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In:News with an Attitude: Ideological perspectives in the historical press
Edited by Claudia Claridge
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 105] 2025
► pp. 133–153

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Chapter 7
Language and ideology

The representation of the Armenian question in letters to the editor of The Times (1914–1926)

 | University of Florence
Published online: 16 January 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.105.07mar
Abstract
This paper combines corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to answer the question: What was the ideological stance on the Armenian Question in letters to the editor during the years of the genocide, and how was this stance expressed? A quantitative and qualitative linguistic analysis on a corpus of LTE published in The Times between 1914 and 1926 combines a corpus-driven approach with corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The analysis of keywords and their frequent collocates and clusters shows a more nuanced picture than the simple ideology of positive ingroup vs. negative outgroup. First, the Armenian side also receives negative evaluations, albeit not detracting from its victim status. Secondly, there is a further negative outgroup apart from the Turks, namely the British government.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical context
  • 3.Letters to the editor and (conflicting?) ideologies
  • 4.Corpus construction
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Turkish vs. Armenian
      • 5.1.1Turkish
      • 5.1.2Armenian
    • 5.2Turks vs. Armenians
      • 5.2.1Turks
      • 5.2.2Armenians
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • References
References (48)
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