Double standards as pseudo-discourse manifestations: Normalizing the Palestine crisis in media coverage

Pseudo-discourse analysis represents one of the emerging approaches within critical discourse analysis that seeks to illuminate the distortions of language applied in the text to support dominant discourse propositions. The current study identifies two primary characteristics pseudo-discourse: 'the pretense of neutrality' and 'hyper-reality based manifestations'. However, the phenomenon of biased dualities in narration has not yet been explored in the existing literature of pseudo-discourse analysis. This study aims to introduce the third characteristic, termed 'double standard manifestation'. Analyzing the current conflicts of Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine, the current study uses a qualitative mixed method to underline the fundamental themes and contradictory propositions evident in double standard news coverage that constitutes generated pseudo discourse of western dominant discourse. The findings revealed three main themes including dehumanization, violence framing, and selective reporting which are employed by the western media to normalize, perpetuate an configure skewed public understandings that favor western dominant discourse. The propositional analysis of pseudo-discourse revealed violation of claimed propositional boundaries compared to those applied o particularly regarding ingroup inclusion or exclusion propositions. The results of the current study contribute to media-awareness initiatives aimed at fostering unbiased and equitable coverage of information, thereby enhancing public understanding.

کلیدواژه ها:

Pseudo-discourse analysis ، Propositional boundaries ، Double standards ، Biased reporting