'Pauper Aliens' and 'Political Refugees'
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‘PAUPER ALIENS’ AND ‘POLITICAL REFUGEES’: A CORPUS LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO THE LANGUAGE OF MIGRATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEWSPAPERS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of PhD By Ruth Byrne Lancaster University, September 2019 Abstract The widespread digitisation of their source base means that historians now face an overwhelming body of material. This historical ‘big data’ is only going to continue to expand, not just because digitisation features prominently on the agendas of institutions, but also because those studying late twentieth, and twenty-first century, history will have to deal with large quantities of ‘born digital’ material as they turn their gaze to the internet age. Although the interfaces currently used to access digital sources have their strengths, there is an increasing need for more effective ways for historians to work with large amounts of text. This thesis is one of the first studies to explore the potential of corpus linguistics, the computer- assisted analysis of language in very large bodies of text, as a means of approaching the ever- expanding historical archive. This thesis uses corpus linguistics to examine the representation of migrants in the British Library’s nineteenth-century newspaper collection, focusing specifically upon the discourses associated with ‘aliens’ and ‘refugees’, and how they changed over time. The nineteenth century saw an increase in global movement, which led to considerable legislative changes, including the development of many of Britain’s present-day migration controls. This thesis finds that ‘alien’ migration increased in topicality in the 1880s and 1890s and that ‘alien’ saw a striking shift in its associations that, significantly, coincided with an increase in, predominantly Jewish, migrants from the Russian Empire. Although only a small proportion of Britain’s ‘alien’ population, this group dominated newspaper reporting, which became characterised by increasingly negative language, including a strong association between the ‘alien’ and poverty. Although ‘refugee’ was often associated with more positive language than ‘alien’, this thesis finds that the actions of a small number of violent individuals influenced newspaper reporting upon political refugees, who became implicated in the alleged ‘abuse’ of the ‘right of asylum’. i Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support and guidance that my supervisors at Lancaster, Ian Gregory and Andrew Hardie, have given me over the course of this research project. I am fortunate to have been funded by a CASE studentship from the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) in collaboration with the British Library. I would like to thank the staff at the British Library, particularly my supervisor Mia Ridge, for their encouragement and enthusiasm, and for providing me with opportunities and a truly inspiring space in which to disseminate my findings. I am grateful to the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) for recognising my thesis with their generous award of the 2018 Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship. The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) has provided me with a physical home in the form of office space, but also a brilliant sense of community, a series of excellent officemates, and many lasting friendships. The FASS Writing Space, where I work as a writing mentor, has also become something of a home from home during my PhD. Particular mention is owed to Joanne Wood for providing motivation (and coffee) whenever I flagged. Last, but by no means least, thanks to Ben and my family for putting up with me. ii Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ ii Contents ............................................................................................................... iii Figures ................................................................................................................... v Tables ................................................................................................................... vii Newspaper Acronyms and Abbreviations .............................................................. viii Other Acronyms and Abbreviations......................................................................... ix A Note on Terminology ........................................................................................... x 1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Motivation .......................................................................................................... 1 Corpus Linguistics ............................................................................................... 5 Aims and Research Questions ............................................................................ 8 Nineteenth-Century Migration ........................................................................ 13 Newspapers ...................................................................................................... 22 1.5.1 The 19th Century British Library Newspapers .......................................... 22 1.5.2 The Changing Nature of the Nineteenth-Century Newspaper ................ 24 1.5.3 A Comparison of the Newspapers in the Sample .................................... 28 1.5.4 Newspaper Influence ............................................................................... 33 Structure of Thesis ........................................................................................... 35 Chapter Summary ............................................................................................ 37 2 Methodology ............................................................................................... 38 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 38 Corpus Linguistics ............................................................................................. 38 ‘Distant’ and ‘Close’ Reading ........................................................................... 42 Undertaking Corpus Analysis ........................................................................... 47 2.4.1 Concordancers ......................................................................................... 48 2.4.2 N-grams .................................................................................................... 49 2.4.3 Queries ..................................................................................................... 49 2.4.4 Corpus Annotation ................................................................................... 50 2.4.5 Concordance Lines and Key Words in Context (KWIC) ............................ 51 2.4.6 Collocation (and associated concepts) ..................................................... 52 OCR Errors ........................................................................................................ 60 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 66 3 Locating Migrants in the Corpora ................................................................. 67 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 67 Searching for Individuals .................................................................................. 71 iii 3.2.1 Searching using Surnames ....................................................................... 72 Searching using Categories .............................................................................. 76 3.3.1 Searching using Nationality ...................................................................... 77 3.3.2 Searching using Migration status ............................................................. 85 Final Search Queries ......................................................................................... 91 4 Aliens .......................................................................................................... 96 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 96 The ‘Alien’ ........................................................................................................ 97 Overview of Newspaper Coverage ................................................................. 100 Discourses ...................................................................................................... 103 4.4.1 Semantic Groups .................................................................................... 103 4.4.2 Legislation .............................................................................................. 108 4.4.3 Number .................................................................................................. 118 4.4.4 Metaphor ............................................................................................... 120 4.4.5 Identity ................................................................................................... 133 4.4.6 ‘Destitute Aliens’ and ‘Pauper Aliens’ .................................................... 141 Newspaper Stances ........................................................................................ 162 Conclusion