The research project, awarded to Dr Levis Mugumya, explores news reportage on terrorism in Uganda and Britain. Research on terrorism since 2001 has largely focused on America and European states which are largely and directly affected by terrorist acts. Whereas the African continent has equally been affected by terrorism, there is limited linguistic research on terrorism particularly on the East African region which has been largely affected by Al-Shabaab. In this regard, the project seeks to demonstrate the role of language in constructing, communicating and construing the discourse of terrorism in two different cultural contexts that struggle to confront and fight a common enemy. It examines comparative linguistic discourse features that news writers invoke covertly or overtly to recount terrorism events. The project also seeks to establish non-linguistic factors that influence the construction of news stories on terrorism. This project employs discourse analytical approaches (Critical Discourse Analysis and Appraisal framework) to examine a corpus of hard news stories on Al-Shabaab and ISIS drawn from New Vision and Daily Monitor (Uganda) and The Independent and Daily Telegraph (Britain), respectively. To this end, the project seeks to contribute to construing terrorism both in sub-Saharan Africa and Britain via linguistic manifestations unfolding in newspaper discourse; explicate factors that may constrain news reporting on terrorism; and comparative journalism studies, which can yield useful data about the processes of cultural globalization.
[Image Credit: News by Hamza Butt [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0].