Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Discourse & Society
This Article
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Fenton-Smith, B.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Diplomatic condolences: ideological positioning in the death of Yasser Arafat

Ben Fenton-Smith

KANDA UNIVERSITY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JAPAN, benfento{at}gmail.com

Yasser Arafat wasakey figure in the political life ofthelate20th and early 21st centuries. As Palestinian president, he was a central player in negotiations over the most contentious issue of the time: Middle East peace. But although his significance is unquestioned, his status is ambiguous: for some he was a freedom fighter, for others a terrorist. It is interesting, therefore, to observe the ways in which different world governments marked the death of Arafat in November 2004, in their official condolence messages. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article treats the diplomatic condolence message as a recognizable text type that has much to tell us about how governments signal and construct ideological positions and in doing so `enact' the international community.

Key Words: appraisal • Arafat • condolence • critical discourse analysis • ideology • Israel • Palestine • political discourse • systemic functional linguistics

Discourse & Society, Vol. 18, No. 6, 697-718 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0957926507082192
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?