Discourse & Society

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Critique Discourses and Ideology in Newspaper Reports: A Discourse

Analysis of the South African Press Reports on the 1998 SADC's Military
Intervention in Lesotho
PULENG THETELA
Discourse Society 2001 12: 347
DOI: 10.1177/0957926501012003004

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 ARTICLE 347

Critique discourses and ideology in newspaper

reports: a discourse analysis of the South African
press reports on the 19 9 8 SADC's military
intervention in Lesotho
Discourse & Society
Copyright 0 2001
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
Vol 12(3): 347--370
[0957-9265
PULENG THETELA (200105) 12:3;
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 347-370; 016627]

AB s TR ACT. The present study examines the coverage of the Southern Africa
Development Community's (SADC) military intervention in Lesotho by the
South African newspapers -- how the newspapers articulate conflicting
ideological positions in their reportage of the intervention. Working within the
ideological framework of news production and reception, the article examines
the issue of critique (with emphasis on blame} in these newspapers. Dividing
the news texts into supportive and protest categories (the PINA and AINA,
respectively), the study investigates different perceptions (opinions, feelings,
attitudes, etc.} about South Africa's involvement in the conflict, and how such
perceptions were encoded in the ideologically based discursive patterns (lexical,
metaphorical and intertextual choices). The differences between the newspaper
reports are also seen as establishing two rival social group identities, expressed
through the ideological us versus them binary opposition.

KEY WORDS: AINA, blame, conflict, evaluation, exclusion, identity, intertextuality,

invasion, PINA, SADC, South Africa, text, transitivity

1. Introduction
Much has been written on warfare reporting in media studies (e.g. Hudson and
Stanier, 1997; Young and Jesser, 1997), and linguistic research (e.g. Hackett and
Zhao, 1994; Rojo, 1995), the focus of which has been on major conflicts such as
the Gulf War. This article analyses news discourse, particularly the news reports
in the South African press during the Southern African Community's (SADC)
military intervention in Lesotho. Although the armed conflict never attracted
international media interest, it was a major event in Southern Africa, as it
marked a new role for South Africa (SA) as a major player in the Southern
African sociopolitical and economic situation. The conflict should be seen against
the background of the following:
(i) It occurred towards the end of the first term of office of the first ever demo-

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348 Discourse & Society 12(3)

cratically elected government, after decades of apartheid rule, and only six
months prior to the general election.
(ii) The new SA government had spent its first term engaged in the political,
social and economic restructuring of the country, in order to improve the lives of
the previously disadvantaged black population, a task which had earned the gov-
ernment sharp criticism from both black and white South Africans, the former
complaining of the slow pace of reform, while the latter expressed fears about the
possible discrimination against the white population.
(iii) The intervention was the first foreign military engagement by the newly
transformed SA army, which had incorporated the former liberation armies into
its ranks; and hence had had its name changed from South African Defence Force
(SADF) to the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), to reflect this
transformation. These changes had created bitter rivalry between the black and
white officers, resulting in incidents of mutiny within the army ranks.
(iv) When SA joined the SADC in 1994, the organization structure changed
from being only a development body to that of assuming security powers to pro-
tect democracy in the member states; the Lesotho conflict was the first test of the
SADC's security powers, enshrined in the 1996 Gaborone Protocol.
The above historical and sociopolitical background to the conflict motivated
the study of critique in this article (the term critiquing defined by the Concise
Oxford Dictionary as to 'evaluate in a detailed and analytical way'). Taking the
view that news discourses do not occur in a vacuum, but are products of the
social system within which journalists work, I assumed that the examination of
critique discourses would reveal evidence of the reproduction of the ideologies of
the social system and institutions in SA at the time (i.e. the political and social div-
isions, polarization of opinion, etc.).
The database for this analysis is a corpus of 300 news reports and 19 editorial
sections of newspapers published between June 1998 and April 1999: from the
SA Independent Group newspapers -- The Star, Cape Argus (to be referred to as
CA), Cape Times ( CT) The SA Independent, The Citizen, Business Day (BD) and the
Mail and Guardian (M&G). I divide the reports into two categories: the 'protest' (or
'dissenting') press -to be referred to as the Anti-Intervention Alliance (AINA);
and those which took a 'supportive' (or 'collaborative') stance - the Pro-
Intervention Alliance (PINA); the term alliance is used very loosely to refer to
shared sociocultural values.

2. A brief history of the military intervention

The military intervention in Lesotho took place on 22 September 1998, after all
attempts by the SADC to find a peaceful solution to the Lesotho political crisis had
failed. The crisis was a result of the Lesotho opposition parties' rejection of the
results of the 23 May 1998 general elections, which they claimed had been
rigged in favour of the ruling party. When the SADC Commission of Inquiry, set
up to investigate the opposition allegations, failed to find evidence of fraud, the

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 349

opposition refused to accept the verdict, and instead turned to the army for sup-
port. This culminated in an attempted military coup, the situation that prompted
the SADC military intervention. The SADC force, which was led by SA, was made
up of the SANDF and the Botswana Defence Force (BDF).

3. Theoretical framework
The study of the production and reception of the news media has been a widely
researched area in linguistics. While some studies have focused on lexicogram-
matical patterns of news reports (e.g. Bagnall, 1993), others have concentrated
on larger discourse patterns (e.g. Van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b; Bell, 1991); yet other
studies (e.g. critical linguistics) have focused on even broader concerns such as
ideology, and various sociocognitive dimensions of news production and
interpretation (e.g. Kress, 1983; Fowler, 1991; Hodge and Kress, 1993; Van Dijk,
1995, 1996). Linguistic studies of the news media have profited from the influ-
ence of the social sciences -the economic, political, social and psychological
aspects of news processing -- these providing 'important insights into the (macro)
conditions of news production and into the uses or effects of mass media report-
ing' (Van Dijk, 1988b: 1). The present study thus derives its theoretical under-
pinning from this interdisciplinary approach; particularly the ideological
framework articulated in Van Dijk (1992, 1995, 1996, 1998); Fowler (1991),
andFairclough(1989, 1992, 1995).

IDEOLOGIES IN THE NEWS

Since news texts are social practices (i.e. they represent the views and actions of
certain social classes or groups), they are subject to the social constraints and
institutional relations within which journalists operate ( Curran and Seaton,
1988; Van Dijk, 1996). The news is not only reported, but it is also interpreted,
and interpreting any event, 'involves the beliefs, opinions, hopes, and aspirations
of those gathering, reporting, and publishing the news', and in that process,
'ideology inevitably co-determines what gets reported, when it is reported, and
how the reporting is done' (Verschueren, 1985: 3). The analysis of news reports in
this study is broadly based on the theoretical framework of ideology defined below:
Ideologies are basic frameworks of social cognition, shared by members of social
groups, constituted by relevant selections of sociocultural values, and organized by
an ideological schema that represents self-definition of a group. Besides their social
function of sustaining the interests of groups, ideologies have the cognitive function
of organizing the social representations ( attitudes, knowledge) of the group, and thus
indirectly monitor the group-related social practices, and hence also the text and talk
of its members. (VanDijk, 1995: 248)

The above framework enables us to investigate and account for discursive pat-
terns of critique, and then speculate on how such patterns function as represen-
tations of the ideologies of social groups within whose midst the news reports
were produced.

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350 Discourse & Society 12 (3)

NEWS VALUES AND EVALUATION

Research on media studies has shown that not every event reaches the news
columns but that journalists use a paradigm of news values (e.g. frequency,
meaningfulness, threshold, consonance, etc.) to decide on which event is more
newsworthy than others (e.g. Hartley, 1982; Bell, 1991). Decisions on news wor-
thiness also influence linguistic choices in the news: the structure and content of
the headline or lead stories, propositional structures, lexical patterns and other
levels of discourse. Structurally, news stories have also been seen to follow certain
schematic patterns of various genres, such as Labov's ( 19 72) narrative structure,
in which evaluation is seen as an integral part of storytelling, to establish the sig-
nificance of what is being told, focus the events, and justify claiming the audi-
ence's attention ( see Bell, 19 91: 152). The present analysis sees critique
discourses as one particular form of normative judgement on human behaviour,
expressed in 'moral comments or demonstrations of the way the world is, the way
the world ought to be, what proper behaviour is, and the kind of people that the
speaker and addressees are' (Linde, 19 9 7: 153). This study, therefore, investigates
how sociocultural values ( either universal or group values) are integrated into
the news through journalistic choices of the language code - the preference of
certain meanings against a host of other possible meanings.

INTERTEXTUALITY AND CONSENSUS

The study also recognises that news texts have a special value of incorporating
linguistic elements of various kinds from one text type to another or from one
socially situated discourse type to another -- the property often referred to under
the general topic of intertextuality (e.g. Bakhtin, 19 81; Fairclough, 19 8 9, 19 9 2;
Candlin and Maley, 199 7). The intertextual practices of the news stories are real-
ized through the incorporation of interpersonal styles, which organize the news
into persuasive and argumentative construct, and also build the assumption of
consensus, making the news as an agreed notion of unity. Consensus ( discussed
in detail in, for example, Hartley, 19 8 2; Herman and Chomsky, 19 88) is under-
stood here as a set of shared beliefs 'that a society shares all its interests in
common, without division or variations' (Fowler, 1991: 16), the ideology which
is the source of the consensual 'we' pronoun commonly used in political dis-
courses. In this study, therefore, we look at the discourse roles of bringing frag-
ments of discourse from interpersonal discourses, such as oral models
(conversation and narrative structures), and polyphonic practices (incorporation
of multiple voices) into the construction of news stories.

4. Discourse analysis
The analysis of news reports in the study is that of rhetorical patterns
of discourse semantics: the propositional patterns, illustrated through transi-
tivity choices, lexical structure and metaphorical expressions. Critique is also
expressed through the intertextual practices of the news reports --the oral models

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 351

(e.g. conversational and narrative patterns) and attribution strategies for the
incorporation of newsmakers' voices in the construction of the news stories.

4 .1 TRANSITIVITY CHOICES
In discourse, the content, participants and semantic roles are largely constructed
through language: they are derived from 'the meanings of the discourse associ-
ated with the institutions relevant to the production and consumption of the text'
(Fowler, 1991: 70). It is from this perspective that I investigate the different per-
ceptions of the intervention between the PINA and AINA press, based on choices
from the system of transitivity, a part of the ideational metafunction of language,
which explores differences in meaning between various types of processes (e.g.
Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994). This analysis has been widely used by critical lin-
guists to show how newspapers provide abundant examples of the ideological sig-
nificance of transitivity in the study of meaning (e.g. Kress, 1983; Fairclough,
1989; Fowler, 1991; Van Dijk, 1995). In this article, the analysis is applied to
newspaper headlines, the choice of which was motivated by their crucial role in
meaning: as macropropositions, they encapsulate the news stories, and attract
the reader to the story (e.g. Fairclough, 1992; Nir and Roeh, 1992). Given the fact
that they are constructed by news editors after the stories have been written (e.g.
Reah, 1998), news headlines function as opinion manipulators, and are thus
good candidates for the study of the newspapers' ideological positions. For this
analysis, only three of these processes found in our data - the material (processes
of doing), relational (being) and verbal (saying)- are discussed.

Material processes Since the M&G, carrying the highest percentage of the AINA
reports, reported events on the battlefield (e.g. who was doing what to whom), the
majority of their headlines were constructed as material processes.
1. SA forces butcher sleeping Lesotho soldiers at Katse Dam (CA, 12 Oct. 1998).
2. SA abandoned the moral high ground among the mountains ( CT, 1 Oct.
1998).
3. More than 100 die in Lesotho misadventure (CA, 15 Oct. 1998).
4. Was Lesotho sacrificed to appease Mugabe? (M&+G, 12 Oct. 1998).
The semantic definition of a material process is that some entity is doing some-
thing, or undertakes some action. In a material process, the entity or participant
responsible for the process is described as agent (or actor), for example, 'SA forces'
in the first headline (1), 'SA in (2) and 'more than 100' in (3). The actions, on the
other hand, can either be concrete, physical actions (e.g. 'butcher' in [1] or
abstract happenings (e.g. 'abandon the moral high ground' in [2]). While in (1)
the agent is represented as actively responsible for the process, in (2) and (3) the
relationship between the agent and the process is not causative, as both agents
are mere participants in processes over which they have no control. Processes
(irrespective of type) can either be confined to the agent or be extended to other
participants: 'butcher' in (1), for example affects 'sleeping Lesotho soldiers',

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3 52 Discourse & Society 12 (3)

referred to, in material terms, as patient or goal (the participant suffering the
process). The difference between a confined process in ( 3) and extended one in ( 1)
can be explained through the theory of ergativity (e.g. Halliday, 1994: 163 ff;
Manning, 1996), the discussion of which falls outside the scope of the present
article. In addition to the two obligatory components of any process ( the partici-
pant and the process itself), the clause may choose a third component- the cir-
cumstantial element ( with the same functions across processes) to represent, for
instance, either the location of an event (e.g. 'at Katse Dam' in [l]), the cause of
a process (e.g. 'to appease Mugabe' in [4]), or the manner in which the process is
carried out (e.g. 'satisfactorily').
While transitivity roles are semantic in nature, they can also be impacted upon
by syntactic transformations. While the latter do not necessarily affect the type of
process, they can bring other dimensions of meaning to the discourse. Unlike the
first three headlines, for example, ( 4) is a passive construction, in which the
patient (Lesotho) is in subject ( or thematic) position; and although the verb struc-
ture, 'was sacrificed' has a feature of agency (i.e. we could ask 'who by'?), the
identity of the agent is not revealed in the headline, thus placing the prominence
of the message on the patient and the action suffered.
The preference of abstract happenings as material processes mentioned above
has a very powerful evaluative function. The choices of frequently used verbs by
the M&G and the CA, such as 'botch' and 'blunder', for example, ( as in 'SA botches
the invasion' and 'Yet again, Pretoria blunders', respectively), do not necessarily
tell us about concrete events, but about the headline writer's interpretation and
evaluation of events. The verb 'butcher' in (1), also shows that since headline
stories are also opinion manipulators, even the choice of concrete actions carry
evaluation -in addition to saying what happened, the verbs also evaluate the atti-
tude of the agent to the patient. Thus while 'butcher' normally refers to the
slaughter of animals, its use with reference to human beings carries negative
connotations of cruelty and brutality.

Relational processes These processes encode the meaning of 'being' something is

being said to be something else: either something has a certain quality ascribed to
it (attributive) or something has an identity assigned to it (identifying). Headlines
(5) and (6) below (note that due to the typical telegraphic syntax of headlines, the
verb 'is' in square brackets was absent in the original) illustrate the two types of
relational processes.
5. SA [is] wrong to interfere in Lesotho conflicts ( CA, 13 Oct. 19 9 8).
6. SA's military intervention [is] a mistake (CA, 26 Sept. 1998).
In almost all the relational process headlines, SA was positioned as a major par-
ticipant, and assigned negative attributes and identifying qualities, for example,
the attribute 'wrong' in (5), and the identity 'a mistake' in (6). Attributes and
other qualities can be ascribed to an entity in structures other than the verb 'is'.
A good example is that of the verbs 'cost' and 'deserves' in 'Lesotho Foray cost SA

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 353

R8 million in first week' (The Star, 12 Oct. 1998) and 'Pretoria deserves world-
wide condemnation for Lesotho fiasco' (M&G, 26 Sept. 1998), respectively, in
which the verb was carried by the circumstantial element, and the attribution by
the nominal group (see Halliday, 1994: 131 ff, for a discussion on circumstantial
processes).

Verbal processes The choice of verbal processes can be seen as one of the distin-
guishing features between the two categories of reports. Unlike in the AINA
reports, the majority of PINA headlines were verbal processes -reporting
speeches by elite people, particularly, government ministers and military officials.
Most of these headlines were found in The Star.
7. Mandela defends military action as coup prevention (The Star, 28 Sept. 1998).
8. Nyanda slams media over distorted Lesotho coverage (The Star, 12 Oct. 1998).
9. Mbeki denies claims about SANDF's botch up (The Star, 29 Nov. 1998).
In these verbal reports, the individual ministers (mentioned by name) are
assigned agency roles (sayer in verbal process terms), whereas other participants
are either receiver (or target) of the process, such as 'media' in (8) or (a part of) the
verbiage (the latter refers to a nominalized statement of the verbal process, such
as 'claims' in [9]). The most common choices of speech verbs in the headlines are
performative verbs (e.g. 'defends', 'slams' and 'denies' above), which characterize
the elite people as speaking from some positions of power through saying cer-
tain things they are also performing certain actions (see, Austin, 1962 on speech
acts). The choice of naming the ministers, as opposed to institutions such as 'gov-
ernment' or 'army', for example, appears to give a human face to institutional dis-
courses, such that the reader identifies with these discourses; thus the headline
stories evoke feelings, such as empathy, patriotism and other human feelings. It is
also worth pointing out that these verbal processes are coded in the present tense,
thereby adding the quality of urgency and relevance to the story, and situating
the message in the here and now.
It should be mentioned that at the height of the conflict when the government
was making use of both the broadcast and press media to rally public support,
papers such as the M&G and CA published response articles the purpose of which
was to counteract what the papers referred to as 'lies' and 'malicious propaganda'
by the government to 'mislead the public'. This was done through the incorpora-
tion of voices from selected sources (e.g. opposition parties, church leaders and
other interest groups), whose versions of events contradicted official ones. Many
of these reports chose verbal process headlines, with the selected sources almost
invariably in agency positions.
(10) Churches and peace bodies take SA to task over incursion (CA 30 Sept.
1998).
(11) Lesotho spin doctor slams SA invasion and lies (CA, 2 Oct. 1998).
(12) SA condemned for cold-blooded murder in Lesotho (M&G, 12 Oct. 1998).

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354 Discourse & Society 12(3)

The point worth noting here is that in the AINA verbal process headlines, the gov-
ernment (represented through place for institution metonymy, 'SA') was either
omitted from the headline or its role reduced to that of either receiver or (part of)
the verbiage things were either said to (e.g. [12]) or about (e.g. [11]) the gov-
ernment.
The analysis of transitivity above has indicated how, through choices from the
lexicogrammar, certain semantic roles and relationships are reproduced in the
ideologically constructed discursive practices. For example, the choice of SA in
material processes indicated the AINA's perception of the farmer's cruel and other
negative activities. Through positioning of participants and process choices, and
their positioning in the clause, we could reasonably speculate on the ideologies of
the news reports.

4. 2 LEXICAL STRUCTURE
Lexical choices have always been seen as very crucial in the construction of
meaning. They 'mark off socially and ideologically distinct areas of experience'
(Fowler, 1991: 84), and therefore have a categorizing function. In our data, these
choices were the most explicitly distinguishing feature between the PINA and the
AINA, particularly in naming ( or labelling) certain entities. Several studies have
shown labelling as an ideological decision, the most well documented example
being that of the difference between 'freedom fighter' and 'terrorist' (e.g. Kress,
1983; Van Dijk, 1995; Clark, 1998). In the present study, we use similar ideo-
logical considerations to describe the labelling strategies of the SA press.
In the first two days of the war, the unexpected high rate of casualties among
the SANDF soldiers, resulted in heightened tensions and polarized opinions
among the SA public, with many calls for the immediate withdrawal of the SA
troops. These tensions could be seen to have accounted for many terms used to
refer to the human participants the SA government, the SADC, Lesotho, and the
critics -and the events. We start by looking at the use of the terms intervention
and invasion, which dominated parliamentary debates and broadcast interviews
(and were later picked up by the press), with reference to the conflict.
Pl: It was intervention, not an SA invasion (The Star, 6 Oct. 1998)
It is similarly erroneous to blame South Africa for the fact that the people of Lesotho
went on a rampage, looting the centre of Maseru. The fact that these activities took
place concomitantly with the military intervention shows that underlying social ten-
sions had reached a point of no return. It is also not correct to endorse the perception
that the SADC had invaded Lesotho, because our military intervention was repeatedly
requested by Lesotho's own government.

The above statement was attributed to a government minister in a report defend-

ing the government's position. In this extract, there is a juxtaposition of the two
terms, in the headline and the main text. In the former, the preferred term, inter-
vention, occurs in the main clause, whereas the second and minor clause intro-
duces the dispreferred term though a negation 'not'. The positioning of the
former term in the main clause gives the message some prominence. The purpose

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 355

of the main text can be seen as the justification of why one and not the other term
is appropriate. In the last sentence, for example, although invade comes before
intervention, it is introduced through the negative 'it is also not correct...' after the
reason for its inappropriateness (i.e. 'because') is given. It is worth noting that the
use of these terms in the SA press are suggestive of the opinions that the users
had - with invasion perceived as indicating violence whereas intervention had posi-
tive connotations of peace and mediation.
The context provided in (P 1) above can be used to explain the frequency of the
use of some labels and not others by either the support or protest media. Using
references to the conflict again as an illustration, I collected the labels from all the
papers, arranged them into groups on the basis of synonymy, and then catego-
rized the groups under broad senses that each group seemed to carry (see Al and
P2 below).
(Al) AINA Labels
(i) Conflict as a mistake and/or military failure: 'a terrible mistake', 'clumsy interven-
tion', 'ill-conceived operation', 'the Lesotho debacle', 'dreadful error', 'inept handling
of a complex situation', 'ill-fated intervention', 'the Lesotho misadventure', 'the
Lesotho botch-up', 'an exercise of futility', 'SANDF disaster', 'blunder', 'the Lesotho
shambles', 'SANDF fiasco', 'mayhem', 'mess'.
(ii) Conflict as violent, illegal and/ or immoral: 'invasion', 'ultimate occupation', 'naked
aggression', 'chauvinistic expansionism', 'bully-boy tactics', 'the Rambo nation
approach', 'devilish and bloody invasion', 'cold-blooded murder', 'merciless butcher-
ing', 'illegal occupation'.
(P2) PINA Labels
(iii) Conflict as successful: 'an unqualified success', 'a resounding victory for democracy
and transparency' and 'a triumph for peace', 'a milestone in regional cooperation',
strike a blow for freedom and peace'.
(iv) Conflict as legal and morally justified: 'intervention', 'a noble purpose', 'a vindica-
tion of the initiative of peace-loving African countries', 'a noble sacrifice for peace', 'a
repayment of SA's moral debt', 'a cleaning up of the scourge of coups', 'a liberation of
democracy', 'an attempt to heal the cancer of corruption', 'a wake-up call to an
African Renaissance'.
The categorization indicates a selection of labels by each category, based along
distinct parameters of value -success, peace, legality and morality. The choices in
(i) and (ii), make the AINA's negative perception clear- all these labels carry nega-
tive evaluations: thus the war is perceived as a mistake - unsuccessful, confused,
illegal, violent and immoral. This view conflicts with that of the PINA, in which
the selected labels carry the meanings of success (iii) and legality and morality
(iv). The fact that each category chose labels from the opposite poles of the
good-bad evaluation continuum could be seen as a powerful ideological tool and
a pointer to the ideology of the news reports concerned.

4. 3 THE METAPHOR SYSTEM AND MORALITY

Choices from the metaphor system also indicated the differences between the

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356 Discourse & Society 12(3)

PINA and AINA press. We examine the use of a distinct group of metaphors
which were used extensively in the press - that of morality - the categorization
broadly based on Lakoff's (1996) view that our metaphorical system is grounded
in our experiential logic of material of well-being (e.g. health, happiness, wealth,
freedom, etc.). An attempt is made to characterize three categories of morality
metaphors (i.e. moral accounting, purity and health), examine the logic behind
their use, and then speculate on their role in critique.

Moral accounting These metaphors are based on our conceptualization of moral

well-being as wealth, the logic of which is rooted in our everyday experience in
which wealth serves as a strong basis on which sociocultural values are based.
We refer to, for example, 'a wealth of information' as a positive value, and 'moral
bankruptcy' as negative. Moral accounting values rely very heavily on the prem-
ise that if someone does something good to you, you are morally 'in debt' to that
person-you 'owe' him/her something, and it is morally right to honour the debt.
In the SA press, these values were represented by the lexical register of financial
transactions: for example, 'owe', 'pay'/'repay'. 'gain'. 'cost', 'loss', 'price', and
similar expressions.
P3: Buthelezi: Petty carping about Lesotho is wrong (SA Independent, 7 Oct. 199 8)
A military intervention is always an extreme, costly and painful action. However, in
this country we have learnt that freedom and liberty always come with a heavy price
tag. I think people should be proud that South Africa, along with other SADC coun-
tries, has chosen to pay this price to protect the freedom and liberty of the people of
Lesotho who, otherwise, today would have been under the yoke of a military junta,
with the possibility of more casualties.
The moral accounting metaphors in the SA press could be seen as based on the
concept of historical, economical and sociocultural relations between Lesotho
and SA. First, Lesotho (which is a small country completely surrounded by SA)
played a major role during the struggle against apartheid (e.g. harbouring SA
exiles, most of whom received higher education and/or military training there).
Second, the country is economically dependent on SA (e.g. the Basotho form a
substantial percentage of SA's workforce, and both countries use the same mon-
etary system). Finally, Sesotho (the language of Lesotho) is one of the major and
official languages of SA, and the people in both countries have families on either
side of the border.
In the PINA press, most moral accounting metaphors were found in statements
attributed to the government and its allies, in the discourses in which SA's involve-
ment in Lesotho was defended. While in ( 3) above, there was an admission that
the intervention was costly (e.g. 'a heavy price'), thus undesirable, the surround-
ing discourse, however, suggests that positive values (e.g. freedom and liberty) are
difficult to achieve, and thus demand sacrifices (e.g. they 'always come with a
heavy price tag). Many PINA reports such as this therefore justify SA's involve-
ment in Lesotho as a sacrifice worth making for the restoration of democratic rule
in the latter. In this manner, S.A's intervention was seen as the repayment of S.A's

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 357

moral debt to the Basotho. Obviously the AINA did not share this view. To this cat-
egory of papers, the intervention was immoral, and therefore undesirable. The
same metaphorical choices were, therefore, used to show the negative effects of
the war. For instance, the term 'cost' as in 'South Africa's botched military inter-
vention has cost it dearly in terms of its good neighbourly relations with Lesotho'
( CA, 15 Oct. 19 98) expresses a negative image. This is so even of positive
metaphorical expressions such as 'gain': SA's actions were said to have gained the
country 'enemies locally and abroad', a 'bad reputation', and similar negative
attributes.

Moral purity This category is based on the logic of moral essence: society sees
moral purity in terms of purity and cleanliness, whereas immorality 'is concep-
tualized as something disgusting, dirty, and impure' (Lakoff, 1996: 262). In the
SA press, immoral behaviour was conceptualized in terms of human waste ( e.g.
'excrement', 'excreta', 'shit', etc.) and environmental pollution (e.g. 'pollution',
'filthy', mess', 'dirty', 'dereliction', etc.). The two texts, (A2) and (P4) can be used
to compare the AINA and PINA use of moral purity metaphors.

A2: Now find a way out of the mess (M&G, 1 Oct. 1998)
When 'good intentions' land you belt-high in excrement with nothing firm underfoot,
it is probably best to delay wondering what persuaded you to walk into it. Self-
flagellation can come later. Now it is time to plan a way out -So that you emerge as
dry as possible, preferably alive and with your dignity intact.
P4: Defending regional democracy (The Star, 14 Oct. 1998)
As in many West African countries, the goddess of coups has deposited her poisonous,
imperishable excreta in the caves of the mountain kingdom, so that Maseru in particu-
lar now stinks with abomination.

The report (A2), one of the M&+G's response articles to official government broad-
cast statements, appeared the morning after the deputy president's address to the
nation in which he had emphasized SA's 'good intentions' for intervening in
Lesotho. In addition to using the term 'mess' in the headline to show disapproval
of the government's actions, the deputy president's concept, 'good intentions' is
placed in quotation marks, and also positioned in the clause in agent role, with
the government (referred to as 'you') as the beneficiary of this immoral action (i.e.
'land ... belt-high in excrement').
A similar metaphor 'imperishable excreta' is used in (P4), which, although
expressing the same meaning, is aimed at a different target. Here the metaphor of
excrement derives from the SA black culture's logic of moral essence, used in folk-
lore, curses and proverbial expressions, to describe immoral behaviour. For
example, there is a Sesotho proverb 'Do not defecate in a cave' (literal translation),
which is based on folklore accounts of caves as shelters against rains and thun-
derstorms by travellers on foot or horseback. In such stories, leaving faeces in a
cave meant corrupting the shelter, making it unusable for other travellers. In this
way, the writer (who is a black SA journalist) exploits the cultural meaning of

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358 Discourse & Society 12(3)

excrement and smell (i.e. 'stinks with abomination'), and the personification of
this immoral behaviour as 'the goddess of coups' responsible for the disintegra-
tion of democratic values in Lesotho.
The press also used positive values in their news stories, which were realized
through images of cleanliness. In (A2) above, for instance, getting out of the
'mess' was seen as the equivalent of 'emerging' from the excrement 'as dry as
possible'. The report made specific recommendations on how SA could reclaim its
moral integrity: the immediate withdrawal of SA troops from Lesotho, apologiz-
ing to the Basotho, and helping rebuild Lesotho's economy. For The Star, in par-
ticular, since the purpose of the war was to return Lesotho to democratic rule, it
was seen as a necessary tool for the achievement of moral purity. Further down
the text in (P4), the war is described as 'an eloquent statement that rather than
hold our heads in our hands ... Africa may now be on the road towards cleaning
its own mess' (The Star, 14 Oct. 1998); and in another story as 'the clean up of
the riff-raff so the seeds of stability will germinate and flourish' (The Star, 6 Oct.
19 98), in which the eradication of the coup plotters (i.e. the 'riff-raff') is seen as
enabling the 'germination' and 'flourishing' of seeds of stability, and therefore
implying Lesotho's (or Southern Africa) return to democracy.

Morality as health Several critical linguistic analyses have commented on

metaphorical representations of social problems as diseases in news reports. It
has been argued, for example, that disease metaphors 'tend to take dominant
interests of society as a whole, and construe expressions of non-dominant
interests (strikes, demonstrations, "riots") as undermining (the health) of society
per se' (Fairclough, 1989: 120). In the same way as moral purity, the majority of
disease metaphors were found in the PINA press, in which dissent was dismissed
in disease terms.
P 5: Put the blame on the real culprits (The Star, 2 Oct. 199 8)
Unfortunately a lot of commentary one hears on the Lesotho crisis does not credit the
South Africans for their effort in treating this bleeding ulcer. Those who allow them-
selves to be contaminated by the hysteria being spread by the likes of the Gauteng radio
station might consider this: that radio station did not even cover the Lesotho elections
in May.

The attack on the media by government and its allies, in particular, was a result
of what was seen as partisan reporting (illustrated in verbal process headlines
above). In (P5), for example, the Gauteng radio station was criticized for lack of
patriotism seen in its special interviews with the Lesotho opposition leaders and
anti-war demonstrators. Its behaviour is thus described in disease terms: instead
of supporting good values, expressed by the metaphor of healing (i.e. 'treating' a
'bleeding ulcer'), the radio station 'spreads' 'hysteria' which is seen as dangerous
to (i.e. it can 'contaminate') society's moral health. Similar attacks on the critics
were lexicalized in metaphors such as 'endemic', 'infected', 'epidemic' and
'cancer', all used to refer to treacherous and unpatriotic behaviour.
From our discussion of the three categories of morality metaphors above, we

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 359

are presented with an interesting phenomenon of blame discourses in which

each category of reports purports to represent mainstream social values. The
morality metaphors appear to manipulate public opinion through appeal to
human feelings such as pity, empathy, disgust, anger, outrage, and so on. By cat-
egorizing the targets of blame as lacking moral values, the metaphors can be seen
to breed exclusion practices in which one group is positioned in discourse as
deviant and thus a danger to mainstream sociocultural values ( exclusion is dis-
cussed later in the article).

4.4 INTERTEXTUAL PRACTICES

Much of the critique in the news text under discussion appears to be carried in
the intertextual patterns of the news discourse. First, critique is expressed
through the incorporation of discourses deriving from oral models (e.g. conver-
sational and narrative discursive patterns), and also through attribution strat-
egies used to bring multiple voices from outside the newsroom into the
journalistic constructions of the news stories.

CONVERSATION
The conversational styles of communication used by newspapers is well docu-
mented in research, and often referred to through terms such as the 'public
idiom' (Hall, 1976; Fowler, 1991) or the 'vox pop' (Hartley, 1982). This style,
through which social values are reproduced in the discursive interaction between
the newspaper text and the reader, is an important source of neutral language
that embodies 'moral' values, and creates 'an illusion in which common sense is
spoken in matters on which there is consensus' (Fowler, 1991: 47).
The press employed an informal and casual style, which mimicked features of
face-to-face conversation. Among these were deictic expressions such as 1st and
2nd person pronominal references ( e.g. 'I', 'we', 'you', 'our government', 'our sol-
diers'), mostly found in appeal to common sense and 'one nation' SA by all sec-
tions of the media. The style is also realized by other rhetorical features:
contractions (e.g. 'we can't and won't sit back'), colloquialisms, slang words and
rhetorical questions. One feature of conversation found in the data is that which
could be called 'journalist invented dialogue' - where a story is presented through
embedded dialogue.
A3: Enter Big Brother SA to a baptism of blood and fire: Lesotho sees our
tough side (CA, 29 Oct. 1998)
Before yesterday, southern Africa had bleated about Big Brother every time South
Africa tried to assert itself; ultra-sensitive to the charge, South Africa backed off every
time. Now it has said, in effect, if you brats can demonstrably not sort out your squabbles,
Big Brother will have to do so.

In journalistic dialogue, we find a replication of speech, without any linguistic

signal on whether the speech was actually made, and in many cases, there is no
source, suggesting that it is the writer's own invention. In (A3), for example, we
see an interplay between simple narration and dialogue: first, the headline

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360 Discourse & Society 12(3)

consists of two clauses in appositive relationship, with the initial clause in dia-
logue form and the second in narrative form. Thus, the second clause can be seen
as having an equal meaning status with the first (i.e. it can mean 'in other
words'). Thus SA is represented as having said something about its neighbours.
Both examples are negative evaluations of SA's oppressive behaviour (seen as a
'Big Brother' attitude) towards its neighbours - treating them as badly behaved
children (i.e. 'brats') involved in noisy quarrels (i.e. 'squabbles'). It is worth noting
the differences between headlines and main texts: in the former, the unspecified
source appears to address directly the unspecified target (e.g. The Star's headlines
such as 'Put the blame on the real culprits' and 'Put up, or shut up'); in the main
text, the dialogue is attributed to SA through reporting (e.g. the M&G's remark,
'South Africa was looking for an excuse to flex its military muscle and to say, 'I am
the biggest in the region'). In the latter use, SA's activities are negatively evaluated
through verbal processes, in which SA ( or government) is in sayer role, thus put-
ting words into SA's mouth, for the purpose of discrediting her.

NARRATIVE MODELS
The news discourses also showed the presence of lexical devices from the narra-
tive models. Such devices are examined through 'cueing', the process which
implies that 'a model of register or dialect or mode can be assigned to a text even
on the basis of some very small segment(s) within its total language' (Fowler,
1991: 61). As has already been seen in (A3) above, the term 'Big Brother' (which
has origins with reference to the oppressive head of state in George Orwell's 1948
novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four), was used as a negative evaluation of SA's arrogant
behaviour. Terms such as this, stood out from other lexical choices, both ortho-
graphically (i.e. they were capitalized), and also they were characteristic of
extremely hostile reports which made no pretence at objectivity.
Another term used in our data is that of 'Rambo', found in seven reports from
the M&G and two from the CA. This term, originating from the name of a hero of
David Morrel's novel, First Blood has been used in international warfare report-
ing. Fowler (1991: 115), for example, found it used in the criticism of the US and
UK's actions in Libya in 19 8 6, where the Guardian evaluated Margaret Thatcher,
as 'Rambo's daughter', and the Sun referred to Ronald Reagan as 'Rambo
Ronnie'. In one report, the M&G (09 Oct. 1998) refers to SA's policy on Lesotho
as the 'Rambo nation approach', where the evaluative weight of the term is made
even stronger by its satirical dimension. For example, it has a homophonic
relationship with the term 'the Rainbow Nation' introduced by President Nelson
Mandela in his first presidential address in 1994, to mark the emergence of the
new democratic society, with positive values such as political reconciliation and
racial harmony. Thus, evaluating SA's foreign policy as the 'Rambo nation
approach' can be seen as undermining the positive values, which the original
concept, 'the Rainbow nation', stood for.
Another interesting cue is that of the mirror analogy in (A4) below derived
from from the well-known children's fairy tale, Snow White.

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 3 61

(A4): Mirror, mirror, on the wall ... (M&G, 2 Oct. 1998)

On the present evidence, if we were to hold a mirror to ourselves, the image with
which we are likely to be confronted is a pale reflection of all that we decry in the face
of the Ugly American: a regional giant lured into hypocrisy by arrogance born of the
trappings of power.

The report from which the extract was taken was highly critical on the govern-
ment's arrogance in dealing with criticism by the opposition. Using both the
chorus for the headline, and adding an additional myth of 'the Ugly American'
(from Lederer and Burdick's 1958 book) in the main, the report is intended to
provide a vivid negative image of the SA government.
Through cues from the narrative model paradigm above, we can conclude that
the analogies above call up the reader's knowledge of this paradigm, so that the
values associated with narrative models are successfully transferred into the
news stories to describe values of the social system of a different historical and
sociopolitical era.

NEWSMAKERS' VOICES AND DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION

News reports are stories by newsmakers, who are either witnesses to facts, sup-
plying the journalist with information, or 'news actors' (the term used in Bell,
1991) whose utterances have news value (e.g. politicians, sportsmen, etc). The
newsmaker's voice is usually brought into the story through the process of attri-
bution, the newspapers 'evoke fragments of discourse outside the text either to
show agreement with them, because they are considered transcendental, or to
criticize them or discredit them' (Rojo, 199 5: 54). For our purpose we look at how,
in the process of giving them voice, the newsmakers are characterized and per-
sonalized in the discourse - how their voices are positioned within the text both
in relationship to the journalist and to the broader sociocultural practice.
In the data, there were differences in the individual papers' coverage of similar
events, particularly the treatment of their newsmakers' voices. To illustrate this,
we begin by looking at fragments of two reports on the SA deputy president's
opening speech at a conference on African Renaissance' by The Star (P 7) and the
M&G (A6), and later use fragments from other texts.
(AS) Mirror, mirror, on the wall ... (M&G, 2 Oct. 1998)
[4] Thabo Mbeki made it clear once again at the 'African Renaissance' shindig at
Fourways this week, that loyalty was the standard by which actions in regard to
Lesotho would be judged.
[ 5] Critics of the Lesotho misadventure, he suggested, nurse 'hatred for the forces of
genuine change on our continent'; they 'virtually approve of a coup d'etat in Lesotho
against an elected government, proclaim criminal arson and looting in Lesotho as an
heroic act of resistance, denounce a humane approach by the region's armed forces
which minimised the loss of life, and prostitute the truth in the process, with gay
abandon'.
[6] What rubbish! If ever there was an enemy of change on the continent it is those
who insist on resorting to military action to resolve political problems ....
[8] The proclamation of 'criminal arson and looting' as a 'heroic act of resistance'

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362 Discourse & Society 12(3)

involves an exercise in sophistry with which the ANC itself, rather than its critics, is
more recently familiar. The 'humanity' of our intervention with armed forces is diffi-
cult to discover amid the tears of the bereaved. And if there has been a prostitution of
the truth the 'streetwalkers' of the analogy are more likely to be found pimping
themselves in alcoves of patronage along the corridors of power than out in the
streets.
P7: Mbeki slams critics of Lesotho intervention (The Star, 12 Oct. 1998)
[1] Deputy President Thabo Mbeki yesterday dismissed critics of South Africa's inter-
vention in Lesotho as opponents of change, and asserted that Africa would not realise
a renaissance until it banished the 'cancer' of corruption from the continent.
[2]Speaking at a conference on the African Renaissance in Johannesburg, he lashed out
at unspecified critics of the Lesotho intervention for 'their hatred for the forces of gen-
uine change on our continent and their determination to defeat us'.
[3] 'You will see these judges virtually approve of a coup d'etat in Lesotho against an
elected government, proclaim criminal arson and looting in Lesotho as an heroic act
of resistance, denounce a humane approach by the region's armed forces which min-
imised the loss of life, and prostitute the truth in the process with gay abandon', the
deputy president said.
[ 4] Mbeki has spoken frequently in recent months on the requisites for an African
renaissance, with increasingly blunt criticism of dictatorship, mismanagement and
corruption.

Direct quotes Although research has shown that journalists turn what their
sources say into indirect reports, it has also been suggested that direct quotes also
play a major role (e.g. Rojo, 1995). Direct quotes in news stories have three pri-
mary purposes: to indicate that the quote is an incontrovertible fact because it is
the newsmaker's own words; to distance and disown the endorsement of what
the source said; and to add to the story the flavour of the newsmaker's own words
(e.g. Tuchman, 1978; Bell, 1991). In our data, however, the three functions are
not mutually exclusive -a single quote can realize more than one function at any
given time.
The two texts above display both similarities and differences in their attribution
strategies. While both use quotations to mark off some sections of the deputy
president's speech (e.g. in paragraphs [2] and [3] in P7, and [SJ in A5), the differ-
ent attitudes of the texts to the speaker is made clear by the surrounding dis-
course. In (A5), for example, some concepts from the original speech are
positioned within the journalistic account as direct quotes - the 'African
Renaissance' in [4] and 'humanity' in [8], the latter picking up the concept of
'humane approach' from the original text. The 'tone' of the text indicates that the
journalist distances himself (and the paper) from the validity of those quotes. This
purpose is reflected in the discourse context in which these quotes occur. For
instance, the i\.frican Renaissance' functions as a modifier to an informal term,
'shindig' (a noisy party), with reference to the forum where the former term was
used - and the absurdity of the concept 'humanity' is shown by contrasting
it with the images of death and bereavement carried in the same sentence.
The M&G's position is different from that of The Star (P7), in which the direct

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 363

quotation from the deputy president appears to represent the paper's own views,
as there is no refutation of the content of the speech. Instead outside the quota-
tions, the concepts from the speech are treated as generally accepted facts: the
term 'renaissance' in [1]. [2] and [3]) is used without any quotation marks. The
attitude of the paper can also be seen in the preference of the more acceptable
term 'conference' as opposed to 'shindig' in (AS).

Speech verbs In our discussion on transitivity, and direct quotation above, we have
hinted on the heavy reliance of the news reports on verbal processes for their
operation. From the verbal process headlines, for example, we have seen the pref-
erence of performative verbs in reporting elite people's speeches. Here we argue
that speech verbs are particularly significant and can be used to indicate the jour-
nalist's purposes of bringing the newsmaker's voices into the news story. Taking
(P7), for example, although neutral verbs such as 'speaking' and 'said' are used,
the dominant choice is that of performative ( and evaluative) verbs such as
'slams', 'dismissed', asserted' and 'lashed', including the nominalization 'criti-
cism'. In this latter group, there is a fusion of a word and an act, to indicate, for
example, the quoted source's social standing (e.g. his/her elite status), purpose of
saying, and attitude to what he/she is talking about. This view is consistent with
several studies on the crucial role of performatives in the news - they are ideal for
news worthiness, and have the potential to provoke a response of a similar kind
(e.g. Van Dijk, 1988a; Bell, 1991).

Personalization and constructions of 'Otherness' Newsmakers' voices are brought

into the discourse through reference to people - the process of personalization,
which is a socially constructed value. The function of this value is 'to promote
straightforward feelings of identification, empathy or disapproval; to effect a
metonymic simplification of complex historical and institutional processes'
(Fowler, 19 91: 15). In this way, the people positioned in the discourse are repre-
sentative of certain categories of deviant behaviour. Elite people whose voices are
used in the news stories are assigned credentials ( or titles) that embody their
claims to news value. Examples of such accreditation are 'Professor Fink Haysom,
the presidential adviser, commented succinctly, [X]': (The Star, 3 Nov. 1998), or
'The sharpest criticism came from Chief of Special Forces Brigadier-General Borries
Bornman, who observed, [X]' (CA, 10 Oct. 1998), where [X] represents the speech
itself. This suggests that because the reader is likely to believe an 'expert' on a par-
ticular topic, the quoted voices are assigned some authoritative quality or authen-
ticity necessary to legitimize journalist's claims in the news story (e.g. Van Dijk,
1988a).
As has already been seen in (AS) above, personalization is not necessarily
complimentary, as newsmakers can be quoted in order to reject their versions
of events. In the present study, the journalists employ personalization in order
to apportion blame, thus establishing rival groups - the positive image of
'ingroups' and the negative one of 'outgroups' (see Van Dijk, 1995, 1998, on

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3 64 Discourse & Society 12 (3)

group identity). We now consider the major rival groups created through person-
alization in the press - the 'government vs. the critics', and the 'white vs. black'
racist stereotypes.

SA leaders as the 'Other' The AINA press, from the beginning of the war, blamed
the government for the decision to invade Lesotho, the subsequent crisis and the
latter's attitude to criticism. The apportionment of blame was done through two
main strategies. First, the newsmaker's voices (i.e. the critics) can be used as infor-
mation to support the journalist's own stance-it can take the form of what I call
'implicit collusion', where there is no linguistic signal to suggest that the journal-
ist disagrees with the quoted sources -or through 'explicit collusion' where the
journalist's positive evaluation signals agreement (seen in speech verbs and other
discourse strategies of involvement). The second strategy is that where the jour-
nalist quotes the blame target's voice (i.e. the government) in order to reject it (the
strategy of detachment). Both these involvement and detachment methods have
been seen in the analysis of (AS) and (P7) above.
The AINA press that referred to individual government's ministers ( using their
names and/or titles) are representative of institutional (e.g. the government)
negative values. Thus the ministers (for instance, Thabo Mbeki) were either 'the
government' or 'SA. They were introduced into the discourse as 'he' or 'them', to
be separated from the rival positive 'us' ('us' used for mainstream positive values).
A6: What precisely were our rights and obligations with regard to our own
Constitution and the body of international law which binds us - in particular, should
the presidency ( or to be precise, those passers-by whom the president cares to leave in
charge of the shop while he and his co-proprietor gallivant abroad) have the power to
commit South Africa to foreign adventures without more respect for the demands of
consultation and debate demanded by the democratic ideal? (M&G, 2 Oct. 1998)
One of the major criticisms in the AINA was that at the time of the crisis, both
the president and the deputy president as well as the foreign minister were on
overseas trips, and none of them cut their trips short when the crisis occurred,
leaving the responsibility of authorizing the intervention to the Home Affairs
Minister (as the Acting President). In (A6), for example, the enemy 'them' is
established through a collective label 'the presidency' or 'he' (for the president
himself), to be contrasted with 'us' in the opening clause (e.g. 'our Constitution').
The president and his deputy are represented in business metaphors as 'propri-
etors' (i.e. 'he and his co-proprietor'), whose deviant values are conceptualized
through the 'business vs. pleasure' discourse: the president leaves 'passers-by'
(identified elsewhere in the text as the Home Affairs Minister, Mangosuthu
Buthelezi and Social and Security Minister, Sydney Mufamadi (who failed to
broker a peace agreement between the political parties in Lesotho). The concept
of 'passers-by' implies the latter ministers' inexperience in handling the crisis.
The president and his deputy are characterized as irresponsible leaders, leaving
matters of national interest in the hands of junior ministers, while they pursued
less serious matter abroad (expressed in 'gallivant'). This deviant behaviour is

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 365

seen as lack of respect for positive values -- 'the demands of consultation and debate
demanded by the democratic ideal'.
The social deviance of the government was also established through what can
be called the 'name = value' expressions, where the name was the ascribed value.
Examples of this can be seen in quoted statements such as 'compromise and fair-
ness does not come easily to the Robert Mugabes, Nelson Mandelas and Eduardo
dos Santos of this world' (CA, 14 Oct. 1998), or referring to the military crisis on
the first two days through the remark, 'The Buthelezi--Mufamadi cocktail alone
was enough to ensure an unhappy outcome' (CA, 13 Oct. 1998). In the first state-
ment, for instance, the pluralization of names such as 'the Nelson Mandelas' rep-
resents the named individual as representative of a social class of deviant people
who flout values and principles of 'compromise and fairness'.

The SA critics as the 'Other' The article has already argued that the government
and its allies, saw protests and criticism as a 'stab-in the back', and used the media
to blame the critics for this unpatriotic behaviour (see semantic representations of
the latter in verbal process headlines above). In the PINA press, therefore, there
was a great deal of personalization patterns in the apportionment of this blame.
PS: Freedom Front leader General Constand Viljoen, under whose command
the old SADF devastated large parts of Southern Africa, piously proclaimed upon
returning from Maseru this week that he had never seen such destruction. Tony
Leon has appointed himself champion of the Lesotho opposition parties and has been
regurgitating every iota of hot air coming from that camp. And the normally sober
Roelf Meyer, also joined in the frenzy, declaring that the SANDF was covering up the
number of soldiers killed in last week's gunbattles. How he believes it possible to con-
ceal 10 extra deaths is beyond comprehension. As for Marthinus van Schalkwyk
... well. (The Star, 8 Oct.1998)

The four political leaders named in (P8) above (see emphasis in bold) were all
former government ministers of the apartheid government, then leaders of four
main white political parties. This fact has been used as a basis for apportioning
blame, probably with the understanding that the majority of the population
would dissociate itself from what the leaders allegedly stood for (i.e. all the evils of
apartheid). The 'them' negative image is constructed through individual refer-
ence to 'he', while their deviant values (see italic emphasis) are expressed through
contrasting their past with their present behaviour. For example, Constand
Viljoen is not only the leader of the Freedom Front (the ultra rightwing party
which was fighting for a separate Afrikaner state within SA), but he was also the
Chief of the Apartheid SA, well known for its destabilization of the Southern
region (for example, it carried out a military raid in Lesotho in 1982, where more
than 40 ANC refugees and the Basotho were killed in their sleep; and similar raids
were carried out in Botswana, Swaziland, Zambia, Angola and Zimbabwe). Thus
his speech on the destruction of Lesotho is ironically described as 'piously pro-
claimed'. The different political leaders are positioned in agency roles, and associ-
ated with negative processes of doing and saying ( e.g. Tony Leon (leader of the

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366 Discourse & Society 12 (3)

Democratic Party) is described as brainless, as having no analytical skills through

the verb 'regurgitate'). It is worth noting the relevance of the last incomplete sen-
tence with reference to Marthinus van Schalkwyk (the leader of the National
Party). The ellipsis seems to leave the characterization to the reader, assuming
that every South African knows what the party ( which was the architect of the
apartheid system) stood for. It should also be said that there were many negative
labels used for the critics and their actions, as illustrated in the deputy president's
speech in (P7) -for example, 'opponents of genuine change on the continent', or
'prophets of doom and gloom', and 'cynics and detractors of both our
Government and everything that is African'; whereas their deviant behaviour is
predominantly described through nominalizations -'their hatred for forces of
genuine change on our continent and their determination to defeat us', 'the pros-
titution of the truth', 'indulgence in an orgy of political opportunism' and many
more.

RACIST STEREOTYPES
Exclusion procedures discussed above can also be seen in the creation of racist
stereotypes - simplified models which fail to see individual features, but only the
values that are believed to be appropriate to the type (Fowler, 1991). Van Dijk (e.g.
1988b, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1998) has extensively discussed this type of exclu-
sion in relation to racism and the press. Considering the social tensions at the
time, it was not surprising to find these stereotypes, the 'us white' versus 'them
blacks', or vice versa.

Black as the 'Other' Although, there was no self-definition of 'us= Whites/Racists'

in the press, there were innuendoes of the opposition between 'white' and 'black'.
In the AINA, for example, there were only three references to the term 'white',
whereas 'black' appeared 17 times, with its equivalent African' used 2 5 times.
The texts below are direct quotes from a political analyst and a military consult-
ant, respectively.
A8: Unfortunately for us in South Africa, our democracy has now been hijacked by the
ANC and its SADC bedmates: a group of despot black leaders who have decided that they
will decree who rules or does not rule in southern African states: democracy African
style. (Citizen, 5 Oct. 1998)
A9: While it may be true that that both black and white soldiers perform well if they have
good leaders, good training, good weapons and tight discipline, the fact is that things
might have gone much better if more white troops had been deployed. (CA, l Oct. 1998)

The belief about black leaders as autocratic and corrupt ran across many AINA
reports. For example, (A8) above associates them with cruelty and oppression
such as in the label, 'despot' and actions such as 'hijack' and 'decree'. This nega-
tive value is also seen as a characterization of 'African' democracy (i.e. 'democ-
racy African style') which flouts our universal democratic values. The deviance of
'black' and African' is seen as denoting, for example, incompetence, arrogance

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 Thetela: Critique discourses and ideology 367

and failure. Thus the policies of the SA government were attributed to the fact
that the ANC was a predominantly black-led government, and its position within
the SADC seen as dangerous because all the SADC leaders were black or 'African'.
In addition, (A9) establishes the opposition between 'black' and 'white', not only
though the presence of the two terms, but also through the clause relations
between the initial (and dependent) clause and the subsequent (and main) clause.
Although the initial (yet subordinate) clause makes an admission (however very
reluctantly through its use of a modalized expression 'it may be true') of equality
between 'black' and 'white' troops, the second (and main) clause makes a cate-
gorical assertion (i.e. 'the fact is') which strengthens the 'white vs. black' dichoto-
mous value relationship.

White as the 'Other' During the conflict, there was evidence that the government
was suspicious of the predominantly white-owned media, which was seen as rep-
resenting apartheid values, and therefore any criticism from the media was seen
as racist. Thus in many official statements ( and those from government allies),
reported in the press, these suspicions were reproduced in the 'them = White'
negative constructions of the news reports. A quote in (P9) attributed to the pres-
idential spokesperson exemplifies this perception.
(P9) The economic power and wealth continues to be monopolised by the same white
hands that propped up the apartheid system for decades. These economic forces from
the old order cannot be accused of being sympathetic to the new democratic order. In
fact, they are sceptical and even hostile to the new democratic system and they resent
the fact that whites were replaced by blacks as governors of the country. (The Star, 2 7
Nov. 1998)

In the PINA press, the enemy 'them' constructions of 'white' in the discourse,
were found in the association of 'white' with labels such as 'Afrikaner', 'Boer',
'those with pale skins with Afrikaans as their mother tongue', 'racists',
'rightwing', 'enemies of democracy'. In (P9) above, for example, white people are
in agent roles, described in metaphorical terms as 'hands' which 'propped up' the
racist apartheid system. Their identity as 'economic forces from the old order'
describes their acquisition of wealth through the immoral apartheid system, as a
reason for their resistance to change: they are therefore 'not sympathetic', 'scep-
tical', 'resentful', and 'hostile'. In this way, the 'whites' represent deviant values
(e.g. racism) which no longer had a place in the new SA democracy.

5. Concluding remarks
The theory of news production and reception from which the paper draws its
approach, is consistent with the framework of the relationship between ideology
and discourse, discussed extensively in the works of critical linguists such as Van
Dijk (1995, 1996), Fowler (1991), Fairclough (1992, 1995), and Hodge and
Kress ( 19 9 3). From the perspective of this framework, the news in the SA press
was seen as a social practice and a product shaped by the social institutions and

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368 Discourse & Society 12(3)

relations - the government and media institutions, the public and political organ-
izations. The critique discourses thus reflected, and in return shaped, the prevail-
ing values of the SA society in a particular historical context -- the political and
racial tensions polarized public opinion during the period of armed conflict - all
these mapped on to the discursive practices of news reports.
Although the study has emphasized the role of lexical signals as explicit signals
of specific evaluations, the view of critique's reliance on normative judgement
( derived from standards of good behaviour) indicates the ideological significance
of such lexical choices. For instance, the discussion of metaphors has suggested
the logic behind the metaphorical choices as based on our conceptualization of
experiential dimensions of wellbeing. Allusions made to cultural dimensions of
meanings of metaphor (e.g. moral impurity as human excrement in caves), indi-
cate the sociocognitive ideologies behind metaphorical choices. Emphasis has also
been put on the discourse context as a determinant of whether or not a word has
an evaluative dimension the transitivity analysis has pointed to the crucial role
of the positioning of participants and processes within the lexicogrammar ( e.g.
choices between agent and patient), in the expression of experiential meanings.
Finally, the study has illustrated the important role of intertextual practices in
critique. It has been shown that the SA press incorporated discourses and text
types from other genres, thus bringing history and society into the news texts for
specific presuppositions, and enabling a transfer of values from the model para-
digms of such genres to comment on the ongoing social problems. The use of the
'Rambo nation' associated the SA government's attitude towards Lesotho with
the popular myth of mindless aggression encoded in the fictional character
'Rambo', in order to undermine the positive values of society in this specific
case, the values expressed by the concept, 'the Rainbow nation'.
The analysis of intertextual practices also raises the question of power
relations between the journalist and the newsmakers, suggesting that since the
former is responsible for the authorship of the news story, the latter's voice is used
by the journalist to express particular viewpoints. In (P7) and (A5), we saw how
the deputy president's African Renaissance' speech was used: the former sup-
porting the views expressed and the latter rejecting them. The study concluded by
looking at how the discursive practices of attribution (e.g. speech verbs, etc.) were
used for personalization of issues and principles, thus creating two rival groups,
the positive us and negative them - the 'Otherness' of government leaders, critics,
blacks, and whites.

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PULENG THETELA received her PhD from the University of Liverpool. She has been a lec-
turer in Linguistics and Language Studies at the National University of Lesotho in
Southern Africa. She recently carried out research for Women and Law in Southern Africa
Research Trust, where she analysed the discourse of interviews and cross-examinations of
rape victims in the Lesotho judicial system. She is currently a Rhodes Research Fellow at
St Hilda's College, Oxford University, where she is working on corpus-based research on
legal and political discourses. ADDRESS: St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, Cowley
Place, Oxford OX4 lDY, UK. [email: pulie.thetela@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk]

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