War Framing: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis of U.S President’s Statements

Abstract

Political discourse plays a significant role in constructing and propagating ideologies specifically, war discourses shape public perception about a particular event. The main to conduct this research was to analyze how war is framed and how they shape the socio-cognitive perceptions of the public. Framing theory by Entman (1993) and socio-cognitive model by van Dijk (1998) was employed to analyze the U.S President’s statements during war scenario. Findings of the study reveal that the U.S President highlighted positive self-representation of the in group and negatively represented the out group creating ideological polarization and the actions performed by during the war by the in group (U.S) were framed as legitimized and justified and the actions or resistance shown by the out group (Iran) were framed as evil and aggressive. The statement’s framed Iran as “evil”, “de-stabilizer”, “weak”, “irrational” and framed “United States as “savior”, “protector”, “decisive” “authoritative” and “global peace protector”. The study highlights the importance of language and how it can shape certain realties and can manipulate the truth and how political leaders use certain discursive and framing strategies to highlight and hide certain realities. This research may be helpful for the further researchers while doing discourse analysis, political discourse and media related researches.