NOMINATION AND PREDICATION STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN BROADCASTING (IRIB) IN PRESENTING NEWS ABOUT SYRIAN CIVIL WAR : a discourse historical approach.

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NOMINATION AND PREDICATION STRATEGIES EMPLOYED

BY ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN BROADCASTING (IRIB)

IN PRESENTING NEWS ABOUT SYRIAN CIVIL WAR

(A DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH)

A Research Paper

Submitted to the Department of English Education

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for SarjanaSastraDegree

By:

TristiLarasati 1002608

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE EDUCATION UNIVERSITAS PENDIDIKAN INDONESIA

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Nomination and Predication Strategies Employed by Islamic

Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Presenting News about

Syrian Civil War

(A Discourse Historical Approach)

Oleh TristiLarasati

Sebuah skripsi yang diajukan untuk memenuhi salah satu syarat memperoleh gelar Sarjana pada Fakultas Pendidikan Bahasa danSastra

Oktober 2014

Hak Cipta dilindungi undang-undang.

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PAGE OF APPROVAL

NOMINATION AND PREDICATION STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN BROADCASTING (IRIB) IN PRESENTING

NEWS ABOUT SYRIAN CIVIL WAR (A DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH)

Approved by:

Main Supervisor

Iwa Lukmana, M.A., Ph.D.

NIP. 196611271993031002

Co-Supervisor

Riesky, M.Ed.

NIP. 198105252005011002

Head of English Education Department

Faculty of Language and Arts Education

Indonesia University of Education

Prof. Dr. Didi Suherdi , M.Ed.

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TristiLarasat, 2014

nomination and predication strategies employed by islamic republic of iran broadcasting (irib) in presenting news about syrian civil war (a discourse historical approach)

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu

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3.1 Research Design ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.2 Data Collection ... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.3 Data Analysis ... Error! Bookmark not defined. CHAPTER IV : FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONSError! Bookmark not defined.

4.1 Nomination Strategies Employed by IRIB in Referring to Social Actors of Syrian civil war Error! Bookmark not defined.

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4.1.7 Nomination of Social Actors before and after Geneva Convention IIError! Bookmark not defined.

4.2 Predication Strategies Employed by IRIBin Representing Social Actors of Syrian civil war Error! Bookmark not defined.

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4.2.4 Predication Strategies before and after Geneva Convention IIError! Bookmark not defined.

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ABSTRACT

This study investigates nomination and predication strategies employed by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)in presenting news about Syrian civil war. This study employs a descriptive qualitative method. The data were in the form of eight news articles taken from IRIB Website. The data were

analyzed ased on Reisigl & Wodak’s theory of dis ourse histori al approa h DHA . Spe ifi ally,

the notion of discursive strategies was used to classify the nomination and predication strategies employed by IRIB. The findings reveal two main points. First, ideological anthroponym and professional anthroponym are the most frequent nomination strategies with the same frequency,i.e 30 times (27.03%). Ideological anthroponym is used to refer to Syrian opposition and realized through negative nomination, while professional anthroponym is used to refer to Syrian government and mostly realized through neutral nomination. Second, explicit predicate is the most frequent predication strategy (64.95%) used to represent social actors of Syrian civil war. It is mostly used to represent Syrian opposition as a negative party and Syrian government as a positive party. In addition, this study also found that the use of nomination and predication strategies changes due to a historical aspect, i.e the Geneva Convention II. It was found that in four news articles published after the convention, nominations of Syrian oppositions are not as negative as those found in four articles published before the convention. On the other hand, predications of Syrian government are not as positive as those found in four articles published after the convention.

Keywords: Syrian civil war, Discourse Historical Approach, Nomination Strategies, Predication Strategies,

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu ABSTRAK

Studi ini meneliti strategi nominasi dan predikasi yang digunakan oleh Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting(IRIB) dalam menyajikan berita mengenai perang sipil di Suriah. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Data yang digunakan dalam studi ini merupakan delapan artikel berita dari laman IRIB. Data tersebut kemudian dianalisi smenggunakan teori discourse historical approach (DHA) atau pendekatan wacana historis yang diformulasikan oleh Reisigl & Wodak (2001). Khususnya, konsep discursive strategies dari DHA digunakan untuk mengklasifikasikan strategi nominasi dan predikasi yang digunakan oleh IRIB. Hasil studi ini menunjukan dua poin utama. Pertama, ideological anthroponym dan professional anthroponym adalah strategi yang paling sering digunakan dan memiliki kemunculan yang sama yaitu30 kemunculan (27.03%). Ideological anthroponym digunakan untuk mengacu pada pihak oposisi Suriah dan hampir semua direalisasikan dengan nominasi yang negative. Professional anthroponym digunakan untuk mengacu pada pihak pemerintah Suriah dan direalisasikan dengan nominasi yang netral. Kedua, explicit predicate adalah strategi predikasi yang paling sering digunakan. Hampir di semua kemunculannya, strategi ini digunakan untuk merepresentasikan pihak oposisi Suriah sebagai pihak yang negatif, sementara pihak pemerintah Suriah sebagai pihak yang positif. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga menemukan bahwa penggunaan strategi nominasi dan predikasi berubah karena suatu aspek historis, yaitu Konvensi Jeneva II. Dalam empat artikel yang dipublikasikan setelah Konvensi Jeneva II, ditemukan bahwa nominasi pihak oposisi Suriah tidak se-negatif dalam empat artikel yang dipublikasikan sebelum konvensi tersebut. Sementara, predikasi pihak pemerintah Suriah tidak sepositif dalam empat artikel yang dipublikasikan sebelum konvensi tersebut.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, research method, clarification of terms, and organization of the study.

1.1 Background

Many media consider conflicts as one of the interesting issues to be reported. This can be seen from the fact that issues of conflict often times are shown in many media’s news headlines. Conflicts in a war between some parties are the example of the most reported issues in media. Furthermore, it is observed that in terms of news, war is better than peace, violence is better than non-violence(Young, 1991).

The relationship between media and conflict is interrelated. Conflict has important roles in media, and vice versa; media can also have some important roles in conflict. With the way they present news, media can either escalate or de-escalate a conflict happening in society (Kempf, 2001).

Media can facilitate better clarification related to a conflict. By presenting news about a conflict or confirming the parties involved in the conflict, media at least contribute to make things clearer. According to Reuben (2005) as cited in Verbeke & Euwema (2009, p. 140), constructive coverage of conflicts by media can contribute to better communication between parties, and provide some problem-solving behaviors.

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An example of third party intervention in the conflict can be seen in Syrian civil war. Syrian civil war, a war between Syria government and its citizen, is interfered by some countries including Iran. As reported in many international media, Iran supplied weapons and military technology to Syria government. Iran also trained Syria army to be more ready in fighting against the opposition group and sent 4.000 troops to aid Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad(Svensson, 2013). Furthermore, Iran is said to support Syria government due to a religious issue. Iran and Bashar Al-Assad are said to be the followers of Syiah (a sect in Islam). They have the same goal which is to fight against the followers of Sunni (a sect in Islam which is in contrast with Syiah)(Bilal, 2012).

Regarding that fact, this study was conducted to investigate how the conflict of Syrian civil war is reported by Iran media. One of the approaches that can be used to investigate this issue is discourse historical approach (DHA) proposed by Reisigl &Wodak (2001). By employing discourse historical approach, this study explores how discursive strategies are used by Iran media in presenting news about Syrian civil war. Discursive strategies in DHA are defined as the systematic ways of using language at different levels of linguistic organization and complexity. The strategies consist of five strategies: nomination strategy, predication strategy, argumentation strategy, perspectivization strategy, and mitigation strategy. However, this study focuses only on nomination and predication strategies.

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type worker in respect to gender in current management literature (Kelan, 2008). On media discourse, DHA was employed to see how topoihelp to reveal thepolitical objectives conveying USA liberal values via films and TV (Wodak, 2010). Though using the same approach, those previous studies have different focuses and scopes.

Among those previous studies, none of them aims at investigating media discourse which is related to the third party intervention of a war. Thus, the present study aims at examining how Syrian civil war is reported in a media of Iran, which is said to be the third party in the war.

1.2 Research Questions

This study was conducted to answer these following questions:

1. How are social actors of Syrian civil war represented through nomination

1. Investigating thenomination strategies used by IRIB in representing social actors of Syrian civil war.

2. Investigating the predication strategies employed by IRIB in representing social actors of Syrian civil war.

1.4 Significance of the Study

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu 1.5 Scope of the Study

Eight articles from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) were taken as the object of investigation in this study. Those texts are news articlesreportingSyrian civil war. The scope of the study was narrowed to find out the nomination and predication strategies used by IRIB in presenting news about Syrian civil war.

1.6 Clarification of Terms

To avoid misunderstanding, some of important terms are clarified as follows:

a. Discourse historical approach (DHA)

DHA is one of the approaches of critical discourse analysis (CDA). DHA synchronizes text analysis with knowledge about the historical sources and the background of the social and political fields in which discursive events are embedded (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001).

b. Nomination strategy

Nomination strategy is a strategy in using linguistic devices to refer to persons, places, or events (Reisigl &Wodak, 2001).

c. Predication strategy

Predication strategy is a strategy in attaching persons, animals, or objects with some qualities or characteristics (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). This strategy is aimed at representing social actors more or less positively or negatively.

d. Syrian civil war

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu e. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)

IRIB is a giant Iranian corporation of radio and television. The corporation was launched in 1966. Then, The English radio’s Internet site was launched in July 2003. (http://www.wikipedia.com)

1.7 Organization of the Paper

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides the research methodology which describes the mechanism in conducting the study. This chapter includes research design, data collection, and data analysis. The research design elaborates the method and the theoretical framework used in this study. In the data collection, the steps of collecting the data are elaborated. In the end of this chapter, the process of analyzing data is explained in the data analysis part.

3.1 Research Design

This study primarily employed a descriptive qualitative method. Descriptive method

is “an investigation that attempts to describe accurately and factually a phenomenon,

subject or area” (Richards & Schmidt, 2002, p. 152), while qualitative method

involves the analysis of non-numerical data by using non-statistical method (Dornyei, 2007). Thus, this study is qualitative since it analyses non-numerical data – the data in this study are in the form of text. However, there are also some quantification applied in this study used to analyze the occurrence of each type of nomination and predication strategies employed by IRIB.

This study’s framework is one of CDA approaches namely Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) proposed by Reisigl & Wodak (2001). More specifically, Reisigl &

Wodak’s (2001) notion of discursive strategy is used as the tool of analysis. Out of

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu 3.2 Data Collection

The data used in this study were taken from the English version of the official Website of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) at www.irib.ir/English. IRIB is the Iranian corporation owned by the government of Iran. It is a very large corporation which establishes radio, television, and online media. However, IRIB was chosen not only because it is a very large corporation but also because IRIB is before Geneva Convention II, a conference held by UN to find a solution of Syrian civil war, and the other four were published after the convention. Two different periods (before and after Geneva Convention II) were selected in order to see whether there is any change in nomination and predication strategies employed by IRIB due to a historical aspect. The news articles and their publication dates are presented in the table below:

Table 3.1 Eight News Articles Reporting Syrian civil war Published by IRIB

No. Tittle Publication Date

1 Syrian MP kidnapped, executed by Takfiri militants

10 November 2013

2 Army makes new gains against Takfiri terrorists across Syria

11 November 2013

3 Saudis seeking to create an army of Syrian opposition

11 November 2013

4 Bomb attack kills dozen in Syria’s Aleppo 12 November 2013

5 Syria militants block Aleppo aid convoy 08 May 2014

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu Regions

7 Groups of Militants Killed across Syria 15 May 2014 8 Leaders of Militant Groups Killed in Aleppo 18 May 2014

3.3 Data Analysis

The collected data were then analyzed by using the framework of DHA proposed by Reisigl & Wodak (2001). Specifically, this study analyzed the data by using a tool proposed by DHA which is called discursive strategy. Discursive strategy offered by DHA consisted of five strategies namely nomination strategy, predication strategy, argumentation strategy, perspectivization strategy, and intensification and mitigation strategy. However, this study only focuses on two strategies which are nomination and predication strategies.

In conducting the investigation, four steps had been done. First, identifying the nomination strategies employed by IRIB in referring to social actors of Syrian civil war. The analysis of nomination strategy was conducted to find out the social actors of Syrian civil war who were mentioned in the eight news texts from IRIB as well as the linguistic devices used to refer to them. The analysis was conducted by manually reviewing the texts. The linguistic devices found as the nomination strategies were than classified based on the types of nomination strategy proposed by Reisigl & Wodak (2001).

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This chapter provides the conclusions of the present study and the suggestions for upcoming studies. This chapter is divided into two sections: the first section provides the resume of this study; the second section provides the suggestions for further studies.

5.1 Conclusions

This study examines how the issues of Syrian civil war are reported by a third party of the war, i.e Iran. More specifically, this study investigates how nomination and predication strategies are employed by Iran media, namely IRIB, in presenting news about Syrian civil war. In addition, this study sees whether the nomination and predication strategies are affected by a historical aspect.

According to the analysis of nomination strategy, anthroponym is the most frequent strategy used by IRIB in referring to social actors of Syrian civil war. There are two types of anthroponym employed by IRIB, i.e ideological anthroponyms and professional anthroponyms. Ideological anthroponyms are used to refer to Syrian opposition. Meanwhile, professional anthroponyms are used to refer to Syrian government. The findings indicate that IRIB foregrounds the ideological side of Syrian opposition and the professional side of Syrian government. In addition, IRIB constructs negative image of Syrian opposition and neutral image of Syrian government. It is proven by the findings showing that ideological anthroponym is realized through negative nominations, while professional anthroponym is realized through neutral nominations.

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contain negative judgment. In contrast, explicit predicates used to represent Syrian government mostly contain positive judgment. The findings indicate that IRIB

represents Syrian opposition negatively by foregrounding the oppositions’ negative

actions and backgrounding their positive actions. In contrast, IRIB represents Syrian

government positively by foregrounding the government’s positive actions and

backgrounding their negative actions.

In this study, it is also found that nomination and predication strategies employed by IRIB change due to a historical aspect, i.e Geneva Convention II. The findings show that the nominations of Syrian opposition in the articles published after the convention are not as negative as those used in the articles published before the convention. On the other hand, the predications of Syrian government in the articles published after the convention are not as positive as those used in the articles published before the convention.

Based on the findings above, it can be concluded that nomination and predication strategies are important aspects in investigating how media represent particular social actors. Furthermore, the choice of language in the nomination and predication strategies can be said to be the part of a social practice, i.e reality construction. It is not merely a transparent device used to describe social actors and their actions but also a device affected by particular factors and loaded by particular values by media. Therefore, CDA is widely used to investigate media discourse to de-mystify the motives behind realities constructed by media.

5.2 Suggestions

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The second is about the news articles. The news articles analyzed in this present study were collected from one media, namely IRIB. It would be worth trying for further studies to collect news articles from different media. Thus, further studies can see whether there are some differences of nomination and predication strategies between the media. Further studies can investigate whether the same social actors can be represented in different ways by different media.

The third is about the historical aspect. This present study took into account a historical aspect in the analysis by comparing news articles published before and after Geneva Convention II. However, the publication dates of the articles are not extremely distant. It would be worth trying for further studies to analyze some articles which are published in the more distant time, e.g articles published in different years.

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