The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality: CADS Approaches to the British Media (Corpus and Discourse)

"This book uses a range of different real text samples to explore how wealth inequality has been portrayed in the British media in the decades between the Second World War and the present day. Using a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies framework, chapters present an historical overview to reveal how mass media discourse has helped make increased wealth inequality look perfectly normal. Print, radio and online media sources are interrogated by a combined methodology drawing from critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and corpus linguistics in order to examine the influence of media on economic policies and its role in making Britain a less egalitarian society. Covering topics such as Second World War propaganda, the 'Change4Life' anti-obesity campaign, the Football Lads Alliance (FLA) Twitter movement and UK General Elections, The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality will be of value to any linguist interested in economic inequality and mass media"-- Provided by publisher Cover Half title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality in the UK 1 Poverty and social exclusion in Britain: A corpus-assisted discourse study of Labour and Conservative Party leaders’ speeches,1900–2014 2 Inequality and ‘the language of leadership’ in the Second World War 3 Revisiting the welfare state through the decades: Investigating the discursive construction of the welfare state in the Times from 1940 to 2009 4 What can be done about child poverty? What the Times said then and what it says now 5 Inequality, accountability and responsibility in UK Press reporting on corporate fraud (2004–14) and modern slavery (2000–16) 6 Health inequality and the representation of ‘risky’ working-class identities in obesity policy 7 We are NOT all in this together: A corpus-assisted critical stylistics analysis of Austerity in Print News Media 2009–10 and 2016–17 8 More inequality, but less coverage: How and why TV news avoided ‘The Great Debate’ either side of the financial crisis 2008–14 9 The democracy we live in: Can there be democracy without equality? Afterword References Index This book analyses diverse public discourses to investigate how wealth inequality has been portrayed in the British media from the time of the Second World War to the present day. Using a variety of corpus-assisted methods of discourse analysis, chapters present an historicized perspective on how the mass media have helped to make sharply increased wealth inequality seem perfectly normal. Print, radio and online media sources are interrogated using methodologies grounded in critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and corpus linguistics in order to examine the influence of the media on the British electorate, who have passively consented to the emergence of an even less egalitarian Britain. Covering topics such as Second World War propaganda, the 'Change4Life' anti-obesity campaign and newspaper, parliamentary and TV news programme attitudes to poverty and austerity, this book will be of value to all those interested in the mass media's contribution to the entrenched inequality in modern Britain.