Language actions as political and ideological actions: A political, ideological and critical discourse analysis of the news about Turkey in western press

Abstract

With the widespread use of media means, the concepts of disinformation and misinformation have become of great interest in the studies of media language. Such studies deal with circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. In this new post-truth era, the status of truth then becomes relative, as the truth has been taken over by subjective comments, information and feelings that would inevitably lead to the invention of new truths. This dissertation, with reference to the concept of 'post truth', dwells on how language actions turn out to be political and ideological actions in media texts. The study analyses the language through which Western media means perform perception operations against Turkey. How post truth language is used to persuade people by fake news, information pollution and lies will be the main focal point of this study. The study uses political, ideological and critical discourse analyses as its theory and method. Dealing with how certain kind of media texts have come into existence, informing the reader about the characteristics of the language used in these texts, how they should be read, and uncovering the relations between language and politics, this dissertation has the nature of both a linguistic study and political one.