Xenophobia as the Word of the Year in English Media Discourse of the 21st Century
https://doi.org/10.18384/2310-712X-2022-4-51-60
Abstract
Aim. The paper is concerned with the study of the semantic field of the noun “xenophobia”, which was chosen by Dictionary.com in 2016 as the Word of the Year. The main focus of interest is the usage of the given lexeme and its synonyms in English media discourse of the 21st century.
Methodology. The research is based on corpus analysis of data from 2015 to 2021 provided by three contemporary English language corpora: Now Corpus, Brexit Corpus, and Coronavirus Corpus.
Results. Corpus data show that in certain periods of time “xenophobia” becomes a high-frequency word due to some extralinguistic factors, including such global events as, for example, Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. It is also established that the semantic field of the concept of “xenophobia” contains a number of words with the similar shades of meaning, which form “hate speech”. As a result of the ongoing information war in media space, xenophobia remains the key word of the last few years and its linguistic markers are used to create the negative image of the “others”.
Research implications. The theoretical significance of the research lies in identifying extralinguistic factors that determine the choice of the Word of the Year. The practical significance is explained by the fact that the obtained results can be used in special courses on corpus analysis and lexicology of the English language.
About the Author
O. V. Koretskaya
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Olga V. Koretskaya, Cand. Sci. (Philology), Assoc. Prof., Department of the English Language
Leninskie Gory 1, Moscow 119991
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