A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of election news in Nigerian newspapers

Adelakun, Tahir (2014). A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of election news in Nigerian newspapers. University of Birmingham. M.Phil.

Preview

Adelakun14MPhil.pdf
PDF - Accepted Version
Download (871kB)

Abstract

This study attempts to identify elements of stance in the reports of election news about the 2011 general elections in Nigeria. This is done by using corpus-based linguistics tools to analyse the data downloaded from the online editions of two Nigerian newspapers. It also involves a brief description of the Nigerian political history and particularly the 2011 general election. The impact of corpus-based discourse analysis and studies related to the language of newspaper discourse which attempt to identify gaps to be filled with this research. The analysis section starts with an exploratory process of identifying topics in the corpus by comparing it with a reference corpus. The topics generated include the one related to politicians, political parties, electoral matters as well as court and legal matters. A keyword analysis of the two newspapers was done to search for evidence of stance and very few evidence of this was found. Attempt was also made to do a diachronic analysis of BEFORE and AFTER the election was also carried out to look for instances of stances. This method too did not produce any significant incidences of stance. The NIGEC corpus was found to contain very small evidence of stance. The conclusion looks at the main findings which mainly show that the Daily Trust seems to concentrate on issues concerning the north while The Nation is more broad based as it discusses issues national wide although it concentrate more on events happening in the south west of the country.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.Phil.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.Phil.

Supervisor(s):