Deconstruction of meaning: Reading News from Derrida

The transition from quantitative methodologies to qualitative methodologies in social sciences has also been effective in communication studies, and discourse analysis methods have begun to be applied in analyzing of news texts. Derrida, who comes into prominence with the concept of deconstruction among the theoreticians of discourse, problematizes the metaphysics of presence and brings the meaning to the field of ontological and epistemological problem. The aims of the study are to read the news texts which accepted as a discourse in the light of the concepts that Derrida has introduced to literature, and to develop an alternative reading-form to the discourse analysis methods which are frequently applied in communication studies. In the first part of the tripartite work, the place of Derrida among the theoreticians of discourse is tried to describe thereby tackling the construction of the meaning on news and the news analysis methods on transition process from quantitative methodologies to qualitative methodologies in communication studies. Derrida's thoughts and concepts are discussed in the second part of the thesis, and in the last part, deconstructive reading of the news texts is done in the light of these concepts. Key Words: Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction, News, Meaning, Discourse