Corruption is a big issue: A corpus-assisted study of the discursive construction of corruption in Ghanaian parliamentary discourse

Abstract

The paper examines the discursive construction of corruption by Ghanaian parliamentarians. It uses as dataset a 1.9 million-word corpus of Hansards of debates and committee reports between 2005 and 2016. It draws on the frame theory and employs a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) approach to explore the languageof parliamentarians (MPs) in order to investigate how Ghanaian parliamentarians frame corruption. The paper attempts to answer the question: how do Ghanaian parliamentarians construct the subject of corruption in their debates and interactions? The paper fi nds thatMPs discursively construct corruption as a huge systematic social canker that hinders socio-politico-economic development of Ghana. This suggests that stronger measures andmore formidable parliamentary commitment are needed to fi ght corruption. The paper hasimplications for parliamentarians’ fi ght against corruption in Ghana.