A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DISCOURSE OF NEWSPAPER ARTICLES IN THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE ON THE (NON)PARTICIPATION OF NOVAK ĐOKOVIĆ IN THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN

This paper, within the framework of critical discourse analysis, deals with newspaper articles about the (non)participation of Novak Djokovic at the 2022 Australian Open, published in the electronic editions of the Italian daily newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica in January 2022. The aim of this paper was to, following Van Dijk (1988a), investigate the schematic organisation of the texts from our corpus, as well as to examine which linguistic units are used in those texts to create a positive and negative image of Novak Djokovic. The results of the research show that a very small number of analysed articles fit into Van Dijk's model of organisation of newspaper texts. The results of the linguistic analysis of the texts indicate that, on the one hand, the discourse strategies of nomination and predication are used to highlight Novak's sporting success, and on the other hand, they serve to portray Novak, who did not receive the vaccine against covid 19, as the culprit for not participating in the Australian Open in 2022 and as a person who behaves recklessly and irresponsibly during the coronavirus pandemic.