To understand the specifics of individual key terms in the Internet media, we made use of Antconc as a tool to compile a table for each term. AntConc elaborates concordances, exhibits the occurrences of a particular word in our selected data. In addition, it also shows the sentence where the word appears in each case, and links the sentences to the text where they appear. An overall collocation analysis was performed for 5 keywords with the window span limited to 30 characters on the either side of the keyword. In this process, the nearest content words within the same sentence are selected as collocations. The result of the collocates help refine the quantitative analysis of the key term of the Internet media and get insights with regard to ideology. In the
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findings discussed below, we first present the results in general distribution and then proceed to a discussion of the collates of tongzhi, tongxinglian 同性戀 ‘homosexuals’
and tonghun 同婚’ ‘same-sex marriage’, nu tongzhi 女同志 ‘lesbisan’, nan tongzhi 男 同志 ’gay’ respectively. However, the keywords nan tongzhi and nu tongzhi only yielded collocates that only occur once or twice. In this respect, the obtained results cannot serve as representative collocates, and therefore we decided not to discuss collocates for nan tongzhi and nu tongzhi in this section but discuss their textual analysis in section 4.3.
4.1.1 The collocates of tongzhi
The most frequent collates of tongzhi, up to the most frequent 10, identified with the use of AntConc, are shown in Table 4.1. The investigation started with an examination of a set of words co-occurring with tongzhi within a span of 30 characters on either side of it in one sentence. We would further focus specifically on content words, and this decision was motivated by the need to eliminate the less telling function words such as zai 在’at’, shi 是 ‘is’. Ten high frequency collocates for tongzhi are identified in table 4.1.
Table 4.1
The collocates of tongzhi (top 10 content words)
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We can see that, among the top 10 significant collocates of tongzhi, most of them are related to events about homosexuality, particularly related to political and legal movements such as youxing 遊行 ’parade’, hunyin 婚姻 ’marriage’, huodong 活 動 ’activity’, zhuanfa 專法 ‘specific law’, rexian 熱線 ’hotline’, quanyi 權益 ’right’.
These collates also include verbs in news reporting like verbs of opposing voices such as fandui 反對 ’oppose’ and verbs of supporting voices such as zhichi 支持 and ting 挺, meaning support. Collocates are also found referring to countries such as China and
Taiwan. As in Huashan Zhou (1995)’s tongzhi theory, he claims that the study of sexuality and sexuality based social movements in China have made great contribution
10 The number of times the word collocates with the search term
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to the popularization of tongzhi in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Similarly, in Sang’s (1999) study of the relationship between activism and the women’s movement in Taiwan, she suggests that tongzhi refer to people with same-sex desire and elements of choice and political activism and sexual identity.
4.1.2 The collocates of tongxinglian
The most frequent collocates of tongxinlian up to most frequent 10 are identified in table 4.2. zhe 者 ‘a person’ is especially high on the list. This result conforms with
Wong’s (2005) study. Wong believes that the term of reference for sexual minorities has always been an important issue, so Wong explores labels that were commonly used in main stream newspaper, Oriental Daily News. According to Wong, tongxinglian zhe is another common term of reference for lesbian and gay men in ODN news. This is a word which comes from English word homosexual. This label specifies that sexual orientation is a concept imported from the West. Like its English counterpart, tonxinglian zhe is a medical term. In Hong Kong, it is the official term for the public
domain, such as the government ormedical reports, to refer to those with same-sex desire. Other significant categories are verbs of reporting and the events related to homosexuals. Reporting verbs like verbs of supporting voices zhichi 支持 ’support’, jieshou 接受 ’accept’, rentong 認同 ’approve’ and verbs of opposing voices like
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fandui 反對 ’oppose’, chishi 歧視 ’discriminate’. It is notable that the frequency of zhixh 支持’support’ and fandui 反對’oppose’ is the same (25); the frequency of discriminate 歧視 and approve 認同 is the same (16). Events and issues related to tongzhi are like jiaoyu 教育 ’education’, jiating 家庭 ’family’, jiehun 結婚 ’get
married’, quanli 權利 ’right’. These terms appear in articles of political news, and legal
news. In addition, instead of addressing husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend, journalists use banlu 伴侶 ’partner’ as a neutral address term to avoid gender reference.
Table 4.2
The collocates of tongxinglian (top 10 content words)
Rank Collocates Gloss Occurrence
things that are done to others 1 1
4.1.3 The collocates of tonghun
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The most frequent collocates of tonghun are shown in table 4.3. Verbs in reporting voices are high on the list, such as fan 反 ’oppose’, ting 挺 ’stand behind’. Different stakeholders or parties involved in the event are like tuanti 團體 ’group’, yiti 議 題 ’issue’. Collocates related to the legal implication of the bill are also included such as hefa 合法 ‘legalization’, xiufa 修法 ‘amend the law’, an 案 ’case’, rufa 入 法 ’legitimate’, renquan 人權 ’rights’.
Table 4.3
The collocates of tonghun (top 7)
Rank Collocates Gloss Occurrence