Journal of World Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract This study examines how news headlines about the October 7, 2023, Gaza crisis employ linguistic structures to convey predetermined framing and reinforce power dynamics. Drawing on Information Structure Theory and the analytical framework of information packing theory, a corpus of 50 headlines from major international outlets (The New York Times, Reuters, CNN, AP, BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera) published between October 2023 and July 2025 was analyzed using qualitative discourse analysis. Information Structure Theory examines how speakers and writers organize and highlight pieces of information in sentences, such as what is presented as known or new, important or backgrounded, to guide the listener or reader’s attention and interpretation. The study investigates how syntactic and grammatical choices frame events, highlight causes, assign or obscure responsibility, and shape readers’ interpretations and thematic focus. Findings reveal that headlines systematically manipulate information structures to achieve pragmatic effects. Here, foregrounding (preposing) emphasizes key actors or consequences; postposing constructions activate presuppositions and dramatize urgency; passive voice, inversion, and interrogatives obscure responsibility and subtly assign or obscure blame; also, expansion constructions (relative clauses, appositives, and parentheticals) enrich context and amplify humanitarian or emotional dimensions. Overall, the study shows that linguistic choices function as pragmatic tools for managing discourse, framing narratives, and influencing perceptions of accountability. These results underscore the ideological and power dynamics embedded in news production and highlight the importance of analyzing information structures to understand how media discourse shapes public understanding and meaning.

Abstract In the present paper, Murad’s memoir, The Last Girl, is scrutinized through the lens of Resistance Literature theories. First introduced by Kanafani (1966) and adapted by scholars such as Harlow (1987) and Sangari (1389 [2010 A. D.]), Resistance Literature has come to constitute pieces of writing that are written during or after a conflict by people experiencing life under the oppressive power. For Harlow and Sangari, what is of utmost importance is the accounts of war experience pictured by civilians from all walks of life. With the Syrian war with the ISIS escalating in 2011 and its consequent overflow into Iraq, the extremist terrorists brought the war to the doorsteps of ordinary people, massacring men and leaving women to deal with the aftermath. The Last Girl is Nadia Murad’s retelling of life under the ISIS as a Yazidi-Iraqi woman. At first glance, Murad pictures a sad, yet vivid image of the Yazidi genocide by the ISIS. However, in a deeper analysis of the text, one finds how being ripped apart from family, utterly displaced, terrorized and raped can also shape a rather stronger, resistant person. By applying Harlow and Sangari’s theories of Resistance to Murad’s memoir, what is manifested is the way in which being appointed to various kinds of terror in war-time can create a more resistant self in someone.