The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality: CADS Approaches to the British Media

Description

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.

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.

[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. * International Journal of Communication * 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. * Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies * 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. * David Peplow, Senior Lecturer in English Language, Sheffield Hallam University, UK * 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. * Christopher Hart, Professor of Linguistics, Lancaster University, UK * 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. * Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, Professor of Critical Discourse Analysis, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and Senior Research Fellow, University of Birmingham, UK *