ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to take a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach (Partington 2004a) to TV news reporting on the 2003 war in Iraq applying the theoretical tools of Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal systems. The text under analysis is the discourse of the anchor on CBS and, for purposes of comparison, the news presenter on BBC during a month of war reporting beginning on March 20, 2003. Of particular interest is the way in which linguistic resources are used by the anchor/news presenter to adopt a stance towards the value positions being advanced by the text and to position themselves with respect to the audience each one construes, resulting in the creation of an appropriate professional ‘persona’ within the given sociocultural context. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to identify systematic patterns on the two broadcasters, particularly with respect to representation of the following: the war, US/UK military casualties, and Iraqi civilian casualties.
