Deciphering Ideological Representations in Editorials of Two U.S. Quality Newspapers

Noh Bo-kyung^**, Ban Hyun^***

^**Seoul University of Foreign Studies, ^***Incheon National University

james1130@hanmail.net
jamesban@naver.com

Received 6. 18. 2014 Revised 8. 7. 2014 Accepted 8. 10. 2014

Abstract

The United States federal government entered a shutdown due to the ideological dispute between Democrats and Republicans from October 1 through 16, 2013. This paper attempts to elucidate ideological representations through a thorough analysis of editorials in two elite newspapers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In particular, we examined how an in-group and an out-group were formed, and how the formation was reinforced in terms of in-group homogeneity and out-group exclusion, by means of linguistic features such as naming choices, the so-called editorial we, and lexical selections, following van Dijk's (1998) ideological square. The results are as follows: (i) the Wall Street Journal emphasized “their” bad properties more aggressively than the New York Times, while the New York Times emphasized both “their” bad qualities and “our” good qualities in a more moderate way than the Wall Street Journal; (ii) the two strategies of emphasis and mitigation enabled both newspapers to reinforce in-group homogeneity and out-group exclusion: The Wall Street Journal openly framed Republicans as the in-group and Democrats as the out-group, whereas the New York Times posited Americans and Democrats as the in-group, in relation to Republicans. (191)

Key Words : ideological square, newspaper editorials, the 2013 government shutdown, naming choice, lexical selection

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Reference

Vol. 40 No. 4 (2022.12)

Journal Abbreviation j. Korea Saf. Manag. Sci.
Frequency Published four times annually in March, June, September, and December
Doi Prefix 10.14353/sjk.
Year of Launching 1993
Publisher The Sociolinguistic Society of Korea

Indexed/Tracked/Covered By