Abstract:
The study is aimed to critically analyze the discourse of the portrayal of Ethiopia in Saving the Forgotten Jews (2015) movie. The movie was selected purposively for the reason that it is dealing with Ethiopia. Van Dijk’s (2006) framework of triangular socio-cognitive approach is used as a model of analysis from linguistic perspective. The results of the study revealed that there are seven themes with negative representations by which Ethiopia is portrayed in the movie. The results revealed various discursive manifestations of the Westerns’ ideologies which the moviemakers used to exhibit the representations of Ethiopia as a result of the country’s past unfortunate events and occurrences, such as famine and civil war, that are identified as the main reasons to the negative portrayals of Ethiopia in Western movies. Based on the analysis, recommendations are given to: a) policymaker and media practitioners to work on the positive images of Ethiopia so as to change the western movie writers’ negative perceptions to Ethiopia b) researchers to cover the nonlinguistic aspects of movies and to analyze movies taken from different parts of the world in addition to the Western ones.
