CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: ISLAMOPHOBIA AND PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE IN IMRAN KHAN AND TAYYAB ERDOGAN' SPEECHES AT UNITED NATIONS

Abstract

This research offers a comparative Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the United Nations General Assembly speeches by Imran Khan and Tayyab Erdogan, focusing on how both leaders construct narratives of injustice, identity, and resistance through strategic language use. The study examines how discourse reflects and reinforces social cognition, ideologies, and group-based representations by applying Van Dijk’s Social Schema Theory on macro, meso and micro levels. Both leaders rely on binary oppositions, repetition, and rhetorical questions to construct in-groups (Muslim World) and out-groups (Western community) in order to convey their ideologies and to create a difference between both communities. The findings contribute to CDA by showing how schema-based language not only reflects but also actively shapes political thought and global narratives in high stakes diplomatic settings. The findings also contribute to understand the perspective of both leaders and also to understand the severity of the issue of Islamophobia and Palestinian Genocide in order to take the problems at a serious level.