The Representation of the Other In Not Explicitly Polarised Issues in Ghana: An Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis

This article has been written to analyse a typical phenomenon concerning the media or politics nexus in contemporary Ghana by exploring how the processes of ‘Othering’ is linguistically embedded in the political discourses of the state-owned Ghanaian newspaper, the Daily Graphic newspaper, when representing the relation between the ruling and opposition political parties in Ghana since 1992. Secondly, the aim of this article was to demonstrate how Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be applied or broadened to alternative settings. Here, ‘alternative’ settings refer to contexts in which a conflict is not the topic of the discourse. As shown by the analysis, unequal power relations are reflected in political news discourses in a state-owned newspaper on not explicitly polarised issues in the politics of Ghana, which demonstrates that the scope of CDA can be broadened to include ‘alternative’ settings. This article was based on the theoretical framework of CDA, particularly, the textual dimension of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. Expert purposive sampling method was adopted. The work employed qualitative research design since the research relied on observation and comprehensive description that resulted in non-numerical data. The research used secondary data.  Thematic analysis was employed to present and analyse the data. The data led to the accomplishment of ‘The Representation of the Other’ in not Polarised Issues in Ghana: An Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis.’ The analysis revealed and concluded that unequal power relations were reflected in political news discourses in a state-owned newspaper on not explicitly polarised issues in the politics of Ghana, and this demonstrated that the scope of CDA can be broadened to include ‘alternative’ settings.