Health and illness as drivers of risk language in the news media – a case study of The Times

Figures & data

Figure 1. Risk words and ‘at risk’-constructs in The Times, decades 1780s to 2000s

Table 1. The risks – collocates of ‘at *** risk of/from’ the 1950s to 2000s

1950s*	1960s*	1970s*	1980s**	1990s***	2000s***
War	War	Battering	Disease	Disease	Flooding
Conflict	Disaster	Injury	Aids	Cancer	Disease
Loss		Pregnancy	Infection	Heart	Heart
Disaster		Disease	Abuse	Infection	Cancer
Inflation		Inflation	Cancer	Starvation	Harm
		Violence	Starvation	Death	Attack
		Heart	Heart	BSE	Abuse
			Extinction	Flooding	Diabetes
			Injury	Extinction	Extinction
			Death	Attack	Infection

Minimum collocation frequency: * = 3, ** = 5, and *** = 10; Collocates sorted by LL.

Source: Zinn, 2020, 75.

Table 2. Objects ‘at risk’, noun collocates in The Times (London), 1900 to 2009

1900s	1910s	1920s	1930s	1940s	1950s	1960s	1970s	1980s	1990s	2000s
Freight	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Capital	Sums	Jobs	Jobs	Jobs	Jobs
Amount	Value	Sums	Sum	Values	Population	Population	Children	Lives	Lives	Lives
Cargo	Amounts	Sum	Population	Amounts	Values	Lives	Lives	Children	Children	Children
Amounts	Property		Sums		Sums	Money	People	People	Patients	Patients
Value	Sums		Amounts		Amount	Life	Patients	Patients	Buildings	People
Property	Freight		Value			People	Workers	Babies	People	Home
Interests	Capital		Property			Amount	Child	Women	Safety	Health
						Capital	Babies	Safety	Women	Buildings
						Women	Future	Child	Life	Safety
						Mothers	Life	Health	Health	Homes

Source: Zinn, 2020: 118, 238.

Figure 2. Occurrence of ‘put at risk’-constructs per million words in The Times 1950–2009

Zinn, J. O. (2020). The UK ‘at risk’. A corpus approach to historical social change. Palgrave Macmillan.

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