Evaluative semantics and ideological positioning in journalistic discourse – a new framework for analysis

Introduction I take as my starting point for this paper the view that, contrary to any claims to ‘objectivity’ on the part of the media industry, news reporting is a mode of rhetoric in the broadest sense of the word – a value laden, ideologically determined discourse with a clear potential to influence the media audience’s assumptions and beliefs about the way the world is and the way it ought to be. This rhetorical and ultimately ideological potential has now been so widely demonstrated in the literature that it hardly needs to be argued for. (See, for example, Trew 1979, Hartley 1982, Fairclough 1988, Bird & Dardenne 1988, Herman & Chomsky 1988, Fisk 1989, Fowler 1991, Ericson & Baranek 1991, Parenti 1993, Eldridge 1993, Iedema, Feez &White 1994, Fairclough 1995, White 1997, White 2000).