Framing Hassan Nasrallah Before and After Death: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Emic and Etic News Coverage

Abstract

Conflicting media frames of Hassan Nasrallah reshape both regional risk calculations and collective memory. This article examines how he is discursively constructed across international (etic) and regional (emic) English-language news reports before and after his death. At the heart of this study is the question: How do emic and etic outlets differently authorize Nasrallah's voice before and after his death? Using a multi-layered framework that integrates Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar, quotation studies, framing theory, and corpus-assisted methods, the analysis covers thirteen articles from Reuters, AP, AFP, Al Jazeera English, and Al Mayadeen English. These articles were selected for their comprehensive representation of media perspectives and their influence within their respective media ecosystems, ensuring methodological rigor and sampling validity. Findings show that etic and emic outlets operate within distinct epistemic regimes that allocate agency, legitimacy, and moral meaning in contrasting ways. Pre-death, etic reports strategically amplify Nasrallah through frames of security, threat, and deterrence, while emic outlets emphasize political identity, historical memory, and resistance. Post-death, a discursive rupture occurs: etic outlets enact epistemic erasure, depicting the killing as a technical operational event, whereas emic outlets reassert Nasrallah as a symbolic and moral figure through sacralized naming and communal voice. Ultimately, the study argues that this emic/etic divide is not merely stylistic but political, exposing how Global North media reproduce a ‘coloniality of knowledge’ that silences resistance figures, while regional narratives function as sites of epistemic counter-memory. The insights from this study could inform newsroom strategies by guiding journalists to navigate these epistemic divides more critically and by helping policymakers recognize the broader impacts of media narratives on international relations and socio-political stability.