Title:

Corpus-Based Analysis of

the Representation of Thai Government

in Bangkok Post and the Nation:

Critical Discourse Analysis

Mr.Warawit Natephra

ABSTRACT

Thai political news expressed in English newspapers in Thailand can reveal political situations of Thailand in a certain time. Different newspapers may have different perspectives or focus on different political issues, possibly revealing bias.

In this paper, I aim to reveal or unpack the meaning of each word which refers to Thai government in politic news, and I also aim to expose the different linguistic features in English newspapers.

Research Questions:

1. What is Thai Government’s image in news from year 2009?

2. What are linguistic choice difference that two leading newspapers use in their writing to present Thai government’s image?

Methods of the Study:

• The data will be collected from 2 English leading newspapers (Bangkok Post and The Nation) 2009.

• Corpus program helps managing information: AntConc is used for this study. It is helpful program to find keyword in texts and other interesting result.

• Compare the information from 2 newspapers by AntConc. This means each newspaper will be defined as references text and the other will be used as corpus files.

• Key Word Analysis is used to find frequency which expose the significant meaning of key words.

• The analytical approach is critical discourse analysis (CDA): appraisal theory and social actors.

Range of the Study:

• Selected newspapers (Bangkok Post and the Nation) are used in this study.

• Use only political news.

• The keyword of this study are all words which refers to the Thai Government.

The expected findings:

• To understand Thai government image in newspapers: power and negative/positive representation

• To understand the difference of linguistic features while Thai government was mentioned in political news from these newspapers.

Expected Benefit:

• To be model of study English newspaper in Thailand when see the words which refer Thai Government’s image. There are benefits both application and implication

• Application: use the point of CDA with association from corpus-based analysis.

• Implication: teacher can use newspapers to teach for building critical mind.