ParlaMint – A Resource for Democracy

The two first met in 2017, during a summer school in the UK, but crossed paths again at the University of Padova, where they both enrolled in the same PhD programme. Del Fante explains: ‘We already had some research interests in common, both in terms of topic and in terms of methods, and we became friends as well. We decided it would be good to work together whenever possible, and we have been doing so ever since.’ (For examples of previous collaborations, see here).

Del Fante has been interested in migration for some time. He sees migration as an age-old phenomenon, a ‘characteristic of humanity’. Del Fante’s PhD focused on the metaphorical representation of migration in the newspaper discourse in the US and Italy. Zorzi recently started working on the topic as part of her current fellowship project on migration discourses. 

‘​​We share the same perspective on migration, and the belief that the way we speak about migrants and migration in general has significant social impact. We feel that this is a very urgent, topical theme, and that we need to pay attention to it.’ Zorzi explains.

The project uses interdisciplinary methods, predominantly corpus-based analysis of the representation of migration and migrants in British and Italian newspapers and parliamentary debates (as found in the ParlaMint dataset). The diachronic analysis compares the discourse in 2015/16, when the so-called European migration crisis took place, with 2020, when COVID-19 first hit the world, with migrants being disproportionately affected by the pandemic. 

The aim was to examine whether there was any difference in the representation of migration and migrants between the languages and time points, by focusing on the occurrences of single words (for example, ‘migrante’/’migrant’, ‘immigrazione’/’immigration’) and common metaphors. 

It is noteworthy that these similarities are present despite the fact that the political and historical backgrounds of the two countries differed during that period: the Italian government was headed by Matteo Renzi and included ministers with various political orientations, mainly from the left-wing Democratic Party, while the UK was governed by David Cameron of the Conservative Party, and had recently voted to leave the EU. That said, specific events in each country (e.g. Brexit or national elections) were not considered in this first analysis.

Moreover, in both time periods, the migrant categories appearing in the UK included ‘workers’, ‘refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’, whilst in Italy the category of ‘worker’ is not used as a way to categorise migrants. This might point to differences in the public perception of migrants in the two national contexts, although further analysis is needed to confirm that.

The analysis also shows some shifts over time. For example, the use of the water metaphor seems to have decreased from 2015/16 to 2020. The use of ‘crisis’ was strongly associated with migrants, especially in the news, but also in parliamentary discourse, in 2015/16, but not in 2020. It is possible that the use of terms such as ‘influx’ and ‘crisis’ could have shifted towards the representation of COVID-19, but more analysis is needed to explore this in more detail.

The project reveals that, in 2020, public attention massively shifted towards the pandemic. However, although migration was talked about less in 2020, the core representation of migrants and migration did not change much between the two time periods in either language. 

 

Although such analyses are unlikely to have a direct impact on policy-making, or on public perception, creating awareness of the way in which such systematic reference use affects the public perception of migration is a first step towards understanding how political choices are made. For example, terms such as ‘migration’  might also strategically be used in politics in other contexts, such as the pandemic and associated proposed measures. While this theory requires some more qualitative  exploration that goes beyond single words, uncovering such underlying dynamics could also contextualise how political decisions are justified and legitimised by the public. Seen in a broader context, Zorzi argues that ‘this [analysis] is a tool for democracy. It could be useful and have an impact, if it is disseminated appropriately.’

Del Fante first learned about ParlaMint – a ‘really precious resource’–  in 2020, when he was working with CLARIN-IT and developed a tutorial for the use of the dataset. The ParlaMint dataset allowed the team to download the raw text and subsequently work with lexical analysis software. They particularly value the resource because it is open access and empowers scientific freedom, since the raw data are interoperable with various different tools. So, depending on the research question at hand, the resources can  be approached in different ways. In collaboration with Prof Salvador Ros in Madrid, Del Fante has also been working on an AI model to detect and interpret metaphors, for which he annotated the ParlaMint dataset for migration-related metaphors to train the model. ParlaMint is also a valuable resource for many other scientific fields, and Del Fante has recommended it to colleagues from political science, who are studying the monetary changes in the European Union.

In due time, they hope to publish their work after peer review and would like to see it shared with the wider public through outreach activities, for example in higher education institutions or via media channels.

Taking additional languages into account would also be an interesting extension of the project, though no specific plans have been made yet. The big dream, Zorzi explains, would be to ‘create a kind of big, massive task force made up of different countries from the European area, and beyond.’

ParlaMint, which they both plan to use again, would certainly allow for more languages  to be studied, and its association with the CLARIN network could get more researchers interested in the topic. In Del Fante’s view, CLARIN is ‘essential for the future of research. Resources on open access are fundamental for the future of our life. Knowledge is the sharing of knowledge. Open access resources are too important now.’