Affiliation:
1. University of Birmingham, UK,
2. University of Birmingham, UK
Abstract
This article, an expanded version of an oral presentation in 1999, uses corpus methodology as a research tool to investigate how social actors are classified in the public discourse of the media, with lexis as our point of entry. Our main focus is the nature of the labels which provide categorization, especially of gender relations. Our main claim is that uses of premodification associated with the two types of newspapers in Britain and their lexical choices produce differential judgmental stances that have social effects. In the first of two complementary studies, we discuss the adjective lexicon of the tabloid press in comparison with quality newspapers, with curvy, hunky and kinky as exemplars with respect to sexualization and the construction of gender. In our second study, we discuss adjectival premodification of man, woman, girl and boy in tabloids and broadsheets: our findings show that the media categorizes people through very specific points of view and values not always apparent to a non-critical reader. Collocational patterns undoubtedly reveal societal and sociolectal attitudes, especially in terms of stereotypes of gender, sexualization, age and behaviour. Our main aim, therefore, is to show that corpus studies can help to deconstruct hidden meanings and the asymmetrical ways people are represented in the press.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Sociology and Political Science,Language and Linguistics,Communication
Reference24 articles.
1. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis
2. Caldas-Coulthard, C.R. ( 1993) ‘From Discourse Analysis to Critical Discourse Analysis: The Differential Re-presentation of Women and Men Speaking in Written News’ , in J.M Sinclair, M. Hoey and G. Fox (eds) Techniques of Description, pp. 196-208. London: Routledge.
Cited by
103 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献