Ideological Framing in British Newspaper Headlines: A Critical Discourse Analysis of The Times, The Sun, and the Daily Mail

الملخص

This research focuses on the critical discourse analysis of 30 matched headlines from The Times, The Sun and the Daily Mail newspapers, covering 10 similar news events that have been published between 2022 and 2024. It explores the linguistic means through which framing is constructed, including the aspects of lexical choice, labeling, grammatical agency, foregrounding and backgrounding, metaphor, pronouns, rhetorical questions, direct address, wordplay, and intertextuality. The analysis is based on Critical Discourse Analysis and framing theory particularly those of Fairclough, van Dijk and Entman, and is qualitative with matched-event design in order to compare the representation of the same or similar event within the three newspapers. The study reveals that there are persistent differences in register and framing preferences. The Times is more likely to use relatively institutional and propositional formulations, The Sun more interpersonal, allusive and popular-cultural, and the Daily Mail more evaluative, as well as emotive. The study also finds significant overlap between newspapers and reminds readers to read every stylist contrast with care, asking themselves if it is a sign of ideological positioning. Ideological framing is best demonstrated when similar events are distributed in similar ways with regard to responsibility, evaluation, causality, or salience using language. The conclusion of the study is that headlines not only summarise news, they also shape the attention, position the social actors and influence the relationship between event, newspaper and reader.