Arab Spring…Islamists-Seculars Struggle to Control Egypt A CDA Study from AJE's Ideological Perspective

Abstract

The current study investigates the Arab spring upheaval consequences Egypt witnessed after 2011 popular revolution as reflected by AJE (Al-Jazeera English) in its online news article. The primary concern is to unveil AJE's hidden ideological view towards the internal conflict in Egypt investigating its discoursal positive ''Self'' and negative ''Other'' representations. Within the linguistic analysis, macro and micro structures of AJE's online news article were analyzed. At the macro level, the semantic macrostructure of AJE's article was outlined to determine its global meaning. At the micro level, the syntactic, lexical and rhetorical structures of AJE's online news article were examined to determine its local meaning. Within the ideological analysis, the AJE's online news article was analyzed to determine its ideological positive ''Self'' (in-group) and negative ''Other'' (out-group) presentations. The study is an attempt to explain how a single reality-Egyptian internal conflict- is viewed and represented by the designated media outlet, AJE. This can be achieved within the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). To conduct this qualitative study, the researchers adopted van Dijk's theory of Macrostructures (1980), van Dijk's theory of ideological square (1998) and Wodak's approach of Discourse- historical (2001, 2009). Furthermore, Fairclough's model for media discourse analysis was utilized to organize the analytical process. The study approved that AJE succeeded to reflect its ideological view. It expressed its support to the Muslim Brotherhood (Islamists) presented as the positive "Self" (in-group) and antagonism against the new Egyptian authority presented as the negative "Other" (out-group).