International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), Vol. 6(3), 2012 (pp. 17-36) 17 Diana Fauzia Sari, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia
Yunisrina Qismullah Yusuf, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia
This study observes the different representations and semiotics that web news texts encode and how these different sign systems could have influences on meanings. It analyzes the events, participants and semiotics of particular news items as covered in three different web newspapers. In studying the different representations of the news texts, an approach by Bell (1998) is implemented in considering the events and participants of the story presented. Semiotics analysis described by Bignell (2002) and Danesi (2002) is used to uncover the hidden messages in every news text where linguistic and graphic signs are involved. Linguistic signs cover the headlines, lexical choices and language use. Graphic signs take on typography, and photographs or images presented to complement the story. The study reveals how these three media use different representations, linguistic and graphic signs as a means of representing the news items to affect readers’
perceptions and insights of the events.
Keywords: News Representations; Semiotics; Linguistic Signs; Graphic Signs;
Events
1. Introduction
News plays a significant role in our community as stories are central to human nature. Bell (1998) says that stories are told as a core part of people’s social identity, and for us, the composition of a life story is fundamental to our self-identity. Evidently, the daily happenings of our societies are expressed in the stories we are told in the media. The medium of news communication includes the news broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, talk shows, press photos, the Internet and even text messages on a cell phone.
Thwaites (2002) states that through the media news, selected information can be obtained and they will be the elements for the people to think about their relationship to the state. Media news also mediates the way every individual illustrates their connection to other institutions or organizations, such as the local community, family, the nation and the world in general.
Chimombo and Roseberry (1998) state:
“News media has acted as a cultural leveller in a very real sense; it plays a significant role in determining literate people’s perception of their view
of the world and also their place in the world, no matter what their condition, and whether they are based in first, second or third world countries.” (Chimombo, & Roseberry, 1998, p. 309)
Consequently, news plays a role in establishing mythic meanings of what is reported in them. Mythic meanings comprise a connection to ideology (Bignell, 2002). This means the media shapes what can be thought of as news, by reporting some events and excluding others. News discourse is an ideological representation of the world because it selects what will be reported, and set the terms of what is significant.
Language is deemed as a system of signs that convey ideas (Yildiz, 2002). The language the media uses has an immense power in influencing the publics’
judgments on a range of issues, from politics to social interpretations. It may even control the changes of public opinions. The printed words have always been a powerful force as they are constantly present in our daily lives. They are read by the people as consequential syntexts; this causes the press to have always been able to affect the opinion of their readers (Danesi, 2002).
Yildiz (2002) further points out that with the lack of examination in the language of media, therefore only the surface of the conception will be understood.
Bignell (1997) suggests that news representations are produced in language and other signs like photographs; they are not merely facts. Any person who relies on the media for information finds himself to have an effect on by their images (David, Burhanudeen, & Abdullah, 2006). Reporters and journalists do not only write the news texts, but they write them with certain styles, structure, order, point of views and values.
The media has a massive quantity of affect on people’s insight of events.
Danesi (2002) says:
“But perhaps the most prevalent function of newspapers in the world of mass communications today is not to provide a forum for a free flow of ideas, but rather to provide distraction. Indeed, to cope with the competition of instant news reports on radio and television, newspapers have become more diversified and intent on entertaining readers. They now not only give extensive background information to the news, and offer truly well-written documentaries and reviews of books, movies, etc., but they also attempt to embellish these in the same way that TV programs do (with visual images, with catchy or sensationalistic headlines, etc).” (Danesi, 2002, p. 17)
The media will be viewed by many people. Especially with the existence of the Internet today, web-pages are increasingly prominent and available for everyone around the world. Web news texts differ from that of the television
or radio news as they can be simply read at any particular times. They also offer solid presentations of signs which every reader can grasp at their own capacity and is always available to be re-read.
How do people from various cultural and educational backgrounds interpret these web news texts? Subsequently, one must understand how these media representations adorn in their garment of organized and chosen words, and signs to charm present-day audiences. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to observe the different representations and the semiotics hidden in news stories and how these different sign systems could have an influence on meanings for the readers.
2. Background 2.1. Media news text
News is the outcome of professional way of thinking, writing and composing which are codes of behaviour learned by news workers (Bignell, 2002). They collect facts about the event, inform them objectively, and the media present them to the public, in a language which is designed to be unambiguous and agreeable to the readers. Bignell (2002) alleges that one of the most appealing sides of news text discourse is the way that it attends the readers. Particular linguistic signs and ways of combining them according to the socially accepted codes connote that news text discourse is a sign of the reader’s discourse, a representation of the reader’s own discursive idiom.
Various studies have been conducted in analyzing news texts, such as by David and Hei (2006) on using semiotics analysis to uncover the underlying ideological bias in the prevailing stereotypical representations of age to help readers negotiate and renegotiate their position in relation to age-related identities that are socially and culturally constructed. Another study by Gambles (1998) examines the types of sign systems within which a particular news story are encoded in a selection of The Sun, The Telegraph, and The Times, which were all published on the same day (Saturday, April 18th, 1998) and how these different sign systems may affect meaning.
2.2. News presentations
News in the paper, either printed or online, are presented in stories, and stories are narratives about people and events. These presentations are focused on the text production. News content and its expression are in one pack, readers depend their understanding on the nature of news content by close analysis of the news text. A contiguous, linguistically proficient analysis of the text necessitates as the basis for all efforts to deliver the ideologies originating the news (Bell, 1998).
Some elements are needed to explain the discourse structure of news stories.
A story normally consists of attribution, and abstract, and the story proper.
Attribution of where the story came from is not always made explicit. It can include credit to a news agency and or a journalist’s by-line, and may also state place and time (or dateline). For press news, the headline or the abstract consists of the lead sentence or “intro” of the news story (Bell, 1998, p. 67).
According to Dik (1997), a discourse event can be said as social, interpersonal occurrence identified by conventions and institutions amending at least the following factors:
1) The participants and their mutual relations.
2) The rights and duties of participants, both with respect to interaction (who may speak when and where?), and with respect to content (who can say what, when and where?)
3) The time, place and setting of speaking
While Yamaguchi (1991) states that by meaning, an event happens because of a foregoing time interval that makes its non-occurrence. More specifically, a certain time phase or duration of non-occurrence must exist in order for an occurrence to be acknowledged as an “event” (Yamaguchi, 1991, p. 1).
2.3. Semiotics in the media
In Yildiz (2002), the etymology of the word semiotics is from Greek term
“sema” which means “marks, signs.” In singular, it is “semeion.” It is defined as the science of doctrine of signs. A semiotic study learns the sign processes provided in texts. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. Sturrock (1986) describes that semantics converge on what words mean, whereas semiotics concentrate on how signs mean.
The study of the media from the semiotics’ point of view was commenced by Roland Barthes in the 1950s, which used basic sign theory to the analysis of all kinds of media spectacles and genres, presenting how it can depict the implicit meanings constructed into them (Danesi, 2002). What’s more, semiotics is acclimatized to discover implicit meanings. It assists in apprehending statements that are produced by the approach of signal classifications that work in discourse communities. By certain community, these declarations can be “obvious,” “natural,” “universal,” “given,” enduring and unquestionable (Chandler, 1994).
Bignell (2002) discusses the ways in which semiotics analysis approach newspapers as a medium. These include discussion of the connotations of the linguistic and visual signs used in news stories. Codes found in these stories deal with linguistic, photographic and graphic signs. Semiotics analysis of a
news text should reflect on the kind of messages that are conversed by the codes of news discourse, the framework in which these messages are constructed by news pros and how they are interpreted by the readers.
3. METHOD
This paper compares and discusses the events, participants and semiotics analysis of three web news texts from The Jerusalem Post, The Guardian and Aljazeera, respectively, which all wrote of one story event, which is on the accidental death of three girls by the shelling of the Israel’s military tank during a recent war in January 2009 with Hamas. Most importantly, we would like to acknowledge that this study does not favour any race, religion, political group, activist group, or the like; it is conducted merely for research and educational purposes.
By and large, news depends for survival on reaching out to audiences as many as possible, as a result the idea of a story is central to news media. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict is conceivably one of the sensitive global issues that are discussed today. The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera were selected as they are believed to represent the countries in conflict, Palestine and Israel. Whereas The Guardian, is selected as it is a media that has been captivatingly perceived to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
An approach by Bell (1998) is used in comparing and analyzing the events and participants in each news texts. This manner is to ease further investigation towards semiotics analysis. Every paragraph of the news text is listed with a number to track the organization of each story (e.g. P1, P2, and so forth). The semiotics analysis approach by Bignell (2002) and Danesi (2002) is implemented as it is found to be comprehensive. Linguistic and graphic signs presented in each news text are discussed. The next section presents the results and discussion from the analysis of the events’
participants and semiotics of news texts as covered in the three different web newspapers.
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Representation of the events and the participants in the texts
Each newspaper has its own characteristics in writing and presenting its stories which are influenced by several factors, including social and cultural contexts. For the production of news, van Dijk (1985) says that some studies (Tuchman, 1978; Fishman, 1980) have begun to investigate on the innovation and perception of the practice of the journalists’ everyday activities. The interaction among journalists, or between journalist with other newsperson, like the sources, witnesses of the events, representative of organizations,
have to be studied by regarding their acts, rational categories, or other principle of understanding on a matter (Bell, 1991). Therefore every journalist brings different codes to a certain message because of their social and educational background, political ideologies and world view.
The web news texts from the three news websites are provided as references for this paper. As this study only analyzed the news text itself, therefore advertisements and web designs unrelated to the news content were disregarded.
4.1.1. Text 1: The Jerusalem Post
Text 1 was the web news story titled ’Tank shells killed doctor’s daughters’
taken from The Jerusalem Post’s website dated February 4, 2009.
Event - Structure
P1 The IDF concluded Wednesday that Israeli tank shells caused the deaths of four Palestinian girls, including three daughters of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, when his house was accidentally attacked on January 16, during Operation Cast Lead.
P2 Following the investigation, the army confirmed that two shells had hit the building. The findings were presented to and approved by OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant and Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.
P3 The IDF said that a Golani Brigade force was operating near Beit Lahiya when it came under sniper and mortar fire in an area laden with explosives. After determining that the source of the fire was in a building adjacent to Abuelaish’s home, the force returned fire.
P4 While the IDF was shooting, suspicious figures were identified in the top floors of the doctor’s house, and the troops believed the figures were directing the Hamas sniper and mortar fire, the army said.
P5 Upon assessing the situation in the field while under heavy fire, the commander of the force gave the order to open fire to the suspicious figures, and it was from this fire that his three daughters were killed, said the IDF.
P6 Once the soldiers realized that civilians, and not Hamas gunmen, were in the house they ceased fire immediately, continued the army. Three of the doctor’s daughters – aged 20, 15 and 13 – and a niece were killed on the second floor.
P7 Another of his daughters and a son were wounded, along with his brother. Abuelaish was on the ground floor with his small son at the
time of the attack. The physician’s wife died of cancer three months ago.
P8 The IDF Spokesman’s Unit stressed that in the days prior to the accident, Abuelaish – who had worked before at Beersheba’s Soroka University Medical Centre and had very good connections with Israelis – was contacted personally several times by officers in the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration to urge him to evacuate his home because of Hamas operations and the intense fighting that was already taking place in that area for several days.
P9 In addition to the personal contact made directly with the doctor, the IDF issued warnings to the residents of Sajaiya by dropping thousands of leaflets and by issuing warnings via Palestinian media outlets. The IDF said it regretted the incident and the loss of life, and that the doctor had been updated with details of the investigation as well.
P10 Considering the constraints of the battle scene, the amount of threats that endangered the force, and the intensity of fighting in the area, the investigators concluded that the forces’ action and the decision to fire towards the building were reasonable.
P11 Abuelaish, speaking on Channel 2 Wednesday, thanked all those who worked to find the truth about the incident and accepted the findings, saying that mistakes can happen.
Events in Text 1
Based on the definitions of event, it was concluded that P1 was the main event in the story. As mentioned earlier, an event should include time, place, participants, and actions. In P1, all of those factors were involved. For the next paragraph, P2 was classified as the background story for the central event in P1, whereas the story itself became more detailed afterwards with more participants being introduced.
P3 to P7 were the chronologies of the incident. It described how the incident or the action happened from the beginning to end; and also its consequences where 4 people had died.
P8 was identified as the second event in the story. Even though there was a correlation between P8 to P1, the event was certainly different. P8 to P10 explained how the IDF had warned the Doctor and other residents about the insecure possibilities in the war zone before the attack. And the last paragraph, P11, was recognized as the reaction part from the participant or victim.
News Participants in Text 1
The news participants identified in the text were:
• The IDF service (P1)
• Four Palestinian girls (dead) (P1)
• Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish (P1)
• OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant (P2)
• Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi (P2)
• Golani Brigade force (P3)
• Another of Doctor’s daughter and son (wounded) (P7)
• Doctor’s brother (wounded) (P7)
• The Doctor’s wife (died of cancer 3 months ago) (P7)
• The IDF Spokesman Unit (P8)
The explanation of the participants in the text was inclusive; no imprecision was found in the story line. All participants were described in their own positions; such as in P7, where the author mentioned Dr. Abuelaish’s wife even though she was not in the scene at the time.
4.1.2. Text 2: The Guardian
Text 2 was the web news story titled Israeli army says shelling of house where girls died was ‘reasonable’ taken from The Guardian’s website dated February 5, 2009.
Event – Structure
P1 Israel’s military last night admitted that one of its tanks killed three girls at their home in Gaza during last month’s war in a case that shocked the Israeli public, but said the shelling was “reasonable.”
P2 The Israeli military said that two shells had hit the house of a Palestinian doctor, Izz el-Deen Abu el-Eish, on 16 January, killing his daughters. Moments after their death the Hebrew speaking gynaecologist was interviewed by mobile phone live on an Israeli television channel, screaming with grief in an extraordinary scene.
P3 For most Israelis it was the first time they had seen such a striking case of civilian deaths in the war, even though hundreds of the 1,300 Palestinian dead were believed to be civilians. The Channel 10 television correspondent who interviewed el-Eish arranged for the military to rush other injured members of the family to hospital in Israel for treatment, where they remain today.
P4 The Israel Defence Force said soldiers from its Golani infantry brigade
were under sniper and mortar fire in the area near the man’s house in Shujaiya, east of Gaza city. It said soldiers identified “suspicious figures”
in the house who they thought were “spotters” for Hamas fighters and opened fire, killing the girls.
P5 “The IDF is saddened by the harm caused to the Abu el-Eish family, but at the same time states that considering the constraints of the battle scene, the amount of threats that endangered the force, and the intensity of fighting in the area, the forces’ action and the decision to fire towards the building were reasonable,” the military said.
P6 Last night, el-Eish, who was still in hospital in Israel with his surviving relatives, said he was grateful his account of the incident had been recognised. “Thank God the truth has been revealed,” he said. “I was always sure that my case was just.”
Events in Text 2
From The Guardian’s text above, the central event was found in P2. In the paragraph, the incident was described in detail. There were participants, setting, time and action involved. The news story chronologies were in different order from The Jerusalem Post. P1 was the lead of the news, which clarified the vagueness of the headline (Bell, 1998), and followed by reaction in P3, and background to reaction in P4.
P5 was interpreted as the text for reaction and commentary, along with the statement given by the Israel’s military or the IDF. The last paragraph, P6, was also classified as reaction from the victim, el-Eish.
News Participants in Text 2
The news participants identified in the text were:
• Israel’s military (P1)
• Three girls in Gaza (P1)
• Israeli public (P1)
• Izz el-Deen Abu el-Eish (P2)
• Members of the family (el-Eish’s family) (P3)
• Soldiers from Golani infantry brigade (P4)
The description of the participants in the story line was not as inclusive as of The Jerusalem Post’s news text. At P3, the text did mention about other injured members of the family, but it did not inform the readers who the family members were. The text in P6 only mentioned “his surviving relatives,”
so there was something slightly unclear about it. However, web news stories
generally cannot be interpreted after the first reading as they are updated frequently. At this point they are apt to be unclear, full of ambiguity, discrepancy and cavity (Bell, 1998).
4.1.3. Text 3: Aljazeera
Text 3 was the web news story titled Israel: Girls’ killing ‘reasonable’ taken from Aljazeera’s website dated February 5, 2009.
Event - Structure
P1 The Israeli military has admitted shelling the home of a Palestinian doctor during its Gaza offensive and killing three of his daughters, but said its soldiers’ actions were “reasonable” considering the circumstances.
P2 Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, a 55-year-old gynaecologist trained in Israeli hospitals, was giving Israel’s Channel 10 his daily phone account from inside the war zone in Gaza when three of his daughters were killed in the attack.
P3 The military said on Wednesday that an inquiry into the January 16 incident found that troops fired two shells at the doctor’s home after fighters fired from the area.
P4 The report said soldiers came under fire from a building close to Abu al- Aish’s, and then “suspicious figures were identified in the upper level of Dr Abu al-Aish’s house and were thought to be spotters who directed the Hamas sniper and mortar fire”.
P5 Abu al-Aish, who has worked for years in Israeli hospitals, has denied there were any fighters at his house.
P6 The report said soldiers stopped firing after hearing screams from the shelled building.
P7 The military expressed sadness at the deaths but did not admit to a mistake in identification.
P8 Instead, it said in the report, “considering the constraints of the battle scene, the amount of threats that endangered the force, and the intensity of fighting in the area, the forces’ action and the decision to fire toward the building were reasonable”.
Events in Text 3
After examining Aljazeera’s news text, the event of the story was in P3 (participants, place, and time included). P1 acted as the lead of the story as it explained the headline. P2 was marked as the background to reaction in the event.
P4 was found to be the background of the event, which told the chronologies of the event. Moving to P5, the reaction from Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish toward the attack was explained. P6 continued to the background to reaction. While at P7, reaction and evaluation was explained, where the Israeli military expressed their sadness but did not classified the act as a mistake towards the incident. The last paragraph, P8, was considered as consequences.
News Participants in Text 3
The news participants recognized in the text were:
• The Israel military (P1)
• Palestinian doctor (Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish) (P1)
• Three of his daughters (Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish’s daughters who got killed in the attack/the victims) (P1)
The participants in Aljazeera’s news text focused only on the main actors in the central event, which were the attackers (The Israeli military), and the victims (Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish and his three daughters).
Accordingly, the news texts from The Jerusalem Post, The Guardian and Aljazeera were organized differently. The most significant differences could be seen on the details of the news story where The Jerusalem Post provided more details compared to the others. Thus, we must take into consideration the state of web news texts where stories are updated on a regular basis.
The general descriptions of actual events were completed with the statements of people involved. The Jerusalem Post had the criteria mentioned.
Its journalist had refined the news story with more names of participants, using indirect quotations from the sources, especially from the IDF side, described the incident from the very beginning, explaining the condition and the positions of the victims when the event occurred, and gave a compelling view toward the incident. This media implied that the Israeli did not intend these killings to happen. The phrase “accidentally attacked” was used in P1 in the opening of the story to support their report.
Meanwhile, The Guardian had another angle in forming the same topic of the news story. In general, the chronologies of the story were similar to The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera, but it also inscribed the opinion of the Israeli with “this is the first time they had seen such a striking case of civilian deaths, even though hundreds of the 1,300 Palestinian dead were believed to be civilian.” At this point, the author was inserting another reality in Gaza.
Aljazeera’s news text was found to be essentially more forthright than the others. The authors or agencies wrote the story in a more unwavering style by using short sentences and included only the main participants in the
events who are the Israeli military, the doctor and his daughters. The text presented condemnation towards the Israeli army, as seen in the statement in P7 that says “The military expressed sadness at the deaths but did not admit to a mistake in identification.”
4.2. Semiotics analysis of the texts
From the three news texts, differences in their representations were clearly found. This is because they were written by different writers with different backgrounds, cultures and point of views towards one particular event.
Another important matter is how they dealt with different layers of readers or audiences. According to Bell (1991) production is portioned as the act in response of media language. The audiences of the media are wide and multilayered, starting from the interviewer whom a newsmaker addresses face to face, to the unobserved mass audience, which itself consist of many kinds of segments. More over some participants in the news also involve as producers and audiences in the media language. The semiotics analysis of the three web news texts are discussed in the following sections.
4.2.1. Linguistic signs Headlines
Implications of the linguistic signs offered by the media are fundamental to the meaning of the news items presented to the readers. Different newspapers use particular narrative codes when representing the same item of news. Fowler (1991) further explains that all news is always transmitted from a specific viewpoint; the reason is that the institutions of news reporting and presentation are socially, economically and politically situated. The arrangement of the medium encodes significances which derive from the respective position within society of the publishing or broadcasting organization.
The headlines are anticipated to pull out the interest of the reader to the topic of the news story (Bignell, 2002), and the words used in the headline entail the readers the proper codes which are required to understand the news items. Gambles (1998) states that each of these narrative codes used in the headlines instantaneously offer an outline on which to assemble the meaning of the news items and the linguistic signs that proposes to the reader the suitable codes which are needed to understand or decode the news items.
This can be seen in the headlines of the three respective news texts. Each medium has headlines that provide a framework on how it builds up the importance of the news items. Each differs in the foundations of their news.
The Jerusalem Post titled the story with ‘Tank shells killed doctor's daughters.’
The title did not reflect the performance of the event on who operated the
tank shells that killed the doctor’s daughters but instead gave the impression to the readers that the incident was accidental and no human wrongs either intended or not were involved.
Whereas The Guardian titled their news with Israeli army says shelling of house where girls died was ‘reasonable’. This title presented a better picture for the readers of who were the subject and object from the event. The word
“says” in the title implied that the statement was based on the Israeli army’s judgment and not the author’s.
Aljazeera simply captioned Israel: Girls’ killing ‘reasonable.’ This heading would magnetize the readers more as it reflected the Israeli army as the executors who possibly regarded killing girls as sensible. The colon “:” after the word “Israel” in the headline also indicated that the statement of “Girls’
killing ‘reasonable’” was also from the Israeli army’s, not the author’s.
Lexical choice
Matheson (2005) argues that the lexical choices are principally significant in building up the meaning of a text in the news story. A reporter can choose the appropriate vocabulary items by looking at the range of possibilities, in order to evaluate the one that are to be used several times in the news stories.
From the headlines, the words to describe the loss of the girls were used differently by each news text. The Jerusalem Post had used the word “killed”
from ‘Tank shells killed doctor's daughters.’ Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English (2008) defines this verb as (1) cause the death of, (2) put an end to. The Guardian chose the word “died” in Israeli army says shelling of house where girls died was ‘reasonable.’ Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English (2008) defines this verb as (1) stop living, (2) (die out) become extinct. Lastly, Aljazeera employed the word “killing” in their headline Israel: Girls’ killing ‘reasonable.’ Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English (2008) defines this noun as an act of causing death.
From the three words above, we connote that the word “killing” used by Aljazeera has the strongest meaning. It is a noun and the meaning reflected that the girls’ loss were due to ‘the act that causes death.’ This word also has synonyms of ‘murder’ and ‘assassination.’ The word “killed” which was used by The Jerusalem Post also demonstrated severity, thus the phrase “tank shells” before it had supported its meaning to be less harsh. It exemplified that the doer was not directly by human but by machine which created a depiction that was less spiteful. The Guardian provided the less severe word “died,”
even though in its P1 it did mention “Israel’s military last night admitted that one of its tanks killed three girls at their home in Gaza during last month’s war in a case that shocked the Israeli public, but said the shelling was “reasonable,””
thus the word in the headline suggested a softer implication that the girls
“had stopped living.” The word “died” being represented in the headline implied a meaning that is notably milder than the word “killed” in the news text.
From the news texts, the word “reasonable” was also attentively salient. This word is an adjective and Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English (2008) defines it as (1) fair and sensible, (2) as much as is appropriate or fair; moderate, (3) fairly good; average. It was presented in different styles by each of the news media. The Jerusalem Post had presented the word almost to the end of the story. After a chronology of the event is written, this word is used to describe why the killings were considered sensible. The word “reasonable” were not intended directly to the Israeli army in shooting the girls by accident, but to “the forces’ action and the decision to fire towards the building were reasonable” as written in its P7.
Differing from the style of The Jerusalem Post, The Guardian and Aljazeera presented the word “reasonably” each in their first paragraphs and further emphasized it near the end of their stories. Furthermore, both of the news media embedded quoting marks (“….”) for the word reasonable →
“reasonable” but The Jerusalem Post did not. Another phrase that these two media put quoting marks was on “suspicious figures” where The Jerusalem Post did not. By putting the quoting marks, it can be interpreted that these words had other or hidden meanings. These meanings could be intended to convert the words to positive or negative connotations. Consequently the readers would focus in interpreting the meaning, as the authors would have wanted them to.
Language use
The greater part of the text in political news stories comprises of direct or indirect quotations such as the examples previously provided above.
Generally, political journalists are not engaged to gather information so much as to collect quotations. Generally the news writing holds the verbs to be active, but to get the participants to the start of the sentence; passivization is quite common in news discourse now (Bell, 1998). The Jerusalem Post and The Guardian were modestly similar in their use of language with detailed information on every event that they had presented. However, both differ from Aljazeera where the explanation was in the manner of straightforward.
The Guardian presented a regrettable statement from the military towards the victim described in the quotation by the military in P5 as “The IDF is saddened by the harm caused to the Abu el-Eish family…,”Aljazeera also provided a short statement on this matter as “The military expressed sadness at the deaths...” in its P7. The Jerusalem Post however did not include any
regrettable statement from the Israeli army.
Aljazeera also wrote a statement that the other news media did not mention, which can be found in its P5 that stated “Abu al-Aish, who has worked for years in Israeli hospitals, has denied there were any fighters at his house.” The word
“denied” in this report implied that Abu al-Aish could firstly be accused that there were fighters in his house. Perhaps the media wanted the readers to find that this accusation might have caused additional unhappiness in the midst of his grief. On the contrary, The Jerusalem Post mentioned how the victim accepted the tragedy. This was found in its P11. The Guardian also provided a similar statement made in direct quotations by the victim in its P6.
As mentioned earlier, news texts are written by different writers with not just different of views towards one particular event, but also due to the different backgrounds and cultures. This can be seen on the way each writer had presented and spelled the victim’s name in the introduction of the story. The Jerusalem Post had written his name as Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, while The Guardian spelled it Izz el-Deen Abu el-Eish, and Aljazeera with Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish. Notice also how The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera presented his name in the beginning of their stories with his title “Dr.” while The Guardian did not. This is found to be one of the cultural signs which their readers that are from different countries would be able to relate to.
4.2.2. Graphic signs
Every newspaper differs in the manner of presenting their written text (Danesi, 2002). This involves the type font, size of fonts and types of photography used. The findings from graphic signs are further discussed below.
Typography
Typography is the appearance, style, and arrangement of text. It is a very important aspect in the news production. If readers have difficulty in reading the content, there is a possibility that they will not read the news text at all.
Every news text needs to accommodate news readers who want to get through the news in a relatively short time.
All three web texts had used bolded headlines but with different type of fonts and sizes. The use of bold serves to direct the reader in making transparent meaning of the following text in the story. The Guardian differs drastically to The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera as it presents the biggest size fonts among the three, which is Times New Roman size 24. To use bigger letters to start the news text is to attract the readers to further read the news story. The text of the story itself was in Times New Roman size 12. The Jerusalem Post had used Arial size 16 for the headings with the story font of 9. Aljazeera had
chosen Verdana size 13.5 thus this is almost similar to Arial size 16. Hence Aljazeera’s story font size is Verdana 10, which is slightly bigger than that of The Jerusalem Post.
The web news texts have unlimited possibilities of type of fonts and sizes in the Internet. Thus space for availability is also considered in their presentations of news texts. The Jerusalem Post had presented more advertisements in its web newspaper compared to The Guardian and Aljazeera; accordingly this might had been the reason why its font size was smaller compared to the other two news texts. As this paper only confers the different representations and semiotics of the news texts, therefore semiotics in the advertisements are not discussed.
Photographs
Graphic signs presented in the news ought to be seen as photographs engrossing connotations (Gambles, 1998). Therefore, the photographs were studied in these three different news texts together with the caption beneath each of them. Bignell (2002, pp. 95-96) says that “these captions provide a set of linguistic meanings which shape our reading of the picture and functions as the ‘proof’ that the text’s message is true.”
Photographs presented to accompany the news text always refer to some meaning. Bignell (2002) explains that the concentration in decoding their meanings is the connotations which photographs produce. He further acknowledges that the implying idea of these iconic symbols rely on what is denoted and goes beyond in presenting a mythic importance which holds and forms the decoding of a photograph’s connotations.
The Jerusalem Post presented a photograph of the victim with his surviving son. Beneath the picture was a simple text of “Dr. Abuelaish with his son.” This emphasized the information that even though its news text was defending the Israeli army in accidentally killing the victim’s daughters, the journalist too had a concern over the loss felt by the victim. Therefore to create a sense of connection between the readers and the victim in the story, the Doctor’s photograph was presented. His facial expression in the photograph presented as if to say, ‘I’m sad my daughters have died, but there is nothing that I can do about it.’ The journalist also supported this image by writing in the last paragraph, P11, “Abuelaish, speaking on Channel 2 Wednesday, thanked all those who worked to find the truth about the incident and accepted the findings, saying that mistakes can happen.”
Aljazeera posted a bigger photograph of an Israeli army man looking at a distance of what seemed to be a bombed area. The photograph representation dominated a great section of the available space for the news text on the page. The text for the picture reads “The Israeli military said the
decision to shell the doctor's home was “reasonable”” and no further comments were made. This effort by the paper is what as Bignell (1997, p. 99) suggests that the caption underneath the picture allows the reader to “load down the image with particular cultural meanings and the photograph functions as the proof that the text’s message is true.” To show further support for the victim’s loss, a video titled Doctor’s loss caught on film was also provided. Here, the writer would like the reader to connote sympathy, tragedy and injustice for the victim in the event. The connotations of the victim that was seen crying in the video suggested that ‘I cannot accept the fact that my daughters have died.’ The photograph and video were to further create a distance between the readers and the Israeli army suggesting that the readers should involve no empathy with the army who brought loss to an innocent man.
Not much comment can be made for The Guardian as it did not present any photographs or videos to accompany their news text. Thus this could be due to the fact that web news texts get their daily articles quickly circulated on a daily basis, therefore any photographs or videos may be posted up in the next updated news.
5. Conclusion
The representation of news text, events and participants of the story from each news text differs from one another. Based on the general illustration of the events and participants, The Jerusalem Post is found to cover the structure. Again, it must be taken into account that web news texts update their stories on a regular basis and this paper only covered one story of the event from each web newspaper, respectively.
To analyze the semiotics secreted in every news text, linguistic and graphic signs are the basic factors to be investigated. Linguistic signs involve the headlines, lexical choices and language use. Graphic signs involve the typography and photographs or images presented to complement the story.
Based on the news texts explored in this study, The Jerusalem Post was found to be leaning more towards defending the Israeli army albeit they also conferred grief for the victim’s loss. They implied familiarity with the victim throughout the story by introducing his family and even his wife who had passed away a few years back and was not involved in the scene. Its chronological order of the event represented the situation of how the killings happened and directed the readers to believe that it was an accident.
Whereas The Guardian made a balance between the accident and the victim’s sorrow by mentioning in its P2 that he was “screaming with grief in an extraordinary scene”. This media used a more orally based vocabulary, stirring and lurid language compared to the others with words such as
“shocked the Israel public” and “striking case of civilian’s deaths…” As this media is based in the United Kingdom and has a different cultural, social and
political background than The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera; therefore their approach of presenting the news texts was neutral. Aljazeera inclined more towards the victim’s side. Even though this media also presented the story of the military’s accident in killing the girls, the last paragraph, P8, had started with the word “Instead” to visualize the readers that the Israeli military appeared to be unconcern with the tragedy and the readers should deem the episode as not an accident. Clearly, these media use different representations and semiotics as means of signifying the news items and to get the audience to perceive and believe the news as they are told in each text.
Apparently, news media is required in the world nowadays. People get connected with each other all over the world by the news. People read, listen or watch the news to get information about the world today. Readers are becoming more aware of where to search for news, whether in hardcopy or digital form, for insightful analysis and comprehensive reporting on issues that are happening around them and even across the globe. For that reason the public ought to be conscious of the power of the language of the media and its effect in influencing and shaping perceptions and opinion especially when the new technological resources for communication today reaches out to a much wider public than ever (David, Burhanudeen, & Abdullah, 2006).
Every reader reads the news text with a set of his own codes to decode the text. These codes will possibly be at variance from every reader. Therefore interpretations of news texts vary base on the views and thoughts of the reader, and also the familiarity with the newspaper and the codes that it uses to present the news to the readers.
David, Burhanudeen and Abdullah (2006, p. vii) prompt that “linguistics analysis of news text media is not only limited to analyzing the different representations of each news text and conducting semiotics analysis, but it also includes visual analysis, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.” The results provided in this study on the different representations and the semiotics analysis of the same news item by different types of news texts did propose several factors involved in their production and recognized the various signs in representing their stories. However, they cannot determine how an individual reader may interpret the representations of the news items in a real social context.
The amount of text used for data provided in this paper is partial and the conclusion was based on the semiotics discourse viewpoint. One story is not always enough to draw a conclusion as a 24-hour web news channel may have issued several stories on the same event on the same day compared to a newspaper with only one report of the event in a day. Fowler (1991) says for our analyses to be valid, we should not rely solely on textual material; we have to go beyond the text, the hands involved in it, the editing process, the
internal guidelines, political orientation, etc. Therefore, for these limitations, further analyses with larger data in wider contexts are suggested to be conducted in future related studies.
The Authors
Diana Fauzia Sari (Email: diana.fauzia [at] yahoo.com) is a lecturer at the Secretarial Education Program (Program Diploma Pendidikan Kesekretariatan or PDPK), Faculty of Economics, Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She was born on September 9, 1978 in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She holds a B.A. in English from Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and an M.A. in TEFL from the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Her main research interests are global English, teaching methodologies, business English and language in the media.
Yunisrina Qismullah Yusuf (Email: Yunisrina [at] gmail.com) is a lecturer at the English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She was born on June 17, 1980 in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She received her B.A. in English from Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and M.A. in Linguistics in the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her research interests are in the various fields of linguistic studies. She is currently a PhD student majoring in Phonetics and Phonology at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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