Political Zionism's discursive processes and media coverage

This book investigates political Zionism’s discursive processes and media coverage. It selects AIPAC speeches from 2006 to 2012 and Israeli print media as a case study. It relies on a corpus of speeches delivered during AIPAC policy conferences and a bundle of press articles extracted from Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. It is motivated by two research questions that aim to illuminate whether Zionist political discourse abides by or radically departs from political discourse norms and the extent to which Israeli print media comply with Zionist political discourse. Zionism, AIPAC, and Israeli print media are thematically and theoretically elucidated. Methodologically, the corpus is qualitatively approached from a CDA perspective where the Faircloughian model is endorsed with its threefold stage: the descriptive, the interpretive, and the evaluative. Speech acts, conversational maxims, reporting strategies, and notions of face and politeness are scrutinized at the descriptive level. Discursive practices, transpired in notions of coercion, legitimization, and delegitimization are discussed at the interpretive level.