English-language newspaper coverage of the 2022 World Cup: An analysis of content and discourse

Details

Supervisors

Arblaster, Paul

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue, à finalité spécialisée: langues des affaires

Abstract

This thesis aims to conclude the English-language newspaper coverage of the last World Cup final between France and Argentina. After an extraordinary match that ended with Argentina winning the penalty shoot-out, I wondered whether the English-language newspapers were taking advantage of the magnitude of the event to talk about other topics, such as the problems surrounding the competition (particularly with human rights) or the greatness of Lionel Messi, Argentina's captain. The hypothesis is that the articles praised the talent of Lionel Messi and that the coverage depends on the country where the newspaper comes from. I wanted to discover that through content and discourse analyses. By analysing the content, I was able to find out what the main subjects of the various articles written by the authors are, for example by looking at the frequency of words. Discourse analysis allowed me to understand the intended message of various authors through their use of vocabulary, grammar, and paper structure. The coverage of different articles (by country or even articles from the same newspaper) has also been compared. The first part of the hypothesis is true: most of the articles praised the fact that Lionel Messi is the best footballer of all time but the second part is false, the coverage does not depend on the country but on the author and the newspaper who wrote the article and the message they wanted to get across.