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Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics

Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics. John Morley University of Siena. Qualitative Analysis. Classical Discourse Analysis. looks very carefully at the details of a text or a small number of texts. Qualitative Analysis. A very small example. A moment for truth

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Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics

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  1. Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics John Morley University of Siena

  2. Qualitative Analysis Classical Discourse Analysis looks very carefully at the details of a text or a small number of texts.

  3. Qualitative Analysis A very small example A moment for truth Blair and Britain face historic choices (The Guardian, 14 February 2003) Our troops are heroes The war’s insane (The Mirror,21 March 2003)

  4. A Larger Look Guardian <FP>In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course. If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determined to see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people’s best interests at heart. But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged. Mr Blair’s whole approach on Iraq may be put to its ultimate test very soon, ... This weekend will be a crucial opportunity - perhaps the last one - to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the Iraqi regime.</FP>

  5. A Larger Look Guardian <FP>In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determined to see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people’s best interests at heart. But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged. Mr Blair’s whole approach on Iraq may be put to its ultimate test very soon, ... This weekend will be a crucial opportunity - perhaps the last one - to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the Iraqi regime.</FP>

  6. A Larger Look Guardian <FP>In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course, If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determinedto see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people’s best interests at heart. But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged. Mr Blair’s whole approach on Iraq may be put to its ultimate test very soon, ... This weekend will be a crucial opportunity - perhaps the last one - to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the Iraqi regime.</FP>

  7. A Larger Look Guardian <FP>In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course, If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determined to see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people’s best interests at heart But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged. Mr Blair’s whole approach on Iraq may be put to its ultimate test very soon, ...This weekend will be a crucial opportunity - perhaps the last one - to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the Iraqi regime.</FP>

  8. A Larger Look Guardian <FP>In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course, If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determined to see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people’s best interests at heart. But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged. Mr Blair’s whole approach on Iraq may be put to its ultimate test very soon, ... This weekend will be a crucial opportunity - perhaps the last one - to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the Iraqi regime.</FP>

  9. A Larger Look Mirror TONY Blair addressed the nation last night with passion and conviction as he justified sending thousands of British troops into war. It is beyond doubt that the Prime Minister believes what he is doing is right, and he has deployed all his legal skills to emerge as a powerful advocate for George Bush and his right-wing policies. It is also beyond doubt that we don't agree with him or Mr Bush. But none of us can do anything now but wait for the war to end - our collective fates lying in the hands of generals. […] But it is not in our view acceptable to use the troops as an excuse for the country to “unite” behind this war, The country does not feel united at all, Most of us feel worried sick about what is happening in our name. It is true that we all support our forces, It is not their decision to be there and we know that many of them and their families share our concerns on this conflict.

  10. A Larger Look Mirror TONY Blair addressed the nation last night with passion and conviction as he justified sending thousands of British troops into war. It is beyond doubt that the Prime Minister believes what he is doing is right, and he has deployed all his legal skills to emerge as a powerful advocate for George Bush and his right-wing policies. It is also beyond doubt that we don't agree with him or Mr Bush. But none of us can do anything now but wait for the war to end - our collective fates lying in the hands of generals. […] But it is not in our view acceptable to use the troops as an excuse for the country to “unite” behind this war, The country does not feel united at all, Most of us feel worried sick about what is happening in our name. It is true that we all support our forces, It is not their decision to be there and we know that many of them and their families share our concerns on this conflict.

  11. Quantitative Analysis looks at a lot of texts to see what patterns there are in them. Corpus Linguistics

  12. Quantitative Analysis Will Corpus Linguistics confirm or disconfirm our close analysis of (bits of) the Guardian and Mirror editorials?

  13. Quantitative Analysis What we need to do a Corpus Linguistics analysis 1) Electronic corpus A large collection of texts saved as a .txt file on a computer 2) Software program WordSmith Suite (Michael Scott 1998)

  14. Quantitative Analysis Corpus News Reports and Editorials From 10 English and US newspapers Written during the Iraq War in 2003 1.25 million words

  15. Quantitative Analysis The modules for the editorials in the Guardian and the Mirror contain: Guardian - 51,701 words Mirror - 21,214 words

  16. Quantitative Analysis Using these modules and our software we can see if the two papers express their opposition in the same way. Note that the Guardian and the Mirror were both very violently against the war.

  17. Quantitative Analysis For the purposes of comparison, I used a corpus of about 100 million words of varied newspaper discourse -(Papers93). This allows us to compare: instance with system typical with exceptional (Partington 2003)

  18. Statistics Guardian Guardian WarEds GUARDIAN.TXT Bytes 311,787 Tokens 51,705 Types 1,118 Standardised Type/Token 48.81 Ave. Word Length 4.73 Sentences 2.485 Sent.length 20.67 ….

  19. Statistics Mirror Mirror WarEds MIRROR.TXT Bytes 127,026 Tokens 21,214 Types 501 Standardised Type/Token 43.78 Ave. Word Length 4.52 Sentences 658 Sent.length 12.06 ….

  20. Statistics Mirror/Guardian WarEds MIRROR GUARDIAN Standardised Type/Token 43.78 48.81 Ave. Word Length 4.52 4.73 Sent.length 12.06 20.67 ….

  21. Word List Guardian Guardian WarEds WordSmith Tools -- 20/07/03 20.46.36 N Word Frequency % 1 THE 3,050 5.97 2 TO 1,454 2.85 3 OF 1,448 2.83 4 AND 1,280 2.51 5 IS 1,089 2.13 6 A 1,015 1.99 7 IN 953 1.87 8 THAT 789 1.54 9 IT 640 1.25 10 FOR 479 0.94 ……

  22. Word List Mirror Mirror WarEds WordSmith Tools -- 20/07/03 20,46,36 N Word Frequency % 1 THE 1,405 5.92 2 TO 722 3.04 3 OF 640 2.69 4 AND 567 2.39 5 IS 524 2.21 6 A 405 1.71 7 IN 355 1.49 8 IT 305 1.28 9 THAT 287 1.21 10 HE 279 1.17 ……,

  23. KeyWords WarEDs N Word Mirror Guardian Keyness Frequency Frequency 1 we 150 76 114.1 4 Tony 105 55 77.3 6 our 101 63 61.6 7 troops 59 20 61.4 13 her 28 5 40.0 14 families 17 0 39.0 16 people 82 65 36.1 19 nations 57 35 35.4 20 war 241 310 35.0 24 women 13 0 29.8

  24. KeyWords WarEDs -2 N Word Mirror Guardian Keyness Frequency Frequency 35 Britain’s 0 34 26.0 36 perhaps 0 34 26.0 37 role 0 34 26.0 38 inspectors 0 37 28.3 42 Iraq’s 0 66 50.4 43 may 17 162 50.4

  25. perhapsand may There are 34 instances of perhaps in the Guardian corpus. There are no instances of the word in the Mirror. This difference illustrates the tendency of the Guardian to hedge its statements and the Mirror’s tendency to assert its point of view more straightforwardly, which we saw in our qualitative analysis. The same point is underlined by the large number of uses of mayin the Guardian - 162, as against 17 in the Mirror.

  26. perhapsand may Analysis of the corpus confirms our close reading of the texts.

  27. we and our - 1 we - Mirror keyness score 114.1 exclusive weAuthority of the newspaper’s voice (i)Their courage, spirit and professionalism was praised by Mr Blair and we agreed with every word he said about them. inclusive we the Mirror and its readers Helps to create a feeling of consensus. (ii)We don't want fake dossiers of "evidence”. We don't want lies about the dangers we face.

  28. we and our - 2 The possessive our is the sixth most key word in the Mirror corpus There are 101 instances of our, of which 49 refer to: our airmen/soldiers/ (magnificent)(armed)forces/ servicemen/ troops/ military leaders The Mirror’s message is that however much we may hate the war, the soldiers are fighting it for us. We also have references to: our Prime Minister(3), our government(3), things that are happening in our name(3), our country(2), our democracy. The Mirror is intent on showing that it is taking this war very personally.

  29. we and our - 3 In the Guardian the commonest collocate of ouris: own interest(3) which pays much more attention to realpolitik. Interestingly, in the Guardian we find that the key word with one of the highest keyness score is: Britain’s(34) This is a much less personalized form of possessiveness than that indicated by our. It is also illuminating that Britain’s most common collocates are: interest(5) and interests(5).

  30. we and our - 4 There is nothing surprising about this. People who study the media are aware that the popular press tends to personalize issues. In the popular press [the personal] is not only by far the most insistently stressed element but is actually offered as an interpretative framework. ‘What happened’ becomes ‘What happened to certain [people]’. (Sparks 1992: 39-40)

  31. Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis Families Mirror 7 instances Guardian 0 Keyness score 39.0 This suggests a fairly classical personalization and sentimentalization of the issue. Is this any way for a country to treat the families of those who have given their lives for it?

  32. Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis We can arrive at a hypothesis by a close analysis of a text. Then, confirm or disconfirm our analysis by using software to interrogate our corpus.

  33. Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis We can alsoconfirm or disconfirm statements made by experts on the discourse type we are studying.

  34. Sailing to the Isles of Serendip Sometimes we can discover things from a quantitative analysis of which we were not aware from our qualitative analysis.

  35. Sailing to the Isles of Serendip Women Mirror 13 instances Guardian 0 instances Pathos provoking expressions occur four times: women left widowed by the conflict in Iraq But this time the element of personalization and sentimentalizationis only a partial explanation.

  36. Sailing to the Isles of Serendip There are nine references to female soldiers in Mirror editorials: the servicemen and women who are risking their lives in the Gulf

  37. Sailing to the Isles of Serendip It would seem that the Mirror in this instance is being more politically correct than the Guardian. I was not aware of this as I read the Mirror and Guardian editorials day by day.

  38. Sailing to the Isles of Serendip An interesting consequence of the software enabling us to discover things we weren’t aware of is that the native speaker is no longer king. The non-native speaker is just as likely to discover things as the native speaker. And the student is as likely to discover things as the teacher.

  39. Discovering the Non-obvious Semantic Prosody The Concept of

  40. Semantic Prosody A Definition The evaluative meaning of a lexical item is not exhausted within the orthographic item but spread over the surrounding co-text. Meaning includes the good or bad ‘aura’ that accompanies the lexical item.

  41. Semantic Prosody The main descriptions of this concepts are to be found in: Sinclair (1987; 1996; 1999), Louw (1993), Stubbs (2001), Partington (2004), Morley (forthcoming).

  42. Semantic Prosody An Example Sinclair (1987: 155-6) Lexical item set in: rot (3), decay, ill-will, decadence,infection, rigor mortis, bitterness, anarchy, disillusion ... Not one of these is desirable or attractive.

  43. Semantic Prosody Most of us would not have been aware of this negative prosody.. We can discover the negative aura through concordancing lexical items.

  44. A Concordance 1 of Civvies: The problem is not violence in itself but the way in which c:\papers\gua931.txt 74 2 ll be turned on by these films but that in itself doesn't make c:\papers\gua931.txt 76 3 ter word) English. While the manual was in itself incomprehensible, it c:\papers\gua931.txt 79 4 ucher Memorial Handicap Chase would not in itself suggest an imminent c:\papers\gua931.txt 5 Cricket: MCC has full confidence in itself - official MATTHEW c:\papers\gua931.txt 6 6 ment. ''Joining the World Cup squad is in itself a big step,'' Taylor c:\papers\gua931.txt 94 7 >Attaching a bug to a telephone is not in itself a crime, according to c:\papers\gua931.txt 14 8 k prisoners' bodies and spirits proved in itself a death sentence for c:\papers\gua931.txt 17 9 ary in the age of the spy satellite is in itself a matter for wonder. c:\papers\gua931.txt

  45. A Concordance A concordance enables us to look at all the occurrences of a lexical item in a corpus and see the items which surround it. We are thus able to see ‘the company it keeps.’ The concordance is central to Corpus Linguistics.

  46. Semantic Prosody in the Guardian Editorial The case of seems determined to -1 In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course, If a particular policy is right, then a minister is entitled to stick with it in the face of opposition, to trust to his own judgment and to take the consequences. That is how Mr Blair seems determined to see things on Iraq, fighting a lonely battle to persuade a doubting nation that George Bush has the British people's best interests at heart.

  47. The case of seems determined to- 2 26 examples in 27,147,792 words (Guardian and Observer, 1993). Nearly all of these are followed by the performance of a negative action: Mr Khan, aged 78, seems determined to crush the prime minister once and for all.

  48. The case of seems determined to- 3 The expression seems determined toimplies that what follows is very likely to be something negative; in Sinclair’s terms its semantic prosody is negative.

  49. The case of in itself -1 In itself, the fact that a majority of the country either opposes or is sceptical towards his policy on Iraq is not necessarily a reason for Tony Blair to change course. But Mr Blair’s view of the crisis - and of the role he is playing - remains dangerously double-edged.

  50. The case of in itself -2 In 100,000,000 words (Papers93) Guardian, Telegraph,Times 25 instances of in itselfin sentence initial or thematic position. All of themsignal a contradiction later in the co-text.

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