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In:Multilingual Corpus Research: Advances and challenges
Edited by Noelia Ramón and María Pérez Blanco
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 126] 2026
► pp. 91–122

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Chapter 4
The role of epistemic stance in shaping conservative newspaper opinion narratives on refugees and irregular immigrants in the UK and Spain

 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 20 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.126.04rom
Abstract
This study examines how UK and Spanish conservative media represent refugees and irregular immigrants, analysing epistemic stance (factivity, modality, evidentiality) through Marín-Arrese’s (2021a, 2021b) framework. A 122,000-word corpus of 95 opinion articles was compiled and divided into six subcorpora: three for the Syrian (2015), Afghan (2021), and Ukrainian (2022) refugee crises, and three for irregular-immigration discourse from those same years. Findings reveal significant differences in how British and Spanish conservative media frame these issues, emphasising the dynamic nature of journalistic practice and the influence of cultural norms and political contexts on the expression of epistemic stance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Epistemic stance: Concept and subcategories
    • 2.1Factivity
    • 2.2Epistemic modality
    • 2.3Evidentiality
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The corpus: Compilation and composition
    • 3.2Corpus coding scheme
    • 3.3Research questions
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Contextual factors shaping conservative opinion journalism on immigration in the UK and Spain
    • 4.2Evolving narratives on irregular immigration and refugee crises
    • 4.3Epistemic stance and narrative framing of irregular immigrants and refugees in British versus Spanish conservative opinion articles
    • 4.4Epistemic stance and narrative framing of the irregular immigration versus refugee crises in British and Spanish conservative opinion articles
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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