This paper investigates how unsupervised machine learning methods might make hermeneutic interpretive text analysis more objective in the social sciences. Through a close examination of the uses of topic modeling—a popular unsupervised approach in the social sciences—it argues that the primary way in which unsupervised learning supports interpretation is by allowing interpreters to discover unanticipated information in larger and more diverse corpora and by improving the transparency of the interpretive process. This view highlights that unsupervised modeling does not eliminate the (...) researchers’ judgments from the process of producing evidence for social scientific theories. The paper shows this by distinguishing between two prevalent attitudes toward topic modeling, i.e., topic realism and topic instrumentalism. Under neither can modeling provide social scientific evidence without the researchers’ interpretive engagement with the original text materials. Thus the unsupervised text analysis cannot improve the objectivity of interpretation by alleviating the problem of underdetermination in interpretive debate. The paper argues that the sense in which unsupervised methods can improve objectivity is by providing researchers with the resources to justify to others that their interpretations are correct. This kind of objectivity seeks to reduce suspicions in collective debate that interpretations are the products of arbitrary processes influenced by the researchers’ idiosyncratic decisions or starting points. The paper discusses this view in relation to alternative approaches to formalizing interpretation and identifies several limitations on what unsupervised learning can be expected to achieve in terms of supporting interpretive work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This corpus-assisted critical discourse study examines news reports published by China’s official English-language media from 2000 to 2018, with the goal of understanding how they represent LGBTQ+ issues within the China’s socio-political context. Analysis reveals that the discussion of LGBTQ+-related topics has been consistently discouraged in China’s official English-language media, and the few news reports which have appeared in these media sources have focused on preventing the spread of HIV/aids through homosexual behaviors, on promoting LGBTQ+ rights, and on advocating (...) for the liberalization of sex education in China. The range of these focuses indicates that, despite widely-held negative stereotypes regarding homosexual behaviors and their relation to the spread of HIV/aids, the official English-language media of China have endeavored to project a positive image of the Chinese central government’s efforts to construct a society that is open, inclusive, and tolerant of LGBTQ+ individuals. This study also discusses positive changes in the social well-being of LGBTQ+ persons in China as evidenced first by the more liberal attitudes that gradually have resulted from the efforts of Chinese netizens to influence LGBTQ+-related governmental policies and second, by the more positive representations of LGBTQ+ issues being communicated to global audiences through the China’s official English-language media. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Political murals have a long history in Northern Ireland. During the Troubles, political murals were used by republicans in working-class areas to construct narratives that would legitimise their ideological assertions and help galvanise popular support for their political causes. In recent years, Belfast's republican political murals have not only become the forefront of a flourishing political tourism sector, but they also provide a risk-free means of drawing attention to dissident republican grievances – both of which challenge traditional and contemporaneous (...) conceptualisations of Northern Ireland's political murals. This study critically examines the communicative function of Belfast's republican political murals in relation to location and audience. It also articulates a conceptual approach to interpreting the function of Northern Ireland's republican political murals. We present calibrated findings that indicate a disparity of function in relation to location and audience and point toward the capacity of murals to fulfil specific communicative functions. (shrink)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists and researchers agree that print media discourses surrounding First Nations people in Australia remain negative and stereotypical. However, how these discourses are constructed in language – and therefore linguistic practices which should be avoided – has so far received minimal attention. Analysing a purpose-built corpus of Australian newspaper articles, this study uses the corpus linguistic technique of collocation analysis to identify relevant discourses and examines the linguistic construction of one discourse that had not yet (...) been identified: cooperation. It finds that although notions of cooperation are ostensibly positive, this is often undermined by syntagmatic processes which demote agential Aboriginal participants to prepositional phrases. Prepositions are often neglected in corpus linguistics and in critical discourse analysis, making this an important finding. (shrink)

The critical discourse analysis is the tool used in this article, to study how audiovisual media have constructed mental representation about the historical facts occurred in Spain between the final stage of the Spanish Civil War and the late 1980s: the theft of newborn babies. The State has failed in an attempt to establish policies that support truth, justice and reparation as it has been recalled by United Nations experts to the Government of Spain, and the reports and documentaries have (...) become vehicles to capture and recover memories. Our objective is to analyze how this collective awareness has been realized and the contribution of reports and documentaries. Our results show that the Spanish television channels silence the Francoist context to depict the thefts as the product of economical mobs focused on child trafficking. The international channels, however, put the origin of the dictatorship at the center of the discourse. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHierarchies of information –inclusion, omission and presentation of society and its citizenry – is a critical aspect of news presentation. This paper looks at newspaper reportage of two tragic events in 2015: a balcony collapse in Berkeley, USA, in which six Irish students died; and a fire at a halting site in Carrickmines, Ireland, which claimed the lives of four adults and six children who were members of the Irish Traveller community. This latter group are an officially recognised indigenous ethnic (...) minority within Irish society, and the community experiences the type of structural inequalities and stigmatisation associated with membership of less powerful groups within a broader society. A bottom-up corpus linguistic methodology is used to generate and interpret perspectives on the newspaper coverage to probe and to assess similarities and, critically, differences, in the nature of the discourses surrounding the communities affected by the tragedies. In doing so, it finds the language used... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we examine representations of masculinity in the English-language South African print media. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques to interrogate a large corpus of English-language newspaper articles on masculinity that appeared in South Africa between 2008 and 2014, we investigate the ways in which different South African masculine types are positioned with respect to one another in the media and examine how these positionings draw on broader tropes of gender, race and social class that circulate in South (...) African society. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a more nuanced picture of gender/sexual hegemony in South Africa that goes beyond a simple opposition between dominant versus subordinate forms of masculinity to explore the range of competing normativities in the region. In doing so, we also aim to contribute to debates about the role of norms and normativities in the theorizing of masculinity more broadly. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the role of objectivity and interpretation within Critical Discourse Studies, arguing that the recognized and accepted situatedness of scholars has implications that are underplayed – to detrimental effect. Following Latour, and admitting the essential role of interpretation in all science, this paper encourages those working within CDS to engage more explicitly with their own roles as interpreters. Arguing for the importance and benefits of such a shift, the case is made for a re-appreciation of the role of (...) interpretation in the rigorous and systematic analysis of texts. Drawing upon insights from translation, deconstruction, and hermeneutics, and analysing a recent interview by the feminist, Germaine Greer, and the angry reactions it provoked from within the Trans community, I argue that CDS scholars should embrace the implications that undertaking a sociopolitical committed analysis brings with it. (shrink)