Let's Taco 'Bout Language

Question 1: Find an article related to terrorism in two different newspapers, magazines, or blogs, preferably two with different styles and political leanings. Using at least two sources from this Conversation as references, analyze the use of language in the articles you selected.

I have chosen Fox News and The Onion for this question. Since the first is known to be very conservative and the latter is mainly liberal, it has a good contrast between political leanings and thus its language usage. The article on Fox News, called "ISIS foreign recruitment plummets as airstrikes destroy its cash supplies," is basically what the title says it is. It mentions how strict rules and planned attacks are helping to slowly defeat ISIS. The news website specifically uses the word ISIS and not terror in the title to avoid "the controversy over variants of the T-word" (Okrent 770). It also draws in readers as this organization has been getting a lot of media attention lately so people are interested to garner more information about them. This article goes on to support a Republican sponsored bill that "urge[s] the Department of Homeland Security to use testimonials from former or estranged jihads...to effectively counter the ISIS message" (Tomlinson). The author incorporates words like "hopeful," "eradicate," and "drop" to emphasize the success of their plans. She doesn't mention Democrats once so she is subtly arguing that Republicans are doing their best in this fight against terror while the Democrats are doing nothing.

Now onto The Onion. The article I chose on this website is called "U.S. to Fight Terror with Terror." The title and the content is satirizing the fact that the media in America puts more fear into the people than benefiting them in any way. It should be giving more tips and information to overcome terrorism but news outlets tend to report on only the damage groups such as ISIS have caused. Something else I noticed was the amount of times "terror" was used versus "terrorism." In previous years, people have "described the enemy as terrorism twice as often as terror" (Nunberg 768), but now "those proportions have been reversed" (Nunberg). This article also integrates "terror" more than the news report on Fox News which makes me believe The Onion is less sensitive towards this topic. Fox News doesn't want to offend any of its readers while The Onion is a well-known satire site. Therefore its subscribers will tend to get affected less. A similarity between these reports is that they both mention Republicans. However, The Onion makes fun of the Republicans' useless strategy to fight terror while Fox News praises them. The writer ridicules the Republicans as their logic consist of "it's a dog-eat-dog world" and "an eye for an eye."

It seems like both news sites are not politically correct. They do not strive for "a vision of a more just, inclusive society in which racism, sexism, and prejudice of all sorts have been erased" (Kakutani 762). Instead, they use more of a formal/polite speech in order to "convey a message and continue to negotiate [a] relationship" (Pinker 746). However, even if these news outlets are not politically correct, it should be acceptable as their job is to report the topic raw. It's just sometimes, the liberal and conservative bias is a bit too strong.