The Representation of Edward Snowden in US and UK Newspapers Whistleblowing Hero or Traitor: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis Masterarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Master of Arts (MA) an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Anita SCHULLER am Institut für Anglistik Begutachterin: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Hermine Penz Graz, 2015 Acknowledgements I want to express my gratitude to Hermine Penz and Nancy Campbell for their guidance and advice during the writing process and the entirety of my studies. Additionally, I want to thank my family and friends for always being by my side. Thank you for all your encouragement, your patience, your inspiration and your never-ending support – during the last year and always! “None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone's help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.” - Harvey Mackay ii Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................................ ii List of figures ..................................................................................................................................................................... v List of tables ..................................................................................................................................................................... vi 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 2. Theoretical Background ................................................................................................................................ 3 2.1. A corpus-based critical discourse analysis ................................................................................... 3 2.1.1. Corpus linguistics ............................................................................................................................ 3 2.1.2. Discourse analysis ........................................................................................................................... 5 2.2. Advantages and limitations of corpora in discourse analysis ........................................... 11 2.3. Corpus-based approaches in practice: Application in research and methodology .. 15 3. Empirical analysis: research questions, data, and methodology .............................................. 18 3.1. Side note: Edward Snowden, the timeline of events and publication of the first articles .................................................................................................................................................................... 18 3.2. Research questions .............................................................................................................................. 21 3.3. The Corpus ............................................................................................................................................... 22 3.4. Methodology ............................................................................................................................................ 28 3.4.1. The software R ............................................................................................................................... 29 3.4.2. Frequency lists ............................................................................................................................... 31 3.4.3. Considering clusters .................................................................................................................... 33 3.4.4. Concordances ................................................................................................................................. 33 4. Discussion of results ..................................................................................................................................... 37 4.1. Frequency analysis ............................................................................................................................... 37 4.2. Cluster analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 48 4.3. Concordances .......................................................................................................................................... 53 4.4. Semantic preferences .......................................................................................................................... 58 4.5. Points of concern ................................................................................................................................... 63 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 65 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 69 iii Appendix A ....................................................................................................................................................................... 75 British Newspapers ................................................................................................................................................. 75 North American Newspapers ............................................................................................................................. 87 Appendix B .................................................................................................................................................................... 104 Frequency analysis ............................................................................................................................................... 104 Cluster analysis (word pairs) .......................................................................................................................... 105 Cluster analysis (groups of three) ................................................................................................................. 106 Concordance lines ................................................................................................................................................. 107 iv List of figures Figure 1: Fairclough's three-dimensional conception of discourse (Fairclough, 2008, p. 73) .......... 7 Figure 2: Discourse analysis of newspaper texts (Richardson, 2007, p. 39) ........................................... 9 Figure 3: Critical Discourse Analysis of newspaper texts (Richardson, 2007, p. 42) .......................... 9 Figure 4: The Guardian front-page of June 10, 2013 - Edward Snowden revealed ("The NSA files: The guardian front pages – in pictures", 2013) ......................................................................... 20 Figure 5: Number of newspaper articles featuring the search term "Snowden" on LexisNexis® Academic per month, from June 2013 to May 2014 .......................................................................... 27 Figure 6: Script in R - Frequency analysis on a one-word level (UK) ................................................... 29 Figure 7: Script in R - Concordance analysis for the key term “Snowden” (U.S.) ............................ 30 v List of tables Table 1: Average circulation of U.S. newspapers (Alliance for Audited Media, n.d.) ..................... 24 Table 2: Average circulation of UK newspapers (National Readership Survey, 2014) ................... 24 Table 3: Corpus consisting of 539 newspaper articles ................................................................................ 28 Table 4: Most frequent words .............................................................................................................................. 38 Table 5: Most frequent lexical words ................................................................................................................ 41 Table 6: Most frequent lemmas ........................................................................................................................... 43 Table 7: Most frequent verbs ............................................................................................................................... 47 Table 8: Most frequent word pairs ..................................................................................................................... 49 Table 9: Most frequent three-word clusters (UK) ......................................................................................... 50 Table 10: Most frequent three-word clusters (US) ....................................................................................... 51 Table 11: Snowden as a legal subject ................................................................................................................ 60 Table 12: The movements of Snowden ............................................................................................................ 62 vi 1. Introduction Is Edward Snowden […] a hero or a traitor? He is a hero. (My colleague Jeffrey Toobin disagrees.) In revealing the colossal scale of the U.S. government’s eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, he has performed a great public service