The Paradoxical Ambiguous Media Views on Jamal Khashoggi's Disappearance: A Critical Pragmatic Study.

Abstract

Critical pragmatists focus on the critical social comments on language whether these comments are negative or positive. A critical pragmatic approach is devoted to clarify the paradoxical ambiguous media views on Khashoggi's disappearance, particularly in Saudi media. The Saudi newspapers participate in misleading the public opinion about the killing of the Saudi journalist Khashoggi. The present paper aims at filling the gap of critical pragmatic strategies of contradiction through adopting a qualitative method of analysis to analyse 12 selected extracts from the Saudi newspaper Arab News talking about Khashoggi's murder. By adopting Searle and Vanderveken's Formal Theory of Speech Act (1985), it has been found that the Saudi position on Khashoggi's disappearance has been changed many times over time. Following three strategies of contradiction, namely: manipulation, deception, and lying, the critical pragmatic analysis shows that Saudi Arabia media does its best in order to deny any responsibility for killing Khashoggi. The use of these three strategies is to influence readers' minds.