Polarization through Religious Driven-issues in the Dutch Mass

Media: A Critical Discourse Perspective

Muhammad Edy Thoyib

, Zainur Rofiq

, Agwin Degaf

, Miftahul Huda

and Irham

Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Jalan Gajayana 50, Malang, Indonesia

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Bulaksumur Catur Tunggal, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Actor description, anti-immigrant, critical discourse analysis, Dutch mass media, polarization

Abstract: This study examines two mass media coverage in the Netherlands about the polarization through religious

driven-issues. The purpose of this study is to explain the textual strategies and discursive strategies used by

Dutch media dutchnews.nl and nltimes.nl between the range of December 1, 2016, to March 15, 2017, prior

to parliamentary elections. The research data was collected through the reading-record technique with a

qualitative descriptive approach using van Dijk’s critical paradigm. The results of data analysis revealed that

the textual strategies used include the use of activation/passivation, abstraction, categorization, and

lexicalization. Meanwhile, related to the discursive strategy, the media show the tendency to portray anti-

Islam and anti-immigrant in the Dutch context positively.

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper examines the ideological

manifestation of political issues on religious issues

in the Netherlands. It combines the results of current

work on van Dijk’s theory of ideology (Van Dijk,

1998) with those of previous projects on the

discursive reproduction of racism (Van Dijk,1984;

Van Dijk, 1987; Van Dijk, 1991; Van Dijk,1993) In

more specific concern, we investigated religious-

driven issues, both spoken and written discourse of

the leading politicians in the Netherlands. As we

regard from the existing studies, this topic has a

similar theoretical framework in a way that it

combines multidisciplinary elements as follows: (a)

an elite theory of racism, (b) a socio-cognitive

approach, and (c) a (complex) multi-level analysis of

text and talk.

There are some previous studies focusing on the

media role in constructing the discourse within the

critical framework. Persson (2016) examined how a

group of migrant rights activists in Sweden is

represented in the news discourse. He found that

activist voices were accommodated unevenly in the

news. Such portrayal, furthermore, is able to rule out

the political significance of activism. In addition, Li

(2011) studied ideological constructions process on

the profound American and Chinese news media

(The New York Times and China Daily) regarding

the reports of an air collision between the USA and

China in April 2001. The study reveals the two

newspapers construct different look at the circulated

collision in accordance with the specific political

position, interests, and priorities of each party.

Specific lexical choices made by each newspaper

are not unintentional. They serve as a medium to

orient readers to particular (ideological) purpose.

This notion is in line with Oostendorp’s work on

President Jacob Zuma’s discourse construction in

the media. The study suggests that inter-textuality

plays a fundamental role in constructing the

president’s political agenda (Oostendorp’s, 2015).

This research aims to conceal majority and

minority discourse of the religious group where

Dutch politicians speak about them. We then

formulate the following questions as the central

concern a) How does Dutch media construct the

majority and minority discourse(s) of religious

group? To what extent do the Dutch politicians

manifest political agenda within discursive practices

and discourse structures expressing polarization

upon religious driven-issues?

1.1 van Dijk’s Critical Discourse

Analysis

The fundamental framework of van Dijk’s Critical

Discourse Analysis (CDA) studies cover some

elements. First, he distinguished Micro vs. Macro

structural level (Van Dijk,2000). The former layer

608

Edy Thoyib, M., Roﬁq, Z., Degaf, A., Huda, M. and Irham, .

Polarization through Religious Driven-issues in the Dutch Mass Media: A Critical Discourse Perspective.

DOI: 10.5220/0009913106080613

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 608-613

ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9

deals with language use in either spoken or written

form, while the latter copes with the power exercise

in the text, such as inequality and dominance. CDA,

at its main tenet, is projected to combine both levels,

in the sense that hardly ever can people detach the

preference of lexical choice and a particular

discursive purpose. Power exercise is often

perceived as a tool to control the thought and act of

any discourse recipients. Regardless the fact that

social power may not always be negative, CDA

analysts highlight it as a vulnerable means to

produce inequality in the society.

van Dijk (2002) defines ideology as the belief

shared within a group of people in certain issues. He

offered a socio-cognitive approach (henceforth SCA)

and discourse analysis of the text to unveil

ideological load in the discourse. Further, SCA

should also examine the speaker’s mental

consciousness during the discourse production

process [5]. The van Dijk’s SCA is comprised of

schemas (person schema, self-schema, role schema,

event schema) and memory (these schema models

were extensively discussed in van Dijk (Van

Dijk,1990).

Memory is an element in human‘s mind through

which they are able to recognize certain things and

have knowledge about them. In more detailed,

memory in this perspective is made up of two parts:

short-term memory and long-term one. Short term

memory is a memory used to remember or recall an

event and occasion that recently occurred in the past.

For instance, we try to remember our friend‘s home

address given in few minutes ago. While, long-term

memory is a memory used to remember or refer to

an event or object that took place in pretty longer

past time (Raslau.et.al.,2014). For example, we try

to remember or run the story of how the movement

of PKI occurred in 1965. As a matter of fact,

typically, people tend to take for granted and use

their long term memory to judge a certain event, for

instance, of how people still judge the descendants

of PKI as a dangerous group in the society. This

condition results from people‘s long-term memory

of the badness of PKI rebellion and, hence, it should

be suspected that they might do the same act as what

their ancestors did in the past.

In relation to media framing, van Dijk's (2004)

framework consists of two main discursive strategies

of 'positive self-representation' and 'negative other-

representation' manifested through such following

discursive moves:

1) Actor Description

Actors in discourse studies may be addressed

from their (social) background as members of

particular groups or as individuals (Van Leuween,

1996). Besides, they may also be described by their

first or family name, social function in the society, by

their actions or attributes, or by their position /

relation to other people. For example, how labors‘

demonstration demanding the rise of salary given

unfairly by the employer of a certain company

described as an unrest and not conducive event by a

journalist against the labors which, hence, seems to

place them as the guilty in the event. Such

description hardly ever be neutral since the employer

has more power to modify the reality by, for instance,

bribing journalist of the media to hide the reality. In

addition, an inappropriate description of others might

result from mental memory of a text producer. For

example, how someone‘s memory of labors‘

demonstration mostly caused much traffic and street

battle against security guards in the past which make

him/her easily judge any other similar movement

may cause the same condition in the present or

future. Thus, such movements typically are always

represented inappropriately in a certain text.

2) Authority

Many speakers in most of occasions, including

but not limited to, for instance in parliament, have an

avenue to modify a certain truth by mentioning

authorities to support the case. The authorities may

be granted from organizations or political party

members, or recognized experts or moral leaders

(Van Dijk, 2004). In this case, the United Nations, or

Amnesty, scholars, the courts, the church or the

media, often have that role. For example, media in

producing texts or news of current celebrity-related

pornography issue have judged who is guilty in the

case by presenting one of multimedia experts‘

testimonies even the case is not yet investigated by

the responsible state law apparatus (e.g. court or

police).

3) Burden

Burden is the way how a discourse maker

describes a certain case (phenomenon) in the text as

a big problem unless it is solved and, thus, by doing

so might gain support from others to soon overcome

the issue. In addition, such way also labels that

burden as a bad or negative entity; conversely, the

one with proposal or its solvency, for instance, gain

positive reception and support. Nonetheless,

sometimes the criteria of measuring a burden are

premises that are taken for granted, as either self-

evident or as sufficient arguments to accept the

proposed inference.

4) Consensus

Consensus is often used in parliamentary

discourses on issues regarding national importance

or interest. This strategy may be performed by

providing claims or wishes. In other words, in-group

unification, cohesion and solidarity against outsiders

(them), should exist over various political

backgrounds, beliefs, or races (Van Dijk, 2004). In

addition, real or apparent consensus used in the text

Polarization through Religious Driven-issues in the Dutch Mass Media: A Critical Discourse Perspective

609

is a means to persuade others to support any

common interest together, for instance George Bush,

the former US president, always euphemized his

main goal of attacking Iraq and toppling down

Saddam Hussein, the former authoritarian Iraq

president, was to stand up democracy and free Iraqi

people from inequality. Since the spirit of

democracy becomes a common goal and consensus

of American people to uphold, he got great support

in doing severe attacks on Iraq.

5) Empathy

The expression of empathy can be combined

together with “a disclaimer” tactic to control the

speaker‘s impression with the audience (e. g. I

understand that you have had many problems, but...)

(Van Dijk, 2004).

6) Illustration

Illustration is a discursive strategy that provides

general truths and or concrete examples to help

audiences imagine the discussed topic (Laine,2007).

Besides, it is also to suggest coercing forms of

factual evidences. By employing this strategy, the

speaker can manage the discourse being delivered as

well as the objective being exercised. In some cases,

speakers often tell typical cases as he or she

experienced and thus generalization is generated.

Therefore, it is very effective to build negative other

representation by presenting such technique in the

discourse.

7) Self-glorification

Self-glorification of a certain group or nation is a

device to create positive self-representation by

glorifying a certain group‘s strength or superiority

(Van Dijk, 2004). He further elaborated that such

strategy, especially, political discourse of positive

self-presentation may regularly be practiced through

various forms of national self-glorification, such as

positive references to the own country, history and

traditions. An instance of this strategy as follows:

“Indonesia has gained 2% economic growth in 2009.

Meanwhile other nations kept struggling to block a

global recession”. (SBY, the former president of

Indonesia, in his official annual mandatory speech).

8) Disclaimer

Disclaimer is presenting an idea as something

positive and then rejecting it by the use of certain

terms, such as 'but' in the second sentence (Van Dijk,

2004). In other words, the speaker acts as if admit the

state or condition of the communicant either badness

or goodness (mostly about goodness admission),

afterwards the speaker rejects such information by

presenting a statement that comes up after the

conjunction “but” is actually the main emphasis in

the sentence (Irham & Wahyudi, 2012). An instance

of such strategy as follows: “Indeed, they are not

against weapons, but they oppose other nations‘

progress” (Ahmadinejad‘s speech at UNGA 2008).

2 RESEARCH DESIGN

This study employed a descriptive qualitative

approach, in a way that the data from written

discourse descriptively analyzed in accordance with

micro, super, and macro structures found in the mass

media. Miles and Huberman (2011) stated that

qualitative research is usually in the form of words

rather than number. We emphasized on the specific

case—Critical Discourse Analysis using van Dijk

models to analyze the news about political

contestation in Netherlands.

The primary data of this study is obtained

dutchnews.nl, and nltimes.nl focusing on political

contestation in the Netherlands. There are about

twenty articles in the news which mainly elaborate

the political contestation of those countries. From

the data source, we analyzed and investigated the

word-choices which are classified as discursive

tactics on a Micro-structure at the lexical level as the

data.

To collect the data, the following steps are taken:

first, the researchers looked for the data (from

December to March, 2017) from mass media

mentioned above about news that has some relation

with political contestation. Second, the researchers

classified the article. In addition, the researcher

checked the writer of that article to make sure about

the background of the writer. Third, after getting the

data, we skimmed it to get the general understanding

of the data. Fourth, the researcher classified the data

based on the classification of the words, and lastly,

the interpretation upon the intention of the journalist,

based on the key words in that article, was made.

In the data analysis, first, the researchers

classified the topic by picking up related data upon

the political contestation in Netherland. Second, the

researchers looked for the classification of the words

based on Van Dijk’s model of the classification in

the lexicon level. After finding the classification of

the word, finally the researchers interpreted the aim

of the journalist in choosing the word itself. Those

are the steps of the analysis in this research.

3 FINDING AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Activation and Passivation

The use of active / passive sentences in CDA is seen

not only as a matter of grammar, nor is it considered

a product of journalist unconsciousness when

writing the news. However, the sentence form

determines the meaning of the sentence. The active

ICRI 2018 - International Conference Recent Innovation

610

sentence emphasizes the subject or the actor, while

the passive sentence deemphasizes it and focuses on

offender's target or action. Furthermore, through the

passive sentence structure, the offender can be

hidden (or demoted) and even removed from the text

(Frauzer,2008).

In the case of Dutch media, Wilders Wilders (the

PVV leader, a far right-wing politician who is

explicitly against Islam and (Muslim) immigrants) is

often reported by using active sentence construction,

particularly related to Islam and Moroccan or

Turkish immigrants discourse. Indeed, for some

languages, the expressions tend to be more

frequently agentive by using active sentence

construction than the others when interpreting and

construing an event. Perhaps the most celebrated

example of the language of this kind is English

when, for example, its speaker more likely to say

”he broke the glass” instead of saying “the glass

broke” in which the agent is not mentioned

(Fausey,2010). However, in CDA tradition, such a

pattern of reporting the news may cause the readers

or the public’s attention to focus on or even blame

the actor.

The researcher found some news related to

Wilders Wilders using this active-passive textual

strategy. For example, in a news release related to

Wilders’s statement on the murderer of populist

politician Pim Fortuyn, dutchnews.nl entitled

"Wilders Wilders tells German tv show Pim Fortuyn

was killed by radical Muslim" in the news release.

Meanwhile, to report the same event, nltimes.nl put

the headline entitled "Wilders mistakenly claims Pim

Fortuyn was killed by radical Muslim".

In both media, the news is presented in the form

of an active sentence. Here, the maker of this

statement is presented in the text. However, the use

of this textual strategy may posit different effects on

the reader. The actor projection in the first news

seems to suggest that Wilders consciously or

confidently made his misleading statement that the

murderer of the mentioned populist politician was a

radical Muslim. However, the use of passive

construction in the first line of the news release

“Anti-Islam campaigner Wilders Wilders was

accused of being a liar…” maybe aimed to blur the

public actor(s) of such accusation or reaction that

may come from both Wilders’s political rivals or

ordinary Muslim citizens. By demoting the agent of

accusation in the sentence may lead the readers to

see Wilders as not making an intentional public lie

or controversial statement. While in the second

sentence, the use of a word “mistakenly” shows that

the media may want to frame the reader to see

Wilders’s statement on that case as a normal mistake

that can be made by anyone, therefore it should not

be too much exaggerated. Moreover, coupled with

the use of categorization strategy which is not

mentioned in nltimes.nl, such as “Anti-Islam

campaigner” at the beginning of the first news

content, may serve as a foundation for justification

that Wilders was fully politicized and victimized

(allegedly convicted as ‘a liar’) by the public

because of his anti-Islam or Muslim immigrants

political stance. This strategy may highlight that

nltimes.nl wants to present much more negative

impression on the reader about Wilders Wilders (as

the actor) than dutchnews.nl does, and the author’s

scrutiny of nltimes.nl’s news headlines may later,

overall, confirm this proposition.

3.2 Abstraction

The use of this strategy is related to whether the

information is presented deliberately or left abstract

and unclear aimed to blur it. Through abstractions

deliberately constructed by reporters, readers can be

directed to capture a certain impression as expected

by the media. For example, by utilizing abstraction

strategies, an event or the number of actor that is

actually quantitatively small can be suggested as if it

is large and significant.

An example of the use of this textual strategy is

found in news releases from dutchnews.nl and

nltimes.nl related to the possibility of VVD or the

other parties in building coalition with PVV party to

on Monday, January 16, 201. In the news coverage,

dutchnews.nl writes "VVD leader Mark Rutte says

‘zero’ chance of coalition with Wilders Wilders

Politics" as the title, while nltimes.nl proclaims the

same event with the title "Populist, anti-Islam PVV

to stand alone at the elections".

In nltimes.nl headline, the sentence PVV to stand

alone makes the impression that there are no other

parties support and are willing to cooperate with

Wilders’s PVV party, while dutchnews.nl gives an

explanation that only Rutte’s VVD party that is

reluctant to make partnership with PVV, while PVV

will supposedly remain supported by the other

parties.

By writing a clear referent or subject VVD leader

Mark Rutte and clear numerical expression zero

chance, the reader can perceive that it is the only

party unwilling to make alliance, and hence it won’t

be significant. Conversely, the use of verbal phrase

PVV to stand alone carries abstract meaning that

PVV and its very stance against Islam is unwanted

in the parliament (or by the public in general). In the

example above, both media are not unaware of the

opportunity of the other party becoming PVV’s

allies after the election. The textual abstraction

strategy is intentionally used by dutchnews.nl to

illustrate how actually there is only one insignificant

party rejecting to cooperate with PVV and, on the

Polarization through Religious Driven-issues in the Dutch Mass Media: A Critical Discourse Perspective

611

other side, is used by nltimes.nl to give bad

impression on the readers that PVV is an alienated

party in the parliament because of its policy against

Islam.

3.3 Categorization

Nominations and categorizations are textual

strategies used to present a person or group of

people as they are or by embedding the category of a

person or group. According to Eriyanto (2009: 182),

this category has various forms by showing the

important characteristics of a person, such as

religion, status, physical form, and so forth. The

instance of this strategy usage, for example, can be

found in a news release related to the safety and

security service’s integrity scandal feared to affect

Wilders’s wellbeing and life, where nltimes.nl writes

" The Safety and Security Service is responsible for

protecting members of the Royal Family and

threatened politicians, including PVV leader Wilders

Wilders".

Although categorization does not significantly

affect the meaning that the reporter wishes to convey

to the reader, the effects may remain massive. In the

example above, the underlined phrase threatened

politicians, including PVV leader Wilders Wilders

can indirectly associate into the minds of readers

that Wilders Wilders’s life is no longer safe in the

midst of this scandal. When someone is labeled or

categorized as “threatened”, this may convey an

impression in the reader’s mind that Wilders worth

receiving protection because his security is in danger

and portrayed as a weak and powerless side.

Considering that such a security issue emerged from

the leakage of police secret information to

alledgedly Moroccan gangs, being “threatened”

categorization here shows that Wilders may become

the possible “victim” of the group (of e.g. Moroccan

race), although, in fact, Wilders and his party’s anti-

immigrant/Islam political stance has long

discriminated the group.

3.4 Lexicalization

Lexicalization is a textual strategy of choosing a

particular word rather than other possible similar

words. In accordance with the notion, lexicon is a

language component that contains all information

about the meaning and usage of the word in the

language (Haspelmath & Sims, 2010). The choice of

words used by the media, is not mere coincidence,

but also shows how the meaning of a reality is

shaped by it. A different media, depending on its

interests and alignments, can construe the same

reality differently.

The word selection strategy was also found in the

Dutch news coverage. For example, in nltimes.nl

article titled " Populist, anti-Islam PVV to stand

alone at the elections", this media writes that

Wilders ‘accused’ PM Rutte (VVD party leader) as

the manifestation of “arrogance of power” because

he rejected to build alliance with Wilders’s PVV

party.

The word “accused” actually has several other

alternative words carrying more positive

connotations, such as assumes and feels. nltimes.nl

could have written a sentence, such as Wilders

assumed Rutte as…., but the impression gained by

readers will be different. Word choice tends to

indicate the attitude and alignment of the media over

a particular fact or side. Implicitly, nltimes.nl wants

to depict Rutte as an accusing person without any

strong evidence.

Another example of the lexicalization strategy

usage is found in news released on the same day by

dutchnews.nl entitled "Wilders Wilders tells German

tv show Pim Fortuyn was killed by radical Muslim".

In its news content, the media chose to quote from

Wilders’s tweet regarding his misnaming of the

populist politician who was killed, saying “The left-

wing elitist losers are enjoying my slip of the tongue

but we are going to de-Islamise the Netherlands very

quickly and that is no slip of the tongue”. The word

de-Islamise gives a sense of removing Islam or its

reversal in the Netherlands, with prefix de- itself is

denoting removal or reversal

(https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/de-).

This lexical selection strategy might be

understood by the readers as very rude statement

because it also implies ethnic cleansing or, at least,

extreme restriction on Islam, although they have

long recognized the PVV party’s main ideal is

pushing Islam and Muslim immigrants out of the

Holland. However, the use of this word in

dutchnews.nl news, the author would argue, is to

strengthen the foundation of polarization between

the party(ies) who stand for Islam or Muslim

migrants and who are against it. This strategy is

further reinforced in the frequent use of racial laden

phrases, such as anti-Islam and anti-immigration in

dutchnews.nl news reports.

4 CONCLUSION

The analysis of microstructure through the use of

textual strategies in two online Dutch mass media

shows that dutchnews.nl tends to use textual

strategies to support and reinforce the legitimacy of

right-wing politician (also known as nationalist, anti-

Islam, and anti-immigration) that is best represented

ICRI 2018 - International Conference Recent Innovation

612

by Geert Wilders. Meanwhile, nltimes.nl tends to

use a textual strategy that gives positive impression

when the news coverage is related to ‘center to left-

wing Populist’ politician (also known as pro-EU)

that is best represented by Mark Rutte or negative

impression if the news report related to left-wing

politician’s movement or ideology.

In terms of discursive strategy analysis, Dutch

news. Nile shows the alignment with right-wing’s

politicians and tends to describe positively.

Conversely, the media describes leftist politicians

(mainly PM Rutte) negatively. In the context of

dutchnews media, therefore, Geert Wilders and PVV

become to the self-group/US category, while the

leftist politicians (Mark Rutte and allies) positioned

as Others/Them category.

The other way around, nltimes.nl does not show

any alignment to leftist politicians, therefore many

occasions tend to describe Geert Wilders and his

supporters. By utilizing several discursive strategies,

nltimes.nl also tends to portray advocates of open

society and populist ideology. In context nltimes.nl’s

news coverage, the populist left-wing politicians

belong to the self/US category, while right-wing

politician (Geert Wilders) and his supporters are the

other/Them category.

REFERENCES

Eriyanto. 2009. Analisis framing. LKIS Yogyakarta

Fausey, C. Long, M, Bria, L. Inamori, A. and L.

Boroditsky. 2010. “Constructing agency: the role of

the language”. Frontiers in Psychology. 1, 162.

Frazer, A.K. & M. D. Miller. 2008. Double standard in

sentence structure: passive voice narratives describing

domestic violence. Journal of Language and Social

Psychology. vol 28 (1)

https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X08325883

Haspelmath, M. & A.D.Sims. Understanding morphology.

Publisher: Hodder Education London 2

edition.

Irham, I. & R. Wahyudi. 2012. “Treating disclaimer as a

power strategy of self-legitimation and other de-

legitimation in Netanyahu’s UNGA speech.”

Language, Discourse, and Society, vol. 2. Pp75-89.

Li, J. 2011. “Collision of language in news discourse: a

functional-cognitive perspective on transitivity”.

Critical Discourse Studies, 8, 3, pp. 203-219

Miles, M. B. & A. M. Huberman. 2011. Qualitative Data

Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. Johanneshov:

TPB.

Oostendorp. M. 2015. “The multimodal construction of

the identity of politicians”. Critical Discourse Studies,

12, 1, 39-56.

Persson, G. 2016. “Ideological struggle over epistemic and

political positions in news discourse on migrant

activism in Sweden”. Critical Discourse Studies, 13,

3, pp. 278-293.

Pikka-Maria Laine & Ero Vaara. 2007. Struggling over

subjectivity: a discursive analysis of strategic

development in an engineering group. Human

Relation. Vol. 60 (1) pp. 29 – 58.

Raslau, F.D. Klein, A.P. Ulmer, J.L. Mathews, V.& Mark,

L.P. Memory Part 1: Overview. American Journal of

Neuroradiology November 2014 (11)2058-2060 doi:

https://doi.org/10.3174/ajnr.A4059

Van Dijk, T.A 1991. “Racism and the press.”

London/New York: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T.A. 1984. “Prejudice in discourse: an analysis

of ethnic prejudice in cognition and conversation”.

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Van Dijk, T.A. 1987. “Communicating Racism: Ethnic

Prejudice in Thought and Talk”. Newbury Park: Sage.

Van Dijk, T.A. 1990. “Discourse and Society: A new

journal for a new research focus. Discourse and

society. London: Sage. pp. 5-16.

Van Dijk, T.A. 1993. “Elite discourse and racism”.

Newbury Park. CA, Sage.

Van Dijk, T.A. 1998. “Ideology: A multidisciplinary

study”. London: Sage.

Van Dijk, T.A. 2002. “Discourse, knowledge and

ideology: reformulating old questions. Essen: LAUD.

Van Dijk, T.A. 2004. “Discourse as social interaction”.

London: SAGE.

Van Dijk, T.A.. 2000. “On the analysis of parliamentary

debates on immigration”. In: M. Reisigl & R. Wodak

(Eds.), The semiotics of racism. Approaches to

Critical Discourse Analysis. Pp. 85-104.

Van Leeuwen, T. 1996. “The Representation of social

actors. Texts and practices: Readings in critical

discourse analysis (Eds). Carmen Rosa Caldas-

Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard.

Polarization through Religious Driven-issues in the Dutch Mass Media: A Critical Discourse Perspective

613