Speaker
Description
The analysis is performed on the corpus of publications on Latvia selected by applying purposive-representative sampling from Latvia coverage by the UK edition of the Guardian over the period spanning from 2003 to 2022. The research aims at determining the patterns of national representation of Latvia and as such is devised at three levels of analysis, where the outer frame is devoted to the thematic analysis of representation based on van Dijk’s (1980, 2001) concept of semantic macrostructures, succeeded by the review of argumentation schemes employed in the coverage drawing on Walton (1996) and supported by the insights into the axiological charge (Krzeszowski 1990, 1993, 1997, 2004; Felices Lago 2014) of the given discourse. The empirical discussion employs corpus-based methodologies alongside socio-cognitive, and socio-semantic approaches to discourse studies and holds inductive analysis of semantic macrostructures performed on the headlines, the lead, topic sentences as well as concluding sections of the selected articles. The thematic analysis is enhanced by the categorization of argumentation schemes employed in the text as well as the discourse axiological values. Findings suggest that the pattern of national representation has changed from general information to more specific with types of argumentation schemes largely centring on similarities, differences, moral values, historical reference, etc. activating axiological space at three levels, societal, group, and individual.
Keywords: national representation, semantic macrostructures, argumentation schemes, axiological values
Affiliation of the author(s)
University of Latvia
Biographical note(s) of the author(s)
Margarita Spirida (Mg. Philol.) is a lecturer and a researcher at the University of Latvia. Her main research interests involve discourse analysis, discourse stylistics, ecolinguistics and translation studies.
| Contact e-mail address | margarita.spirida@lu.lv |
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