The representation of migration in parliamentary settings: critical cross-linguistics corpus-assisted discourse analyses

Abstract

This study examines migration representation in three parliamentary chambers: the Spanish Chamber, the European Parliament, and the British House of Commons. The time span of its analysis coincides with the eighth Legislature of Spain (2004–2008). The reasons for this decision are straightforward. If parliaments portray or construct ideological debates in democratic societies, it seems logical to turn our attention to them as a means of assessing the nature and quality of comparable but different multicultural environments in which migration is a major defining feature. Furthermore, this time span allows for an examination of such societies at different ideological phases, for example, Spain’s conceptualisation of migration in the initial stages of parliamentary representation. The study expands the method of corpus-assisted analysis through a critical theoretical framework proposed by the socio-political scientist Zapata-Barrero. Data were obtained from the European Comparable and Parallel Corpus Archive of Parliamentary Speeches. Well-established tools in corpus linguistics, such as frequency and collocation, were employed, leading to an examination of Zapata-Barrero’s reactive and proactive discourses. The quantitative methods used were especially in-depth, undertaking an exhaustive descriptive and statistical treatment and aiming to strengthen the validity of subsequent qualitative analyses. Consequently, a virtuous circle was achieved: the corpus linguistic procedures reached higher levels of theoretical abstraction, while Zapata-Barrero’s framework gained robustness and more potential for generalisation. The study’s originality, thus, lies in the mutual synergies activated by this theoretical and methodological combination.