A Discourse Analysis Approach to Establishing Prevalent Concepts in the Maritime Community

Abstract

The paper analyses prevalent topics found in narratives of the maritime discourse community in the past seven years, from 2016 to 2022. For this purpose, we compiled a corpus of eighty speeches given by the respected Mr. Kitack Lim, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). The texts are found on the official IMO website and were delivered on the occasion of significant maritime events. The analysis section combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The sophisticated language program Wordstat was used to determine frequencies, dominant phrases, collocations and prevalent topics. In addition, critical discourse analysis was used to interpret linguistic facts through the lenses of an actual maritime setting. The results reveal how dynamic changes in the maritime discourse community are reflected in narratives. We note how traditional issues in seafaring have been complemented with new perspectives impacted by globalisation, digitalisation, automatisation, issues of social and human rights which have been raised, women’s empowerment, questions of environmental protection and many more. We conclude that the established concepts cannot be demarcated: they are increasingly interdependent and have the seafarer in their focus. We also point to the possibility of future research in the domain of comparative analysis on a sample of larger corpora that could make use of research articles or academic narratives about the maritime discourse community.