EL CONTENIDO DEL PLAN ESTRATÉGICO DE MARKETING

The discourse prosodies of loanwords described by ELU was subject to detailed analysis within CDA framework using the SCA. It is insufficient to stop at the stage of describing the discourse prosodies of loanwords without relating to their ideological

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underpinnings within a sociocultural and sociopolitical context given that such foreign concepts have sociopolitical dimensions. Thus, a critical perspective of meaning construction of loanwords as encapsulated in the discourse prosodies was the next step to understand more about them.

The SCA (Van Dijk; 2014b, 2016b) was also employed as an analytical tool to critically examine the outcomes obtained from applying ELU model. In this approach (see also 1.2 and 3.3.1.2), ideology is at the interface between discourse and society. Within this approach, tow levels of cognition can be described: personal and social cognition. At the personal cognition level, language users represent mental models of the situations (or semantic models) and contexts (or pragmatic models) of social events that are appropriate to the communicative environment based on assumed shared knowledge (Van Dijk, 2014). At the social cognition level, language users are also social members with shared sociocultural knowledge of the natural and social world including norms and values. The shared sociocultural knowledge is translated into and enacted in discourse as attitudes and ideologies often implicit. Social cognition is emphasized and viewed as a system of mental representations and processes associated with a group members (Van Dijk, 1995a). Within this system, group members share sociocultural knowledge and evaluative beliefs. These socially shared knowledge and attitudes are partially controlled by ideologies.

4.1.2.1 Approaching Ideological Discourse

Establishing ideological content in foreign words is grounded in Van Dijk's socio- cognitive view of ideology as ' basic systems of fundamental social cognitions... shared by members of groups' and, thus, capable of organizing and controlling social attitude.

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Two of the possible approaches to examine ideological discourse are: to start with the ideologies and models characteristic of a social group and find out how they are reproduced and enacted in language users' discourse; while the other way is to analyze discourse structures to find out how they represent ideological instances (Van Dijk, 1995). Van Dijk continues that “Such an approach would theoretically mimic an interpretation or recipient theory of ideology: it may suggest how recipients go about hearing or reading discourse as ideological” (1995b, p. 255). This study adopted the second approach in which discourse is investigated against potential ideological connotations and expressions as codified in using foreign words and collocational relations, and hence, language use was the starting point of analysis. Identifying ideological instances using foreign words in Arabic start by explicating the connotations (of words, phrases, sentences) that were argued to be ideologically loaded. These connotations are explained in light of shared (religious, national, political...etc.) ideologies and sociocultural aspects common in Arab world.

The interpretation of ideologies drew on a set of basic assumptions typical to discourse processing such as context, models, knowledge, and group beliefs (Van Dijk, 2006). Context is one of the mental models, was here restricted to linguistic context/co- text, where the surrounding linguistic items (words, phrases, sentences...etc.) are used to address or describe an event. Other mental models include the language users' (as authors/writers or addressees) impression or previous experience about a topic/issue. This includes the choice of the topic, who produces it, and to whom it is addressed. For instance, a critique on a new immigration policy is more prone to ideological opinion than news or reports on sports.

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Knowledge demonstrates shared general belief (about culture, tradition, social system...etc.) among community members. Shared knowledge allows for constructing mental models translated into presuppositions which, in turn, facilitate production and comprehension of discourse of particular groups. Group beliefs refer to shared beliefs among members of a particular group who form a subgroup of a larger community i.e., columnists, professors, and activists who promote certain ideologies that fall under their interest or profession.

Language users take into consideration various assumptions, as previously mentioned, to interpret ideological discourse, however, it should be noted that these assumptions are not limited to ideological purposes. Mental models are subjective and may be ideologically biased, so as the language users' and analysts' interpretation of discourse. Thus, any endeavor to do an explicit and comprehensive analysis of ideology in discourse is still far from being complete, since ideological discourse is always personally and contextually variable (Van Dijk, 2006, p.124). Yet, this study was hoped to discursively approach ideological aspects coded in foreign words in relation to basic assumptions (e.g. Islam as the major faith, Arabic as a native language) in Arab world and avoiding as much as possible over interpretation.

4.1.2.2 Analyzing Ideological Discourse

In fact, all discourse structures (semantic, phonological, syntactic, graphical, stylistic…etc.) can be present in a given discourse and imply ideological features, however, the focus was on discourse semantics level. The semantic structure is one of the key structures of discourse comprising macrostructure aspects (e.g., topics and themes) and microstructure aspects (relations between propositions) that contribute to the overall

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meaning of the discourse (Van Dijk, 1985). These semantic properties expose mental representations of social members in language use. However, it is important to note that semantic properties, like other structures, may directly or indirectly apply to discourse. The semantic aspects of collocational relations and discourse prosodies of foreign words that exhibit shared attitudes/opinions, positions, and interests of Arabs as a social group were examined. Ideological meanings can be studied by examining their implicit representations and effects in the semantic more than syntactic structures of discourse since “…meanings are more prone to ideological marking than syntactic structures, because ideologies are belief systems and beliefs characteristically tend to be formulated as meanings of discourse” (Van Dijk, 2006, p.126).

Any semantic analysis of the meanings of a given discourse is far from being complete since many facets of meaning are unknown. Thus, I focused mainly on three relevant aspects of discourse semantic structures: lexicalization, propositions, and themes/topics, yet, other aspects such as level of description and presupposition might be investigated if pertinent. Lexicalization or the lexicon which is “the major dimension of discourse meaning controlled by ideologies” (Van Dijk, 1995b, p. 259) used in a particular discourse demonstrates language users’ choice of words and other accompanying words to make meaning. For instance, using foreign words to make reference to certain culture, country, religion, and ethnicity to introduce them as 'others' or external parties. Also, addressing recipients or readers as ingroup members as opposing to outgroup members. Proposition refers to the meaning of a sentence or what the sentence is all about and it has truth value. A proposition is abstract and comprises a predicate and one or more arguments. Through proposition, the argument and the parties

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or entities involved in discourse can be identified and be subject to analysis, i.e. what issues are being discussed or debated on and who are the referents. Themes/topics are subjectively drawn from the information expressed in the propositions that reflect the important aspects of texts. Themes are identified relevant to their positions in discourse i.e., in headlines, paragraph initial or at the conclusion part. The foregrounding and backgrounding of information could be used as a strategy to make ideologies more prominent in order for the reader or recipient to acquire or adopt.

The semantic structure of ideological discourse, through lexicalization, propositions, and themes, were evaluated to understand how they were organized and presented in terms of polarization, identification, self-description and other-description, and norms and values (Van Dijk, 1995b, 2015a). The use of pronouns (we or they) or expressions (e.g., national-international, internal-external) are some discursive strategies to show ingroup and outgroup membership. Also, positive description of ingroup and negative description of outgroup as well as emphasis on good native norms and values against others’ bad ones. The aforementioned semantic aspects and strategies may not all be present in ideological discourse, yet they are very common.