Media representations of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies have mostly revealed the negative media representations of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs), which are pervaded by racist content. Yet, no study has adopted a corpus-assisted discourse analytic approach to systematically investigate a large amount of language data about foreign domestic helpers collected from the news media. To fill this niche, this study employs the notion of discourse prosodies to examine the dominant discourses surrounding foreign domestic helpers in the context of Hong Kong as represented in the South China Morning Post. The findings reveal two dominant discourses underlying the media representations of FDHs: supportive and othering discourses, suggesting ideological implications for both anti-racism and racism, respectively. In conclusion, the usefulness of employing corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine dominant discourses in media representations is highlighted.