Discursive Constructions of terrorism in The Peoples Daily and The Sun before and after 9.11

1
Discursive Constructions of terrorism in The
Peoples Daily and The Sun before and after 9.11

• Yufang Qian
• Lancaster University
• (qianyf_at_yahoo.com)
• 13th March, 2008

2
Corpora used in this research
3
The newspapers with highest readerships in both
China and in the UK

• The Peoples Daily
• Chinese broadsheet, with a circulation of 3 to
  4 million official newspaper of CPC
  
• The Sun
• English tabloid, standing at around 3,200,000
  copies daily run by Rupert Murdochs News
  corporation

4

• Corpus analytical techniques
• frequency
• keyword
• clusters
• collocations
• concordances
• discourse prosodies.
• Corpus Analysis Tool
• Wordsmith Tools 4 (Scott 2004)

5
Collocational network

• Borrowed similar technique from
• McEnery (2005) Baker (2005)
• Basic criteria for creation of collocational
  networks in this study
  
• Calculating MI scores in WS for the word
  terrorists (in each of the three subdivisions in
  the STC and the PTC
  
• The lexical words in the strongest 20 collocates
  of terrorists in the PTC while the strongest 50
  collocates in the STC
  
• Second order of collocates and dead end
  collocates
  
• Slightly different rules for the words terror,
  terrorism, terrorist, terrorists

6
Collocational networks(1)Collocational network
of terrorists before 9.11 in the STC
chief
cops
terror
last
police
shot
gun
murderers
said
loyalist
force
group
republican
bomb
terrorists
convicted
dissident
Irish
freed
IRA
terrorist
threat
attack
arms
7
(2)Collocational network of terrorists after
9.11 in STC
fight
terrorism
extremist
raising
suicide
threat
group
Islamic
funds
people
America
suspected
killed
Palestinian
terror
leader
terrorists
IRA
Israeli
fanatics
Al Qaida
September
Taliban
fighters
network
Osama bin Laden
terrorist
Afghanistan
chief
atrocities
fears
evil
war
8
Collocational networks(1)Collocational network
of terrorists before 9.11 in the STC
chief
cops
terror
last
shot
police
gun
murderers
said
loyalist
force
group
republican
bomb
terrorists
convicted
dissident
Irish
freed
IRA
terrorist
threat
arms
attack
9
(2)Collocational network of terrorists after
9.11 in STC
fight
terrorism
extremist
raising
suicide
threat
group
Islamic
funds
people
America
suspected
killed
Palestinian
terror
leader
terrorists
IRA
Israeli
fanatics
Al Qaida
September
Taliban
fighters
network
Osama bin Laden
terrorist
Afghanistan
chief
atrocities
evil
fears
war
10
(3)Collocational network of terrorists before
9.11 in the PTC
11
(4)Collocational network of terrorists after
9.11 in the PTC
12
Findings

• Changes before and after 9.11 in the STC
• Organizations (e.g. dissident, loyalist
  Republican) ? individual name (e.g. Osama bin
  Laden)
  
• No religion-believed related words ?
  collocates relating to religion (e.g. Islamic,
  fanatics extremist)
  
• Discourse of crime (e.g. police, crime
  imprisonment) ? discourse of war (e.g. war,
  fighters, chief, suicide (bomber) killed)
  
• Local threat of terrorism (IRA, Irish,
  Republican loyalist)? world wide terrorist
  threat (e.g. network, suspected, raising
  funds)
• Changes before and after 9.11 in the PTC
• Russia, Middle East, the Kosovo war,
  military conflicts and religion ? America and Al
  Qaida
  
• Discourse of armed conflict ?discourse
  of military combat

13

• Differences between the STC and the PTC
• The most distinguishing feature of the
  two Chinese collocational networks is that all
  except one of the collocates are keywords,
  suggesting that the choice of words on terrorism
  in the PTC is more relatively stable  than the
  STC.
• None of the collocates reference crimes,
  nor the names of leaders and groups in the
  network of terrorists in PTC.
  
• There are no evaluative or subjective
  words appeared in the Peoples Daily networks,
  whereas The Sun contained words such as evil,
  fanatics and extremist.
• There are more words referring to war
  after 9.11 in the STC while there is no war as
  collocate in the collocational network after 9.11
  in the PTC
• Commonality between the STC and the PTC
• In terms of descriptive content, there
  are some commonality between two newspapers after
  9.11 (e.g. fight, America, Al Qaida,
  Afghanistan, suicide, 9.11 Laden).

14
Further work

• Looking at context
• 1. convergence in the networks
• 2. concordance lines
• Looking at keywords
• 1. key verbs
• 2. key adjectives
• 3. key modal verbs
• Interpretation of discursive constructions of
  terrorism manipulated in both newspapers

15
Conclusions

• The technique of collocational networks helps us
  understand more clearly the discursive
  constructions of terrorism in both newspapers.
  
• The discourses around terrorism changed before
  and after 9.11.
  
• The discourses around terrorism varied between
  two newspapers.
  

16

• Thank you!