Event-construal in press reports of violence in two recent political protests: A cognitive linguistic approach to CDA

In this paper I extend the scope of the Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by incorporating Langacker’s model of Cognitive Grammar in a critical analysis of press reports of violence in two political protests. In doing so, I address issues recently raised against CDA concerning cognitive equivalence. The paper presents an analysis of the alternative conceptualisations of violence invoked in online reports from The Telegraph vs. The Guardian of two recent political protests. Systematic differences in construal are found across several parameters of conceptualisation, including schematisation and various ‘focal adjustments’, which, it is suggested, represent potential sites of ideological reproduction. Keywords: critical discourse analysis; cognitive grammar; action schemas; focal adjustments; political protests