Parliament Attack: Discourse and Ideology in Indian English Newspapers

 

The paper tries to capture how the structure of texts under the pressure of the social circumstances of communication, embodies values and beliefs. It particularly focuses on the four editorials of two Indian English daily (‘The Hindu’ and ‘The Pioneer’) that are commonly perceived to have two different polarized political or ideological biases. The editorials are related to a high profile political case that deals with those who were apparently involved in Indian Parliament attack in 2001. As a follow up of the parliament attack three young Kashmiri men and one lady were charged with waging war against state and therefore detained under controversial Prevention of Terrorism Acts (POTA). The study is based on methods that scholars of critical linguistics have used to unveil the underlined meanings of political discourse. The two research questions that have been probed in this paper are: (1) what are the political or ideological orientation of the two newspapers? (2) How statuses of the agents or themes determine the style of news discourse in Indian context? The texts were analyzed in terms of their ideational and interpersonal functions. It investigates three highly significant linguistic structures like ‘transitivity’, ‘modality’, and ‘lexicons’. The analysis of ‘transitivity’ (Ideational function) reveals that ‘the three’ accused in the case occupy ‘agentive’ roles in ‘The pioneer’ while they are mostly placed in the ‘effected’ participant positions in ‘The Hindu’. ‘The Pioneer’ holds the three accused directly responsible for the ‘conspiracy’ of the parliament attack without any trace of hedge. The Hindu’, on the other hand, was critical on the role of state for ‘falsely’ implicating the accused. The use of lexicons and modality in the texts also, establishes The Pioneer’s anti Pakistan stand on one hand, and on the other, it indicates The Hindu’s ideological biases for ‘equal justice for all’. Thus, the ideational and interpersonal functions of the texts dichotomize these two news papers into two distinct categories: ‘Socialism’ (The Hindu) vs. ‘capitalism/imperialism’ (The Pioneer).