Religion in the Media: A Linguistic Analysis

Salman Al-Azami

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137299727
• eBook ISBN: 9781137299734
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This ground-breaking book takes an interdisciplinary approach to language, religion and media using an audience-response study. In this book, the author investigates how the three Abrahamic faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are represented in mainstream British media and analyses how members of each religious group and those with no religion receive those representations. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis, Al-Azami considers the way the media use their power of language to influence the audience's perceptions of the three religions through newspaper articles, television documentaries and television dramas. Chapter 3 presents the results of an original investigation into the responses of members of the three religious groups and those with no religion when exposed to those same media materials. The author applies the encoding/decoding model and also considers people's views in face-to-face interactions compared to comments on online newspapers. Comprehensive in its analysis, this book will be of interest to students of Linguistics, Media Studies, Religious Studies, and Journalism.

© The Author(s) 2016

Salman Al-AzamiReligion in the Media: A Linguistic Analysis10.1057/978-1-137-29973-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction—Language, Religion, and Media: A New Approach

Salman Al-Azami¹

(1)

Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK

End Abstract

Religion is important to most people in the UK, according to the most recent census data. The censuses of 2001 and 2011 included an optional religion question, which showed an overwhelming majority of people affiliating with a religion with over three quarters of the population saying that they had a religion in the 2011 census, making it an important aspect of the lives of the British people. Although 7.2% of the people who participated in the last census did not answer the question and although there has been more than a 10% increase of people reporting no religion since the 2001 census (ONS 2011), there can be no doubt that religion plays a crucial role in the lives of most Britons.

American sociologist Nelkin (2000, p. 14) defines religion as ‘a belief system that includes the idea of the existence of an eternal principle ... that has created the world, that governs it, that controls its destinies, or that intervenes in the natural course of its history’. A functional definition of religion refers to it as ‘a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life’ (Yinger 1970, p. 7). Although Smith (1982) looks at religion as ‘solely the creation of the scholar’s study’, Green and Searle-Chatterjee (2008, p. 1) observe that the discourse of religion has shaped major social changes in the world in the past two centuries. However, religion is increasingly becoming a subject of prejudice in recent times. Allport (1979, p. 446) suggests that the main reason of this prejudice is the ‘cultural function’ of religion.

In a democratic society, some take the view that the media plays a vital role in defending public interests by mediating between society and state. Such a role enables the media to have privileged access to the minds of the public. The end of the Cold War in the 1990s saw the media’s attention towards religion significantly increased, particularly after the tragic events of 9/11 and 7/7. Samuel Huntington’s (1996) theory of ‘Clash of Civilisations’ suggests that religion and culture are going to determine the global conflicts in the twenty-first century. Although political scientists debate how much the current global conflicts stem from a clash of civilisations, the media (particularly in the West) has taken a deep interest in religion and its influence on society. The separation of church and state ensures no role of religion in governance leading to secularism gaining momentum in most countries in Europe. Yet, religion continues to play an important part in the lives of European citizens. Although the number of people identifying with a religion decreased from the 2001 to the 2011 census, still 59.3% of the UK population call themselves Christians and Muslims are the second largest religious group with 4.8% adherents (ONS 2011). Therefore, religion remains a significant aspect of contemporary social, political, and cultural lives of many people and continues to be an object of media scrutiny. Religions are represented in news, documentaries, serial dramas, comedies, soap operas, and on reality television. Religions are depicted in films and portrayed in the broadcast and print media, on the Internet, and in multi-platform texts.

According to Hoover (2006), ‘It is through the media that much of contemporary religion and spirituality is known’ (p. 1). The reason behind the increased interaction between religion and media is that in this modern age, we are continuously exposed to and are largely dependent on the media for information. Hoover’s later study (2012) suggests that it is 9/11 that led to the increase in media audience. The effects of the attacks would not have been the same without the media coverage, which has permanently shaped the way people see religions’ contribution to politics, public discourse, social change, and political struggle. According to Hoover (2012, pp. 76–87), media, religion, and religion and media together were important to the events of 9/11 and their aftermath in four ways. First, the media was the source of the national and global experience of the events; second, the media was the source of our knowledge of the events and their knowledge of us; third, the American media exports, such as films, are an important basis for the ‘Islamist moral critiques of US and Western culture’, creating a stereotypical negative impression about the West in the Muslim world; and fourth, 9/11 illustrated and confirmed the role of the media as central to a new ‘civil religion’ based on ‘public rituals of commemoration and mourning’.

The growing media interests in religion resulted in increased awareness amongst academics of the complex interactions between religion and the media. However, Hoover (1998) argues that journalists lack the knowledge and expertise to report the religious dimension of news stories adequately. Buddenbaum (1990) suggests two reasons why the reporting of religious aspect of news stories is often woefully inadequate. First, the predominant ethos of the newsroom is secular, and many journalists have an antipathy towards religion. Second, news stories are primarily characterised by controversy and conflict, and this consequently misrepresents ‘the reality of religion as most people experience it’ (p. 259). Biernatzki (2002) finds poor representation and interpretation of religion in the media where ‘it is either ignored or sensationalized—and either of those extremes distorts its reality’ (pp. 1–2).

Morris (1994) argues that the news has the capacity to confront believers with ‘perennial questions about meaning, destiny, and purpose’ (p. 146). Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theorists like Fairclough (1995a) and Van Dijk (2001) discuss how the media uses the power of language to influence its audience towards a particular direction. However, many commentators no longer accept the secularisation thesis (Berger 1999). Hoover (1998) points out that many news stories do have a religious dimension.

Research on religion and media has come from a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, religious studies, media studies, cultural studies, and so on. There have also been significant works on language and media. Although not as much as the other two, language and religion has also been a subject of scholarly works in recent times. Audience response studies on religion and media have mainly focused on socio-political aspects with very little interest in language. Religion and media scholars’ perspectives have mostly been on non-linguistic issues, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and so on. On the other hand, if we look at studies on media and language, we will hardly find any work that involves representations of religions.

A detailed literature review will be dealt with later; for now, it is important to briefly outline the works that have been done so far, which highlight the importance of this book as a pioneering work in the area.

Religion and the Media

Religion and the media is an emerging field of study with a growing literature. Hoover and Lundby’s pioneering work (1997) in the field set the trend by linking theories of media, religion, and culture, which they call an ‘… interrelated web within society’ (p. 3). They conclude that the integration of media, religion, and culture leads to the understanding of mediated religion in culture (p. 298) Hoover later extends this by looking at media consumption from the perspectives of social theory and practice (2006). Papers in De Vries and Weber’s edited book (2001) show manifestations of religions through mediatisation, contextualizing the contemporary world within the theories of media and religion, with particular emphasis on representations. Lynch and Mitchell’s edited volume (2012) explores the relationship between religion, media, and cultures of everyday life, questioning how they implicate, contextualise, and shape contemporary society. Clark’s (2007) edited collection intersects the secular media and the sacred texts to look at the negotiation between religious practice and the commercial marketplace in the present age of consumerism. Lynch’s edited collection (2007) looks at religion in popular culture, whereas Stout (2012) examines the history, theory, cultural context, and professional aspects of media and religion looking at religion and media in terms of world conflicts.

It is evident from literature in religion and the media that linguistic analysis is largely ignored, whereas people’s manifestation of religious beliefs and the media’s role in depicting religions involve language use in a large scale.

Language and the Media

Studies on language and the media are heavily focused on media discourse with some studies on news reporting. Van Dijk’s edited volume (1985) is considered a key text in this area. In it, media discourse and the production process are discussed in social and cultural contexts. Fairclough (1995b) looks at media discourse in terms of social and cultural change with a view to highlighting ‘… the linguistic and discoursal nature of media power’ (p. 3). Bednarek (2006) analyses some newspaper corpus, looking for an expression of opinion in news discourse, whereas Talbot (2007) brings together cultural studies and Critical Discourse Analysis in her attempt to analyse the representational aspect of media discourse. Fowler’s (1991) work is concerned with the linguistic content in newspapers and it shows how language is used in the construction of ideas. Scannell’s (1991) edited book is one of the pioneering studies on ‘broadcast talk’, which draws on discourse, conversational analysis, pragmatics, and critical linguistics to address the ways in which media constructs audiences and how the audiences respond to it. Tolson (2006) studies ‘conversational media talk’ with direct or indirect audience involvement.

It is evident that studies on media discourse generally do not focus on religion. In the current world order, a study of media discourse on religion will be a useful addition to the field.

Language and Religion

Most works on language and religion have been published in recent times, and therefore, the list of existing literature is relatively short. Omomiyi and Fishman’s (2006) edited collection is a pioneering work in this area; in it, new methodologies and paradigms of analysis are explored to demonstrate how the shared interests of sociology, religion, and language impact social practices in various communities around the world. Porter’s (1996) work is an edited volume about theological and literary issues related to the nature of religious language. Fatihi et al. (2003) looks at communicative aspects of translations of the Quran using ‘componential analysis’ of semantics—the study of meaning. Green and Searle-Chatterjee’s (2008) edited volume analyses the interplay of religion, language, and power. William Downes (2011) explores world religions and relates modern cognitive theories of language and communication to culture and its dissemination.

However, existing literature in this field does not take into account media as an important player in the relationship between language and religion.

Audience Response Studies

Hall (1980) talks about encoding and decoding of media texts where the decoded meaning of a message may be different from the intended meaning of the encoder, because the audience brings ‘interpretive frameworks’ to texts rather than agreeing to the ‘preferred meaning’ of the media text. Ruddock (2007) uses theories of cultural studies to look at people’s perceptions of media representations. Stout and Buddenbaum (1996) look at audience responses to media representations of various Christian traditions in the context of institutional religious influences and expectations. Other research on media supports Hall’s position that people actively engage with media texts rather than passively absorb meanings (Buckingham 1996; Morley 1992). Poole (2002) applies Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model and finds that ‘cultural and religious proximity is important for decoding culturally encoded texts’. Al-Azami (2008), in a study of negative media portrayals of some mosques in Britain, finds that many non-Muslims living near those mosques used their knowledge to construct media representations as ‘prejudiced’ and ‘misconceptions’.

Despite the complexity of the engagement between media representations and audiences, there is lack of research about how people, particularly the various religious communities in the UK, make sense of media images of religions. This book attempts to compare the responses of three religious groups and the responses of those with no faith in an audience response study and it brings a new dimension to the existing literature in the area. The introduction of interactive news media through online versions of newspapers and news agencies means that the silent masses are no longer silent. The opportunity to react to a news item while maintaining anonymity has empowered many members of the public to give their opinions freely. Religion is one issue that evokes a lot of controversies and debate in online media. This aspect is also covered in this book.

It is clearly evident that little in existing literature combines language, religion, media, and audience response studies together as an academic field of study. The only study that is partially similar to the present study is Baker et al.’s (2013) work that analyses media attitudes towards Islam using Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis methods. This lack of interest by scholars prompted the necessity of linking all these forms theoretically in the present study. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of how language is used in the media while representing religions and what impact it has on people from different faith groups and none. The book aims to facilitate the opening of a new field of research that will extend the interdisciplinary area of ‘religion and the media’ to ‘language, religion, and the media’.

Media Representation: The Three Abrahamic Religions

This book analyses media representations in the UK of the three Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction—Language, Religion, and Media: A New Approach
• 2. Media Representation of Religions: A Critical Discourse Analysis
• 3. Media Representation: Audience Response
• 4. Conclusion—Towards a New Interdisciplinary Field
• Backmatter