TY - JOUR
T1 - The language of suffering
T2 - Media discourse and public attitudes towards the MH17 air tragedy in Malaysia and the UK
AU - Ong, Theng
AU - McKenzie, Robert M.
N1 - Corresponding author:
Theng Theng Ong, PhD, is a researcher in the Department of English and Linguistics at Northumbria University (United Kingdom). Her areas of research include language and media, critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. She has recently finalized her PhD on the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedies (MH370 & MH17) in the media and public discourse.
Email address: [email protected], [email protected]
Address: English Language and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Design & Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Lipman Building, Sandyford Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST
Tel: +60103781619
Second author:
Robert McKenzie is Senior Lecturer in sociolinguistics at Northumbria University. He has a background in both linguistics and psychology and his research is located in the areas of variationist sociolinguistics, the social psychology of language and speech perception. Recent publications include articles, detailing the results of large-scale empirical studies, in International Journal of Applied Linguistics (2017), International Journal of the Sociology of Language (2015), Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (2016, 2018) and Language Awareness (2015).
Email: [email protected]
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords analysis revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ (Malaysian elites) and non-important ‘Other’ (non-Malaysian) in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ (the West) and evil ‘Others’ (Russia) in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘conflicts’.
AB - ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords analysis revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ (Malaysian elites) and non-important ‘Other’ (non-Malaysian) in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ (the West) and evil ‘Others’ (Russia) in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘conflicts’.
KW - Corpus linguistics
KW - Discourse analysis
KW - Language attitudes
KW - keyword analysis
KW - MH17
KW - sociolinguistics
KW - sociolinguistic awareness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065182122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1750481319842455
DO - 10.1177/1750481319842455
M3 - Article
SN - 1750-4813
VL - 13
SP - 562
EP - 580
JO - Discourse and Communication
JF - Discourse and Communication
IS - 5
ER -