The Linguistics o f Blame in Media Diseource: Language, Ideology and Point o f View in Media Reports on the 1998 Lesotho Conflict

The perception that the media play a very important role in society is already too familiar. The present study ’ examines the role o f the English Language press (in Lesotho and South Africa) in the 1998 Lesotho political conflict. The study is concerned with the ways in which news reporters (including news editors) manipulate the resources o f language to put across specific ideological perspectives and viewpoints in reporting events. The study> is not so much concerned with the 'truth ’ o f reported events since the establishment o f this may prove too elusive. The paper focuses, instead, on variations in the degrees o f neutrality or bias, which are inscribed in the linguistic choices which news reporters make. Through its analysis o f lexical, metaphorical and rhetorical choices used by different newspapers to report the same events, the paper concludes that news reports can ideologically encode varying degrees o f access to the truth o f things