Russia and Ukraine through the Eyes of ParlaMint 4.0: A Collocational CADS Profile of Spanish and British Parliamentary Discourses
Proceedings of the IV Workshop on Creating, Analysing, and Increasing Accessibility of Parliamentary Corpora (ParlaCLARIN) @ LREC-COLING 2024
Abstract
This article resorts to mixed methods to examine British and Spanish parliamentary discourse. The quantitative corpus-assisted (lexical priming) theory and data are complemented by the qualitative discourse historical approach. Two CLARIN ParlaMint corpora – ParlamMint-GB and ParlaMint-ES – are queried in the analysis, which focuses on English (“Rusia” and “Ukraine”) and Spanish (“Rusia” and “Ucrania”) nodes and collocations. In sum, the analysis sketches a brief profile of each corpus. The British House of Commons is more homogenous, strongly associating “Russia” and “Ukraine” with their participation in the war. Furthermore, this chamber shows a greater interest in “Russia. The Spanish Congreso de los Diputados indicates greater quantitative differences (heterogeneity). Here, “Russia” clearly transcends its role as a military contender and is also portrayed as an economic competitor for the West. Unlike in Britain, the Spanish lower house shows more mentions of “Ucrania”, which is assigned just one role – as an invasion victim. In conclusion, the productivity of corpus-assisted mixed methods is confirmed along with the precious value of the ParlaMint constellation.