War in Gaza

A Multimodal Analysis of the Attacks on the UNRWA School

Bibliographic Data

ID12914690
AuthorsNour Shreim (corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume7
Issue1
Pages54-81
Publication date2014-01-17
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/1752628013y.0000000010
OpenAlexW1986235335
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

One of the events that have characterized the human cost of the Gaza Conflict of 2008–2009 is the mortar shelling of a United Nations (UN) run School, sheltering more than 1300 Palestinian civilians seeking refuge from the fighting. This paper offers a multi-modal approach to Critical Discourse Analysis by examining how the English and the Arabic language services of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Al-Jazeera approached the event. It details the visual and textual depiction of the proportionality of casualties, the humanitarian situation, and the extent to which the actions of the protagonists are presented as justified, rationalized, or legitimized. The paper finds that all the channels recognized that the deaths of civilians are regrettable and tragic, but differed in their judgements about whether the attacks were deliberately targeting civilians, or were the collateral consequences of conducting intensive military action in highly populated urban environments

Action (physics · Arabic · Art · Criminology · Depiction · Linguistics · Political science · Proportionality (law · Shame · Sociology · Visual arts · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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