Discourse and Ideology Variation: A Critical Functional Approach To Mina Stampede News Reports

This paper takes a critical look at the news reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia on Mina stampede. Previous studies have indicated that media discourse contributes to public opinion and ideology. Little, however, has been mentioned on how variation in media discourse affects the process. This study analyzed 24 news reports from the two countries from 24 to 31 September 2015 using the components of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results indicate differences in the reports from the two countries in using variation patterns which in turn have the potential of changing and monitoring readers` ideologies through influencing their opinions on the nature of power relations and interactional structures. The paper tries to contribute to the area of research on media discourse and ideology construction by arguing that discourse variation has not been sufficiently theorized. An attempt will also be made to offer a tentative theorization of such variation.