Contesting territory via editorials in different varieties of English

Abstract

This article broadens Schneider's (2018) proposal relating to finding culture in corpora by examining keyness, conceptual frames, and metaphorical signals in newspaper editorials in two varieties of world Englishes: Chinese and American English. These editorials focus on opinion articles and commentaries about territorial issues in the South China Sea during 2013–2015. The results demonstrate that keywords and metaphorical signals are used differently in the newspaper editorials published in these two countries, while the conceptual frames vary by degree but not by type. I discuss these findings in terms of how lexical-conceptual patterns allow for a greater understanding of the culture of argumentation. I argue that these types of focused, small corpora analyses are also useful for examining culture in corpora and suggest that Schneider's (2018) second layer of cultural dimensions should be expanded from indicator terms to include lexical-conceptual patterns found in keyword analysis, conceptual framing, and metaphorical signaling.