Essay Example on Introduction I am a 28 year old woman trying to make a Living

Introduction I am a 28 year old woman trying to make a living and a career Harvey Weinstein is a 64 year old world famous man and this is his company The balance of power is me 0 Harvey Weinstein 10 Kantor and Twohey 2017 October 5 In 2015 Lauren O Connor a former assistant to film producer Harvey Weinstein wrote this in a memo to executives at Weinstein s company She described the business as a toxic envi ronment for women and accused Weinstein of sexual harassment Kantor and Twohey 2017 October 5 She and further victims were however silenced with settlements until The New York Times published an article in October 2017 in which a number of women accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and abuse over three decades Kantor and Twohey 2017 October 5 Articles published by other newspapers that address the scandal therefore look at two different sides the male accused and the female accusers The balance of power between these two sides which Lauren O Connor referred to in her letter to business executives is noticeable in the representation of these male and female social actors in the media 

The present paper aims to determine these differences in the media discourse on the Weinstein scandal Firstly a brief overview of previous research on the representation of social actors will be provided Furthermore the data sources and selection and the method of analysis will be described Finally the data will be analysed using the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis CDA which focuses on the connection between language and power This examination aims to illustrate differences in the portrayal of male and female social actors as well as differences in this representation between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers 2 Literature Review Previous studies on media discourse have addressed the depiction of social actors and found differences between male and female social actors For instance Theo van Leeuwen 1996 discussed ways social actors are portrayed in discourse and identified various ways in which this representation can be realised p 67 He differentiated between three kinds of transfor mation deletion that is inclusion or exclusion of social actors rearrangement such as fore grounding or backgrounding and substitution such as the representation of social actors as groups assimilation or individuals individualisation Leeuwen 1996 pp 66 67 

 The data will be sourced from three broadsheet newspapers The Daily Telegraph The Guardian and The Times and three tabloid newspapers Daily Mail Daily Mirror and The Sun to in addi tion achieve a comparison between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers The online database LexisNexis will be searched for occurrences of the name Harvey Weinstein in British newspapers between 5th and 6th October 2017 to obtain the data Thus the first articles published by the British newspapers after the scandal was made public by The New York Times on 5th October 2017 were chosen to allow and ensure a direct comparison of all articles The articles will be analysed using the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis CDA This approach considers discourse to be a form of social practice which involves a connection between a discursive event and the social structure it is set in Fairclough and Wodak 1997 p 258 Discourses can contain presentations of power and ideology and can even include the representation of unequal power relations such as racism or sexism Fairclough and Wodak 1997 p 258 These connections between language and power and may however be hidden and CDA aims to uncover these connections Fairclough 1989 p 5 CDA can be conducted through various approaches such as the discourse historical approach which was introduced by Ruth Wodak 2001b This approach investigates discursive strate gies and linguistic devices to uncover social inequality manifested in language use Wodak 2001a p 3 Wodak 2001b p 72 However Critical Discourse Analysis CDA has limita tions such as the influence of the researcher s own view and bias Meyer 2001 p 30