There has been a tremendous interest in the Western media concerning the status of women in Saudi Arabia. The recent reform in women’s rights and guardianship system has Western media gone into motion frenzy. A few research has been done on the representation of Saudi women in Arabic newspapers, but there is a scarce of research in Western English newspapers to date. This article exercises a critical discourse analysis approach to investigate the language used in three famous Western newspapers to uncover the hidden ideologies behind the representation of Saudi women’s guardianship system. To this end, van Dijk’s (2004) analytical framework was employed to reveal the underlying ideologies of six reports by The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Toronto Star. The findings show that the three newspapers have expressed the notion of “otherness” in their descriptions of Saudi Arabia and Saudi women. Furthermore, the newspapers have shared the employment of consensus and negative other-presentation to portray Saudi women as being oppressed and subordinate.

中文翻译：

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西方报纸对沙特男性监护制度和女性旅行自由的表述：批判性话语分析

西方媒体对沙特阿拉伯的妇女地位非常感兴趣。近来女权和监护制度的改革让西方媒体一片哗然。一些关于沙特妇女在阿拉伯报纸中的代表性的研究已经完成，但迄今为止西方英语报纸的研究很少。本文运用批判性话语分析方法来调查西方三大报纸所使用的语言，以揭示沙特妇女监护制度表现背后隐藏的意识形态。为此，van Dijk (2004) 的分析框架被用来揭示《华盛顿邮报》、《卫报》和《多伦多星报》六篇报道的潜在意识形态。调查结果显示，这三份报纸在对沙特阿拉伯和沙特女性的描述中表达了“他者”的概念。此外，报纸还使用共识和负面的其他表现来将沙特妇女描绘成受压迫和从属。