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Article published In: Pink Dot: Discursive Formations, Constructions, and Contestations
Edited by Adi Saleem Bharat, Pavan Mano and Robert Phillips
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 10:2] 2021
► pp. 180–201

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A corpus-assisted analysis of the discursive construction of LGBT Singaporeans in media coverage of Pink Dot

 | Ball State University, USA
Published online: 16 July 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.20010.phi
Abstract
Beginning in spring 2009 and continuing annually since, members of Singapore’s LGBT communities have assembled at Hong Lim Park at an event dubbed Pink Dot. The original goal of the gathering was to help build a more inclusive nation by standing up to discrimination faced by LGBT Singaporeans. While the early Pink Dot events were all but ignored by the mainstream state-run press, the change in tone, the increasing number of attendees, and the participation by members of the ruling People’s Action Party and their families made the gathering impossible to ignore. This paper uses a corpus-based keywords analysis to evaluate the main lexical differences between the media coverage of Pink Dot by the state-run press and that of the sociopolitical blog The Online Citizen. Two separate language corpora (State Media and Online Citizen), each containing approximately 111,000 words, were compiled from available coverage of Pink Dot dating from 2009 to 2018. Using SketchEngine (Kilgarriff, Adam, Rychlý, Pavel, Smrž, Pavel & Tugwell, David. 2004. The Sketch Engine. 2004. Information Technology (ITRI) 81: 105–116.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Kilgarriff, Adam, Baisa, Vít, Bušta, Jan, Jakubíček, Miloš, Kovář, Vojtěch, Michelfeit, Jan, Pavel, Rychlý & Suchomel, Vít. 2014. The Sketch Engine: Ten years on. Lexicography 11: 7–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), top keywords and phrases were identified by comparing these corpora to each other. Through a preliminary exploration of the collocational environments and the concordance lines adjoining these keywords, this paper sheds light on how language is being deployed in an attempt to sway a debate of great national and regional significance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Method and data
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Keywords and semantic mapping
    • 4.2Concordance and collocation
    • 4.3Homosexuality/homosexual
    • 4.4Gay
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1The state and the status quo
    • 5.2Civil society and change
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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