Cover not available
Article published In:
Register Studies
Vol. 3:1 (2021) ► pp.144–171

Multiple Correspondence Analysis, newspaper discourse and subregister

A case study of discourses of Islam in the British press

| Lancaster University
ORCID logo | Lancaster University | Xi’an Jiaotong University
ORCID logo | Lancaster University

This article introduces a new method for grouping keywords and examines the extent to which it also allows analysts to explore the interaction of discourse and subregister. It uses the multivariate statistical technique, Multiple Correspondence Analysis, to reveal dimensions of keywords which co-occur across the texts of a corpus. These dimensions are then interpreted in terms of the discourses to which they contribute within the data, thus forming the basis of a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The approach is demonstrated through analysis of the discourses that are used to represent Muslims and Islam in a corpus of UK national newspaper articles published on these topics spanning 2010–2019. The approach reveals an interaction between discourse and subregister, hence this article argues for the need for (corpus-assisted) discourse analysts to account for subregister as a level of meaningful variation when analysing press discourse.

Keywords: keyword analysis, Multiple Correspondence Analysis, newspaper discourse, Islam
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Islam in the press: Existing research and the recent context
  • 3.Approach: Data, keyword co-occurrence and MCA
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Dimension 2: War, conflict and terrorism vs. reporting of everyday life and events (link to subregister: Yes)
    • 4.2Dimension 3: Foreign Affairs vs. domestic affairs (link to subregister: No)
    • 4.3Dimension 4: Western political conflict vs. overseas conflict (link to subregister: Yes)
    • 4.4Dimension 5: UK Policy versus US Policy (link to subregister: No)
    • 4.5Dimension 6: Globalisation vs. Tribalism
    • 4.6Dimension 7: Corruption and human rights vs. The aftermath of terror attacks (link to subregister: Yes)
    • 4.7Dimension 8: The rise of the far right vs. the radicalisation of British Muslims (link to subregister: No)
    • 4.8Dimension 9: Political processes and elections vs. political processes and security threats (link to subregister: No)
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 25 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rs.20024.cla
References
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T.
(2013) Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, P., & McEnery, T.
(2019) The value of revisiting and extending previous studies: the case of Islam in the UK press. In R. Scholtz (Ed.), Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists (pp. 215–249). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, M.
(2006) Evaluations in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Biber, D.
(1988) Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Conrad, S.
(2019) Register, Genre and Style (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Gray, B.
(2013) Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-register. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(2), 104–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
(1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Benzécri, J. P.
(1979) Sur le calcul des taux d’inertie dans l’analyse d’un questionnaire. Cahiers de l’Analyse des Données, 41, 377–378.Google Scholar
Brookes, G., & McEnery, T.
(2019) The utility of topic modelling for discourse studies: a critical evaluation, Discourse Studies, 21(1), 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carter, R.
(1988) The language of written sports commentary: soccer – a description. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Registers of Written English. Situational Factors and Linguistic Features (pp. 16–51). London: Frances Pinter, London.Google Scholar
Clarke, I.
(2019) Functional linguistic variation in Twitter trolling. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, 26(1), 57–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clarke, I., Brookes, G. & McEnery, T.
Forthcoming). Keywords through time: Tracking changes in press discourses of Islam. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics.
Dunning, T.
(1993) Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics, 19(1), 61–74.Google Scholar
Lê, S., Josse, J., & Husson, F.
(2008) FactoMineR: An R Package for Multivariate Analysis. Journal of Statistical Software, 25(1), 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Roux, B., & Rouanet, H.
(2010) Multiple Correspondence Analysis. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, A.
(2014) Mind the gaps: The role of corpus linguistics in researching absences. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 118–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinna, A., & Brett, D.
(2018) Constance and variability: Using PoS-grams to find phraseologies in the language of newspapers. In J. Kopaczyk & J. Tyrkkö (Eds.), Applications of Pattern-driven Methods in Corpus Linguistics (pp. 107–130). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richardson, J. E.
(2004) (Mis)Representing Islam: The Racism and Rhetoric of British Broadsheet Newspapers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schroeter, M. & Taylor, C.
(2018) Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse: Empirical Approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zou, H., Hastie, T. & Tibshirani, R.
(2006) Sparse Principal Component Analysis. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 15(2), 265–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar