Camel in the news: a corpus-based analysis of English language newspapers in Saudi Arabia, Australia and China

The Saudi Arabian Council of Ministers declared 2024 the ‘Year of the Camel’. This inspired us to consider the perception of camels across English speaking newspapers in three countries with strong connections to camels: Saudi Arabia, Australia and China. Our goal is to explore the underlying cultural metaphors that shape the way camels are conceptualized in each social context. Our corpus of 402 newspaper articles yielded 656 references to the word camel. We see markedly more references to camel as livestock or food sources in the Saudi press than in the other settings. The Australian press used a wider range of camel metaphors. Meanwhile, the Chinese press was unique in discussing the ancient Silk Road, linking camel to the modern Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These findings highlight the utility of comparative analysis of news discourse to explore variation in cultural conceptualizations across varieties of Asian Englishes in the Asia-Pacific.