Discourse, news representations and Corpus Linguistics

1. Discourse, news representations and Corpus Linguistics Paul Baker July 2011

2. Structure • 1 Background to a corpus approach to (C)DA • 2 A 9 stage model • description • illustration • evaluation • 3 An experiment in analyst consistency

3. Discourse • “a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events… Surrounding any one object, event, person etc., there may be a variety of different discourses, each with a different story to tell about the world, a different way of representing it to the world.” (Burr 1995: 48)

4. Critical discourse analysis • Identifies discourses in texts • A politically driven form of analysis • Several levels of analysis e.g. • Text • Production and reception • Intertextuality • Social context (society’s politics, history) • Usually qualitative and with small datasets

5. Criticisms of CDA • “Your analysis will be the record of whatever partial interpretation suits your own agenda” (Widdowson 1998: 148) • “what is distinctive about Critical Discourse Analysis is that it is resolutely uncritical of its own discursive practices” (Widdowson 1998: 151)

6. The benefits of using corpora • Interpretation “grounded in systematic language description” • Need to account for much larger amounts of text • Accurate and fast calculations • Corpus-driven techniques reduce researcher political and cognitive bias (primacy effect, clustering illusion). • Potential to find exceptional cases

7. Contributors to the approach • Michael Stubbs (1994, 1996) • Gerlinder Mautner (1995, 2004, 2007, 2009) • Carmen Caldas Coulthard (1995) • Ramesh Krishnamurthy (1996) • Alan Partington (Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies) (2004, 2008, 2010) • Susan Hunston (2002, 2003) • Kieran O’Halloran and Caroline Coffin (2004) • Paul Baker (2005, 2006, 2008)

8. My own research • Gay Men (2004a,b, 2005) • Refugees and asylum seekers (2005, 2008a,b) • Fox-hunting (2006) • Islam and Muslims (2010) • Gender (2006, 2008, 2010) • Foreign doctors (2011)

9. Nine stage Corpus-assisted CDA (Baker et al 2008)

10. Stage 1 – wider reading • Van Dijk’s (1987: 58) four topic classes for racist discourses • They are different, they do not adapt, they are involved in negative acts and they threaten our socio-economic interests • Karim’s (2006: 119-20) four primary stereotypes of Muslims: • ‘having fabulous but undeserved wealth (they have not earned it), being barbaric and regressive, indulging in sexual excess, and… the “violent Muslim”’

11. Stage 2 – corpus building/research questions • Do representations of Muslims match with van Dijk’s or Karim’s categories? • What differences occur over time or between different types of newspapers? • 143 million word corpus (200,037 articles)

12. Stage 3 – corpus-driven analysis • Keyword comparison of broadsheet and tabloids • Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza were strong tabloid keywords

13. Stage 4 – collocation/concordance analysis

14. Stage 4 – Concordance analysis • EVIL hook-handed Muslim cleric Abu Hamza is using a legal trick to delay getting the boot from Britain for THREE years and rake in thousands more in hand-outs. The People, March 21st, 2004 • RANTING Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed pulled off another handouts coup by claiming disability benefit to get a £28,000 car, complete with satellite navigation system. Yet he walked into the showroom with barely a limp. The Sun May, 16th, 2005

15. Stage 5 – new hypotheses Stories about ‘undeserving Muslims on benefits’ originate in the tabloids and influence the discourse of right-leaning broadsheets.

16. Stage 6 – corpus analysis

17. Stage 6 – corpus analysis • INVESTIGATORS discovered £180,000 in a London bank account held by a radical Muslim cleric accused of fomenting and financing terrorism. Sheikh Abu Qatada, who lives on benefits in Acton, west London, had his assets frozen at the weekend after appearing on a Treasury list of people suspected of "committing or providing material support for acts of terrorism". Telegraph, October 18th, 2001 • The taxpayer will also fund at least £12,000 per year in benefits for Qatada, his wife and five children, even though Qatada was once found to be carrying £170,000 in cash when he was stopped by police.” Telegraph, June 18th, 2008

18. Stage 7 - intertextuality DAVID Blunkett has ordered a benefits blitz on Islamic hate clerics who sponge off the state. The Daily Express, August 17th, 2005 So, David Blunkett is to have a blitz on Muslim clerics who sponge off the state ("Benefits blitz on the hate preachers", August 17). Daily Express, letters, August 18th, 2005

19. Stage 8 – new hypotheses Some newspapers use readers’ letters as a legitimation strategy to print more Islamophobic representations.

20. Stage 9 – analysis of corpus • PIGGYBANKS are facing the axe - because some Muslims could take offence. Britain's top High Street banks have ruled the money-boxes are politically incorrect. But last night the move sparked snoutrage. And one of Britain's four Muslim MPs, Khalid Mahmoud, said: "A piggybank is just an ornament. Muslims would never be seriously offended." The Star, October 24th, 2005

21. Stage 9 – analysis of corpus TEXT MANIACS (The Star, October 25th, 2005) • muslims r offended by our piggy banks! ? Then the £56 me n ma wife n ma 4 girls have got in our piggy bank 2 help the ppl in pakistan wil b spent on a fry up. • Y shud we change r way of life just 2 stop offendingmuslims. they aint neva gonna change theirs. Maybe they shud try eating pork. a nice bacon sarnie cud change any1's mind.

22. Evaluation of method • Fruitful in identifying numerous features of the corpus which could not have been considered in advance • Researchers need to be trained in conducting different forms of analysis (or utilise a team of researchers with different skills). • Each stage can open up multiple pathways and/or hypotheses, not all of which can be followed due to time and money constraints. At times, the number of ‘directions’ that the research could go in felt overwhelming and endless. • Did researcher bias impact on paths followed, outcomes?

23. An inter-analyst consistency experiment • Subjects – 5 analysts all with prior experience of combining corpus linguistics and discourse analysis or CDA. • The corpus search term: “foreign doctors” + similar terms • All British national newspapers (about half a million words) • Research Question “How are foreign doctors represented in the British press 2000-10?” • Any form of corpus methods or software allowed

24. Methods

25. Corpus Tool

26. Findings

27. Shared findings e.g. calculated by: # of shared findings made by analyst 1 and 2 # of findings made by either analyst 1 or 2 Analysts 2 and 5 – most similar findings (36%) Analysts 3 and 4 – hardly any similar findings (13%)

28. Did the analysts uncover different things? • Only one finding (4%) discovered by every single analyst • About a quarter of findings discovered by the majority (3+) of analysts. • But 65% of findings only discovered by 1 analyst • Distinction between “major” and “minor” findings. • Analysts agreed on the overall ‘feel’ of the data, but the specifics differed. • Two “productive” strategies: spend a long time on one technique (1, 3), use lots of different techniques (2). • Time and ability/experience are important factors.

29. Conclusion • Corpus tools give a reasonably high degree of consistency for identifying larger patterns • Caution in concluding the techniques remove all bias • Procedures direct attention to unforeseen aspects of the data • Resulting in more interesting questions and hypotheses

30. Thank you