The Representation of the Capital of Kazakhstan in Central Asia Online News Coverage: a Corpus-Assisted Analysis
The Representation of the Capital of Kazakhstan in Central Asia Online News Coverage: a Corpus-Assisted Analysis

Summary/Abstract: Central Asia (CA) is a region spanning five countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan,Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union. Recently,the biggest CA country – Kazakhstan – spurs a growing interest in the media due to its rapiddevelopment and the emerging role as the key player in Central Asia economy, politics andculture. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the capital of Kazakhstan (and the countryper se), is represented in online news coverage in a selection of newspapers published inKyrgyztan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The theoretical and methodological framework ofthe investigation hinges on the assumptions of the Framing Theory used in media studieson the one hand, and follows a corpus-assisted discourse analysis widely used in linguisticinquiries on the other. The data come from a monitor JSJ corpus, from which virtual corporaillustrating the news published by the above-mentioned countries were teased out. Thecorpus-based tools used in the quantitative study involve: the analysis of collocations,keywords and frequencies, as well as sentiment analysis. The examination of framingillustrates a qualitative investigation. The results of the study demonstrate that Kazakhstanis represented in online CA news coverage in highly positive terms, as a powerful leader ofthe whole Central Asia region (in terms of economy, politics and culture).

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