A discourse analysis of 'race,' rhetoric and media: Content and concepts in 'The Dallas Morning News'

The purpose of this study was to provide a rhetorical analysis of "race" in the literature of the press. Such terms as "race" and "racism" have reached iconic significance over the 20th century, and have hardened into conceptual symbols which are complex and controversial. However, extended rhetorical examinations about the role of language in constructing "racial" ideas are absent, despite the prominence of guerrilla writing strategies used in this century to attack "race." And because traditional media studies have tended to ignore the literary tradition from which the modern newspaper has evolved, this study's focus was to highlight the specific rhetorical components of news discourse and their correlation to the metaphor of "race," or a "rhetoric of racism".; First, the phenomenon of guerrilla writing was defined and reviewed for its impact on "race" writing in this century. Next, the etymology of some common "race" words and their relationships to metaphor, as well as of journalism's rhetorical and literary traditions were presented. Variables were then extracted against which news writing as literary discourse could be studied. A numerical matrix was designed and attached to these variables in order to help determine the patterns of "race" and rhetoric within an individual news story.; Next, the front pages of random issues from The Dallas Morning News, dated from 1895 to 1993, were reviewed on microfilm and analyzed according to the numerical matrix. Twenty-three variables reviewed from 48 issues revealed that while the African American presence has greatly increased over the century, the "racial" metaphor has remained unchanged. Through the use of strategies such as "cloaking," "redundancy," and "resonance," news writing has maintained and highlighted the "racial" myth. Finally, through the standard news writing paradigm of the "5w's and an H," journalism has given a given a facade of objectivity to subjective reporting and perceptions about "race"--ideas which are outmoded for modern realities of ethnic diversity.; Discourse scholars in all fields must seek meaningful ways of writing about diversity without resorting to stereotypes.