Abstract
Digital addiction is a new type of behavioural addiction that emerges as a result of excessive and compulsive use of new digital technologies. Many researchers have focused on studying substance addiction and some types of digital addiction in a variety of fields such as discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, and psycholinguistics. However, no linguistic study is conducted on digital addiction as an umbrella term. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate digital addiction as an umbrella term for digital devices, digital platforms, and digital media in two British broadsheet newspapers. To accomplish the aim of the current study, Jeffries’ analytical tools (2010) of critical stylistic analysis is adopted to detect which critical stylistic tools are employed and the differences in using these tools in Guardian and Independent’s articles to reflect ideologies regarding digital addiction.
The results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data show that all textual-conceptual functions are employed in both newspapers to reflect negative ideologies regarding digital addiction. They reveal that digital addiction is a global problem in the modern-day and its effects are as dangerous as drugs to highlight the necessity of taking its effects more seriously and to convince readers to increase their awareness of its effects as well as moderate their use of digital technologies. However, in Guardian’s articles, naming and describing tool occupies the highest rate while the tool of enumerating and exemplifying occupies the lowest rate to reveal the negative effect of digital addiction in all aspects of life, especially social life. At the same time, in the Independent’s articles, the tool of representing actions/events/ states occupies the highest rate while the tool of negating achieves the lowest rate to reveal the negative changes that digital addiction causes in ethical values and behaviour of children and teenagers, especially girls. Additionally, they highlight the confession of tech companies’ employees that apps are intentionally designed with addictive properties.
