The Discursive Representation of Language Varieties in News Websites: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis

This study investigates the representation of language varieties on Iranian news websites through Woolard’s (2020) social–semiotic framework. Grounded in Peircean semiotics and informed by Critical Discourse Analysis, this framework examines the social–semiotic processes through which ideological beliefs and value systems regarding language are constructed and reproduced in news discourse. The dataset comprises 170 news texts purposively collected from Iranian news websites over a ten-year period (2014–2024). The study adopts a mixed-methods design: in the qualitative phase, texts were analyzed based on Woolard’s social–semiotic processes, and in the quantitative phase, the frequency and distribution of these processes were calculated. Inter-coder reliability was confirmed using Cohen’s kappa coefficient (κ > 0.80). The findings reveal nine key social–semiotic processes in news discourse. Among these, qualia was the most frequent process (38 instances, 22.4%), reflecting the ideological emphasis on positive and negative evaluative judgments toward language varieties. Iconization followed (32 instances, 18.8%), linking linguistic varieties symbolically to ethnicity, nationality, and speaker identity. Although the other processes occurred less frequently, they play a critical role in the naturalization of linguistic ideologies and the unequal representation of language varieties in Iranian news media.