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THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY:
CADS APPROACHES TO THE BRITISH MEDIA
Edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan
London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249783
JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ-CRUZ
Universidad de Málaga
fernandezcruz@uma.es
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9007-9976>
The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality is a monograph that emerged
from a symposium at the University of Birmingham in mid-2018, featuring
chapters presented at the event as well as additional commissioned chapters from
other scholars. Edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan, this book
explores how language in the British media portrays and influences economic
inequality. Using a variety of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study (CADS) approaches,
it provides an historicized perspective on the normalization of wealth inequality in
the United Kingdom from the 19th century to the present day. By analyzing print,
radio, and online media, the nine chapters, written by scholars with backgrounds
in Critical Discourse Studies, reveal how the media influences public perception
and contributes to entrenched inequality in modern Britain. The book highlights
the multifaceted nature of economic inequality and its interconnections with
health, gender, and class. In the times where poverty is justified as an individual
choice, and meritocracy and financial self-aid are discursively hegemonic, this book
is an asset for social scientists of diverse fields (e.g., Economy, Sociology,
Journalism, Pol-Sci) to gain a linguistic perspective of this phenomenon.
This volume contributes to social sciences by offering an Applied Linguistics
perspective on the representation of those suffering from inequality. It shows how
an imbalanced structure of power has used negationism and repression as tools to
control and perpetuate itself, all in the name of democracy and liberty. The book’s
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core idea underscores the inescapable nature of inequality, a concept that constantly
evolves with changing historical circumstances and class power balances. These
social interactions lead to new forms of discourse and require innovative strategies
for addressing it. The Introduction, written by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and
Michael Toolan, establishes the overarching theme of the discursive construction
of economic inequality in the UK. It provides a comprehensive foundation for
understanding the book’s focus and methodology. Following the Introduction,
nine chapters analyse specific aspects of economic inequality, examining how it is
represented and perpetuated through language and British media.
The first chapter, written by Nuria Lorenzo-Dus and Sadiq Almaged, applies
CADS techniques on Labour and Conservative annual conferences on poverty and
social exclusion from 1900 to 2014, dividing the data into three periods. Keyword
analyses are conducted to identify relevant terms, followed by manual categorization
of contextualized use of these terms into Poverty and Social Exclusion discourses
within the corpora. Finally, an ideo-textual analysis is performed on concordance
lines containing the most frequent keywords. The findings reveal two dominant
discourses: a financial-centric approach favored by the Conservative Party, and a
more hardship-oriented narrative favored by Labour. Both parties tend to use
abstract words to depict poverty and social exclusion, often using third-person
language to distance decisionmakers from responsibility. Not strikingly, party
leaders tend to use passive forms when depicting ‘the poor’, which reinforces the
aforementioned inescapable nature of economic exclusion.
Chapter 2, by Joe Spencer-Bennet, conducts a critical discourse analysis of
inequality during World War II, drawing from sources in the Ministry of
Information and the Mass-Observation project. Employing a qualitative approach,
the chapter thoroughly examines official texts, particularly focusing on the
synthetic vernacularization of political communication directed at the masses. This
shift in political discourse from abstract and educated to a more vernacular “new
language of leadership” for the masses is explored. The analysis reveals that the
language intended for the ‘masses’ was rife with stereotypes, primarily serving aims
of population control rather than fostering democratization or egalitarianism.
Chapter 3, written by Isabelle van de Bom and Laura L. Paterson, offers a
compelling analysis of the evolution of the ‘welfare state’ concept in the press. To
accomplish this, they meticulously extracted concordances containing this term
from a subcorpus of articles sourced from The Times. They systematically classified
all instances of the key term from 1940 to 2009. Their findings reveal that the
term is not anchored to a consistent core value and that its associated meanings
have fluctuated over time. Notably, the discourse surrounding welfare shifted
ideologically, aligning with neoliberalism and associating welfare with the creation
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of a socially marginalized underclass. This shift intensified following Rupert
Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times. During the 1960s, the welfare state was
largely taken for granted and scarcely mentioned. However, it came under intense
scrutiny during the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the acquisition of the
newspaper by the tycoon. More importantly, this chapter unveils that The Times
has restricted the concept of welfare to the provision of benefits for the less
privileged, omitting core elements such as education or the National Health
System from the discourse on welfare.
In Chapter 4, Michael Toolan undertakes a critical discourse analysis by comparing
the keywords extracted from a corpus of opinion articles sourced from The Times,
spanning two distinct decades: the 1970s and the 2000s. This study’s central focus
is child poverty, and it introduces two contrasting script types: a laissez-faire
approach and an interventionist approach. While the research is undeniably
intriguing, it would greatly benefit from a more explicit exposition of the
methodology employed. During the 1970s, the interventionist approach was
considered desirable, while in the 2000s, the narrative took a contrasting turn.
Discourse surrounding welfare and state-supported assistance became marginalized,
and poverty in the 2000s was predominantly portrayed as a personal issue, with
the state seemingly incapable of providing viable solutions.
Chapter 5, authored by Ilse A. Ras, analyzes how the press portrays elite crimes,
such as ‘corporate fraud’ and ‘modern slavery’. The research examines rhetorical
techniques and neutralization in media coverage, using different time periods
(2004-2007, 2008-2010, and 2011-2014) to construct the Modern Slavery
Corpus from database searches in 22 British newspapers. The study finds that
reporting on these crimes often avoids assigning responsibility to corporate
criminals, instead blaming governments for a perceived failure to regulate
effectively, allowing corporations to evade accountability.
Chapter 6, authored by Jane Mulderring, explores the intricate relationship
between health and inequality, with a specific focus on the analysis of the UK
government’s Change 4 Life program aimed at reducing obesity from its inception
in 2009 to 2019. This chapter seeks to examine the linguistic representation of
target groups within obesity policy, aiming to uncover the linguistic processes that
shape the normative linguistic identity assigned to certain populations.
Furthermore, it endeavors to identify the strategies employed by the government
to engage specific target audiences. To accomplish this, Mulderring’s research
draws upon two primary sources: a corpus of policy documents and a corpus of
advertisements disseminated on television and social media platforms. However,
the chapter does not provide detailed information regarding the size or scope of
these corpora.
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Chapter 7, co-authored by Leslie Jeffries and Brian Walker, undertakes a
comprehensive examination of the evolution of ‘austerity’ in discourse, one of the
Great Recession mantras, instrumentalized in advancing a neoliberal agenda. The
authors meticulously scrutinized the utilization of the key term ‘austerity’ in the
UK Parliamentary context by juxtaposing two time-tagged newspaper corpora
during different stages of the crisis (beginning and end). Over time, the discourse
surrounding austerity has transitioned from a concept associated with war-rationing
across all social classes to the imperative of ‘balancing the books’ discourse —to
justify the reduction of public spending disproportionately impacting the less
affluent and exacerbated inequality. Thus, ‘austerity’ evolved into a hegemonic
term that resists critical scrutiny, often positioned as a necessary evil.
In Chapter 8, Richard Thomas undertakes a commendable task, meticulously
transcribing and analyzing news broadcasts from BBC (publicly owned) and ITV
(a private broadcaster). His analysis spans the years 2007 and 2014. Through a
combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, a consistent use of neoliberal
anti-regulation rhetoric to shield the interests of the affluent is unveiled, which is
particularly outrageous for the publicly-funded BBC, all while demonstrating
reluctance to address the pressing issue of inequality. In his analysis, the author
highlights how these news outlets often employ neoliberal anti-regulation rhetoric
to defend the interests of the super-rich, while consistently using language to mask
their reluctance to address the pressing issue of inequality. Thomas’s paper artfully
strikes a balance between statistical precision and engaging, thought-provoking
arguments, leaving the reader with a plethora of questions that beckon further
exploration.
In Chapter 9, Wolfgang Teubert boldly concludes the book with what may be
considered its most combative episode, asserting that his hermeneutic work is
unequivocally “not a scientific paper”, and indeed, it need not be. The author
challenges the foundational principles of parliamentary systems under the control
of the oligos, the few, who safeguard their interests in the market from the masses
while veiling inequalities under the rhetoric of “individual liberty” as working-class
movements grew stronger in the 19th century. In his analysis, Teubert posits that
true freedom is primarily enjoyed by the wealthy, thereby asserting that they are
the only ones truly capable of exercising their freedoms. To manage the
revolutionary aspirations of the working class and suppress major upheavals, the
narrative framework was strategically shifted overnight from “democracy is evil” to
“we already live in a democracy”. Teubert conducts a hermeneutic analysis of
select texts from political works and the records of British Parliament discussions
on democracy, spanning from 1832 to the present day. While his pessimistic
perspective on a seemingly divided and powerless working class may be contentious,
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it offers a rare opportunity to engage with critical issues in linguistic discourse.
Teubert’s work offers valuable insights into the discourse surrounding the working
class and contemporary discourses of meritocracy and the follies of a social ladder.
Ultimately, he concludes that hegemonic discourse inhibits workers from actively
advocating for equality within the democratic sphere, which would lead to equality
and real democracy for the working-class social majority.
The book closes with an Afterword by Danny Dorling where he reflects on
inequality and an omniscient market economy “where everything is for sale,
everytime, everywhere” (185). You cannot be unlucky but rather you have not
tried hard enough.
While the book undoubtedly offers valuable insights, it is worth noting that there
was room for more visualizations and statistical analyses within its pages. Such
enhancements could further enrich the presentation and interpretation of data,
providing a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Apart from
this, the book provides a highly valuable multidisciplinary bibliography,
encompassing fields like linguistics, discourse studies, political science, sociology,
and cultural studies. Within its pages, readers will discover a treasure trove of
methodologies that are very valuable in their own right for the analysis of other
discourses, but here succeed on the quest of underscoring the profound changes
in discourse over time. Each chapter critically scrutinizes the discursive norms used
by the elites that often obfuscate and marginalize the source of social inequalities.
Encouragingly, this body of work is an antidote for fatalism: it demonstrates that
nothing is irreversible. If discourse could evolve in the past for the worse, it could
also be reshaped (for the better, for the many) in the future.
Received: 18/10/2023
Accepted: 21/09/2024
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.