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A Corpus-Assisted Study of British Newspaper Discourse on the European Union and a Potential Membership Referendum

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A Corpus-Assisted Study of British Newspaper Discourse on the European Union and a Potential Membership Referendum A CORPUS-ASSISTED STUDY OF BRITISH NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON THE EUROPEAN UNION AND A POTENTIAL MEMBERSHIP REFERENDUM by SHARON LESLEY GLAAS A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS BY RESEARCH Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics School of English Drama and American & Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham October 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis reports a Corpus-Assisted study of British newspaper discourse on the European Union in light of the forthcoming membership referendum, focussing on the discursive construal of British and European identity, representation of social actors and evaluation of the EU, in a corpus of articles from a variety of national newspapers. The thesis offers a theoretical and methodological review of scholarship in the fields of Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics arguing that a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques is productive. Further, consideration of what is absent from a corpus is shown to enhance interpretation. The thesis argues that notions of national identity represent a significant barrier to development of a supra-national EU identity and that this is perpetuated through the construal of the EU as ‘other’ in quasi-national terms with characteristics drawn from French and German stereotypes. Additionally, backgrounding of EU institutions and practices, combined with almost total absence of reference to EU citizens and a focus on the discourse of conflict, conspires to ensure negative evaluation of the EU even in publications supportive of membership. Further, it is argued that dichotomised notions of Eurosceptics and Europhiles do not sufficiently convey the complexity of sentiment apparent in the discourse. Acknowledgements Thank you, to my family and friends who have encouraged me and supported me throughout the writing of this Thesis. I could not have done it without you. And to my supervisor at the University of Birmingham, Susan Hunston, whose insight, guidance and reassurance has been inspiring and invaluable. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE THESIS ............................................................................... 1 1.2 AIMS OF THE THESIS ................................................................................................ 2 1.3 THESIS OVERVIEW & RESEARCH QUESTIONS ......................................................... 4 CHAPTER TWO: BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................. 7 2.1 AIMS OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 7 2.2 THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW ................................................. 7 2.2.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 7 2.2.2 DISCOURSE AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES ......................................................... 8 2.2.3 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CORPUS LINGUISTICS .................................................... 11 2.3 SCHOLARSHIP ON THE EUROPEAN UNION ......................................................... 14 2.3.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 14 2.3.2 BRITISH MEMBERSHIP OF THE EU ........................................................................... 15 2.3.3 BRITISH SUPPORT FOR THE EU .............................................................................. 18 2.3.4 BRITISH MEDIA ATTITUDES TO EUROPE ................................................................... 21 2.4 CONCLUSION TO THE LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................ 24 CHAPTER THREE: DATA AND PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION ....................................... 26 3.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 26 3.2 DATA ....................................................................................................................... 26 3.2.1 BRITISH NEWSPAPERS ........................................................................................... 27 3.2.2 THE EUREF CORPUS ............................................................................................ 28 3.3 PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATIONS ............................................................................ 31 3.3.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 31 3.3.2 DISTRIBUTION OF ARTICLES .................................................................................. 32 3.3.3 FREQUENCY AND KEYWORD ANALYSIS ................................................................... 36 3.4 FOCUS OF THIS STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ......................................... 38 CHAPTER FOUR: CONSTRUCTION OF BRITISH AND EUROPEAN IDENTITY ................. 40 4.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 40 4.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................. 41 4.3 METHOD ................................................................................................................. 44 4.4 ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 46 4.4.1 WE AND OUR - PRONOUN USE ............................................................................. 46 4.4.2 POLYSEMOUS EUROPE AND METONYMIC BRUSSELS .................................................. 53 4.4.3 A FRANCO-GERMAN ALLIANCE ............................................................................. 59 4.5 CONCLUSIONS ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY .................................... 63 CHAPTER FIVE: REPRESENTATION OF ACTORS ............................................................... 65 5.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 65 5.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................. 66 5.3 METHOD ................................................................................................................. 69 5.4 ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 70 5.4.1 THEIR POLITICIANS AND OURS .............................................................................. 70 5.4.2 EU INSTITUTIONS ................................................................................................ 76 5.4.3 BRITISH AND EUROPEAN PEOPLE ............................................................................ 80 5.5 CONCLUSIONS ON THE REPRESENTATION OF ACTORS ..................................... 83 CHAPTER SIX: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE EU ................................................................. 84 6.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 84 6.2 THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ......................................................................... 85 6.3 METHOD ................................................................................................................. 87 6.4 ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 88 6.4.1 RIGHT-LEANING PRESS ......................................................................................... 88 6.4.2 LEFT-LEANING PRESS ............................................................................................ 93 6.5 CONCLUSIONS ON ATTITUDES TOWARDS EUROPE ........................................... 97 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS ON METHODOLOGY .............. 101 7.1 CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................... 101 7.2 REFLECTIONS ON METHODOLOGY .................................................................... 105 7.3 POTENTIAL FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ................................................................. 106 APPENDICES ..................................................................................................................... 108 APPENDIX 1: TOP 200 MOST FREQUENT WORDS IN EUREF CORPUS ......................... 108 APPENDIX 2: TOP KEYWORDS BY PUBLICATION .......................................................... 109 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 119 List of Figures and Tables Figure 2.1 Virtuous Cycle of Research ................................................................................ 13 Figure 3.1 Monthly Distribution of Articles in the
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