A Linguistic Analysis of Online Newspaper Reports of the April 2015 South African Xenophobic Attacks

Abstract

While the mass media plays a crucial role in the documentation of social realities, it has also been accused of agenda-setting. This study examined newspaper reports on the April 2015 South African xenophobic attacks. Contrastive in outlook, four debut reports on the violence – two from Nigeria and two from South Africa – were discussed. The selection of the online national daily newspapers was based on prestige, readership and accessibility. Employing Critical Discourse Analytical tools, attention was accorded to the
linguistic portrayal of violence through the consideration of lexis, sentence structures and other foregrounded linguistic features. The counter-discursive strategies and ideologies behind linguistic constructions were identified. The analysis revealed that lexical categories frame and reflect the perspectives to the reportage of violence. Sentence types, particularly the complex sentences and
passive sentences, symbolise a victim-aggressor relationship. Emotive language was employed to either emphasise or de-emphasise the xenophobic violence. Two dominant ideological motives were identified – Otherness/counter discourse and history. The study concluded that linguistic choices and structures are integral to newspaper reportage as they undertake ideological roles towards
framing events and influencing their audience.