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In:Representing the Other in European Media Discourses
Edited by Jan Chovanec and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 74] 2017
► pp. 103–120

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Chapter 4
Profiling of new Europeans in the British conservative press

A case study of the Daily Telegraph

Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.74.05szy
Abstract
This chapter presents an exploratory analysis of discursive strategies through which Europe and Europeans are represented, focusing on how their images are profiled in the texts of the British conservative newspaper Daily Telegraph, a quality newspaper ranked as one of the three most widely read in the UK throughout the 2000s. We explore articles retrieved from the Internet version of the Daily Telegraph from the 1st of May, 2004 to the 1st of May, 2009, aiming to establish the patterns of distribution of the words “EU”, “Europe” or “European”, and discover possible othering techniques that do not overtly transgress the rules of political correctness. Such covert profiling, among other factors, can hardly be underestimated as a determinant in the process of opinion forming and decision making among the general public, the effects of which have been revealed in time, as witnessed during the Brexit referendum. Cognitive images can be projected and, in the process of repetition, legitimized through language use. Thus, when a given lexical patterning appears regularly, it acquires the potential of shaping particular perceptions of objects and ideas. Both quantitative and interpretative analyses of the corpus amounting to 550,000 words have revealed a range of subtle othering techniques through which the concept of Europeans has been significantly and consistently profiled.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The linguistic image of the world – profiling through text
  • 3.New Europeans in British daily quality press
    • 3.1The contextual aspects of the British press
    • 3.2Collecting texts to form a corpus
    • 3.3Quantitative results
    • 3.4Interpretative analysis
    • 3.5The uses of the lexeme Europeans
  • 4.Conclusions
  • References
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