Modern-Diachronic analysis of newspapers

The SiBol/Port project (originally SiBol) was set up in 2005 by a group of English linguistics researchers from the Universities of Siena and Bologna in Italy – “SiBol” being a portmanteau of the two University names. These were Alan Partington, Alison Duguid, Anna Marchi, Caroline Clark, Charlotte Taylor, and John Morley.

The aim of the project is to study developments in very recent English language usage but also in social, cultural and political attitudes over recent times, as reflected in language. The term Modern-Diachronic Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (MD-CADS) was coined to denominate, in general, this kind of study.

The SiBol / Port suite of corpora, therefore, currently consists of:

  • SiBol 93 containing the entire output of the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph for 1993.
  • SiBol 05 containing the entire output of the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and the Observer, Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph for 2005.
  • Port 2010 containing the entire output of the Guardian, Times, Telegraph for 2010.
  • SiBol 13 containing the entire output of the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Times of India, New York Times, Washington Times, South China Morning Post, Daily News Egypt, Gulf News (UAE) and This Day Lagos.

The corpora are now available to the wider research community through SketchEngine.

In 2010, a special edition of the journal Corpora was dedicated to outlining and exemplifying the methodology of MD-CADS and all the articles in the journal made use of SiBol 93 and SiBol 05.

MD-CADS research using the SiBol / Port corpora:

    Partington A. and Duguid, A. (2008). Modern diachronic corpus-assisted discourse studies (MD-CADS) in Bertuccelli Papa, M. and Bruti, S. (eds) Threads in the complex fabric of Language. Pisa: Felici editore, pp. 5-19

    Marchi, A. & C. Taylor. 2009. Establishing the EU: The representation of Europe in the press in 1993 and 2005. In Jucker, A. H., M. Hundt, & D. Schreier (eds.), Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse. Papers from the 29th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 201- 224.

    Partington, A. 2010. Modern Diachronic Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (MD-CADS) on UK newspapers: an overview of the project. Corpora 5(2), 83-108.

    Duguid, A. 2010. Newspaper discourse informalisation: a diachronic comparison from keywords. Corpora 5(2), 109-138.

    Clark, C. 2010. Evidence of evidentiality in the quality press 1993 and 2005. Corpora 5(2), 139-160.

    Marchi, A. 2010. ‘The moral in the story’: a diachronic investigation of lexicalised morality in the UK press. Corpora 5(2), 161-189.

    Duguid, A. 2010. Investigating anti and some reflections on Modern Diachronic Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (MD-CADS). Corpora 5(2), 191-220.

    Taylor, C. 2010. Science in the news: a diachronic perspective. Corpora 5(2), 221-250.

    Taylor, C. 2011. Searching for similarity: The representation of boy/s and girl/s in the UK press in 1993, 2005, 2010. Corpus Linguistics 2011. University of Birmingham, 20-22 July.
    Partington, A. 2015. Corpus-assisted comparative case studies of representations of the Arab world. In P. Baker (ed) Corpora and Discourse Studies, London: Palgrave.