TY - CONF
T1 - Corpus-based methodology and (critical) discourse studies: Context, content, computation
AU - Gabrielatos, Costas
N1 - Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. & McEnery, T. (forthcoming a). Sketching Muslims: A corpus-driven analysis of representation around the word “Muslim” in the British press, 1998-2009. Applied Linguistics.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C. & McEnery, T. (forthcoming b). Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos C., Khosravinik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T. & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 273-305.
Gabrielatos, C. (2007). Selecting query terms to build a specialised corpus from a restricted-access database. ICAME Journal, 31, 5-43.
Gabrielatos, C. & Baker, P. (2008). Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1996-2005. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 5-38.
Gabrielatos, C., McEnery, T., Diggle, P. & Baker, P. (2012). The peaks and troughs of corpus-based contextual analysis. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 37(2).
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - The presentation will discuss practices employed in two recent research projects in order to address two common interrelated criticisms of corpus approaches to critical discourse studies, namely that they …
a. do not (sufficiently) take account of the relevant context;
b. merely examine groups of words (e.g. keywords, collocates) – or, at best, concordances of a few words around the node.
The examples come from work carried out within the following two projects:
• Discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996-2006.
• The representation of Islam and Muslims in the UK press, 1998-2009.
Both projects employed large corpora comprising all British national newspapers, and had a strong diachronic element (Baker et al., 2008; Baker et al., forthcoming a, b; Gabrielatos, 2007; Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008; Gabrielatos et al., 2012).
The central aim of the presentation is to demonstrate that these criticisms stem from outdated and restricted conceptions of corpus research. That is, irrespective of whether they may be justified in individual cases, these criticisms do not concern the potential of corpus-based approaches. More specifically, the main points to be illustrated are:
• Corpus researchers have no less access to sources of relevant contextual information than (critical) discourse analysts.
• A corpus-based contextual analysis; that is, a preliminary quantitative analysis of the diachronic frequency development of corpus texts, reveals patterns which not only pinpoint areas that can be usefully examined in detail, but, more importantly, uncovers helpful contextual elements, which can inform the interpretation of results.
• Corpus analysis need not stop at the examination of short concordance lines, but can involve the close analysis of longer stretches of text, or whole texts if necessary – while at the same time retaining the ability to quantify the results.
AB - The presentation will discuss practices employed in two recent research projects in order to address two common interrelated criticisms of corpus approaches to critical discourse studies, namely that they …
a. do not (sufficiently) take account of the relevant context;
b. merely examine groups of words (e.g. keywords, collocates) – or, at best, concordances of a few words around the node.
The examples come from work carried out within the following two projects:
• Discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996-2006.
• The representation of Islam and Muslims in the UK press, 1998-2009.
Both projects employed large corpora comprising all British national newspapers, and had a strong diachronic element (Baker et al., 2008; Baker et al., forthcoming a, b; Gabrielatos, 2007; Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008; Gabrielatos et al., 2012).
The central aim of the presentation is to demonstrate that these criticisms stem from outdated and restricted conceptions of corpus research. That is, irrespective of whether they may be justified in individual cases, these criticisms do not concern the potential of corpus-based approaches. More specifically, the main points to be illustrated are:
• Corpus researchers have no less access to sources of relevant contextual information than (critical) discourse analysts.
• A corpus-based contextual analysis; that is, a preliminary quantitative analysis of the diachronic frequency development of corpus texts, reveals patterns which not only pinpoint areas that can be usefully examined in detail, but, more importantly, uncovers helpful contextual elements, which can inform the interpretation of results.
• Corpus analysis need not stop at the examination of short concordance lines, but can involve the close analysis of longer stretches of text, or whole texts if necessary – while at the same time retaining the ability to quantify the results.
KW - corpus approaches
KW - (critical) discourse studies
KW - diachronic studies
KW - contextual analysis
M3 - Paper
T2 - Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies International Conference
Y2 - 13 September 2012 through 14 September 2012
ER -
