Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a means of discourse analysis emerged in the 1970s, through locating discourses within the social context where they occur, this approach reveals the dialectical relationship between language and society. The effect of discourse in maintaining the power relationship is at the core of CDA research. Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework is a robust tool to reveal this effect and has been adopted in various subjects. This research adopts this framework to the analysis of online news reports on the execution of Saddam Hussein to further enrich the variability of the subjects. Through the stages of description, interpretation and explanation, the political ideology of neo-conservatism and new-militarism hidden in the discourse is explored and revealed. This ideology is encoded in particular linguistic features and is subliminally reinforced to the audience through reading and interpreting. The findings shed light on the importance of critical discourse awareness which could be employed while reading news reports to decipher the hidden ideology that reflects the inner relationship between language and social cultural factors.
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
3. Methodology
4. Result and Discussion
5. Conclusion