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dc.contributor.authorMorrissey, Lochlan
dc.contributor.authorSchalley, Andrea C
dc.date.accessioned2017-12-11T03:05:04Z
dc.date.available2017-12-11T03:05:04Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.identifier.issn0726-8602
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/07268602.2017.1350130
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/350063
dc.description.abstractThe terms refugee, asylum seeker and boat people are of particular prominence in the Australian discourse surrounding immigration policy, and are widely used in day-to-day conversation among Australians. Despite their frequency of use, a lexico-semantic study of the terms has not been carried out to date. This paper fills this gap by proposing a semantic analysis of them. The study is based on a corpus created from online comments to the Australian television programme Go Back To Where You Came From (Season 1, SBS 2011). After introducing the data and analytical framework—object-oriented semantics—we discuss the terms’ lexical semantics. While the discussion of immigration issues is emotionally laden, our results suggest that the default semantics of the terms do not include evaluative components. Rather, speakers tend to evaluate the agreed-upon semantic specifications differently depending on their political views. We show how each term represents a specific node in a network of concepts for translocating individuals, but may in context also be applied to neighbouring nodes that lack a lexicalization. While the terms are seemingly used interchangeably, our analysis instead emphasizes the influence of the underlying conceptual structure and the resulting constrained plasticity of nominal meaning in context.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherRoutledge
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom389
dc.relation.ispartofpageto423
dc.relation.ispartofissue4
dc.relation.ispartofjournalAustralian Journal of Linguistics
dc.relation.ispartofvolume37
dc.subject.fieldofresearchPsychology
dc.subject.fieldofresearchLanguage, communication and culture
dc.subject.fieldofresearchOther language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode52
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode47
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode479999
dc.titleA Lexical Semantics for Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Boat People in Australian English
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.descriptionC1 - Articles
dc.type.codeC - Journal Articles
gro.facultyArts, Education & Law Group, School of Languages and Linguistics
gro.rights.copyright© 2017 Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Australian Journal of Linguistics on 10 Aug 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/07268602.2017.1350130
gro.hasfulltextFull Text
gro.griffith.authorMorrissey, Lochlan T.


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