Estudios Irlandeses (Mar 2015)
Constructing Perceptions of Sexual Orientation: A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of Transitivity in the Irish Press
Abstract
During the Celtic Tiger period, Ireland grows faster than the Eurozone only to later suffer the harsh impact of the recession. This coincides with increased in-group essentialism leading to prejudice against minorities (Zagefka et al. 2013). Whilst extremist politicians justify anti-immigration beliefs, racism becomes a problem in Ireland. Attacks on certain groups rise dramatically: Women, Travellers, Africans or homosexuals endure verbal and physical mistreatment. Financial crises cause social and discursive marginalisation (Gabrielatos and Baker 2008), and intolerance inevitably contributes to discriminatory views underpinning old-fashioned values. In such a context, we argue that there will be a tendency to nurse the demonisation of the Other (Said 1978), and that the ideological bent of the media sources (see Fowler 1991, Rosen 1999, Barnhurst 2005, van Dijk 2006) will have some impact on how otherness is portrayed. The latter justifies an analysis of how bias fostering exclusion is reinforced in the public domain (Wodak and Chilton 2005). Given Irish gays’ new status following the controversy around same-sex marriage, here we examine newspaper articles to observe the discourse construction of homosexuality (Collier 1995, Stychin 1995, Naidoo 1997, McGhee 2001, Baker 2005), and detect any instances of homophobia. To do so, a corpus-based critical discourse analysis is conducted with our focus on the notion of transitivity (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) as a means to reveal people’s perspectives on the topic at hand.
