Islamophobia in The Truth about Muhammad by Robert    Spencer: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Document Type : Research in linguistic and literary studies

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English, faculty of arts, south valley university, Qena, Egypt.

Abstract

This paper is written out of an MA dissertation: Islamophobia in some Works by Robert Spencer: A critical Discourse Analysis, South Valley University, Faculty of Arts, English Department. This research aims to introduce critical discourse analysis (CDA) as an effective linguistic approach for analyzing the language of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is unreasonable fear of Muslims, in particular, and Arabs, in general. One of Spencer’s works is selected to explain the linguistic aspects of the local meaning which indicates the islamophobic attitude of the writer applying the theoretical framework of Van Dijk. Van Dijk’s theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis comprehensively analyses the racial discourse according to four steps: 1) macro-structure, 2) local meaning, 3) subtle formal structure, and 4) context and event models. In the local meaning, it is required to analyze various linguistic aspects including the syntactic, semantic, rhetorical, and stylistic aspects to explain the meaning of the discourse. The analysis of the local meaning of some passages in The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion elucidates that misinterpretation, omission, the use of specific figures of speech, and negative lexicons illustrate the writer’s view about Mohammed (PBUH) and Muslims. While Spencer denies the existence of Islamophobia in his writings, CDA indicates that The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion exemplifies an Islamophobic discourse. 

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