A corpus-based discourse analysis of security in White House press briefings

White House press briefings are daily meetings between the White House press secretary and the press. As one of the main official channels of communication for the White House, they play a crucial role in the administration communication strategies (Kumar 2007). Security has always been a key concept in political debate (Buzan 2000), particularly after the events of 9/11 and the rising of a new regime of international security (Fairclough 2007). Our analysis of a corpus of press briefings ranging across five presidencies, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, will focus on the lexical item security from a modern diachronic corpus-assisted discourse studies perspective (Partington 2010). The analysis of the collocational profile of security across time will enable us to assess the phraseological evolution of the senses of the term and its conceptualisation in US political debate, from “social security” (during Bill Clinton presidencies) to “homeland security” (especially during the first George W. Bush administration), and up to “national security” (in Obama’s presidential term).