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

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality in the UK, Eva M. Gomez-Jimenez (University of Granada, Spain) 1. Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of Labour and Conservative Party Leaders’ Speeches, 1900-2014, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus (Swansea University, UK) and Sadiq Almaged (Thi-Qar University, Iraq) 2. Inequality and ‘The Language of Leadership’ in World War II, Joe Bennett (University of Birmingham, UK) 3. Revisiting the Welfare State Through the Decades: Investigating the Discursive Construction of the Welfare State in The Times from 1940-2009, Isabelle van der Bom (Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany) and Laura Paterson (Open University, UK) 4. What Can Be Done about Child Poverty? What The Times Said Then and What It Says Now, Michael Toolan (University of Birmingham, UK) 5. Inequality, Accountability and Responsibility in UK Press Reporting on Corporate Fraud (2004-2014) and Modern Slavery (2000-2016), Ilse Ras (Leeds University, UK) 6. Health Inequality and the Representation of ‘Risky’ Working Class Identities in Obesity Policy, Jane Mulderrig (University of Sheffield, UK) 7. We Are NOT All in This Together: A Corpus Assisted Critical Stylistics Analysis of Austerity in Print News Media 2009-2010 and 2016-2017, Brian Walker and Lesley Jeffries (University of Huddersfield, UK) 8. More Inequality, but Less Coverage: How and Why TV News Avoided ‘The Great Debate’ Either Side of the Financial Crisis 2008-2014, Richard Thomas (University of Swansea, UK) 9. The Democracy We Live in: Can There Be Democracy without Equality?, Wolfgang Teubert (University of Birmingham, UK) Afterword, Danny Dorling (University of Oxford, UK) Index

About the Author :
Eva M. Gomez-Jimenez is Lecturer of English Language at the University of Granada, Spain. Michael Toolan is Professor of English Language at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Review :
[T]his informative and insightful volume is an up-to-date contribution to the existing literature in CADS and economic inequality, with both methodological significance and wider socio-political impact ... On the other hand, by providing critical analysis of authentic discourse on a range of topics relating to inequality, this timely edited volume showcases the power of linguistic tools for investigating how mediated media discourse has influenced and shaped public perception of inequality. As a reader, I found this volume to be a fascinating and insightful collection of research papers. The issues discussed are both timely and pressing, the areas in which inequality are researched are varied, and the research is methodologically rich. This is a powerful publication which I hope will be read by a large audience. A brilliant collection focusing on ways in which social inequality is consistently normalized through language. Engaging throughout, this book presents a highly disturbing picture of inequality and poverty in our supposedly developed society, while at the same time encouraging us to think about how we might change things for the better. This fascinating and insightful collection addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time – the discursive construction of inequality. It does so with all the rigour that corpus linguistic methods afford. With a range of techniques exploited to investigate various sites of inequality, the book provides a comprehensive overview of how corpus-assisted discourse studies can address issues of class, poverty, social mobility and austerity. Timely, powerful and methodologically rich, this is an essential read for scholars in corpus assisted discourse studies and critical discourse studies. This exciting collection focuses on crucially important current-day economic inequalities at all levels of the social spectrum. Authors use Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis on the British mass media, to critically evaluate the political, social and interpersonal impact of economic exclusion: child poverty, unemployment, corporate fraud, propaganda policies and modern slavery. Cumulatively, the chapters present disturbing and insightful analyses followed by eloquent proposals for social change.