A critical discourse analysis of selected online intercultural news stories in the Philippines: Linguistic and discursive strategies in constructing writers\u27 social identities

The study combines two areas in Applied Linguistics Intercultural Communication and Critical Discourse Analysis to problematize the writers and the readers construction of identity /ies as well as to uncover the duality of online intercultural periodicals. Two frameworks were used in the study. The first assumes the notions Benwell and Stokoe (2007) set for representation, relation, and expression. From these notions, a model was devised to show the interconnectedness of these three elements. The second leans on Faircloughs Systemic Functional Grammar, which is heavily inspired by Halliday. The study identified and analyzed four linguistic units namely modal verbal operators, voice, personal pronouns, and mood element in the seventy-two online business articles taken from three online intercultural periodicals. Next, predominant discursive strategies were inspected. Findings revealed that predominance of certain linguistic units point to the writers and the readers identities. Chinese Filipino writers position themselves as strategizers, shrewd analysts, and certainty seekers. They regard their readers as confidante. Meanwhile, the Indian Filipino writers are positioned as being attached to tradition and as optimists. They relate to their readers by regarding them as students. Finally, the Filipino American writers position themselves as objective and action takers while regarding their readers as outsiders. Next, examination of predominant discursive strategies in the online intercultural periodicals shows that a shift of the dominant-dominated interplay takes place in the first two intercultural periodicals while maintaining the usual dominant-dominated for the third intercultural periodical. The study has considerable implications in the areas of critical discourse analysis and language teaching