The Deadly Power of Words: A Corpus Discourse Analysis of Racism in the News during COVID Times and Students' Sentiments

言語的致命力量：對新冠肺炎時期新聞中之種族主義及學生情緒的詞彙庫用語分析

葉佰賢(Aiden Yeh)

《語文與國際研究》 25期 (2021/06) Pp. 87-122

https://doi.org/10.3966/181147172021060025004

摘要

The deadly Coronavirus aka COVID-19 has brought the world to its knees, literally crashing down the global economy and destroying people's lives and their livelihood. Amid this pandemic, another viral chain of discourse has been brought about by the devastating consequences of COVID-19-one that is as deadly as the virus itself: racism, more specifically, anti-Chinese racist remarks. The construction of anti-Chinese sentiments was predominantly instigated by the fact that COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan, China. As the virus spreads from the east to the west, the propensity to blame the nuances of the pandemic to China and to anything or anyone related to being Chinese has also increased. As Taiwanese students tend to travel abroad either for education or leisure purposes, the current anti-Chinese hostility puts them in a very vulnerable position as many of them bear physical resemblance to the mainlanders. The need to raise students' awareness about racism in the news has become more important than ever. This paper reports a corpus-based discourse analysis based on two self-created corpora drawn from 110 international news reports (articles) and the students' written responses (45 articles). Critical discourse analysis based on corpus linguistics (Baker, et al, 2008) using Voyant Tools (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2016), a web-based reading and analysis program for digital texts, was conducted to investigate word patterns that rose from collocations and concordance data, and the intensity of the patterns based on collocation trends, word frequency and word choice as visually presented in Cirrus (word cloud), and the correlational impact of these linguistic devices. These results were then interpreted using critical discourse analysis (CDA) theoretical framework of Van Dijk (1984, 2015), Fairclough (1995, 2001) and Wodak (2001) to evaluate the racist discourse, students’ attitudes and their mental and social representations that they share, which evoke fear, concerns, and resolutions. The findings suggest that their attitudes are not ingrained but are socially cultivated based on public discourse. The findings also imply that international news reports have the capability of spreading ideological views of anti-Chinese sentiments, i.e., framing the pandemic as ＂Chinese virus＂ or ＂Kung Flu＂ thus instigating further ＂discrimination＂ against ＂Asians＂ in general. The students' corpus shows a high frequency of the lemma ＂Taiwan/Taiwanese＂ and ＂help＂ signifying a strong sense of pride as an overwhelming majority felt that Taiwan is successfully leading the fight against COVID-19, thus explicitly drawing a clear demarcation line disassociating themselves from the ＂Chinese＂.

關鍵字

COVID-19 ； corpus linguistics ； critical discourse analysis ； racist discourse ； cross-cultural communication

並列摘要

致命的冠狀病毒又名COVID-19，已使世界屈服，著實使全球經濟崩潰並摧毀了人們的生活和生計。在這疫情期間，COVID-19毀滅性的後果帶來了另一種病毒連鎖效應，這與病毒本身一樣致命：種族主義，更具體地說是反華種族主義言論。COVID-19最初在中國武漢被發現這一事實，在很大程度上促使了反華情緒的建立。隨著病毒從東方傳播到西方，不盡相同地將大流行病歸咎於中國以及與中國人有關的任何事物的可能性也在增加。由於台灣學生傾向於出於教育或休閒目的出國旅行，當前的反華敵視使他們處於非常弱勢的地位，因為他們當中的許多人與大陸人很像。新聞中提高學生對種族主義意識的需求比以往任何時候都更加重要。本文報告基於詞彙庫的用語分析，該用語分析基於兩個自建的詞彙庫，該詞彙庫是從110篇國際新聞報導（文章）和學生的書面回應（45篇文章）中得出。進行了基於詞彙庫語言學的批判性用語分析（Baker等，2008），使用了基於網路上的數位文本閱讀和分析程序Voyant Tools（Sinclair＆Rockwell，2016），研究了詞語搭配和協調產生的單詞模式數據，以及基於這些模式的搭配趨勢，單詞頻率及其在Cirrus（單詞云）中直觀呈現的與單詞選擇的關係，以及這些語言修辭手法的相關影響，得出的模式強度。然後，使用Van Dijk（1984，2015），Fairclough（1995，2001）和Wodak（2001）的批評性話語分析（CDA）理論框架來解釋這些結果，以評估種族主義話語，學生的態度以及他們的心理和社會表徵，這些表現所引起的恐懼，擔憂和解決方案。研究結果表明，他們的態度並非根深蒂固，而是根據公眾話語在社會上培養出來的。調查結果還暗示，國際新聞報導具有傳播反華情緒的意識形態觀點的能力，即將流行病定為“中國病毒”或“功夫”，從而在總體上加劇了對“亞洲人”的“歧視”。學生的詞彙庫顯示出頻繁出現的“台灣／台灣人”和“幫助”的引理，這表明強烈的自豪感，因為絕大多數人認為台灣已經成功領導了與COVID-19的鬥爭，從而明確劃定了界限使自己與“中國人”區隔。

並列關鍵字

COVID-19 ； 詞彙庫語言學 ； 批判性用語分析 ； 種族主義用語 ； 跨文化溝通

參考文獻

Cheng, W. (2012). Corpus‐based linguistic approaches to critical discourse analysis. In C.A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 1-8), Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0262.

Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51-58. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x.

Taiwan to donate 6 million masks to countries in Asia, Europe, Americas. (2020, April 09). Focus Taiwan. par. 2, https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202004090012

Tannen, D. (1998). The argument culture: Moving from debate to dialogue. New York: Random House.

Taylor, C. (2014). Investigating the representation of migrants in the UK and Italian press: A cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse analysis. International journal of corpus linguistics, 19(3), 368-400.