A Master’s Thesis at the College of Languages Explores Critical Discourse Analysis in Food Blogs from Linguistic and Cultural Perspectives
On Tuesday, July 22, 2025, the Department of English at the College of Languages, University of Baghdad, discussed the master’s thesis titled *”A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Food Blogs in English and Arabic”* by student Noor Hamed Abd Al-Sada.
The study aimed to apply Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis alongside the social semiotic approach of Kress and Van Leeuwen to a selection of food blogs written in English and Arabic.
The goal was to uncover how textual and visual elements produce cultural values and community identity through food-related practices. The thesis also included a theoretical overview of the critical discourse analysis framework and a methodological design for sample selection, involving five English blogs and five Arabic blogs, with twenty posts collected from each cultural context. It featured both qualitative and quantitative analyses of accompanying texts and visual snapshots using Fairclough’s (2015) model and Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework.
The committee recommended adopting the multimodal approach in discourse studies on social media and emphasized the importance of raising content creators’ awareness of the cultural impact of their representations on audiences. The committee also advised the researcher to consider the feedback provided by its members.
