Saga of Aluthgama and Beruwela incidents enacted in the news releases of the main political parties in Sri Lanka: A discourse of non-reconciliation?

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the ways in which social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted,reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. More specifically CDA stems from a critical theory of language which sees the use of language as a form of social practice. All social practice are tied to specific historical contexts and are the means by which existing social relations are reproduced or contested and different interests are served. By looking at the discourse form of news releases by main political parties in Sri Lanka, including the Right of Reply Government Sri Lanka made at the 26th Session of the Human Rights Council, tabled as Agenda Item 4, about the recent incidents at Aluthgama and Beruwala, using a combination of CDA and Corpus Linguistics (CL), this research paper tries to answer the following research questions. How is the text positioned or positioning? Whose interests are served by this positioning? Whose interests are negated? What are the consequences of this positioning? Are the press releases of the main political parties based on much talked and desired discourse values of Sri Lanka, such as reconciliation, development, equality and pluralism? Unfortunately analysis of most news releases show just the opposite. In most of the releases supremacy of the majority, exclusion, stereotypes , deviation of multiculturalism is evident. Our findings show a nation, torn and wounded and devastated by nearly 30 years of protracted ethnic conflict, and that Sri Lanka has a long journey towards, discourse of reconciliation, holistic development, equality and pluralism.