How to use corpus linguistics in the study of media discourse

Abstract

Using tools of linguistic analysis, the study of how texts, particularly media texts, frame the events or issues they describe is one part of what is known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Before corpus linguistics became mainstream, CDA examined such framings in single texts at a particular point in time, or over a very short period. Increasingly, critical discourse analysts employ corpora in their investigations of media discourse. The substantive section of the chapter contains a case study which demonstrates the value of corpus-based CDA in revealing how media texts frame events and issues over a significant period of time. CDA investigates how language use reproduces the perspectives, values and ways of talking of the powerful, which may not be in the interests of the less powerful. CDA has not escaped criticism, which has largely been on methodological grounds. Corpus-comparative statistical keywords may or may not coincide with (corpus-based) cultural keywords.