A contrastive analysis of keywords in newspaper articles on the “Kyoto Protocol”
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Erica Bassi
Abstract
In 1997, an international environmental agreement was negotiated in Kyoto. It became famous as the Kyoto Protocol. Using corpus-linguistics tools, this chapter analyses the treatment of the controversial “Kyoto Protocol” in two national newspapers: the Italian La Repubblica and the American The New York Times. As a preliminary study, I compute the keywords for the articles about Kyoto, and then group the keywords into semantic fields to study the main specific groups of meaning to which Kyoto is related. I then focus on the words denoting ‘disaster’ and ‘alarm’. To conclude, I consider some positive keywords studying the concordance lines in order to describe their associated semantic prosody. The analysis will show how, despite some similarities in the lexical usage, the meaning conveyed by the two dailies is quite different.
Abstract
In 1997, an international environmental agreement was negotiated in Kyoto. It became famous as the Kyoto Protocol. Using corpus-linguistics tools, this chapter analyses the treatment of the controversial “Kyoto Protocol” in two national newspapers: the Italian La Repubblica and the American The New York Times. As a preliminary study, I compute the keywords for the articles about Kyoto, and then group the keywords into semantic fields to study the main specific groups of meaning to which Kyoto is related. I then focus on the words denoting ‘disaster’ and ‘alarm’. To conclude, I consider some positive keywords studying the concordance lines in order to describe their associated semantic prosody. The analysis will show how, despite some similarities in the lexical usage, the meaning conveyed by the two dailies is quite different.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Perspectives on keywords and keyness 1
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Section I. Exploring keyness
- Three concepts of keywords 21
- Problems in investigating keyness, or clearing the undergrowth and marking out trails… 43
- Closed-class keywords and corpus-driven discourse analysis 59
- Hyperlinks 79
- Web Semantics vs the Semantic Web? 93
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Section II. Keyness in specialised discourse
- Identifying aboutgrams in engineering texts 113
- Keywords and phrases in political speeches 127
- Key words and key phrases in a corpus of travel writing 147
- History v. marketing 169
- Metaphorical keyness in specialised corpora 185
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Section III. Critical and educational perspectives
- A contrastive analysis of keywords in newspaper articles on the “Kyoto Protocol” 207
- Keywords in Korean national consciousness 219
- General spoken language and school language 235
- Index 249
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Perspectives on keywords and keyness 1
-
Section I. Exploring keyness
- Three concepts of keywords 21
- Problems in investigating keyness, or clearing the undergrowth and marking out trails… 43
- Closed-class keywords and corpus-driven discourse analysis 59
- Hyperlinks 79
- Web Semantics vs the Semantic Web? 93
-
Section II. Keyness in specialised discourse
- Identifying aboutgrams in engineering texts 113
- Keywords and phrases in political speeches 127
- Key words and key phrases in a corpus of travel writing 147
- History v. marketing 169
- Metaphorical keyness in specialised corpora 185
-
Section III. Critical and educational perspectives
- A contrastive analysis of keywords in newspaper articles on the “Kyoto Protocol” 207
- Keywords in Korean national consciousness 219
- General spoken language and school language 235
- Index 249
