Palestinian and Israeli Voices in Five Years of U.S. Newspaper Discourse

Abstract

This article describes a comprehensive discourse analysis of U.S. newspaper coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over a five-year period, 2002 through 2006. Critical discourse analysis has been combined with corpus linguistics to produce integrated qualitative and quantitative analyses of six dimensions of the discourse: (1) direct quotes, (2) indirect quotes (3) terms denoting violence, (4) terms denoting negative emotions, (5) terms denoting conflict, and (6) positive discourse. These dimensions of discourse with respect to Israeli and Palestinian authorities and civilians led to a number of conclusions that, in general, the discourse is characterized by terms denoting violence, conflict, and negative emotion.