Research Information System
7th International Conference on Narrative & Language Studies, Trabzon, Turkey, 3 - 05 May 2018, pp.24, (Summary Text)
It is old consensus by now that the issue of Syrian refugees in Turkey, in particular, and the refugee problem, in global scale, is one of the biggest problems facing us in 21st century. From the beginning of the century, millions of people had to leave their home countries due to several reasons such as war, starvation, scarcity etc. For instance, the conflict in Syria between the government and various other forces started in the spring of 2011 and as a result of this conflict, millions of Syrian people forced to leave their own country in order to survive and have a better life both their own and their families. By the end of 2014, an estimated 7.6 million people were internally displaced and 3.7 million Syrians had fled the country after the conflict began in order to seek better life conditions, which sometimes caused tragedies like 3- year- old Alan Kurdi and his family (OCHA, 2014, UNHCR, 2015). Following this dramatic event, the world countries started to look refugee problem differently. This paper is an attempt to reveal the extent of tragedy through adopting a corpus based lexicology perspective by analyzing the lexical combinations in the news related to the issue with a specific focus to Alan Kurdi case, which became a symbol of the plight of so many others fleeing conflict and persecution in Syria and elsewhere. Two corpora namely “BEFORE AYLAN” and “AFTER AYLAN” were compiled and the perspective of the media towards the issue was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings revealed that there were changes in the frequencies of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, indicating varying degrees of understanding and tolerance and a more liberal attitude towards the global issue of refugees after the event. Keywords: refugee crisis, Alan Kurdi tragedy, lexicology