Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideological Bias

Migration in the British Press

Anna Islentyeva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429558122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideological Bias presents research combining a range of corpus-linguistic techniques which are employed to analyse how migration discourse is (re)constructed in the contemporary British press. Two specialised corpora containing 1, 000 news reports, editorials, and opinion pieces from five major national British newspapers were collected and annotated for this research. The event separating these two corpora is the 2016 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU). In its analysis, this book:

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• employs both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods, with four case studies offering a broad perspective on how the topical socio-political issues of migration and asylum seeking are represented by left- and right-wing British newspapers;

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• explores how newspapers reveal their political orientation and promote their political agenda by employing specific linguistic patterns and discursive strategies – in this case, in the representation of the key social actors within migration discourse;

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• provides case studies that place a particular focus on the discourses surrounding European migrants and migration within the EU, which proved to be a very popular topic in the British press both before and after the 2016 EU membership referendum; and

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• offers a comparative corpus analysis that seeks to ascertain whether media discourse regarding EU migration has changed in the wake of the referendum.

This book is a useful source not only for students of English, linguistics, and media studies, but also for researchers in the fields of applied corpus linguistics, critical discourse studies, contemporary media analysis, and metaphor research.

1
Ideology in the contemporary media

Bias in the British press

1.1 Approaches to discourse and key goals in critical discourse analysis

Approaches to discourse

Since the 1960s, there has been an explosion of interest in the notion of discourse and, more specifically, discourse analysis or discourse studies. The term discourse is used to define a concept whose meaning and application tend to vary within the academic cultures of different countries. A fundamental distinction can be drawn between discourse and more traditional linguistic terms such as language, sentence, text, and genre (Angermuller et al. 2014: 3).

First, the distinction between sentence and discourse is more or less transparent. Formally, discourse usually constitutes a series of sentences. Stubbs (1983: 1) defines discourse as language above the sentence or the clause. Discourse is thus synonymous with order on a transphrastic level, such as in Harris (1952), who first introduced the term discourse analysis. Secondly, discourse is not equivalent to language, that is, according to de Saussure (1916), defined as an abstract system of signs with a rigid structure. In contrast, discourse implies how language is used in specific contexts; in this sense, discourse can be defined as language use in both speech and writing. Thirdly, a differentiation is sometimes made between written and oral modes, but discourses are neither written nor oral texts. Widdowson (2004) argues that a discourse should be clearly distinguished from both written and oral texts; discourse is the process of meaning negotiation, while a text is its final product. Discourses do not necessarily represent written data; they can comprise written, oral, and even non-verbal data such as visual data, gestures, facial expressions, and other types of body language. Finally, the term discourse is often associated with different types of language use, such as political (Chilton 2004), media (Fairclough 1995b), advertising, legal, medical, educational, and environmental discourses. In this sense, discourse represents a conceptualisation that can be linked to such classic linguistic terms as genre or text type (cf. Baker 2006: 3).

Angermuller et al. (2014: 2) state that the term discourse can be understood in terms of micro-sociological and macro-sociological approaches:

1. On a micro-sociological level, discourse is understood as language in use, while discourse analysis implies the process and practice of contextualising texts, the situated production of speech acts, as well as turn-taking practices.
   (Gumperz 1982; Brown & Yule 1983)
2. On a macro-sociological level, discourse can be defined as a form of verbal and non-verbal practices within social communities.
   (Foucault 1972; Fairclough 1992, 1995a, 2015)

Similar to the distinction between these micro and macro levels are the ideas of James Paul Gee (1999), which were published in his foundational book on discourse analysis. Gee distinguishes between discourse and Discourse (with a capital D): the former can be defined quite simply as any stretch of language in use, while the latter combines language in use with a variety of social practices within a specific group (teachers or lawyers), such as actions, interactions, values, customs, and perspectives. The relationship between these two concepts can be described as hierarchical: different historically formed Discourses determine a broader context for analysing discourses.

The methods of discourse analysis are frequently employed in linguistics, sociology, and political, communication, and media studies, but the actual ways in which discourse analysis is applied within these disciplines involve a range of approaches and methodologies. Broadly speaking, a differentiation can be drawn between the French theoretical approach to discourse and the tradition of empirically oriented discourse analytical research that was developed primarily in the UK and USA. The former approach emerged from post-structuralism and was inspired by philosophers such as Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, and Althusser (cf. Williams 1999). The key interests of the French discourse analytical school are relations between language, power, and ideology – specifically, the question of how conventional uses of language are created by conventional modes of thought (Bayley & Williams 2012: 13). For discourse theorists working in line with Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, social relations are constructed in discursive practices, while the concepts of knowledge, power, and subjectivity constitute the triangle of discourse theory. The Anglo-American tradition concentrates on the empirical analysis of language in use; for example, a primary focus is placed on two major issues: first, how the social and discursive roles of speakers and addressees are enacted in texts, and secondly, how personal identities are constructed in different text types (Bayley & Williams 2012: 14). The Anglo-American tradition can therefore be described as more empirical: it includes both large-scale quantitative corpus analysis and more qualitative, micro-sociological studies (Angermuller et al. 2014: 5). Empirical discourse studies often include findings from the field of social semiotics (Halliday 1978, 2007; Kress & van Leeuwen 1996), as well as sociolinguistics (Stubbs 1983); in addition, discourse studies comprise a number of approaches, including speech act theory (Widdowson 2007) and corpus-based methods (Sinclair 2004; Baker 2006).

Discourse as social practice

The approach that combines elements of both the French and Anglo-American traditions is known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) or Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). This critical approach to discourse analysis – which is the main theoretical framework upon which this book is based – was born in response to concerns regarding the power of language to exercise control within society. CDA constitutes a vast, multifold research field that derives from a variety of theoretical backgrounds and is designed to be used to critically engage with different types of data. The roots of CDA lie in classical rhetoric and text linguistics, as well as sociolinguistics and pragmatics (Martin & Wodak 2003: 4). Most importantly, Teun van Dijk, one of the founders of CDA, emphasises the critical orientation of this type of discourse analysis by stating that, as an approach, CDA emerges from “critical linguistics, critical semiotics and in general from a socio-politically conscious and oppositional way of investigating language, discourse and communication” (van Dijk 1995: 17; emphasis added).

Historically, CDA developed out of the fields of functional linguistics and semi-otics (Halliday 1985). In the UK, linguists such as Roger Fowler, Robert Hodge, Gunter Kress, and Tony Trew (Fowler et al. 1979; Fowler 1991, 1996) started formulating the basic principles of critical linguistics; their work was primarily based on the systemic-functional and social-semiotic linguistics of Halliday, whose methodology is still crucial to CDA practices. Fairclough defines clear linguistic categories for analysing the relations between discourse and social meaning (Blommaert 2005: 23). Apart from systemic-functional linguistics, British cultural studies have also profoundly influenced CDA. The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies, headed by Stuart Hall, has systematically addressed such relevant social, cultural, and political issues as neo-liberalism, the New Right, Thatcherism, racism, and the end of the welfare state (Blommaert 2005: 23).

Deriving from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, CDA represents a complex network of principles, aims, and methods. Blommaert (2005: 21) argues that CDA is not just a school of thought; rather, it comprises a network of scholars from various theoretical backgrounds who address similar social and political issues, applying similar principles of analysis and employing some of the institutional tools developed within this framework. Political, media, advertising, educational, and various institutional discourses belong to the key areas of critical research, while Norman Fairclough, with a background in systemic-functional linguistics, Ruth Wodak, focusing on identity politics and the study of racist talk and texts, Teun van Dijk, specialising in text linguistics and cognitive linguistics, and Paul Chilton, with a focus on linguistics, semiotics and communication studies, can be called both the pioneers and leading scholars of CDA. Furthermore, these researchers are often associated with three distinct approaches within CDA that are labelled:

1. the socio-semiotic approach (Fairclough 1992, 1995a, 2010, 2015),
2. the discourse-historical approach (Wodak 1996, 1991, 2001), and
3. the socio-cognitive approach (van Dijk 1993, 1996, 1998, 2001).

These three approaches are the most firmly established and widely recognised and as such are often referred to as mainstream CDA (Hart 2010: 14).

Norman Fairclough’s socio-semiotic approach analyses the relationships between semiosis and various elements of social practices and focuses on both structure and function (Angermuller et al. 2014: 378). Fairclough broadly defines discourse as a form of social practice (2015: 55). Discourse and society are closely connected in at least three interrelated ways. First, discourse is a part of society, and the relationship between discourse and society is thus internal and dialectical, however asymmetrical, which means that linguistic phenomena are always social phenomena, whereas social phenomena are only in part linguistic (Fairclough 2015: 56). Linguistic phenomena are social in the sense that whenever we produce text or talk, we do so in ways that are socially determined and have social effects. Conversely, social phenomena are linguistic in the sense that any discourse production is not merely a reflection of social processes and practices, but rather is a part of those processes and practices. Secondly, Fairclough (2015: 57) argues that discourse is a social process, whereas a text, both written and spoken, is a product of the process of text production. In addition to the production of a text, the process also includes the act of interpretation, for which the text operates as a resource. Text analysis therefore constitutes only one part of discourse analysis; a br...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication Page
• Introduction: language corpora and media discourse on migration
• 1 Ideology in the contemporary media: bias in the British press
• 2 Corpus-based discourse analysis: data collection and corpus construction
• 3 Discursive representations of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and migrants (RASIM) prior to the EU referendum
• 4 Discursive representations of migrants after the EU referendum
• 5 The English garden: a metaphor for English society
• 6 The metaphorical motif of war in the British press
• Conclusion: principles of cohesion and evaluation in newspaper texts
• Appendix
• Index