Semantic Prosody of 'Vigilante' and 'Vigilantism' in Ghana's Print Media: A Corpus-Based Inquiry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26437/0er33f32Keywords:
Corpus linguistics, newspaper, semantic prosody, vigilante, vigilantismAbstract
Purpose: Socio-political studies on vigilantism have highlighted the negative acts that vigilantes of political parties often engage in, especially during elections in Ghana. However, linguistic studies examining this negative view of vigilantes and vigilantism are lacking in the Ghanaian context. The present study, therefore, explored the semantic prosody of the words "vigilante" and “vigilantism” from a corpus-based perspective.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The study utilised a corpus of newspaper articles on vigilante activity and vigilantism, sourced from the Daily Graphic and the Daily Guide, covering the period from 2016 to 2019. The corpus analysis software AntConc 3.5.7 (Windows, 2018) was employed to display the collocates of the two words. Subsequently, the concordance lines of these collocates were examined to determine their semantic prosodies.
Findings: The results indicated that both “vigilante” and “vigilantism” possess negative semantic prosody, primarily due to the negative context in which their collocates are used.
Research Limitation: The study was limited to newspaper articles from only two newspapers within a specific timeframe (2016 - 2019), which may not capture the full range of linguistic representations of vigilantism in the Ghanaian media or other discourse domains.
Practical Implication: The findings suggest the need for further linguistic studies on “vigilante” and “vigilantism”, employing other linguistic methods such as Critical Discourse Analysis and Transitivity analysis, to deepen understanding of their representation in discourse.
Social Implication: The present study has demonstrated that language, whether deliberate or not, reflects socio-political sentiments regarding the state of political vigilantism in Ghana.
Originality/Value: This study addresses a gap in linguistic research on “vigilante” and “vigilantism” in Ghana, offering original insights into the semantic prosody of these terms and highlighting the importance of linguistic perspectives for understanding socio-political phenomena.
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