Categories
Academic

#CORPUSMOOC – Corpus Linguistics Week 3

Find an article in which the word ‘refugee’ is mentioned – make notes about how refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, etc are talked about. Chose: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lebanon-stems-influx-refugees-minister-claims-countrys-internal-security-risk-1470743

  • Referred to in terms of numbers (large numbers)
  • Range of words indicating a ‘problem’ to be solved, stemmed, halted, stop them infiltrating, as a danger, etc.
  • Refugees = a destabilising influence
  • Humanitarian refugees (criteria unknown) only allowed.
  • ¼ people in Lebanon = refugees, highest number in the world = straining infrastructure and driving down wages.
  • Need ££ to deal with “influx”.

Oh, maybe it was supposed to be a British newspaper – ah well, pretty familiar!

Video 1: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press

Methodologically – need large amounts of data, frequency data, hunt for co-occurrences, annotation/grouping, quantification and statistical significance.

Merits – helps us get ‘the big picture’, identify the ‘aboutness’/areas of interest that can be interrogated – can work qualitatively/quantitatively and check on ‘gut instinct’

Core terms – keywords, cluster, collocation, semantic prosody, discourse prosody.

Video 2: Building the Corpus and Initial Analysis

In UK universities is access to many newspapers, but need to define the keywords [x OR x OR x AND NOT x]

How derive a query? Collected a quick corpus of texts from a pilot study, then compared to ‘general English’ to define the ‘aboutness’, then used keywords/intuitions/concordancing to include/exclude from collection. Data was split into ‘tabloids’ and ‘broadsheets’ (interesting distinction). More data in the broadsheets, but articles in broadsheets = longer (so they are not ‘more obsessed’ about them.

Finding ‘topoi’ = finding key ‘theme’ in the data. How do ‘collocates’ (associated words) help construct that theme?

Statistical significance important. Red = tabloids; blue = broadsheets.

entry

TOPOI:

  • Generally about entry (mode, place, legality) – discourse largely established by the TABLOIDS
  • Number, Abuse, Numbers, Finance (cost/abuse), threat – also tabloids (except large numbers)
  • Residence, legality, issues with system, unwelcome (authentic and legitimacy only mentioned by broadsheets).
  • PLIGHT – much larger in the broadsheets (so more sympathetic?)

VIDEO 3: Tabloids, Broadsheets and Key Clusters

High probability for collocates. Red = tabloids, blue = tabloids; black = equal.

plight

Related to numbers/quantity – different ways of doing it, but both speak in quantity metaphors, and also in the idea of ‘plight’ (based on number of collocates).quantity

To look with the word ‘illegal’ – manually checked it, then right-sorted to see what followed the word illegal. Identifying origin, ethnicity, religion, age, type of work, etc.

right-align

Number of clusters – some are more ‘emblematic’ of tabloids…

illegal

Equivalence is being ‘forced’ – terrorism, crime, fraud, etc. all being brought together in the discourse, rather than representing ‘reality’.

How many occurrences per million ‘normalised’ amongst words? Expect to see more in the tabloids than the broadsheets.

illegal-residence

VIDEO 4: IN FOCUS. The expression ‘pose as’.

Who uses the term ‘Pose As’ in relation to RASIM? Tabloids use it 8 x times more than broadsheets…

Beggars, crooks, etc. are identified as ‘posing as RASIM’ = taken ‘as fact’, and therefore positive stance towards ‘tougher measures’ – this is particularly in the tabloids. It’s there in the broadsheets too, but the opposite view is presented (if with less words).

Identifying problems in the asylum system by police/reporters ‘posing as’ RASIM.

The tabloids focus particularly upon asylum seekers ‘posing’ as nurses, etc…

Criminals may pose as RASIM to harm RASIM – also in tabloids, but very low numbers…

VIDEO 5: Summing Up

Focus upon words ‘suffocated’ and ‘drowned’ – focus upon whether they were represented as ‘illegal’ – directly (illegal immigrants) or indirectly (sneaking)?

suffocated-drowned

Dictionary may have a range of different meanings, but the press gives a range of terms that ‘mean similar’ … used in a particular way continuously.

Remember that there are distinctions within newspapers, rather than labelling ‘tabloids’. Question how helpful your distinctions are.

Move between largescale analysis, and closer/more-detailed readings of the text.

By admin

Dr Bex Lewis is passionate about helping people engage with the digital world in a positive way, where she has more than 20 years’ experience. She is Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University and Visiting Research Fellow at St John’s College, Durham University, with a particular interest in digital culture, persuasion and attitudinal change, especially how this affects the third sector, including faith organisations, and, after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2017, has started to research social media and cancer. Trained as a mass communications historian, she has written the original history of the poster Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth Behind the Poster (Imperial War Museum, 2017), drawing upon her PhD research. She is Director of social media consultancy Digital Fingerprint, and author of Raising Children in a Digital Age: Enjoying the Best, Avoiding the Worst  (Lion Hudson, 2014; second edition in process) as well as a number of book chapters, and regularly judges digital awards. She has a strong media presence, with her expertise featured in a wide range of publications and programmes, including national, international and specialist TV, radio and press, and can be found all over social media, typically as @drbexl.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.