KTO Karatay University

2020-2021 Academic Year

Spring Semester IMT312 Text Analysis Midterm
21956019 Mehmet Özgü Aras
Task: Analyse the news report below critically in terms of genre, framing,
foregrounding-backgrounding, presupposition, topicalization, tense and
modality.
Genre: This article extracted from “The New York Times”, one of the most
popular newspaper in United States. It clearly belongs to “news” genre. As in all
newspaper reports, our expectation here is whether objective journalism rules
are followed. In this newspaper article, the statements of the opposing groups
were given without adding comments, respectively. The text does not contain
any information other than the explanations of the authorities. All that
happened is described in a passive voice like “he said that” in the past tense. But
this style does not give enough information about objectivity. For more
information we should look in a deeper level.
Framing: The text begins with the explanations of the Tehran administration and
throughout the text, the responses of the Tehran administration to various
claims are mentioned. However, it is important to note that no evidence of
allegations has been presented by neither author nor dissents throughout the
whole text. So framing is simple: Build suspicions in reader's minds via the fact
that there are various unsubstantiated allegations. As if they mean to “careful
reader, there are claims that Iran has nuclear bombs. We haven’t seen yet but
there might be”.
Visual Aids: Extracted part of the text contains no captions or something. Only
aid is the title of the report and it is the important one. “Iran denies!”. So, there
are some claims. There is no evidence. Only thing can Iran do is denying. Framing
is already starting from the beginning.
Foregrounding: If we call denial “D” and claims “A”, the text proceeds as
DADADA. Iran's desperate answers to the allegations were always given as a
priority because the reporter wanted the allegations not to stand in a showcase
because of the lack of evidence. The information that the allegations have not
yet been proven is given in the second half of the text by barely mentioning of
it.
Presupposition: There is an important, clear and clever presupposition in the
text and that is “if you have uranium enrichment program then you are
developing a nuclear weapon”. This presupposition forms the basis of the
dissidents’ claim. Iran never denies the existence of program. They only deny the
existence of nuclear weapons and they are using enrichment program only to
produce nuclear electricity power. However, this presupposition is strong
because you do not need enriched uranium for electricity. That is why the
dissidents express their unproven claims so comfortably.
Topicalization: The topic is always about Iran and claims of nuclear weapons.
The sentences of both dissidents and Iranian authorities begin with “Iran”: “Iran
rejected claims”, “Iran hiding weapons”, “Iran suspended program”, “Iran does
not have weapons” and so on. And then again there no topic about evidence of
claims.
Modality and Tense: Sentence structure of the opposition group and the
American foreign minister always contains the probability modal verbs like
would be, could be and should be. It is clear that claims are far from certainty.
This situation makes space for insuniation for dissidents because, at one point,
if it is proven that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, the dissidents can easily
say that what they were just talking about claims.
Conclusion: So, does the Iran has nuclear weapons? In fact, it is not so important
whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not. The important thing is the possibility
of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and the threat perception arising from this
claim awakens suspicions in people's minds. It is easier to canalize people
through doubts than through the facts. When we look at it from this point of
view, this news is a lobbying success for the Iranian dissidents living in America.
Even the American foreign minister reflects the perspective of the Iranian
dissidents.
According to me, there are no nuclear weapons in Iran at that moment. Yes, they
have uranium enrichment programs, but if they had ready-to-use nuclear
weapons at their hands, we would have seen evidence of them already in the
news.