Applying word space models to sociolinguistics 133A totally different picture emerges for the lexical field of religion. Here
suddenly Algemeen Dagblad and Het Parool give the lowest scores be-
tween the two topics. Instead Trouw and NRC Handelsblad display the
highest document-based relatedness. As we mentioned before, these are
two quality newspapers in the Netherlands. In addition, Trouw also has a
specific focus on religious issues. In NRC Handelsblad words referring to
Islam tend to crop up more often in articles that also contain words refer-
ring to religion in general – the stable lexical field. Trouw, by contrast,
scores better on words in the evolving lexical field of religion that also
refer to the more political sphere, like meningsuiting ‘freedom of speech’ or
grondrecht ‘basic right’. Finally, Trouw also shows the highest relatedness
between Islam and the lexical field of culture. This time the results for the
stable and evolving lexical fields perfectly mirror each other. Trouw
emerges as the clear winner twice, with relatedness scores of 3.95 and 4.71.
Taken together, the results in Table 6 point at two poles in the docu-
ment-based relationships of islam, islamitisch and moslim after the Sep-
tember 11 attacks. On the one hand, there are the lexical fields of terrorism
and war. When we compare the five newspapers, it is Algemeen Dagblad in
particular that links up these fields with Islam, by referring to them in the
same article. On the other hand we have the fields of religion and culture.
These fields are connected most with Islam in NRC Handelsblad and
Trouw.
What do these results tell us about the news coverage of the investigated
newspapers? Obviously we should not conclude that Algemeen Dagblad
tends to portray Islam as a source of terrorism, while NRC Handelsblad and
Trouw see it more as a cultural religion. After all, texts that deny the link
between Islam and terrorism would also contribute to a high relatedness
score between the two lexical fields, simply because both topics are
present. The results do tell us something, however, about the different pers-
pectives that the newspapers take. It appears that Algemeen Dagblad focus-
es mostly on the coverage of the news events themselves, while NRC Han-
delsblad and Trouw like to go into the cultural and religious background of
terrorism and Islam. This indeed ties up with the supposed interests of the
newspapers’ target audiences.