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Constructing national identity in the British press: the Britain vs. Europe dichotomy

Islentyeva, Anna and Abdel Kafi, Mihera 2021. Constructing national identity in the British press: the Britain vs. Europe dichotomy. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies 4 , pp. 68-95. 10.18573/jcads.64

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Abstract

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) not only marks a crucial point in its history and politics, it also evidences growing concern over issues such as British self-determination and national identity. It is therefore revealing to trace the contrasting contemporary media representations of Britain and Europe within the context of the EU membership referendum of 2016 and migration within the EU. Immigration, in its broadest sense, provides a basis for ideological debates about the nature of identity and self-representation. This corpus-based study analyses the discursive techniques employed by the national press in its representation of both Britain and Europe during the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2016–2018. The data represents a specialised corpus containing 500 editorials, opinion pieces and news reports from five British newspapers: The Guardian (The Observer) and The Mirror represent left-wing ideology, while The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Sun represent right-wing ideology. In terms of methodology, the study applies a mixed-method approach that combines corpus-based analysis with a further examination of wider contexts and discourses. As a first step, the analysis focuses on the left-hand collocates of the words Britain versus Europe, as well as on the right-hand collocates of the adjectives British versus European and EU. As a further step, a concordance analysis of the most salient and distinctive collocates is used to identify the discourses constructed around these terms; the differences between the left- and right-wing newspapers are then analysed, and finally, the findings are situated in a broader socio-political context. The study uses this combination of methods to reveal how the British press creates the Britain versus Europe dichotomy.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics
H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Publisher: Cardiff University Press
ISSN: 2515-0251
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 13 August 2021
Date of Acceptance: 31 May 2021
Last Modified: 04 May 2023 21:36
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/143379

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