How do Egyptian Newspapers Tell Us about the Current Ideological Trends (Published)
The present paper attempts to analyse the main front-page headlines of eight Egyptian newspapers, with different mainstream readerships, reporting a single political news issue. On the 13th of April 2013, the retrial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was postponed when the judge withdrew from the case and referred it to another court. The next day, all Egyptian newspapers tackled the event. A critical discourse analysis is carried out to investigate the way language is used to shape certain political ideologies in the newspapers’ headlines. The study concludes that despite their claim of being objective, newspapers represent news in a way that propagates their preferred ideologies. Hence, other than being a means of communication, newspapers seem to be an instrument of power, control and manipulation.
Keywords: Egyptian Newspapers, Headlines, Ideology, Power, critical discourse analysis
Home as a Battlefield: Power and Gender in Harold Pinter’s the Collection, the Lover and Old Times (Published)
Harold Pinter has been hailed as a dramatist among the half-dozen best dramatists, able to use his considerable wit in unusual, resonant and riveting ways. The central theme of his work is one of the dominant themes of twentieth-century art: the struggle for meaning in a fragmented world. His characters are uncertain of whom or what they understand, in whom or what they believe, and who or what they are. Pinter’s characters operate by a stark ‘territorial imperative,’ a primal drive for possession. In his plays, the struggle for power is an atavistic one between male and female. Hence sexuality as a means of power and control is our priority in discussing a select set of Pinter’s playscripts. We here examine the element of sexuality in these chosen texts analysing the relationship between male and female characters, as they snipe and sling potshots across the most intimate of all battlefields: our home and castle. The texts are studied individually, in sequence, in an attempt to lay bare the technique and leverage of sexual negotiations in Pinter’s work.
Keywords: Gender, Harold Pinter, Power, Relationships, Sexuality