The representation of Meghan Markle in The Mail on sunday’s headlines from a critical discourse analysis theory and a feminist perspective

Abstract

The British royal family has always been in the media spotlight as its members’ private lives are constantly divulged. One of the latest victims of this type of harassment has been Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle. Since their relationship became widely known, she has been defamed by the British press, especially the online British tabloid The Mail on Sunday. On account of this, the present study focuses on how Meghan Markle is represented as a social actor by the mentioned tabloid from a Critical Discourse Analysis theory (CDA) and a feminist perspective. For this purpose, a corpus of the most relevant headlines about Meghan Markle, from October 2016 to October 2019, has been compiled and then analysed under the scope of three renowned authors. A qualitative research method was adopted to carry out this research since it was the most suitable for analysing and interpreting the data. The analysis of the headlines demonstrated the way in which Meghan Markle was represented, giving hints of the unfair treatment she received during those years.