The ‘Megxit’ in British and American Headlines: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Language and Translation, College of Language & Communication (CLC), Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Alexandria, Egypt.

Abstract

This study aims to examine the discursive devices employed by British and American newspaper headlines to deliver the news of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step down as senior members of the British royal family. It also aims to reveal how devices, such as presupposition, lexical choices and grammar reflect the ideologies of media practitioners in Britain and the United States regarding the issue under study. Forty headlines are collected from ten major newspapers in Britain and the United States of America: The Guardian, The Times, The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, New York Post, Washington Post, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today. The forty headlines are collected from articles published within fifteen days of Prince Harry’s announcement on the 8th of January, 2020. The study applies Fairclough’s (1995) framework of CDA. The results show that British and American news headlines employ presupposition, word choices, emotive language, naming strategies, along with tools such as direct and indirect quotation an active and passive voice differently to express their different ideologies.

Keywords