Особености на парламентарния дискурс: какви данни дава езикът за социалното явление?

Abstract

The article presents the results of a corpus study of parliamentary discourse in English and Bulgarian. The key word lists in corpora from the Bulgarian and British Parliaments are compared in terms of the conceptual categories they present. The analysis reveals which parliamentary specifics can be established from observing linguistic features. The corpora compiled for the purposes of the study are from the parliamentary Hansards of the British and Bulgarian Parliaments for January 2009, of about 3 million running words each. The Word Smith is used for deriving key word lists, collocates and 3-7-word clusters. The key- word lists in both corpora are classified into semantic classes and the comparison establishes what features of the social practice stand behind the keyness. The conclusions reveal differences between parliamentary practices in both Parliaments, direct towards tendencies signalled by the keyness of specific entries and suggest methodological issues connected with the application of critical discourse analysis combined with corpus linguistics.