THE STUDY OF TERROR, TERRORISE, TERRORISM, TERRORIST IN TWO NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Michael Chimaobi Ochu
Thapelo J Otlogetswe, Prof. University of Botswana

Keywords: Mutual Information (MI), concordance, terrorism, collocation, corpus, collocate

Abstract

This article studies words which cluster around or are found in the company of terror, terrorise, terrorism, and terrorists in two Nigerian online newspapers retrieved around the Nigerian elections of 2011. The aim is to get a better understanding of the term terrorism by studying its collocates as well as the collocates of its related terms terror, terrorise and terrorist. The study does not examine the political or ideological motives, the causes or goals of terrorism. Instead, it appeals to concordance analysis as well as Mutual Information (MI) measures as primary approaches of word association analysis. The results of the study
reveal that words such as kidnapping, armed robbery, assassination, oppression, killing, and heinous crimes are found in close proximity with terrorism.

Keywords: Mutual Information (MI), concordance, terrorism, collocation, corpus, collocate.

Published

2018-09-12

Issue

Vol 30 (2018)

Section

Articles