The New York Times: a política externa na campanha presidencial de 2008

Abstract

This paper aims at showing how The New York Times presents the positioning on foreign policy ofthe two main candidates – Barack Obama and John McCain, in the 2008 presidential election. Itis based on the Journalism Studies developed by Sousa (2004 and 2006) and Traquina (2004 and2005) and it has the methodological support of the Critical Discourse Analysis, with the works ofBell (1991), Fairclough (1995 and 2003) and Fowler (1991), and of the French stream of discourseanalysis, with Maingueneau (2001) and Charaudeau (2006). The results point out that, although thecandidate Obama permits a glimpse of light regarding a dialogue between the United States andthe countries it has some conflicts with, the posture of both candidates keeps signs of the Americanintervention policy continuity – darkness.