Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of Syrian refugees in the Canadian press, from December 2015 to December 2017, in four English-language major newspapers. Using methods of Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study found three prominent themes, namely intake, integration, and concern, through which Syrian refugees are depicted across the political spectrum. The results indicate that adopting a more inclusive immigration policy did not totally negate the biased and discriminatory representations entrenched in the media coverage of refugees, but it can set the stage for more empowering and sympathetic treatment of refugees in the media. This analysis speaks to the importance of media discourse in producing and maintaining particular depictions of refugees among the Canadian public, highlighting the role of ideological and political stances in the portrayals of refugees across news outlets.

Keywords

Corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis Canadian media ideology Syrian refugees

Introduction

Canada’s response to the plight of Syrian refugees became a focal point in the country’s 2015 federal election campaign after a picture of the lifeless body of the Syrian toddler, Alan Kurdi, on a Turkish beach in 2015, provoked criticism of the Conservative government for not doing enough to help the Syrians. During the campaign, the Liberals vowed to quickly take in 25,000 Syrian refugees if elected. Consequently, the country’s immigration policy became more inclusive after the election and the media adopted a more humanizing tone in relation to Syrian refugees as the coverage shifted from the conflict in Syria to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Canada (Mohamed and Bastug, 2021; Wallace, 2018). However, the findings of this study indicate that even adopting a more inclusive immigration policy can not totally negate the biased and discriminatory representations entrenched in the media coverage of refugees. The findings also demonstrate that there is a capacity for a more empowering and sympathetic treatment of refugees in the media suggested by Wallace (2018).

Henry and Tator (2002) maintain that the Canadian public mostly gains an understanding of immigrants including refugees by turning to the news rather than through first-hand experiences and interactions with newcomers. Moreover, a large number of scholars have emphasized the power of media discourse in normalizing certain images and perceptions of minorities which are often not completely impartial and accurate (Baker et al., 2013; Fairclough, 1989; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1992). This is extremely important in light of a survey, conducted in 2018, which found the majority of Canadians believe in the objectivity of the news they consume (Mitchell et al., 2018).

Fairclough (1989) views discourse as language in use and reiterates that the power of media discourse is a matter of, but not limited to, language. He also underlines the relation between language, ideology, and power, emphasizing the role of ideology and, more particularly, ‘the ideological workings of language’ as a primary means of ‘manufacturing consent’ through which power is exercised in modern society (Fairclough,1989: 4). He stresses the linguistic analysis of media texts as a fundamental tool to uncover the embedded commonsense assumptions or ideologies which are shaped, maintained, and reinforced about minorities in media representations. However, Fairclough (1989) recommends the linguistic analysis of texts not in isolation, but rather in tandem with the wider social context in which the texts are produced and interpreted, emphasizing that ‘all linguistic phenomena are social’ (p. 23). In doing so, Fairclough proposes a three-level model for the analysis of any given discursive event. The first level is concerned with the description of formal properties of the text, the second level deals with an interpretation of the text in light of the processes that affect its production and consumption, and the third level seeks to give an explanation of the social conditions which affect the processes of text production and consumption.

The current study is informed by Fairclough’s model of discourse analysis and aims to examine the media coverage of Syrian refugee resettlement in Canadian newspapers in light of the newspapers’ political and ideological alignments and against a backdrop of a more embracing refugee policy under the Canadian Liberal government.

Refugees in the news

A substantial body of research that investigates the depiction of refugees in media discourse points to the tendency to depict refugees as outsiders (Baker and McEnery, 2005; Baker et al., 2008; Bradimore and Bauder, 2012; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008; KhosraviNik, 2010; Krishnamurti, 2013; Pickering, 2001). These studies find that refugees are frequently discriminated against and deemed as a threat and burden, and more recently, as victims (Aswad, 2019; Holzberg et al., 2018). The negative effect of such depictions is, perhaps, intensified due to the ability of the news media to speak to, for, and from individuals and groups in authoritative ways from a presumed impartial stance (Johnson, 2013; Matheson, 2005). In a cross-linguistic examination of the Italian and UK press, Taylor (2014) concludes that refugees from certain nationalities are foregrounded and more likely to be the subject of moral panic. A number of studies carried out on British and Australian press reports found that refugees are frequently misrepresented and dehumanized by connecting them with unwantedness, destruction, and uncertainty (Baker and McEnery, 2005; Baker et al., 2008; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008; KhosraviNik, 2010; Pickering, 2001). This was commonly achieved by using liquid metaphors as shown in a diachronic study of the use of metaphor by Taylor (2022) who posits that water is a ‘long-standing’ metaphor used in relation to migration in the press over 200 years.

In addition to depicting refugees as invaders, the media also attributes criminality through lexical choices, mainly used in association with criminals, namely ‘detainees’, ‘isolated from the rest’ and ‘little prospect of release’, which further contributes to the portrayal of refugees as a threat (Parker, 2015: 6). Such reports potentially diminish the willingness of host communities to welcome refugees (Aswad, 2019). In their study of media representations and public perceptions of refugees in Australia, McKay et al. (2011) discovered a correspondence between the coverage and an increasingly unfavorable perception of refugees by the public.

The arrival of scores of migrants in Europe in 2015 was a turning point in how the media represent refugees (Chouliaraki and Zaborowski, 2017). Some studies of the coverage of refugees in newspapers in Greece, Serbia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, France, the UK, and Ireland demonstrated a swing between narratives that depict refugees as a threat and narratives that highlight the humanitarian needs of refugees (e.g. see Chouliaraki and Zaborowski, 2017; Holzberg et al., 2018). However, the victimization of refugees can be used to support and encourage dehumanizing and marginalizing practices against them and suggest their inferiority to the people of host communities (Steimel, 2010).

The treatment of refugees by the Canadian media has been extensively researched (Bradimore and Bauder, 2012; Greenberg, 2000; Henry and Tator, 2002; Hier and Greenberg, 2002; Ibrahim, 2005; Krishnamurti, 2013; Wallace, 2018). Although Canada is believed to be more open to immigration compared to Europe and the representation of refugees in Canadian media is considered more positive than that of other Western countries (Esses et al., 2013), a large number of studies has found practices of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of refugees in Canadian news, particularly against those who arrive via ‘unconventional’ means at the borders and seek refuge. The Chinese and Sri Lankan refugees who arrived in Canada by boat in 1999 and 2009, respectively, provide excellent examples of negative media reactions that dehumanized the refugees and described them as a security threat (Bradimore and Bauder, 2012; Ibrahim, 2005; Krishnamurti, 2013). Although Syrian refugees entered Canada through a highly-praised sponsorship program rather than ‘illegally’ crossing the borders, studies of the coverage of Syrian refugees in the Canadian media have found biased depictions of the group as passive victims and potential threats and burdens. For example, Tyyskä et al. (2017) identified frequent descriptions of Syrian refugees as vulnerable and lacking agency, while Syrian men were specifically highlighted as would-be terrorists in disguise. Although the tone of the coverage became softer and more humanizing after the emergence of the Kurdi photo (Wallace, 2018), another study found that in conservative-leaning newspapers, Syrian refugees were depicted as a burden on the healthcare system and housing resources, demonstrating the role of ideological stances of the news sources in their representations (Mustafa et al., 2021).

The above-mentioned studies provide invaluable insights into the depiction of Syrian refugees in Canadian media; nevertheless, a more linguistically-grounded analysis is needed because ‘in texts, we may be aware of what the speaker or author is doing, but not so much how they are doing this’ (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 5). Also, in contrast to previous studies, which utilized a purely qualitative approach (Mustafa et al., 2021), the current study merges quantitative and qualitative tools and methods of Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the data from bottom-up and top-down perspectives, respectively. A corpus-assisted approach enables the analyst to have a thorough understanding of ‘the meanings and functions of certain lexical choices made in texts about refugees’ (Baker and McEnery, 2005: 223), while CDA is used to critically examine the micro-structures of the text and tries to interpret the findings in the social context, maintaining that discourse is both ‘socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned’ (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). Corpus-assisted CDA has proven to be highly conducive to the studies of the media representation of refugees and other types of immigrants, for example, in the UK, Turkey, and Australia (Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008; Efe, 2019; Salahshour, 2016). This paper intends to apply this approach to the analysis of media representation of Syrian refugees in the Canadian context.

In this paper, I examine the representations of Syrian refugees in two national newspapers, the Globe and Mail (GM) and the National Post (NP), and two regional newspapers, the Toronto Star (TST) and the Toronto Sun (TSU). All four sources are highly circulated newspapers (Agility PR Solutions, 2022) , plus the Toronto Star is Canada’s most popular newspaper based on weekly publications and second in daily publications behind The Globe and Mail (WorldAtlas, 2019). The Toronto Sun, as a tabloid, has a certain way of selecting and presenting news that is viewed by many people as valid (Örnebring and Jönsson, 2004). Plus, both newspapers cover the city of Toronto which hosts the largest population of Syrian refugees resettled in the country (Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada [IRCC] , 2020). The selected sources also reflect the diversity of political and ideological stances as the National Post and the Toronto Sun are considered conservative-leaning media and the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail favor the Liberal Party and centrism, respectively. This paper aims to address the following questions: 1. What are the themes in relation to Syrian refugees and to what extent do the themes vary across the data? 2. What are discursive strategies and linguistic choices used to represent Syrian refugees in sources with different political leanings?

Data and method

The newspaper articles for inclusion in the corpus were retrieved from the archive ProQuest using the search words ‘Syrian’, ‘refugee*’, and ‘Canada’ from December 2015, when the first Syrian refugees landed in Canada, to December 2017, after which the news coverage of the refugees sharply declined according to my pilot study. A total of 280 articles including hard news and opinion pieces were collected (Table 1). The former contains facts or what is known to be normalized discourse (Bradimore and Bauder, 2012), and the latter is believed to formulate certain preferred viewpoints about issues that matter to the public (Greenberg, 2000; Van Dijk, 1988). Hence, the inclusion of both types of articles will broaden the scope of the analysis by examining any reference to Syrian refugees in the newspapers under study. The newspaper articles downloaded from ProQuest included information about their type and publication section that facilitated the classification of the data presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Number of words and articles in each corpus.

Title	Tokens	Type	Articles	News	Opinion
GM	49,358	6244	66	55	11
NP	31,780	5356	37	26	11
TST	77,736	8270	110	88	22
TSU	30,534	4651	67	36	31
Total	189,408	24,521	280	205	75

CL is the study of language based on examples of naturally-occurred language use employing computerized software which is able to carry out complex calculations quickly and accurately on the linguistic data (McEnery and Wilson, 2001). Corpus-assisted studies typically begin with generating a list of keywords (words that appear more frequently than would be expected) by comparing their frequency between the study corpus and a reference corpus which, in this case, is the news section of Strathy Corpus of Canadian English (13,451,003 tokens). For this study, I used WordSmith Tools 7 to generate keywords for each newspaper. The threshold for keyness was set at p value (p ⩽ 0.0000001) which is WordSmith’s default setting. All the generated keywords were examined for this study. Keywords were grouped into thematic categories through the examination of their collocates (words that co-occur more frequently than expected within a specified span) and concordance lines (all the occurrences of keywords in a corpus) which were expanded to the whole text when needed. Note that the statistical measure chosen for the collocates is Mutual Information (MI) which ‘highlights rare exclusivity of the collocational relationship’. (Brezina, 2018: 70). Next, the proportion of each theme was calculated by adding up the frequency of all of its keywords and then dividing the total by the overall number of tokens in the corpus (See Appendices 1 –4 for a detailed breakdown of keywords in each corpus). It is imperative to note that collocates were mostly used to determine the themes, and concordances were heavily utilized in uncovering the representational strategies used by the sources under study.

I employed two prevailing approaches in CDA, namely Van Leeuwen’s (2008) model and discourse-historical approach (DHA) proposed by Wodak (2001) to unravel the newspapers’ representational strategies and corresponding linguistic realization in relation to Syrian refugees. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) model was used to explore the representation of the integration of Syrian refugees into Canada. Social actors can be activated in a text as either dynamic forces in an activity or passivated as undergoing or benefiting from an activity through linguistic means (p. 44). In doing so, the newspapers under study appeared to use linguistic items which denote processes of doing/happening, sensing, and behavior known as material, mental, and behavioral respectively (Halliday, 1985 cited in Van Leeuwen, 2008). It should be mentioned that the implementation of Van Leeuwen’s model was preceded by a thorough reading of each newspaper article to examine if and to what extent the refugees were given a voice, that is, the newspapers talk ‘to’ Syrian refugees and not just ‘about’ them (Table 4). Finally, DHA proved to be highly conducive to studies concerned with the role of ideology in media representations (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak, 2001; Wodak and Matouschek, 1993). To explore the role of the political positions of the newspapers in their representation of Syrian refugees, I drew on DHA to examine the discursive strategies and related linguistic devices used to refer to and describe Syrian refugees and their resettlement in Canada, to justify arguments in favor of or against them, to frame the newcomers and issues related to them from speakers’ point of view, and to intensify or mitigate the force of utterances (Table 2).

Table 2.

Discursive strategies in DHA.

Questions to approach discursive features	Discursive strategies	Purpose
How are persons, objects, phenomena, events, processes and actions named and referred to linguistically in the discourse in question?	nomination	discursive construction of social actors discursive construction of objects, phenomena, events discursive construction of processes and actions
What characteristics or qualities are attributed to social actors, objects, phenomena, events, processes and actions mentioned in the discourse?	predication	discursive characterization of social actors, objects, phenomena, events processes and actions (e.g. positively or negatively)
What arguments are employed in discourse?	argumentation	persuading addressees of the validity of specific claims of truth and normative rightness
From what perspective are these nominations, attributions, arguments expressed?	perspectivisation	positioning the speaker’s or writer’s point of view and expressing involvement or distance
Are the respective utterances articulated overtly, are they intensified or mitigated?	mitigation and Intensification	modifying the illocutionary force of utterances in respect to their epistemic or deontic status

Analysis

In this section, I present the thematic categories identified in the study along with a tabular description of the definition of each category and examples of keywords in each theme, followed by a discussion of the proportion of the themes among the sources under study. Next, I discuss how Syrian refugees are linguistically and discursively represented in the data, and the role these portrayals play in shaping and/or promoting particular representation of the refugees for the reader.

Themes related to Syrian refugees

The themes that emerged from the analysis are concern, intake, and integration (Table 3). These thematic groupings indicate the focus and interest of the newspapers’ coverage of Syrian refugees. As Figure 1 indicates, the most conspicuous similarity between the newspapers pertains to the saliency of the theme of intake, reflecting the central focus of all the newspapers, regardless of their political alignments, on the resettlement of 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada as a result of adopting a more welcoming immigration policy under the Liberal government. However, a more CDA-inspired analysis of keywords in this theme found that the intake is put in a relatively negative light in the NP and TSU, the conservative-leaning media, while TST and GM adopt a more positive view in support of the resettlement.

Table 3.

Thematic categories related to Syrian refugees.

Categories	Definition and examples of keywords
Concern	Used to refer to threats posed, and burdens imposed by Syrian refugees to Canada (e.g. security, screening, ISIS, values, housing, food), and the challenges faced by the government, private sponsors, volunteers, and refugees regarding the resettlement (e.g. housing, food, backlog, delays)
Intake	Used to refer to refugee resettlement in Canada in general, these are keywords denoting government officials, parties, and organizations (e.g. Trudeau, McCullum, immigration, citizenship, government, feds, liberal, conservative, COSTI, Lifeline), keywords denoting the different strands of refugee sponsorship program (e.g. families, groups, sponsored, private, privately, government), keywords denoting the legal and administrative aspects of the resettlement (e.g. applications, processing, visa), keywords denoting the willingness, commitment, and efforts toward refugee resettlement (e.g. Canadians, bring, welcoming, welcome, newcomers)
Integration	Used to refer to the transitioning of Syrian refugees into the new life in Canada (e.g. integrate, English, Arabic, classes, apartment, kids, enrolled)

Figure 1.

Proportion of themes in each newspaper.

Next, Figure 1 shows that integration is also an observable theme in the majority of the sources with the exception of NP, suggesting the newspapers’ interest in the coverage of the life and activities of Syrian refugees in Canada although with different representational purposes which will be explained in more detail in the next section. Finally, the theme of concern has a markedly smaller proportion in GM and TST in comparison with the other two conservative-leaning newspapers which appeared to highlight presumed threats and burdens associated with Syrian refugees. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the observed variation in the proportion of concern in sources with different political leanings, the CDA-informed analysis found that GM and TST opted for mitigating challenges and obstacles facing the Canadian government, sponsors, and Syrian refugees themselves which is in line with their perceived stance in favor of the resettlement.

Discursive strategies and linguistic choices used to represent Syrian refugees in each theme

Representation of refugees in terms of intake

The more close-reading of the keyword resettlement (46 occurrences in GM and 85 occurrences in TST) shows that the intake is neutrally referred to as program, plan, and effort, and is magnified by using evaluative words and expressions in GM and TST:

It is an ambitious plan and there will be some bumps in the road as service providers gear up to provide resettlement services for the newcomers. (GM20160118NW)

. . ., and to make sure that this extraordinarily complex and multifaceted operation will come off with as few hitches as possible. (GM20151201NW)

Local sponsorship groups that were formed after the Liberal government launched the massive Syrian resettlement plan in November, must partner with the sponsorship agreement holders. (TST20160119NW)

City wraps historic resettlement chapter (TST20160521NW)

The use of evaluative words and expressions can be seen as an attempt to magnify Canada’s humanitarian response to the plight of Syrian refugees in the above-mentioned excerpts. Additionally, the significance of being helped by Canada for Syrian refugees is intensified in the liberal-leaning TST by using figurative language, namely simile (Example 1), allusion (Example 2), and metaphor (Example 2). The intensification techniques used to magnify the intake help construct an image of Canada, particularly the Liberal government, as a savior:

‘It’s something like a dream’, Fadi said underneath the Peace Tower. (TST20151205NW)

They braved the hell of war in their ravaged homeland, and languished in camps for as long as 3 years for a ticket to the promised land. Maher al Halabi emerged from his interview with the UNHCR last Saturday..….That ‘golden ticket’ means he, his wife and two children, Ghassan, 7, and Mohammed, 18 months, made the cut. (TST20160117NW)

The close-reading of the keyword resettlement (27 occurrences in NP and 40 occurrences in TSU) in the conservative-leaning sources reveals representations that attribute negativity to the Syrian resettlement although in slightly different ways. To elaborate, NP implicitly describes the intake as a political gesture (Example 1). However, the resettlement efforts are found to be highly spoken of only when the credit is given to the Canadian public rather than the government (Examples 2):

The refusal rate for Syrian refugees was 4% according to the documents, which, though released only recently, date to the early stages of the Syrian refugee program, when the Liberal government was trying to fulfill a campaign promise to resettle 25,000 by the end of 2015. (NP20170228NW)

A close look at Canada’s impressive and praiseworthy Syrian refugee resettlement numbers − 40,000 since Trudeau formed his government - shows that only slightly more than half were ‘government-assisted’ resettlements. . .. Canadians from all walks of life have done their country proud over the past few months. (NP20170202OP)

On the other hand, TSU uses a more subjective language in relation to the resettlement calling it a pledge, promise, gesture, and ploy. The newspaper employs the strategies of perspectivation and intensification to criticize the government’s fast-tracking of Syrian refugees, using expert voice (Examples 1), impersonalization (Example 2), and evaluative expressions (Examples 1, 2,):

‘The way they’ve been handling this is just amateurish and dangerous"’, former diplomat James Bissett, who first joined the public service in the 1950s, said in a phone interview. (TSU20160301NW perspectivation strategy)

the memo describes the chaos and confusion felt by those on the ground who were scrambling to implement this partisan pledge. (TSU20170613NW intensification strategy)

Also in TSU, the concordance analysis of the keyword Trudeau’s (41 occurrences) points to the widespread criticism of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. As can be seen below, the texts frequently use nomination, predication, perspectivation, and intensification strategies to depict the resettlement as a political play which is not surprising given the stance of the newspaper. However, the portrayal of Syrian refugees as a political tool in the right-wing Canadian newspaper is in line with the practice of politicizing immigration by the media in other countries, such as France, Poland, Sweden, and the US, and contributes to the dehumanization of the refugees (Aswad, 2019; Gattinara and Zamponi, 2020; Krzyżanowski, 2018; Nagel, 2016). In addition, it can be argued that transforming the refugees into a political tool can downplay the sense of emergency in response to the humanitarian crisis and consequently undermine the efforts by the government as well as sponsors and advocacy groups to garner public support for Syrian refugees coming to Canada.

Justin Trudeau’s fairytale story of Syrian refugees is once again clashing with reality. His government first had to admit that its election campaign promise to admit 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2015 was wildly unachievable. (TSU20160123OP nomination, predication, and intensification strategies)

The forum was held on Nov. 28-29, 2015, in Toronto, in the midst of the turmoil of trying to implement Trudeau’s ambitious political promise. another recurring theme is clear: that Trudeau’s refugee timeline was totally unmanageable. Many experts have alleged that Trudeau’s decision to resettle 25,000 on a fast-tracked timeline was based not on what’s best for Canada, but on short-term thinking and partisan gain. (TSU20170613NW nomination, predication, perspectivation, and intensification strategies)

Representation of refugees in terms of integration

As Table 4 shows, TST has the highest number of articles (35.5%) featuring refugee personal stories and quotations. The texts quote the refugees as expressing hope and willingness to build a new life and show them as engaging in their daily life in Canada, activating the refugees in mental, behavioral, and material processes respectively (Halliday, 1985). The activation helps give more agency to refugees than is normally attributed to them in their news representations. Similarly, about 20% of the coverage (13 texts) in GM features Syrian refugee stories (Table 3) including interviews with them and their sponsors and employers. The refugees are described as dedicated workers (Examples 2) and entrepreneurs (Examples 3) who bring their skills, knowledge, and experience gained in Syria to build their lives in a new country:

Table 4.

Refugee voice presentation in the data.

Newspapers	Number of articles in total	Number of articles featuring refugees	% of articles in the corpus
GM	66	13	20
NP	37	07	19
TST	110	39	35.5
TSU	67	09	13.5

Darzee hopes to merchandise products, such as their Canada 150 items, to retailers such as Hudson’s Bay and Winners in order to make it sustainable. (TST20170304NW behavioral process)

‘The Syrians are extremely hard workers. The first thing they say to me, “We want to work, we want to earn our money.” They want to give back’. (GM20160118NW behavioral and mental processes)

Across Canada, Syrian newcomers-turned-business owners are finding their footing. (GM20170426SNW material process)

GM compares government-sponsored refugees with those sponsored by private individuals and groups. While acknowledging that the privately sponsored refugees are facing less difficulty in their integration into Canada, the author makes arguments to justify the intake of government-sponsored Syrians through topicalization (Example 1) and adjacent text positioning (Example 2):

Because things are so urgent, most of the Syrian refugees coming to Canada are being brought in directly by the federal government, rather than through private sponsors. These government-assisted refugees, as they’re called, are at greater risk of failing or of falling through cracks. (GM20151201NW)

Government-sponsored refugees are typically selected based on humanitarian need, which will often present social and educational challenges and they tend to take longer to establish themselves. (GM20161202NW)

The portrayal of the activities, efforts, and progress of Syrian refugees in daily life helps to construct the newcomers as resilient and determined individuals who are keen on and capable of integration despite the acknowledged challenges and struggles faced by immigrants in Canada including the language barrier and lack of Canadian work experience and credentials (Ricento, 2021). Comparatively, there is more tendency in NP to underscore the challenges of refugee integration by passivating them through perspectivation strategy using quotations that indicate an implicit bias toward the refugees:

In Ottawa, many of the 1700 refugees from Syria are unskilled workers who cannot read or write their native Arabic, says Michael Qaqish, a councilor who speaks Arabic. This compounds the challenge of finding them work. (NP20161121NW quotation)

But Fakih says the Syrians are not easy to integrate. ‘You need to manage expectations’, he says. ‘We are pulling them from the streets. We definitely need to get them used to women’s rights. They have been living in a zoo’; (NP20161102SNW quotation and implicit bias)

On the other hand, Syrian refugees are often passivated by being shown as ‘beneficiaries’ (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 44), enjoying the safety of Canada. They are mostly activated in material processes that denote criminality in TSU. The refugees are reported as committing domestic violence and sexual assault (Malcolm, 2017). While both of these crimes are serious and require corrective actions, the overt framing bias of the author who uses hyperbolic and sensationalist phrases to generalize isolated events contributes to reinforcing the long-established image of refugees as culturally unadaptable and helps shape the perception of domestic violence and sexual assault as foreign constructs in Canada (Mustafa and Pilus, 2020):

A group of recently-arrived Syrian refugees gathered at a Scarborough park Monday to celebrate living peacefully in their adopted country - hours after a series of bombings killed dozens in their homeland. (TSU20160906NW shown as beneficiaries)

Now we learn that one of these Syrian refugees used the iconic symbol of Canadian patriotism - the hockey stick - as a weapon to bring a barbaric attitude toward women to Canada. (TSU20170617OP shown as engaged in criminal activity)

Moreover, the analysis suggests that the authors attempt to give the impression that crimes such as domestic violence and sexual assault have been imported by refugees to Canada (Examples 1,2 below). More importantly, Syrian refugees are attributed responsibility for instances of sexual misconduct in Europe through semantic contagion between the categories of ‘asylum-seeking men’ and ‘Syrian refugees’ and adjacent text positioning (Example 3 below). It is argued that such depiction is not only an unfair generalization but also a ‘misattribution of behavior’ (Aswad, 2019: 365), given the lack of evidence that Syrian refugees have committed those acts in Europe:

Instead, the Trudeau government rushed to bring over Syrian families, including, clearly, some men prone to domestic violence, without asking if they could adapt to our society. (TSU20160526OP)

In Canada, women and girls should be able to go to a public swimming pool without fear of being assaulted. They should be free to wear a bathing suit - a bikini even - if they so please. This isn’t the Middle East, and women should not have to cover up and wear hijabs and niqabs just to protect themselves from sexual predators. (TSU20170214OP)

The federal government wants to focus on the cultural integration of Syrian refugees to avoid the clashes seen in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Dozens of women there have reported being groped - and even raped - by asylum-seeking men, sometimes hanging out in large, intimidating groups. (TSU20160114NW)

The comparison of the manners in which Syrian refugees are activated and passivated in relation to their integration confirms the existence of two opposing perspectives of paternalism versus empowerment through which refugees can be represented in the media. The former sees refugees as vulnerable and in need of saving, while the latter promotes a view of self-reliant and independent refugees. The problem with the paternalist view is that it places refugees ‘in a subordinate role to professionals who are responsible for providing the services and the help they need’ (Hardy and Phillips, 1999: 10).

The concordance analysis of the keyword values (13 occurrences) in TSU highlights a prevalent argument against Syrian refugees that represents them as a threat to Canadian culture. The expressions such as Canadian values (6 occurrences), our values (2 occurrences), and our cultural values (2 occurrences) suggest assimilationist undertones associated with the concerns expressed about the integration of Syrian refugees. Plus, the use of expressions such as ‘at odds with Canadian values’ and ‘coming to terms with Canadian culture and values’, in the excerpt below, presupposes Syrian refugees as being inherently different; therefore, their integration can be difficult:

But when the offending student is part of a wave of recently arrived Syrian refugees - unable to speak English and at odds with Canadian values of pluralism and tolerance – extraordinary help from Ottawa is required. But the example of Fredericton High School should remind us to be clear-eyed and practical about the difficulty that many Syrian refugees will have coming to terms with Canadian culture and values. (TSU20160704OP)

Finally, the concordance analysis of the keyword our (35 occurrences) in TSU reveals the prevalent use of the word as a discursive strategy that creates a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Van Dijk, 1991). Similarly, our collocates with country (MI 6.27/12 occurrences) reinforces the perception of Syrian refugees as an out-group, plus, the emphasis on both the significance of refugee integration and the efforts to ensure it, leads the reader to perceive the Syrians as fundamentally different from Canadians and thus contributes to the further Othering of the group.

Representation of refugees in terms of concern

It is imperative to mention that the representational difference between the newspapers is most noticeable in this thematic category. To begin with, concordance analyses of keywords challenges (16 occurrences), delays (15 occurrences), and backlog (09 occurrences) in TST demonstrate that the Liberal-leaning newspaper is mainly concerned with the problems that affect refugee intake, well-being, and success in Canada. Similarly, a close reading of the keyword trauma (09 occurrences) in GM found a relatively sympathetic attitude toward Syrian refugees’ mental health issues acknowledging the challenges faced by the newcomers. Also, a close analysis of the keyword housing in GM (32 occurrences) and TST (22 occurrences) indicates that the newspapers drew upon mitigation strategy to downplay the challenge of finding permanent ac commodation for Syrian refugees using impersonalization and quotations from officials:

On Tuesday, two cities – Vancouver and Ottawa – said they are halting their reception of government-assisted Syrian refugees as settlement agencies there try to work through housing bottlenecks . (TST20160119NW impersonalization)

Mr. McCallum acknowledged the housing problem a s ‘ significant ’ but ‘ manageable ’. (GM20160204NW quotation)

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in a statement said it agrees finding affordable housing in some parts of the country can be a challenge . However, it said the federal government has committed to re-establishing its role in supporting affordable housing through the development of a national housing strategy . (GM20161019NW impersonalization)

In contrast, TSU uses argumentation strategies that depict Syrian refugees as a burden on the country’s resources. The authors take an explicit stance to express concern about Syrian refugees using hyperbolic and sensationalist phrases, aggregation, and liquid metaphor (Examples 1,2,3 below). Meanwhile, NP alludes to the refugee burden on the Canadian economy by highlighting the worries of business owners about reducing the number of skilled workers to accommodate the temporary upsurge in the intake of Syrian refugees (Examples 4,5):

Syria’s refugees: Who pays?; Providing for their medical care could take away from other health-care services if governments don’t increase funding— With its $10.3 billion deficit and a total debt of $288.1 billion, the Ontario government is hardly in a position to cover the additional health care expenses for the refugees. . . (TSU20151213NW aggregation)

Refugee Costs Soar;----Untold millions of dollars have been spent and a jaw-dropping myriad of helping agencies have been involved in getting them settled. . . (TSU20170319NW hyperbole)

No sanctuary from costs; Flood of refugees takes toll on city finances (TSU20171029NW liquid metaphor)

Provinces and businesses keen to bolster their workforce are worried the push for Syrian refugees this year will lead to a cutback in foreign workers. (NP20160222NW)

But the move has nonetheless raised concerns from business groups about the Liberals’ long-term plans for immigration. (NP20160309NW)

When raising security concerns about Syrian refugees, the conservative-leaning media draws on arguments that echo the possibility that Syrian refugees suspiciously carry ISIS members within their midst into Canada and even infiltrate US soil. The depiction of the refugees as a security threat is done by using impersonalization (Example 1), quotations from officials (Example 2), and topicalization (Example 3) as shown below:

Refugee checks flawed: Memo; Screening precautions rushed? The memo – dated November 2015 and compiled by civil servants in the department of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) – raises serious questions about the screening and vetting Syrian refugees received before coming to Canada . (TSU20170613NW)

‘ We have a pretty unsecure border with Canada ’, Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin said Wednesday. ‘Islamic terror represents a threat. It’s real. It’s growing ’. (TSU20160204NW)

The rise of ISIL in Syria and its role in planning and inspiring terrorist attacks in the West has fueled caution over refugees from the country. (NP20170210NW)

The above-mentioned arguments can be seen as fallacious for two reasons. First, there has been no evidence that Syrian refugees have been involved in acts of terrorism in the United States (Friedman 2017 cited in Aswad, 2019: 365). Second, an intelligence report by Canada’s immigration officials found little evidence of security concerns about Syrians (Bell, 2017). Contrariwise, security concerns regarding Syrian refugees coming to Canada are mentioned in GM and TST, but they are often mitigated by referring to official statements dispelling those concerns about the Syrians. Nevertheless, it should be noted that references to the connection between Syrian refugees and terrorism and emphasis on security issues can prompt the reader to infer a link between the refugees and terrorist activities:

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said any concerns that Syrian refugees are a security risk is ‘ludicrous’ and ‘scaremongering’, pointing out that they are subject to deep background checks. (GM20160203NW)

. . ., experts on both sides of the border say the countries have similar security screening processes to keep suspected terrorists and criminals out. ‘I have never had a sense that there are any concerns about the quality of the Canadian screening’. . . (TST20170224NW)

Further insight into these findings can be gained by situating the findings in Fairclough’s model. The analysis indicates how the discursive and linguistic choices made in each newspaper contribute to the construction of a particular understanding of Syrian refugees in terms of the themes highlighted by the newspapers under study. The findings also demonstrate that Canada’s response to the humanitarian crisis is transformed and recontextualized in ways that correspond to the concerns, priorities, and goals, determined by the political alignments and ideological stances, of these newspapers. Finally, the more empowering and sympathetic depictions of refugees in centrist and liberal-leaning sources seem to be part of the country’s wider sociopolitical changes in reaction to the plight of Syrian refugees which was symbolized by the photo of the perished child Alan Kurdi.

Conclusion

The findings of this analysis shed light on the media discourses on and around refugees through the examination of the representation of Syrian refugees in the Canadian press during a period that marks a shift to more welcoming immigration policies in the country. The findings indicate that adopting a more inclusive immigration policy did not totally negate the biased and discriminatory representations entrenched in the media coverage of refugees, but it set the stage for more empowering and sympathetic treatment of refugees in the media. By employing corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, I determine three themes through which Syrian refugees are depicted and perceived across the political spectrum. The analysis finds that the news coverage revolves around the intake operations, the integration, and the concerns associated with Syrian refugees which are represented in noticeably different manners reflecting the political and ideological stances of the four newspapers.

First, the resettlement operation is generally supported by the centrist and liberal-leaning media which also leverages it to render a glorified picture of Canada as a savior. In contrast, the conservative newspapers mainly criticize and politicize the country’s response to the humanitarian crisis which is described as the worst since the World War II. Second, the integration of Syrian refugees receives a relatively more empowering treatment in the centrist and left-leaning newspapers, which depict the refugees as willing and capable of improving their lives, versus paternalist and pessimistic attitudes found in conservative-leaning newspapers, where refugees are characterized as not matching the presumed culture and values of the country. Third, the liberal and centrist newspapers turn the spotlight on the logistical challenges associated with refugee intake and, at times, sympathize with their lingering mental sufferings, while the conservative media covertly and overtly raise alarmist views about economic and security issues.

The portrayal of Syrian refugees as different, involved in negative acts, and threatening economic interests is in line with what Van Dijk (1987) categorizes as topics that reinforce racist discourse. It has been argued that ‘[negative] media representations affect attitudes towards migrants, create anxieties and fears, rally support for and against immigration, and legitimate immigration laws’ (Bauder, 2008: 290). Further research can involve the regional newspapers in other provinces across Canada, using a corpus-assisted approach, to ascertain to what extent the findings of this study might be parallel to the representation of Syrian refugees in other parts of Canada since regions experienced different interactions with refugee intake (Wallace, 2018). Additionally, given Canada’s two official languages, a cross-linguistic analysis of the refugee coverage between Canada’s anglophone and francophone media would be a valuable research avenue, especially since Quebec – where French is the official language – hosts the second largest population of Syrian refugees in Canada (IRCC, 2020).

These points notwithstanding, the findings of this study have shown the importance of the role of media discourse which builds and promotes certain representations of refugees and the ideologies underlying these representations. It is imperative to note that welcoming Syrian refugees by Canada is not solely a humanitarian gesture but a legal requirement as a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention which calls for protecting refugees and respecting their rights and dignity. It can be argued that the protection of and respect for refugees is not only the duty of the Canadian government, but it also behooves the Canadian media to be more mindful of their influence because media depictions of refugees can sway public opinion and attitude for or against the minorities which, in turn, affect the way refugees are treated in Canadian society (Bauder, 2008; Duffy and Rowden, 2005).

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix 4.

Breakdown of keywords in each theme in TSU.

Categories	Keywords	Frequency	No. of texts	Log-L	Log-R	Total Frequency of keywords	% of theme in corpus
Intake	Trudeau	119	32	788.31	6.46	1595	5.2
	Government	240	55	568.78	2.99
	Sponsored	87	26	558.73	6.28
	Immigration	81	31	491.53	5.86
	25,000	68	27	485.74	6.92
	Resettlement	40	26	408.60	11.49
	Privately	45	20	300.44	6.50
	Trudeau’s	41	20	294.62	6.96
	2016	26	18	260.45	10.87
	McCallum	34	12	254.95	7.26
	2015	20	14	179.33	8.91
	Canadians	51	17	165.77	2.96
	Newcomers	16	11	145.22	5.77
	Resettle	15	13	145.18	10.08
	Welcome	37	22	135.51	4.04
	Families	38	20	118.92	3.43
	Timeline	14	10	109.31	7.56
	Our	79	26	98.78	1.65
	Feds	15	09	93.20	6.11
	Resettled	07	06	90.33	10.92
	Resettling	08	08	86.07	137.10
	10,000	24	14	78.53	3.73
	Immigrants	14	08	76.93	4.53
	Applications	17	11	74.18	4.60
	Liberals	29	16	71.42	3.07
	Armenian	09	04	67.31	6.55
	Target	20	13	63.41	3.65
	Sponsor	14	12	59.20	4.50
	Bring	27	16	59.08	2.54
	Groups	17	11	58.43	2.63
	Private	31	14	52.97	2.42
	Pledge	11	09	51.98	4.89
	Program	38	16	51.76	1.77
	Processed	10	08	51.64	5.24
	Welcoming	09	08	49.68	5.53
	50,000	14	08	48.80	3.90
	Citizenship	11	08	45.46444.22	4.42
	Process	28	15	42.74	2.30
	Bringing	16	12	42.31	3.24
	Officials	33	11	38.94	2.02
	Sponsorship	11	07	36.74	3.95
	Federal	30	18	36.46	1.63
	Sponsors	10	09	36.08	4.03
	Organizations	14	11	35.81	3.02
	Sponsoring	07	06	33.68	5.20
	Settle	10	09	32.59	3.81
	Agencies	10	08	32.38	3.11
	Settled	11	09	32.31	3.47
	Charities	08	06	31.95	4.34
	Safe	15	08	28.75	2.67
	Promise	12	09	28.68	3.01
	Prioritize	04	04		6.95
Integration	Integration	23	12	147.54	6.28	126	0.4
	Integrate	15	12	107.77	6.96
	Our	35	18	98.78	1.65
	English	17	10	74.49	2.69
	Language	28	19	60.61	2.82
	Integrated	08	06	30.85	4.02
Concern	ISIS	15	09	214.91	9.47	205	0.6
	Security	45	24	108.17	3.02
	Screening	16	10	71.96	4.71
	Vetting	07	05	63.12	8.98
	Memo	13	03	60.12	4.81
	Challenges	16	09	55.38	3.88
	Migrants	08	05	52.10	6.36
	Elites	07	03	49.53	6.86
	Dental	10	04	43.20	4.57
	Housing	18	15	39.21	2.83
	Terrorist	13	09	37.89	3.27
	Values	13	10	36.12	3.33
	Border	16	04	34.59	2.81
	Islamic	08	07	29.70	3.75

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Nasim Omidian Sijani is a doctoral student at Carleton University. Her research interests revolve around Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) approaches to the analysis of language use. She graduated from the University of Siena in Italy with an MA in Language and Mind, Linguistics and Cognitive Studies.

References

Agility PR Solutions (2022) Top 10 Canadian Newspapers. Available at: https://www.agilitypr.com/resources/top-media-outlets/top-10-canadian-print-outlets/ (accessed 20 February 2023).

Aswad

(2019) Biased neutrality: The symbolic construction of the Syrian refugee in the New York Times. Critical Studies in Media Communication 36(4): 357–375.

Baker

Gabrielatos

KhosraviNik

, et al. (2008) A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society 19(3): 273–306.

Baker

Gabrielatos

McEnery

(2013) Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baker

McEnery

(2005) A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in UN and newspaper texts. Journal of Language and Politics 4: 197–226.

Bauder

(2008) Immigration debate in Canada: How newspapers reported, 1996–2004. Journal of International Migration and Integration 9(3): 289–310.

Bell

(2017) Syrian refugees ‘relatively low security threat’; declassified contradicts Trump team’s imperatives. The National Post, February 10.

Bradimore

Bauder

(2012) Mystery ships and risky boat people: Tamil refugee migration in the newsprint media. Canadian Journal of Communication 36(4): 637–661.

Brezina

(2018). Statistics in Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Chouliaraki

Zaborowski

(2017) Voice and community in the 2015 refugee crisis: A content analysis of news coverage in eight European countries. International Communication Gazette 79(6-7): 613–635.

11.

Duffy

Rowden

(2005) You Are What You Read? London: MORI.

12.

Efe

(2019) A corpus-driven analysis of representations of Syrian asylum seekers in the Turkish press 2011–2016. Discourse & Communication 13(1): 48–67.

13.

Esses

Medianu

Lawson

(2013) Uncertainty, threat, and the role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees. Journal of Social Issues 69(3): 518–536.

14.

Fairclough

(1989) Language and Power, 2nd edn. London: Longman.

15.

Fairclough

Wodak

(1997) Critical discourse analysis: An overview. In: Van Dijk

(ed.) Discourse and Interaction. London: SAGE, pp.258–284.

16.

Gabrielatos

Baker

(2008) Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 1996– 2005. Journal of English Linguistics 36(5): 5–38.

17.

Gattinara

Zamponi

(2020) Politicizing support and opposition to migration in France: The EU asylum policy crisis and direct social activism. Journal of European Integration 42(5): 625–641.

18.

Greenberg

(2000) Opinion discourse and Canadian newspapers: The case of the Chinese “boat people. Canadian Journal of Communication 25(4): 517–537.

19.

Halliday

MAK

(1985) Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

20.

Hardy

Phillips

(1999) No joking matter: Discursive struggle in the Canadian refugee system. Organization Studies 20(1): 1–24.

21.

Henry

Tator

(2002) Discourses of Domination: Racial Bias in the Canadian English-Language Press. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

22.

Hier

Greenberg

(2002) Constructing a discursive crisis: Risk, problematization and illegal Chinese in Canada. Ethnic and Racial Studies 25(3): 490–513.

23.

Holzberg

Kolbe

Zaborowski

(2018) Figures of crisis: The delineation of (un)deserving refugees in the German media. Sociology 52(3): 534–550.

24.

Ibrahim

(2005) The securitization of migration: A racial discourse1. International Migration 43(5): 163–187.

25.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (2020) Syrian Refugees – Monthly IRCC Updates. Available at: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/welcome-syrian-refugees/key-figures.html#popup1 (accessed 10 June 2022).

26.

Johnson

(2013) Language Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

27.

KhosraviNik

(2010) The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers: A critical discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1): 1–28.

28.

Krishnamurti

(2013) Queue-jumpers, terrorists, breeders: Representations of Tamil migrants in Canadian popular media. South Asian Diaspora 5(1): 139–157.

29.

Krzyżanowski

(2018) “We are a small country that has done enormously lot”: The ‘refugee crisis’ and the hybrid discourse of politicizing immigration in Sweden. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16(1-2): 97–117.

30.

Machin

Mayr

(2012) How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE.

31.

Malcolm

(2017) The real legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program. The Toronto Sun, 17 June.

32.

Matheson

(2005) Media Discourses: Analyzing Media Texts. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

33.

McEnery

Wilson

(2001) Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

34.

McKay

Thomas

Warwick Blood

(2011) ‘any one of these boat people could be a terrorist for all we know!’ Media representations and public perceptions of ‘boat people’ arrivals in Australia. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 12(5): 607–626.

35.

Mitchell

Simmons

Matsa

, et al. (2018) Publics globally want unbiased news coverage, but are divided on whether their news media deliver. In: Pew Research Centre. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/01/11/publics-globally-want-unbiased-news-coverage-but-are-divided-on-whether-their-news-media-deliver/ (accessed 10 June 2022).

36.

Mohamed

Bastug

(2021) Syrian refugees in Canada and transculturalism: Relationship between media, integration and identity. Journal of Refugee Studies 34(1): 219–240.

37.

Mustafa

Pilus

(2020) #WelcomeRefugees: A critical discourse analysis of the refugee resettlement initiative in Canadian News. Journal of Language Studies 20(4): 30–54.

38.

Mustafa

Pilus

Mohammad Lotfie

(2021) The representation of Syrian refugees in Canadian Online News Media: A focus on the topos of burdening. Canadian Journal of Communication 46(4): 875–903.

39.

Nagel

(2016) Southern hospitality? Islamophobia and the politicization of refugees in South Carolina during the 2016 election season. Southeastern Geographer 56(3): 283–290.

40.

Örnebring

Jönsson

(2004) Tabloid journalism and the public sphere: A historical perspective on tabloid journalism. Journalism Studies 5(3): 283–295.

41.

Parker

(2015) ‘Unwanted invaders’: The representation of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and Australian print media. eSharp 23: 1–21.

42.

Pickering

(2001) Common sense and original deviancy: News discourses and asylum seekers in Australia. Journal of Refugee Studies 14(2): 169–186.

43.

Reisigl

Wodak

(2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.

44.

Ricento

(2021) Refugees in Canada: On the Loss of Social and Cultural Capital. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

45.

Salahshour

(2016) Liquid metaphors as positive evaluations: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the representation of migrants in a daily New Zealand newspaper. Discourse Context & Media 13: 73–81.

46.

Steimel

(2010) Refugees as people: The portrayal of refugees in American human interest stories. Journal of Refugee Studies 23(2): 219–237.

47.

Taylor

(2014) Investigating the representation of migrants in the UK and Italian press: A cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse analysis. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 19(3): 368–400.

48.

Taylor

(2022) The affordances of metaphor for diachronic corpora & discourse analysis: Water metaphors and migration. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27: 451–479.

49.

Tyyskä

Blower

DeBoer

, et al. (2017) Syrian Refugee Crisis in Canadian Media. Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement. Toronto: Ryerson University.

50.

Van Dijk

(1987) Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. London: SAGE.

51.

Van Dijk

(1988) News as Discourse. Hillsdale: Erlbaum Associates.

52.

Van Dijk

(1991) Racism and the Press; Critical Studies in Racism and Migration. London and New York: Routledge.

53.

van Dijk

(1992) Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse & Society 3(1): 87–118.

54.

Van Leeuwen

(2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.

55.

Wallace

(2018) Contextualizing the crisis: The framing of Syrian refugees in Canadian print media. Canadian Journal of Political Science 51(2): 207–231.

56.

Wodak

(2001) The discourse-historical approach. In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp.63–94.

57.

Wodak

Matouschek

(1993) We are dealing with people whose origins one can clearly tell just by looking: critical discourse analysis and the study of neo-racism in contemporary Austria. Discourse & Society 4(2): 225–248.

58.

WorldAtlas (2019) The most popular daily newspapers in Canada. Available at: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-popular-daily-newspapers-in-canada.html (accessed 15 July 2022).

A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the representation of Syrian refugees in Canadian newspapers

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Refugees in the news

Data and method

Analysis

Themes related to Syrian refugees

Discursive strategies and linguistic choices used to represent Syrian refugees in each theme

Representation of refugees in terms of intake

Representation of refugees in terms of integration

Representation of refugees in terms of concern

Conclusion

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

Author biography

References