Using corpus linguistic techniques in (critical) discourse studies reduces but does not remove bias: Evidence from an Arabic corpus about refugees

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Haider
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Discourse Studies

Abstract Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) investigates the relationship between language, power, and society. Corpus linguistics (CL) is the study of language based on examples of real life language use. Over the last two decades, various scholars have combined some approaches and notions of CDA with the analytical framework of CL to examine the representation of several phenomena in relatively large texts. This study follows a corpus-assisted (critical) discourse analysis approach to investigate a 2.5 million word corpus of Arabic news articles by Jordan’s News Agency (PETRA). It demonstrates how some researchers following this approach may make some decisions, at some stages of their analysis, which are likely to affect their findings. These potential decisions may include selecting what statistical measures to use, what threshold to consider, what terms from the frequency, cluster, and collocation results to further investigate, which concordance lines to include in their study, and some others. In this study, I argue that some of these decisions can be made to suit the researchers’ preconceived assumptions and pre-existing hypotheses. The study concludes that using corpus linguistic techniques to discursively analyze large data reduces but not completely removes researchers’ bias.

scholarly journals Fundamentalist and tolerant islamic discourse in john updike’s terrorist and jonathan wright’s translation the televangelist: a corpus-based critical discourse analysis of semantic prosody

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahlam Ahmed Mohamed Othman
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Data Selection ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Semantic Prosody

Corpus-based critical discourse analysis studies have gained momentum in the last decade. Corpus Linguistics allowed critical discourse analysts to avoid bias in data selection and enlarge their samples for more representative findings. Critical Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, gave depth to corpus linguistic analysis by contextualizing it. The present study combines the two approaches to analyze the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords common to John Updike's Terrorist published in 2006 and Jonathan Wright’s translation The Televangelist published in 2016. The results of the corpus-based analysis show that while the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords is negative in Updike’s novel, it is highly positive in the translated novel. The conclusion is that Van Dijk’s proposition of the polarized representation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ holds for Updike’s fundamentalist Islamic discourse which negatively represents Islam and Muslims. However, Van Dijk’s proposition holds only partially for Wright's tolerant Islamic discourse which positively represents Islam and Muslims without misrepresenting the other.

Capturing Herder: a three-step approach to the identification of language ideologies using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis

Corpora ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-95
Author(s):  
Adnan Ajšić
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Large Data Sets ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Statistical Techniques ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Recent lexical approaches to the identification of language ideologies focus on the application of quantitative corpus-linguistic techniques to large data sets as a way to minimise researcher inference and ensure more objective sampling methods, replicability of analytical procedures, and a higher degree of generalisability ( Fitzsimmons-Doolan, 2014 ; Subtirelu, 2015 ; Vessey, 2017 ; Wright and Brooks, 2019 ; and McEntee-Atalianis and Vessey, 2020 ). Based on two comprehensive, specialised research (11.6 million words) and comparator (22.4 million words) newspaper corpora, this study offers an examination of the effectiveness of the multivariate and univariate statistical techniques, and proposes a three-step approach whereby corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis are combined to identify ( 1) thematic and ( 2) ideological discourses (cf. ‘d’/’D’ discourses; Gee, 2010 ), and ( 3) language ideologies. In contrast to recent contributions, it is argued that item frequency is not necessarily a reliable or effective indicator of language ideologies but, rather, of language-related discourses which can be examined for implicit and explicit language-ideological content. A combination of multivariate and univariate statistical techniques, and the three-step approach are shown to be a highly effective methodological solution for synchronic and diachronic language ideology and discourse research based on topically/discursively heterogeneous corpora.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordanian Newspapers

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Amal Riyadh Kitishat ◽  
Murad Al Kayed ◽  
Mohammad Al-Ajalein
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Statistical Tools ◽  
Syrian Refugee ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis

The present study employs corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the attitudes of Jordanian news towards the Syrian refugee crisis. The corpus of the research, which consists of 10140 articles (Word types: 103170 and Word tokens: 1956589), were taken from the Petra news agency between 2016 and 2018. Antconc Tools Version 3.4.4w was used to analyze the data. The study used corpus statistical tools of collocates and concordance. Collocates tool used to create a list of 200 collocates associated with the words: /lad3iʔ/ ‘refugee’, /lad3iʔi:n/ ‘refugees’, /su:ri:/ ‘Syrian’, and /su:ryi:n/ ‘Syrians’. These collocates were organized into two thematic categories: ‘services and resources’ and ‘Jordanians and Syrians’. The study used a concordance tool to unveil the attitudes of newspapers towards the Syrian refugee crisis. The findings of the study showed that Jordanians see Syrians as “brothers” and “guests”. However, Jordanian newspapers overstated the negative effect of Syrian refugees on the Jordanian economy, education, healthcare, etc. Jordanians were frustrated because Syrians compete with them on their resources and governmental services.

King Abdullah II Anti-Terrorism Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Sami K. Khawaldeh ◽  
Wafa abu Hatab
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Positive Image ◽  
Ideological Attitudes

The present paper investigates Anti-terrorism Ideology (ATI) in King Abdullah II of Jordan political discourse following a critical discourse methodology and focusing on three speeches delivered in 2015. The socio-cognitive approach is adopted as an analytical framework to decipher the underlying ideological attitudes and meanings that are encoded in these speeches. The study revealed that semantic aspects including lexical choices, repetition, and presupposition have been employed to construct (ATI) that aimed at creating a negative mental image of terrorists and a positive image of Islam.

Counter-discourse corpora, ethical subjectivity and critique of argument

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran O’Halloran
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Argument Evaluation ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity

In the article, I model an alternative critical discourse analysis (CDA) pedagogy which is based on an ethical subjectivity instead of a political subjectivity. Aimed at undergraduates, it facilitates critical purchase on arguments which attack the standpoint of relatively powerless groups/organizations (who seek political change). Via corpus linguistic analysis of appropriate web-based data, I show how the analyst can rigorously find out at scale the recurrent key concerns of a relatively powerless Other with whom they were previously unfamiliar. They use this counter-discourse information as a lens on an argument which criticises the relatively powerless group, ascertaining whether or not the argument has distorted the group’s key concerns. Should this be the case, I highlight how the analyst can go on to explore whether any mischaracterisation has implications for the argument’s credibility because it loses coherence relative to the outlook of the Other. The approach is grounded in Jacques Derrida’s ‘ethics of hospitality to the Other’. It is in being hospitable to the outlook of a relatively powerless Other, and adopting it for purposes of argument evaluation, that the analyst effectively creates an ethical subjectivity. That said, the ethical and political are, in principle, relatable with this method as I indicate.

Counter-discourse corpora, ethical subjectivity and critique of argument: An alternative critical discourse analysis pedagogy

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-813 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Argument Evaluation ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
Online Comments ◽  
Text Cohesion

In the article I model an alternative critical discourse analysis (CDA) pedagogy which is based on an ethical subjectivity instead of a political subjectivity. Aimed at undergraduates, it facilitates critical purchase on arguments which attack the standpoint of relatively powerless groups/organizations (who seek political change). Via corpus linguistic analysis of appropriate web-based data, I show how the analyst can rigorously find out at scale the recurrent key concerns of a relatively powerless Other with whom they were previously unfamiliar. They use this counter-discourse information as a lens on an argument which criticises the relatively powerless group, ascertaining whether or not the argument has distorted the group’s key concerns. Should this be the case, I highlight how the analyst can go on to explore whether any mischaracterisation has implications for the argument’s credibility because it loses coherence relative to the outlook of the Other. The approach is grounded in Jacques Derrida’s ‘ethics of hospitality to the Other’. It is in being hospitable to the outlook of a relatively powerless Other, and adopting it for purposes of argument evaluation, that the analyst effectively creates an ethical subjectivity. That said, the ethical and political are, in principle, relatable with this method as I indicate. Keywords: absences; argumentation; change.org; corpus linguistics; counter-discourse; critical discourse analysis; ethical subjectivity; Jacques Derrida; online comments; text cohesion.

“They cowardly attack US, so we nobly eliminate them…”

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-315
Author(s):  
Cristina Mayor-Goicoechea ◽  
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The People ◽  
Linguistic Strategies

Abstract The threat of the Islamic State is realised both in its attacks and its discourse. To illustrate the role of linguistic threats, the present study investigates the ISIS online propaganda magazine Dabiq by combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics (Romero-Trillo 2008; Baker et al. 2008). Following the two groups described by van Dijk (2003), which are represented by the in-group (ISIS) and the out-group (against ISIS), we propose a third element: the translocal group (i.e., the people in between). The results show the substantial presence of linguistic strategies enhanced by Dangerous Speech (Benesch 2013) to create a high segregation between the groups. Also, the analysis shows the inextricable relationship between conflict and dangerous language and the need to investigate this link further, with special reference to the polarisation of the groups and to the subsequent escalation of violence in discourse.

Representation, conceptualization and positioning in Critical Discourse Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-294
Author(s):  
Piotr Cap
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Space Theory ◽  
Discourse Studies

Abstract The present paper explores the current nexus between Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), focusing on theories of conceptual positioning, distancing and perspective-taking in discourse space. It assesses the strengths, limitations, and prospects for further operationalization of positioning as a valid methodology in CDA, and political discourse studies in particular. In the first part, I review the cognitive models of positioning that have made the most significant contribution to CDA. Discussing Deictic Space Theory and Text World Theory, among others, I argue that these models reveal further theoretical potential which has not been exploited yet. While they offer a comprehensive and plausible account of how representations and ideologically charged worldviews are established, they fail to deliver a pragmatic explanation of how addressees are made to establish a worldview, in the service of speaker’s goals. The second part of the paper outlines Proximization Theory, a discursive model of crisis and conflict construction in political discourse. I argue that, unlike the other models, it fully captures the complex geopolitical and ideological positioning in political discourse space, providing a viable handle on the dynamics of conflict between the opposing ideologies of the space.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document