DISTRESS in English media: integrating cognitive-discursive and computational approaches

Abstract

The study acknowledges that DISTRESS is a complex cognitive, linguistic, and social phenomenon conceptualized in media discourse by polarized lexical instantiations and conceptual metaphors. This paper focuses on discovering the contrual of DISTRESS and its cultural and contextual objectification in the social context of media discourse. The theoretical backbone comprises conceptual metaphor theory, discourse theory, frame semantics and field theories, and linguistic theory of emotions. Cognitive-discursive framework reinforced by the computational approach reveals communicative situations of distress and their contextual specifications governed by specific communicative strategies and tactics. Integration of discursive and computational analyses with the assistance of Voyant Tools, Textanz, and SentiStrength brings topicality and insightful revelations about the fragments as particular contexts of sociocultural knowledge about DISTRESS. Cognitive framework discloses preconceptual characteristics of DISTRESS, its lexicon, and metaphoric conceptualization on various levels of abstration. The frame model of DISTRESS represents knowledge and associations about the emotion and the interplay of sensory and symbolic information. Discursive framework underpinned by a versatile text analytical software tool Textanz 3.1.4 enables to identify the types, ratio, and shared values of participants in communicative situations of distress. Sentiment analysis by a software tool for social web texts SentiStrength 2.3 helps extract the strength of mixed emotions on a dual scale (positive/negative sentiments) that articulates evaluative attitudes towards the particular communicative situation of distress regulated by a particular communicative strategy.