3 Material and methodology
3.2 Methodology 45
What almost all of the aforementioned studies in chapter 2 have in common (except the ones deploying corpus analysis) is that they are all more or less qualitative analyses of news discourse. Obviously, the benefit of using quantitative analysis is a capturing of “patterns or frequencies of meaning across a large sample of texts” (Richardson 2007: 21). However, a problem with such analysis is that it often assumes that when various people read the same text, they understand it in the same way, which also corresponds to the intention of the producer of the text (Berelson 1952 in Richardson 2007: 17). Quantitative methods have thus
TT 1967 TT 2014 News articles Word count News articles Word count June 5 741 - - June 6_1 1132 July 9 1302 June 6_2 855 July 11 776 June 7 648 July 23 1034 June 10_1 247 Aug 1 867 June 10_2 698 Aug 5 923 June 12 565 Aug 28 461 Total: 4886 Total: 5363 NYT 1967 NYT 2014 News articles Word count News articles Word count June 6 910 - - June 7_1 733 - - June 7_2 787 - - June 8_1 406 July 7 1017 June 8_2 633 July 10 967 June 10 547 July 20 990 June 13 394 Aug 8 1182 June 14 743 Aug 26 1474 Total: 5153 Total: 5630
Table 3.2: Word count for the NYT material from the year 1967 and 2014. Table 3.1: Word count for TT material
been found insufficient in exploring and valuing studies of “situated, emergent and reflexive human phenomena” (Lindlof 1995: 22).
My analyses are for the most part qualitative, in that they concern themselves with complete and detailed texts, rather than with the frequencies of linguistic features. Here, rare phenomena are considered just as interesting as common ones. As Stensaas (1986: 54) notes, the concepts being studied are best understood in contexts of the whole story, and not by resorting to strict measurements. Going against the common understanding of qualitative analyses, the thesis does categorize and count results within the Appraisal framework, but it also acknowledges ambiguity. The main disadvantage of qualitative analysis is that the findings may have limited significance beyond the actual study, due to its lack of interest in patterns. In order to deal with this, a relatively large amount of text was retrieved for each newspaper (see tables 1.1 and 1.2), thus enhancing the validity of the measurements done (i.e. quantitative analysis). Notably, the measurements do not give an accurate account of linguistic features, rather an overview of tendencies detected on the basis of the framework. Thus, groupings of sources and changes in use are quantified and displayed in, for instance, figures 4.1 and 4.2. The number of these figures is based on the number of analyzed clauses in the respective newspapers. The numbers of the various attitudes (see tables 4.1 and 5.1) are based on an overall count of attitudes revealed, meaning that if one clause revealed several types of attitudes, then all of them were accounted for. Consider by way of example:
3.1 “The defenceless women and children of Gaza are in desperate need of our support” (TT August 5, 2014).30
In example (3.1), we see that the words “defenceless” and “desperate need” trigger the attitudes of affect: insecurity. However, when the sentence is understood on the basis of the surrounding textual influence, we may also analyze it as a moral judgment, thus this example reveals two types of attitude. Note that the figures concerning attitudes can only be seen as tentative, showing tendencies, rather than definite frequencies, because many of them are interpretations of the material, i.e. we cannot be absolutely certain that everyone would analyze them in the same manner.
In addition to the Appraisal framework, which comprises the foundation for and the presentation of the analyses of attitudes in the chosen newspaper articles (e.g. Martin and
White (2005)), works by Fairclough (1995; 2001), Bell (1996), Fowler (1991), van Dijk (1988) and Bednarek and Caple (2012) have broadened the perspective of the investigation. The news articles were read closely, divided into paragraphs and clauses, and placed in an EXCEL-form (see appendix 1), consisting of the three major categories of appraisal: attitude, engagement and graduation, one form for each news article.31 The categories are distributed in such a way that the text for analysis is placed to the left, followed by slots for appraiser and appraised, attitude, engagement, and graduation, as well as their most significant sub- categories. Accordingly, spots are left open for the indication of positive and negative attitude, inscribed and invoked, as well as isolated and infused evaluations. This way of demonstrating the categories and findings, as well as the material itself, was found useful, due to the possibility of evaluating all three categories of the appraisal system simultaneously, as well as enabling a closer look at the prosodic appraisal features of the various texts. Martin and White (2005) display the various analyses by marking the items directly in the running text, which makes sense since the items influence one another, and may have several different attitudes operating at the same time. However, for the purpose of this thesis, and due to the relatively high amount of words, I found it easier to grasp, as well as present my results, by using the Excel-form.
The findings were divided into clauses or sentences revealing different types of attitudes, meaning that if a sentence consists of two clauses revealing two different attitudes, then these are separated and counted as instances of two attitudes. If a sentence consists of two or more clauses, revealing one type of attitude with regards to the same issue, then it was kept as one instance in the analysis. I realize the dilemma that may occur when employing this kind of procedure, but I chose it, nevertheless, due to the large amount of data retrieved. I would like again to stress that although figures and overviews appear in some sections of the thesis, the emphasis and focus is not on quantitative analysis and absolute numbers, but rather on the appraisals revealed throughout the texts.32
Attributions are problematic, because any evaluation that they might be carrying is sourced to an external party, and not the journalist or newspaper. However, even though they do not stem directly from the various journalists, and can thus not necessarily be considered as the newspapers’ political leanings, the choice of sources is still within the power of the journalists and newspapers, and therefore important markers of potential attitudes. As White
31 The inspiration for the use of Excel-forms comes from Shoshana Dreyfus, a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney.
32 Due to space restrictions, only four analyses are included in the appendix. The rest can be accessed through the links provided in the appendix.
(2012: 57) states: “attitudinal evaluations and other potentially contentious meanings are largely confined to material attributed to quoted sources”, hence they are crucial to our overall understanding of the portrayal of the conflict.
Some of the examples included in the thesis include full sentences, as well as longer stretches of text, even though they may have been analyzed separately in the analysis (see for instance example (4.5)). This is done to make it easier for the reader to understand the immediate context of where the various clauses/sentences appear in. Apart from the already identified weaknesses of material, such as the subjective selection of parts of the retrieved data, it is important to note that the conclusions drawn on the basis of the analysis can only be considered tentative, seeing that the implicit evaluations revealed through the framework may be viewed differently by other researchers. This is true however much we try to be objective. Additionally, although an attempt was made to get a full grasp of the political and social situation in 1967, it is close to impossible to know for sure whether my analysis would have been perceived in the same way in 1967, as they are understood today. Having mentioned some of the weaknesses associated with the use of the appraisal framework, I would like to add that parts of what may be perceived a weakness is also what constitutes the strength of the framework, because it is precisely these ‘difficult’ areas of subjectivity and implicitness that may reveal some of the attitudes and power relations behind the news articles and stories portrayed.