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Victims or non-humans: Exploring the semantic preference of refugees in Spanish news articles.
- Source :
-
Language & Communication . Nov2019, Vol. 69, p11-25. 15p. - Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- This paper explores the discursive representation of refugees in a 1.8-million-word corpus of Spanish news articles collected from the digital libraries of El Mundo and El País. Through a corpus-assisted methodology, synchronic and diachronic analyses have been conducted in order to examine the semantic preference of the lemma refugiado over the 2010–16 period. The results show a semantic preference of refugiado for two major semantic sets, namely victimization and dehumanization. Indeed, the preference tends to fluctuate between these two extremes over the years analyzed: either they are victims and their human condition is highlighted or they are dehumanized. Both sets of collocates represent about 50 percent of the total semantic preference of refugiado. • The lemma refugiado shows a preference for victimization 24.5% of its occurrences. • The lemma refugiado shows a preference for dehumanization 25.8% of its occurrences. • Seasonal collocates coincide with the biggest arrival of refugees in Europe. • Victimization and dehumanization show opposite tendencies over the 2010–16 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *REFUGEES
*DIGITAL libraries
*CORPORA
*DEHUMANIZATION
*CRIME victims
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 02715309
- Volume :
- 69
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Language & Communication
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 139723406
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2019.05.001