A Critical Analysis of Political-Economical Discourse: The Case of Iran’s Post-Nuclear Deal Economic Development

CDA is an approach to the analysis of language use that, based on the claims of van Dijk(1995), has a social and ideological approach to discourse. Critical discourse analysis gainssignificance particularly with the analysis of political texts considering their role inestablishing force, identity, and political ideology. This study took an initiative criticalperspective towards the rather under-research area of political and economical discourseanalysis. The issue of Iran’s economic changes after the nuclear deal attracted considerableattention from news media. This study intended to examine the news editorials from fourworld-known newspapers: Tehran Times, New York Times, China Daily and Moscow Times.Twenty editorial were selected from each newspaperand were subjected to content analysisthrough the application of Fairclough’s (2003) critical discourse analysis model. The obtainedfrequency data were analyzed through a series of Chi-square tests. The findings revealedsignificant differences among these newspapers showing a putative disparity betweenpolitical and real world framings of the economical changes identified in this research. Thepoints of departure and their significant implications are further discussed.