A contrastive analysis of keywords in newspaper articles on “Kyoto Protocol“
Erica Bassi
Presentation by Petr Dluhoš

Outline
•Introduction
•Data corpora
•Semantic fields
•Alarm/disaster meaning
•Environment, gas collocations
•Conclusions
•

Introduction
•Kyoto protocol (1997)
•Two newspapers
–Italian La Repubblica
–American The New York Times
•Contrastive analyses of keywords
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Data
•La Repubblica
–832 texts
–500,000 words
•The New York Times
–657 texts
–650,000 words
•Articles from 1997 – 2006
•Selected manually according to the theme

Reference corpora
•The New York Times portion of the American National Corpus (4148 articles, 3.6 mil. words
•La Reppublica corpus (380 mil. words)
•
•Tools used:
–TreeTagger
–WordSmith Tools 4.0

Extracting keywords
•Positive and negative keywords
•Manually grouped into semantic fields (economics, family, entertainment)

Positive keywords semantic fields



Differences among keywords in one semantic group - negotiation
•Mainly in negotiation, change, effect on the planet
•Negotiation
–NYT - disussing two different positions: talks, debate, negotiators
–LR – reaching an agreement: accords, targets, ratification

semantic group – change
•NYT – privation and deficiency:
–reduction, cut, limits
•LR – also other changes:
–reduction, increase, development
–

semantic group – effect on the planet
•NYT – general effect, indirect :
–warming, greenhouse, pollution
•LR – distaters, direct consequencies:
–hurricane, floods, drought
–

Detailed table



Alarm sub-corpora
•To explain the last divergence
•Articles selected manually
•Reference corpora - whole Kyoto corpora
•NYT - remote, distatnt problems:
–Ice melting, sea rising, birds, bears
•LR – natural calamities:
–Disastre, hurricane, uragane
–

Time evolution of selected words (natural events)
•According to whole Kyoto corpora


Time evolution of selected words
•In the semantic field of “disaster”


Time evolution of selected words
•In the semantic field of “alarm”


Concordance of “environment” and “gas”
•Environment –
–1st positive in LR,
–35th in NYT
•Gas –
–LR – judgement, negative attitude (harmful, toxic, cause, responsible)
–NYT – uncertainity, doubts (contribute, believed, linked, scientists)

Concordance of “gas”



Concordance of “gas” – uncertainity in NYT



Conclusions
•Same semantic fields, different meanings
•USA – negotiations, difficulty of change
•Italy – agreement, awareness of negative consequencies
•Which approach is better?
–USA – unrealistic difficulties, ignoring Kyoto protocol as a solution
–Italy – myth of an easy redemptive solution