Islamophobia in American TV Series: Integrating Critical Discourse Analysis with Grammar of Visual Design

Authors
A. Mousavi dehsheikh 1
P. Yousefian 2
B. Mahmoodi bakhtiari 3
1 Ph.D. Candidate in General Linguistics, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran
2 Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran
3 Faculty member of Linguistics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
According to Sheridan and Gillett (2005), one fundamental form of inequality, being on the rise since 9/11, is religious discrimination. The main source of experiencing and being exposed to such inequalities and discriminations can be television which ‘is such an important source of information and entertainment that viewers cannot escape its gradual encroachment into their everyday lives’ (Laughey, 2007, p. 20). American TV series are so major and worldly-known entertaining media that many of them have millions of viewers around the world. So, it will be of great importance to make sure if they want to keep and even worsen this picture of Islam and Islamophobia. Therefore, this paper investigates the role of American TV series in promoting Islamophobia in public view. To do so, one has to analyze two main aspects of the TV shows which are the conversations and the picture frames. For analyzing the former, we have chosen Norman Fairclough’s (1992a, 1995, 2001) approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, and for the latter, Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Grammar of Visual Design. American TV series, named Homeland (2011- still on air in 2017), broadcasted by Showtime® in the U.S has been the corpus of the present study. Its story that is mainly connected to the Middle East with lots of Muslim characters explains our choice. Consequently, the present study seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. Do the analyzed sequences of Homeland have Islamophobic elements based on Fairclough’s (1992a, 1995, 2001) CDA framework? 2. Do the analyzed sequences of Homeland have Islamophobic elements based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Grammar of Visual Design? 3. Are there any combinations of visual and discursive elements to promote Islamophobia in the analyzed sequences of Homeland which can be analyzed by an integration of Fairclough’s (1992a, 1995, 2001) CDA framework and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Grammar of Visual Design?
Our work has led us to the conclusion that many cases in Homeland TV series, either discursive (based on Fairclough’s CDA framework (1992a, 1995, 2001)) or visual (based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design (2006)), were Islamophobic. Furthermore, there were cases in which both visual and discursive (audio) elements were used to promote Islamophobia. As a result, all of the research questions receive a positive answer. Moreover, it can be concluded that a combination of Fairclough’s (1992a, 1995, 2001) CDA framework and Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design (2006) can create a powerful approach in critical media analysis to expose the real policies of the media and power owners and decode the encrypted messages behind what is shown to the public. It is worth noting that analyzing a greater number of TV series could result in a higher generalization of our results.

Keywords

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Language Related Research
Volume 8, Issue 4
September and October 2017
Pages 207-238