Ethno-Semantic Texture of News Headlines: A Case Study of a Syrian Drowned Toddler

Abstract

The present study does processually explore the ethnosymanticity of some journalistic texts that supposedly report and narrate the same appallingly saddening incident vis-à-vis a traumatizing tragedy of a three year toddler who passed away as an inflatable boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea on September, 2^nd 2015. The researcher closely examines the textual semantics of these texts and tries to relate how such texture can affect the meaning network conveyed or perceived by virtue of incorporating the impact of such texts strictly within their ethnographic dimensions and vice versa. Therefore, this paper exclusively endeavors to unveil and stress how socio-cultural and socio-political aspects of the Syrian crisis, in general and the Toddler’s Kurdish ethnicity, in particular, have been ethnosemantically presented as this incident unbelievably resonated across news agencies both nationally and internationally, thus exhibiting how such authentic texts may contextually serve to intentionally mobilize and steer the public opinion not only of the general public but also ones that the political elites may adopt as well once the tragedy gets manipulated to maneuver socioculturally and sociopolitically. The news agencies the researcher has referred to as a source of data are alphabetically the ABC News, Daily Mail, Daily News, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and The Washington Post.