Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora

Citation

Wiegand V (2026) Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora. London: Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/exploring-meaning-in-surveillance-discourses-through-corpora-9781350501546/

Abstract
Situated at the intersection of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and surveillance studies, this book focuses on how surveillance is defined, discussed, and negotiated in public discourses. It analyzes different meaning components of the cultural keyword surveillance, which is inherently linked to power relations. The author looks at the representation of surveillance in three different discourse domains – the prime academic journal in surveillance studies (Surveillance & Society), The Times newspaper, and the signage of public spaces. Through these analyses, she develops three principles of meaning-making: meaning evolves with the discourse, meaning emerges via comparison, and meaning takes shape in co-occurrence patterns. Two analysis chapters implement a novel method of ‘co-occurrence Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and surveillance studies, this book focuses on how surveillance is defined, discussed, and negotiated in public discourses. It analyses different meaning components of the cultural keyword of surveillance – inherently linked to power relations – in ongoing debates of public discourses. The author looks at the representation of surveillance in different discourse domains through three different studies – the prime academic journal in surveillance studies (Surveillance & Society), The Times newspaper, and the signage of public spaces. The first two studies illustrate implementations of a novel method of 'co-occurrence comparisons' in diachronic analyses of collocation. The final study integrates cutting-edge research on the multimodal representation of surveillance in public spaces. Adopting the sociolinguistic framework of 'surveillant landscapes' from mediated discourses analysis, this analysis reveals how surveillant practices are signalled in public environments. To capture the textual and material representation of surveillance in a collection of photographs from public spaces in multiple cities across Europe, North America, and Asia, the study presents a novel methodology combining corpus and qualitative methods for the analysis of multimodal data. With its analysis of innovative corpora, Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora contributes new insights into meaning-making patterns of surveillance and makes a strong case for the role of corpus methods in the emerging 'sociolinguistics of surveillance'. With its innovative analyses, Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora offers new insights into meaning-making patterns of surveillance and makes a compelling case for the role of corpus linguistic methods in the emerging ‘sociolinguistics of surveillance’.