Madam, - Dermot Ahern (March 6th) writes a prolix defence in reaction to Nuala Ahern's article of March 4th and Margaretta D'Arcy's letter of March 5th, both of which question the Government's actions regarding banning cluster bomb munitions.
Mr Ahern cites his contacts with Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, and with the National Pensions Reserve Fund Commission, "with a view to ensuring that no public funds are invested in any company involved in or associated with the production of cluster munitions".
After this woolly statement, the Minister goes on to say he is "proud that Ireland is leading efforts to combat cluster munitions and passionately hope that a convention will be agreed here in May".
The question remains, however: does Ireland have investment in companies which produce cluster bomb munitions? - Yours, etc,
NICK DORAN, Sandyford Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14.
The issue at question: Media representations of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.
Media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict (hereafter IPC) has become increasingly diversified in recent years. This diversification of news in general, and the IPC in particular, have occurred somewhat in parallel with the rapid growth of the fields of critical thinking in language and discourse analysis. Critical Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Systemic Functional Linguistic, Cognitive Discourse Analysis and Discourse Semantics are just some of the areas which have contributed to the impressive body of knowledge about human communication and the dialectic that language, ideology and power maintain in societies.
