analysis developed by Teun A. Van Dijk. The results of the
analysis reveal that the news about people who smuggle drugs and who are named as “barons” by the
Turkish media are transferred to the reader with an encouraging and exaggerated use of language, that
drug trafficking is represented as a quite lucrative and adventurous profession which provides
opportunities to quickly promote or possess fame and fortune, that instead of focusing on personal,
social, and economic problems caused by drug trafficking, the problem is decontextualized by putting
the emphasis on individual success stories of barons, the magnitude of smuggling, how cunning the
smugglers are, how they could escape from prison or how they lived in their ordinary lives. While the
media uses the term “poison merchant” even for kids who are pushed to criminal activities concerning
narcotics/stimulants, the preference of the concept “baron” when it’s about people who engage in
massive amounts of drug trafficking reveals a necessity to question the media’s sincerity concerning
the struggle against substance use and addiction.
substance use substance addiction baron poison merchant discourse analysis
Birincil Dil | İngilizce |
---|---|
Bölüm | Makaleler |
Yazarlar | |
Yayımlanma Tarihi | 1 Ekim 2018 |
Gönderilme Tarihi | 7 Nisan 2018 |
Kabul Tarihi | 20 Temmuz 2018 |
Yayımlandığı Sayı | Yıl 2018 Cilt: 8 Sayı: 4 |
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