Discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996-2006
Summary: Refugees and asylum seekers seeking entry into the UK have become the focus of intense media and political discussion. On this project, we explore the discourses surrounding these groups, examining both how that discourse has evolved and how it has constructed both groups. In doing so, we are seeking to meet a methodological objective: the marriage of the broadly quantitative methodology of corpus linguistics with the traditionally qualitative methods of critical discourse analysis. Out intention is to both better account for the construction of the identities of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press while simultaneously affirming, amending or challenging past work undertaken on media representations of both groups.
Key Facts
Funder: ESRC
Principal Investigator: Paul Baker
Co-investigators: Tony McEnery, AcSS, FRSA, Ruth Wodak
Research Associates: Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyzanowski
Dept/Research Group: Linguistics and English Language
Project Description
Refugees and asylum seekers seeking entry into the UK have become the focus of intense media and political discussion. On this project, we explore the discourses surrounding these groups, examining both how that discourse has evolved and how it has constructed both groups. In doing so, we are seeking to meet a methodological objective: the marriage of the broadly quantitative methodology of corpus linguistics with the traditionally qualitative methods of critical discourse analysis. Out intention is to both better account for the construction of the identities of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press while simultaneously affirming, amending or challenging past work undertaken on media representations of both groups.
Aims
- To further the contribution of corpus linguistics to CDA by showing how corpora can play an important role in critical social research.
- To achieve that by an exploration of the construction of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press.
- To explore the discursive construction of the groups in focus both synchronically and diachronically over the period 1996-2006, using multiple UK news sources, which will allow as to examine a range of contrasts (e.g. regional vs. national; tabloid vs. broadsheet).
- To explore the possible relations between discourses surrounding refugees/asylum seekers and van Dijk's (1987) description of racist discourses.
- To reflect critically upon aim (1) by mapping out the possible uses of corpora in CDA while considering what corpora cannot achieve, and hence what marriage between corpus and non-corpus based approaches may be best for CDA.
Related papers
(forthcoming) Gabrielatos, C. & Baker, P. 'Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: a corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylym seekers in the UK Press 1996-2005)' Accepted for Journal of English Linguistics.
(forthcoming) Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T. & Wodak, R. 'A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press.' Accepted for Discourse and Society.
Gabrielatos, C. (2007). Selecting query terms to build a specialised corpus from a restricted-access database. ICAME Journal 31, 5-43.
Related presentations
Baker, P. (2007) Flooding, crawling, sneaking: a corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1995-2006. Paper given at the University of Liverpool. 17th October 2007.
Baker, P., McEnery, T. & Gabrielatos, C. (2007) Using collocation analysis to reveal the construction of minority groups: The case of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in the UK press. Paper given at Corpus Linguistics 2007, University of Birmingham, 28-30 July 2007. (Available online)
Gabrielatos, C. & Baker, P. (2006). Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in UK newspapers: Towards a corpus-based analysis. Paper given at the Joint Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics and the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, University College, Cork, Ireland, 7-9 September 2006. (Available online)
Gabrielatos, C. & Baker, P. (2006). Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in UK newspapers: Towards a corpus-based comparison of the stance of tabloids and broadsheets. Paper given at the First International Conference: Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD 2006), University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 29-30 June 2006. (Available online )
Gabrielatos, C. (2006). Towards quantifying 'quality' in the press: Comparing the stance of UK broadsheets and tabloids towards refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. Paper given at the joint meeting of the Corpus Research Group (CRG) and Language, Ideology and Power Research Group (LIP), Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, UK, 13 June 2006. (Available online)
Contact details
Tony McEnery 01524 593212 http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/295/ a.mcenery@lancaster.ac.uk
Ruth Wodak 01524 592473 http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/265/ r.wodak@lancaster.ac.uk
Project Funder
ESRC - £44,867
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