by Angela Zottola (Author)
Winner of the PROSE Award (2022) for Language & Linguistics
For many people, newspapers are a key source of information on many topics, including issues related to gender and sexuality. Applying a broad range of corpus linguistic methods, Transgender Identities in the Press critically explores the linguistic cues and patterns used by the print media in their representation of trans people.
Through close analysis of a corpus of articles collected from English-language newspapers from the UK and Canada, Angela Zottola focuses on the semantic categories of representation associated with transgender identities. Exploring a set of key terms, this book examines the semantic prosody and the language choices that each term is invested with, using Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate how the way the press represents this topic influences readers and their understanding of the major debates.
Using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, Transgender Identities in the Press casts light on the complex picture of press language during a period of social change and increasing awareness. Highlighting both efforts to represent this community in an inclusive and non-discriminatory way and areas where there is need for improvement, this book illustrates a variety of issues from a critical and social perspective.
Author Biography
Angela Zottola is Researcher in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Turin, Italy. She received her PhD in Mind, Gender & Language: Language, Linguistics and ESP from the University of Naples Federico II. Her research interests include (Critical) Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Queer Linguistics and Ecolinguistics applied to the investigation of the media, including newspapers and social media platforms. She is interested in investigating the representation of identities in different contexts.