Some Linguistic Resources of Subjectivity in Media Discourse: A Study in BBC English News Reports and their Arabic Counterparts

Subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy is widely of interest to scholars in general, and to linguists in particular. It becomes especially so when it comes to journalism, that vital vehicle of communication which is in daily contact with people to tell them about the world around them. One way of fulfilling objectivity in media is through informing readers of different languages equally by media institutions having multi-language services. To see whether it is the case, a number of English hard news stories and their Arabic counterparts from BBC are subjected to analysis. The analysis is carried out on the level of inserting or avoiding a number of subjective categories put by Iedema et. al. (1994). The study has shown that impartiality and even-handedness, although a goal frequently claimed to be followed by media institutions, is frequently violated.