Discursive Constructions of terrorism in The People’s Daily and The Sun before and after 9.11

1. Discursive Constructions of terrorism in ThePeople’s Daily and The Sunbefore and after 9.11 Yufang Qian Lancaster University (qianyf@yahoo.com) 13th March, 2008

2. Corpora used in this research

3. The newspapers with highest readerships in both China and in the UK • The People’s Daily Chinese broadsheet, with a circulation of 3 to 4 million; official newspaper of CPC • The Sun English tabloid, standing at around 3,200,000 copies daily; run by RupertMurdoch’s News corporation

4. Corpus analytical techniques: • frequency • keyword • clusters • collocations • concordances • discourse prosodies. Corpus Analysis Tool: • Wordsmith Tools 4 (Scott 2004)

5. Collocational network • Borrowed similar technique from McEnery (2005) & Baker (2005) • Basic criteria for creation of collocational networks in this study: • Calculating MI scores in WS for the word terrorists (in each of the three subdivisions in the STC and the PTC • The lexical words in the strongest 20 collocates of terrorists in the PTC while the strongest 50 collocates in the STC • Second order of collocates and ‘dead end’ collocates • Slightly different rules for the words terror, terrorism, terrorist, terrorists

6. Collocational networks（1）Collocational network of terrorists before 9.11 in the STC chief cops terror last police shot gun murderers said loyalist force group republican bomb terrorists convicted dissident freed Irish IRA terrorist threat arms attack

7. (2)Collocational network of terrorists after 9.11 in STC fight extremist terrorism raising suicide threat group funds Islamic people America suspected killed Palestinian terror leader IRA terrorists fanatics Israeli Al Qa’ida Taliban September fighters network terrorist Osama bin Laden Afghanistan chief fears atrocities evil war

8. Collocational networks（1）Collocational network of terrorists before 9.11 in the STC chief cops terror last shot police gun murderers said loyalist force group republican bomb terrorists convicted dissident freed Irish IRA terrorist threat arms attack

9. (2)Collocational network of terrorists after 9.11 in STC extremist terrorism fight raising suicide group threat funds Islamic people America suspected killed Palestinian terror leader IRA terrorists fanatics Israeli Al Qa’ida Taliban September fighters network terrorist Osama bin Laden Afghanistan chief fears atrocities evil war

10. 组织 organization 巴勒斯坦 Palestine 极端主义 extremism 事件 incident 势力 forces 导弹 missiles 合作 co-operation 恐怖 terror 宗教 religion 共同 common 国际 international 民族 nations 安全 security 袭击 attack 打击 fight 形式 forms 中亚 Mid-Asia 主权 sovereignty 恐怖主义 terrorism 分裂主义separatism 国家 country 关系 relationship 支持 support 冲突 conflict 恐怖分子terrorists 发展 development 独联体 CIS 武装 armed 活动 activities 西方 The West 塞族 Serbs 以色列 Israel 极端分子 extremist 阿族 Albanian 联合国 the UN 行动 action 维和 peacekeeping 部队 troops 科索沃 Kosovo 车臣 Chechen 军事 military 南联盟 FRY 地区 region 非法 illegal 俄 Russia 战争 war 政府 government 问题 problem (3)Collocational network of terrorists before 9.11 in the PTC

11. 自杀 suicide 事件incident 表示 said 发生 take place 袭击 attack 9.11 布什 Bush 行动 action 恐怖 terror 政府government 美国 America 势力 forces 恐怖分子 terrorists 总统 president 东突 East Turkistan 活动activities 阿富汗Afghanistan 组织organization 分裂主义 separatism 基地 Al Qa’ida 军事military 打击 fight 建立 set up 国际 international 问题 problem 训练 training 拉登 Laden 恐怖主义terrorism 共同 common 合作 cooperation 反对 oppose 形式 form 成员 member 支持 support (4)Collocational network of terrorists after 9.11 in the PTC

12. Findings • Changes before and after 9.11 in the STC Organizations (e.g. dissident, loyalist & Republican)  individual name (e.g. Osama bin Laden) No religion-believed related words  collocates relating to religion (e.g. Islamic, fanatics&extremist) Discourse of crime (e.g. police, crime& imprisonment)  discourse of war (e.g. war, fighters, chief, suicide (bomber) &killed) Local threat of terrorism (IRA, Irish, Republican &loyalist) world wide terrorist threat (e.g. network, suspected, raising&funds) • Changes before and after 9.11 in the PTC Russia, Middle East, the Kosovo war, military conflicts and religion  America and Al Qa’ida Discourse of armed conflict discourse of military combat

13. Differences between the STC and the PTC The most distinguishing feature of the two Chinese collocational networks is that all except one of the collocates are keywords, suggesting that the choice of words on terrorism in thePTC is more relatively stable  than the STC. None of the collocates reference crimes, nor the names of leaders and groups in the network of terroristsin PTC. There are no evaluative or subjective words appeared in the People’s Daily networks, whereas The Sun contained words such as evil, fanatics and extremist. There are more words referring to war after 9.11 in the STC while there is no war as collocate in the collocational network after 9.11 in the PTC • Commonality between the STC and the PTC In terms of descriptive content, there are some commonality between two newspapers after 9.11 (e.g. fight, America, Al Qa’ida, Afghanistan, suicide, 9.11 & Laden).

14. Further work • Looking at context: 1. convergence in the networks 2. concordance lines • Looking at keywords: 1. key verbs 2. key adjectives 3. key modal verbs • Interpretation of discursive constructions of terrorism manipulated in both newspapers

15. Conclusions • The technique of collocational networks helps us understand more clearly the discursive constructions of terrorism in both newspapers. • The discourses around terrorism changed before and after 9.11. • The discourses around terrorism varied between two newspapers.

16. Thank you!