Representation of foreign countries in the US press : a corpus study
This study examines the representation of foreign countries in two US newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The corpus comprises foreign news reports between the years 1999-2003 amounting to approximately 42 million words of running text. The thesis presents 5 analyses each focusing on collocational and semantic patterns of a given set of keywords. In the first study, premodifiers of the keywords countries/ country/ nations/ nation are examined. It is argued that the semantic patterns of the premodifers construe a hierarchy and polarity among the countries concerned. In the second study, collocates indicating mental and verbal processes of Arab leaders and European/ European Union/ EU leaders are examined. In the third study, verbs of saying attributed to the keywords Blair and Hussein are examined. In the fourth study, the lexical collocate said and a set of grammatical collocates of the keywords China/ Japan/ North Korea/ South Korea are examined. These three analyses show that there are subtle and nuanced patterns in the representation of the countries and leaders which correspond to the countriesâ relationship with the US and which transmit the âfriend and foeâ or âus and themâ
Bang, Minhee
PE English ; P Philology. Linguistics
Representation of foreign countries in the US press : a corpus study. This study examines the representation of foreign countries in two US newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The corpus comprises foreign news reports between the years 1999-2003 amounting to approximately 42 million words of running text. The thesis presents 5 analyses each focusing on collocational and semantic patterns of a given set of keywords. In the first study, premodifiers of the keywords countries/ country/ nations/ nation are examined. It is argued that the semantic patterns of the premodifers construe a hierarchy and polarity among the countries concerned. In the second study, collocates indicating mental and verbal processes of Arab leaders and European/ European Union/ EU leaders are examined. In the third study, verbs of saying attributed to the keywords Blair and Hussein are examined. In the fourth study, the lexical collocate said and a set of grammatical collocates of the keywords China/ Japan/ North Korea/ South Korea are examined. These three analyses show that there are subtle and nuanced patterns in the representation of the countries and leaders which correspond to the countriesâ relationship with the US and which transmit the âfriend and foeâ or âus and themâ
representation foreign_country press corpus_study study_examines representation foreign_country newspaper new york times washington post corpus_comprise foreign news report amount word run text present_analysis focus collocational semantic pattern give set keywords first study keywords country nations nation examine argue semantic pattern construe hierarchy polarity among country concern second study indicate mental verbal process arab leader european european union leader examine third study verbs say attribute keywords examine fourth study lexical say set grammatical keywords china_japan north korea south_korea org examine analyse show subtle nuanced pattern representation country leader correspond country relationship transmit friend