The role of stylistic features in constructing representations of Muslims and France in English online news about terrorism in France

ABSTRACT

Part of a larger study on style and cultural representation in the online news of three European countries, this article examines a corpus of news articles from the online versions of The Guardian and The Telegraph about the terrorist attack that took place in Nice, France in July 2016. Specifically, modality, use of the term ‘jihad’, and treatment of ‘integration’ and of Muslims are analyzed, and instances of alliteration and metaphor observed, to determine how these elements contribute to shaping journalistic representation of the event, Muslims and French society more generally. Preliminary findings suggest that both English news sources sometimes use modality to give suppositions a patina of fact, but that The Telegraph uses ‘reportedly’ and ‘alleged(ly)’ more often. In addition, The Guardian journalists sometimes misuse the term ‘jihad’ and its derivatives, despite the clear indications about this term that are provided in the editorial guidelines, while this does not occur in The Telegraph articles. The news sources also address the topics of integration and Muslims in diverging ways, which in turn lead to distinct portrayals of French society. These differences may be tied to the political affiliations of the sources or to journalist identity, and merit further research.

KEYWORDS:

• Style
• online news
• Muslims
• cultural translation
• cultural representation
• terrorism

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Lucile Davier for fruitful early brainstorming sessions and advice, and to Federico Federici for his generous and careful guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ashley Riggs was affiliated for many years with the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Geneva and is currently a visiting research fellow at University College London (Centre for Translation Studies and Institute of Advanced Studies). Her main research interests include language and cultural representation in the news, contemporary fairytale studies and its intersections with feminism and gender studies, and translation criticism. She is currently working on a project examining journalistic style and cultural representation in press reporting on terrorist events and has also published on Angela Carter and Emma Donoghue and French translations of their fiction.

Notes

1 https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/congress-decisions-2006. Quoted in a report by the Muslim Council of Britain (Versi, 2016b).

2 Translations of content originally appearing in Spanish and French are my own.

3 https://theconversation.com/counter-terrorism-policies-play-an-important-role-in-shaping-a-national-identity-narrative-conversation-with-lee-jarvis88680?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton

4 https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/19/tracker-islam-and-british-values/

5 http://www.theredcard.org/news/2015/05/20/perception-vs-reality-young-peoples-perceptions-of-society-lead-to-concerns-about-the-potential-development-of-prejudice

6 https://www.met.police.uk/stats-and-data/hate-crime-dashboard/

7 Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) seminar, 2013: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/centras/translation-news-and-events/centras-seminars-stylistics-and-the-study-of-translated-online-news

8 https://www.theguardian.com/info/2015/aug/05/the-guardians-editorial-code

9 https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide

10 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/about-us/editorial-and-commercial-guidelines/

11 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435316/Telegraph-style-book-Jj.html

12 Davier (2009, pp. 81–82) observed a similar phenomenon.

13 Any instances where this was uncertain are not included in the list.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number P2GEP1_171957].