Corpus Construction and Keyword Analysis of Texts Produced in the Aftermath of Tokai Village's Nuclear Fuel Plant Accident

Abstract

In 1999, a severe accident happened at a nuclear fuel factory in Tokai Village, 130 km northeast of Tokyo.  The Tokai Village accident is the third most serious accident in the history of nuclear power, after the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.  Following this accident, Tokai village held 16 public briefing meetings.  The meetings were intended to reassure villages of the plants’ safety measures.  This analysis indicates that these meetings provided opportunities for corporate and governmental power to be legitimized.  Based on the minutes from three of the meetings and three types of publications after the accident, a critical discourse analysis was conducted.  The identities of victims and company and village officials are expressed in multiple ways.  Moreover an appraisal analysis involving concordancing and referencing to corpora was conducted using keywords in the Tokai Village Corpus.  This corpus is a compilation of various documents concerning the accident.  In this study, the rationale for the corpus construction and the selection of key words will be described together with the results from the keyword concordancing procedure.  These findings will be interpreted in light of the participants’ narratives.