Texts and Practices Revisited: Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis 1032225122, 9781032225128

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introduction
The Development of the Area
The Structure of the Book
Fowler and Kress: Critical Discourse Analysis
Norman Fairclough: Technologization of Discourse
Jay Lemke: Transmedia Identities: Critical Analysis and New Media
Theo Van Leeuwen: Performance and Politics
Ruth Wodak: Euphemizing Exclusion and the Racialization of Space
Malcolm Coulthard: The Official Version
Teun Van Dijk: Manifestos as Social Movement Discourse
Luisa Martín Rojo: The Anti-Establishment Discourses of the Radical Right in Spain: On ‘Freedom’ and Libertarianism During the Pandemic
Phil Graham: Negative Discourse Analysis, Narrative, and Marketing in Post-Literate Culture
David Machin: Analysing Discourses in Infographics
Germán Canale: CDA as Local Praxis: Educational Media and Anti-Gender/sexuality Discourse in News Reports in Uruguay
Rodrigo Borba: Disgusting Politics: Circuits of Affects and the Making of Bolsonaro
Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard: Ageism, Sexism, and Semiotic Representation
Mary Talbot: Multimodal Biography of a Revolutionary Feminist
Final Note
References
Chapter 2 Critical Linguistics
Introduction
Critical Analysis
The Grammar of Transitivity
The Grammar of Modality
Transformations
Classification
Coherence, Order and Unity
Research Task
Notes
Reference
Chapter 3 Technologization of Discourse
Introduction
Characteristics of Discourse Technologization
Technologization of Discourse and Wider Processes of Change
Technologization of Discourse and Changing ‘Workplace Culture’
Impact On Discoursal Practices
Further Changes in Universities
Two Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 4 Transmedia Identities: Critical Analysis and New Media
Critical Discourse Analysis: From Print Texts to Multimedia Franchises
Models, Identifications and Identity
Transmedia Immersion ‘24/7’
Games and Globalization
Dilemmas and Opportunities
Some Strategies for Research
How to Do It?
Research Tasks
References
Chapter 5 Performance and Politics
Introduction
The Representation of Performance
Performer- Vs. Performance-Oriented Representations
Labelling and Characterizing
Characterizing and Labelling Performances
Implicit and Explicit Performance Orientations
Interpreting
Performing Populisms
The Ordinary Bloke
The Family Man
The Commander
Conclusion
Research Questions
Notes
References
Chapter 6 Walls, Boundaries, and Borders: Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Racialization of Space
Introduction: Some Functions of Walls
Walls, Ghettos, and Borders: Inclusion and Exclusion
Moralization, Mediatization, and Securitization
Walls and Segregated Spaces
Legitimizing Exclusion: Discourse, Argumentation, and Legitimation
Debating the Building of Walls
Conclusions
Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 7 The Official Version
Introduction
On Collecting Verbal Evidence
An Illustration From a Problematic Interview That Was Not Audio-Recorded
Ways of Improving the Collection of Verbal Evidence By Means of Police Interviewing
Recommendation 2: Silence Should Be a Right and a Right Clearly Communicated Before Any Questioning Begins and Not Forfeitable Unintentionally.
Recommendation: 4: All Significant Interviews With Non-Native Suspects Must Be Interpreted.
On Transcribing Recorded Evidence
Concluding Observations
Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 8 Manifestos as Social Movement Discourse
Introduction
Discourse Analysis of Social Movements
Studies of Manifestos
Theoretical Framework
Contexts of Manifestos
Participants
The Socio-Political Context
The Discourse Structures and Strategies of Manifestos
Social Cognition
Personal Or Group Cognition
Discourse Structures
The Stop Mare Mortum Manifesto in Spain
Stop Mare Mortum
The Manifesto of the First Continental Summit of Indigenous Women Puno, Peru May 27–28, 2009
Conclusions
Research Tasks
References
Chapter 9 The Anti-Establishment Discourses of the Radical Right in Spain: On ‘Freedom’ and Libertarianism During the Pandemic
Introduction
How to Regenerate Political Discourse to Win Power
How Does the Radical Right Build an Anti-Establishment and Anti-Politician Discourse to Take Over the Political Scene
Polarization, ‘Mutual Minorityhood’, and Antagonism: Anti-Correction, Anti-Progressivism, and Anti-Establishment
A Counterhegemonic Reframing
Freedom Or Privilege?
A Conservative Neoliberal Political Rationality: Paleolibertarianism
Concluding Remarks: Activism in Research
Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 10 Negative Discourse Analysis, Narrative, and Marketing in Post-Literate Culture
Introduction
Critique and the Status Quo
NDA and Problems of Purity
Links Between the Negative and Attitudinal Meaning
Post-literate Culture, Narrative Syntax, and Marketing Discourse
Politics in Targeted Societies: Wedge Issues and Discourse-Industrial Sectors
Revenge Attack Fear as Suburbs Gripped By Terror
Selling the Social Soul
Conclusion
Research Tasks
Note
References
Chapter 11 Analyzing Discourses in Infographics
Introduction
Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodality, and Analysing Infographics
A Tool Kit for Analysing Infographics
Using a Case Study: Sustainability as a Buzzword
Analyzing Infographics
Building Block Compositions
Lists and Tables
Center-margin Compositions
Cycle Compositions
Left-right Compositions
Pathway Compositions
Segmentation Compositions
Network Compositions
Conclusion
Research Tasks
References
Chapter 12 CDA as Local Praxis: Educational Media and Anti-Gender/sexuality Discourse in News Reports in Uruguay
Introduction
Anti-gender/sexuality Discourse and Education
Educational Media and the DPSE
Corpus and Contextualization
Analysis
Thematization
Victimization
Heterosexuals as Victims
Parents as Victims
Children as Victims
Heterogeneity as Ingroup Self-Representation
Silencing Children and Teenagers (As Learners)
CDA as Local Praxis: Some Final Remarks
Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 13 Disgusting Politics: Circuits of Affects and the Making of Bolsonaro
Introduction
Affective Communicability
Resentful Straight Men
Circuits of Disgust and the Making of Bolsonaro
Final Remarks
Research Task
Notes
References
Chapter 14 Ageism, Sexism, and Semiotic Representation
Introduction
Ageism
Ageing
Ageism in Discourse – Words and Images
Coda – Resisting Voices
Research Tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 15 Multimodal Biography of a Revolutionary Feminist
References
Index

Citation preview

Texts and Practices Revisited

This is a second edition of the ground-​ breaking volume Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, which was the first published collection of chapters presenting critical discourse analysis theory and practice. Critical discursive approaches have now become the main trend in most discursive and semiotic investigations. It was then, and is especially now, predominantly concerned with identifying, demystifying and resisting the ways language and semiotic systems are used to reflect, create and sustain inequalities in specific contexts. This new collection presents contributions by all six of the living authors who were central to the first edition: Norman Fairclough, Theo van Leeuwen, Teun van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Carmen Caldas-​ Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard –​plus an edited version of a jointly authored classic chapter originally authored by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress. There are four new chapters written by the other leading members of the foundational 1990s European Critical Discourse Analysis group: Phil Graham, Jay Lemke, David Machin and Louisa Rojo and two by young critical discourse researchers who have risen to prominence more recently: Rodrigo Borba and Germán Canale. Texts and Practices Revisited: Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis provides a representative collection of work which, while authored by the pioneering researchers of the first wave of CDA, illustrates their most recent concerns and their latest analytical techniques. It is an essential text for all advanced students of English language, linguistics, media and cultural studies. Carmen Rosa Caldas-​Coulthard is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she taught and researched for many years. (1996–​2012). She has published extensively in the areas of Critical Discourse Analysis, Media, Gender Studies, Social Semiotics and Visual Communication. Her most recent publication is the edited volume Innovations and Challenges: Women, Language and Sexism, Routledge, 2020.

Malcolm Coulthard is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Linguistics at the University of Aston, UK, and Emeritus Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK. He was one of the founders of the School of Discourse Analysis at the University of Birmingham and his book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis was the groundbreaking work for the area of Discourse Analysis. Recent publications include: A Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, 2021 and (with Alison Johnson and David Wright) An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence, 2017.

Texts and Practices Revisited

Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis

Second Edition

Edited by Carmen Rosa Caldas-​C oulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

Designed cover image: Getty Images | XH4D Second edition published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Carmen Rosa Caldas-​Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Carmen Rosa Caldas-​Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 1996 British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen Rosa, editor. | Coulthard, Malcolm, editor. Title: Texts and practices revisited : essential readings in critical discourse analysis / edited by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, Malcolm Coulthard. Other titles: Texts and practices. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022041229 | ISBN 9781032225128 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032225111 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003272847 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Discourse analysis–Social aspects. | LCGFT: Essays. Classification: LCC P302.84 .T48 2023 | DDC 401/.41–dc23/eng/20220928 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041229 ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​22512-​8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​22511-​1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​27284-​7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003272847 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

We dedicate this book to our grandchildren, Josh, Sam, Luc, Sienna, Zander, Max, Eric and Izzy, hoping they grow up into a more equitable society. Carmen Rosa and Malcolm

Contents

Notes on contributors  Acknowledgments  1 Introduction 

ix xiii 1

CARMEN ROSA CALDAS-​C OULTHARD AND MALCOLM COULTHARD

2 Critical linguistics 

12

ROGER FOWLER AND GUNTHER KRESS

3 Technologization of discourse 

27

NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH

4 Transmedia identities: critical analysis and new media 

43

JAY LEMKE

5 Performance and politics 

60

THEO VAN LEEUWEN

6 Walls, boundaries, and borders: Inclusion, exclusion, and the racialization of space 

81

RUTH WODAK

7 The official version 

99

MALCOLM COULTHARD

8 Manifestos as social movement discourse  TEUN A. VAN DIJK

113

viii Contents

9 The anti-​establishment discourses of the radical right in Spain: On ‘freedom’ and libertarianism during the pandemic  

134

LUISA MARTÍN ROJO

10 Negative discourse analysis, narrative, and marketing in post-​literate culture 

152

PHIL GRAHAM

11 Analyzing discourses in infographics 

171

DAVID MACHIN

12 CDA as local praxis: Educational media and anti-gender/ sexuality discourse in news reports in Uruguay 

195

GERMÁN CANALE

13 Disgusting politics: circuits of affects and the making of Bolsonaro 

213

RODRIGO BORBA

14 Ageism, sexism, and semiotic representation 

236

CARMEN ROSA CALDAS-​C OULTHARD

15 Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist 

253

MARY TALBOT

Index 

263

Contributors

Rodrigo Borba is Associate Professor of Socio/​Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His research interests include queer linguistics, linguistic landscapes, health communication, and discourse analysis, with an activist and research focus on the relations between discourse, gender, and sexuality. He has an impressive list of publications, both in his native Brazil and internationally. His latest edited book is Discursos Transviados: Por uma Linguística Queer (Transgaysive Discourses: For a Queer Linguistics) 2020. He is co-​editor of the journal Gender & Language. Germán Canale is Associate Professor in the Institute of Linguistics (FHCE, Universidad de la República, Uruguay) and is currently Director of Studies for the PhD program in Humanities. His fields of study are critical discourse analysis, multimodal social semiotics, ethnographic approaches to discourse, educational media and textbook studies. He has recently published the books Technology, Multimodality and Learning: Analyzing Meaning across Scales, 2019 and A Multimodal and Ethnographic Approach to Textbook Discourse, 2022. Norman Fairclough retired in 2004 with the title of Emeritus Professor of Language in Social Life at Lancaster University. His view of Critical Discourse Analysis centres upon the relationship between language and power, and the relationship between language and other facets of change in social, political and political-economic practices, institutions and structures. His work has had an impact on several areas of social and political research, including critical management studies (and emergence of the market and managerial university), policy studies, and political economy. His approach to Critical Discourse Analysis has changed quite radically during the past thirty-odd years, in response to social, economic and political changes. His books include Language and Power (1989, 3rd edition 2015), Discourse and Social Change (1992), Discourse in Late Modernity (with Lilie Chouliaraki, 1999), Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (2003), Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edition 2010),

x Contributors

Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students (with Isabela Fairclough, 2012). Roger Fowler (1938–​1999) was Professor of Linguistics at the University of East Anglia and one of the founders of Critical Linguistic Analysis. His ground-​breaking book Language and Control, published in 1979 and co-​authored with Gunther Kress, Bob Hodge and Tony Trew, launched Critical Linguistics, which later morphed into Critical Discourse Analysis. His single-​author book Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press (1991), was a pioneer of Media and Cultural Studies. Phil Graham is Emeritus Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia. He was the founding co-​editor of Critical Discourse Studies and is on the editorial boards of several international journals. Phil applies critical discourse methods for interdisciplinary research in areas that include political economy, new media, propaganda, education, and Creative Industries. Prior to entering academia, Phil spent over two decades as a musician, composer, and producer. He is currently engaged in a theorisation and analysis of post-​literate cultures and the political economic implications of those. He is also a researcher on an Australian Research Council funded Discovery project investigating the role of music as a cultural determinant of health in First Nation communities. Together with Fairclough, Lemke and Wodak, he edited the first seven volumes of the journal Critical Discourse Studies, 2004–​2010. Gunther Kress (1940–​2019), MBE, was Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He trained as a linguist in Australia and London under MAK Halliday. Although he researched widely, he is best remembered for his innovative contributions to the study of Multimodality. He is most widely known for Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design,​which he co-authored with Theo van Leeuwen. It is now in its third edition, and is one of the most influential books on the topic. Jay Lemke is Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, and previously taught at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and the University of California at San Diego. He researches multimedia communication, learning, and emotion in the context of social and cultural change. He is the author of Talking Science: Language, Learning and Values; Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics; and over 100 research papers on discourse and multimedia analysis, language in education, and social-​cultural theory. David Machin is Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International University, PR, China, to where he moved in 2020 after a decade at Orebro University, Sweden. He has

Contributors xi

published widely in critical discourse studies and multimodality. His books include How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis (2012), Doing Visual Analysis, (2018) and Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2020). His recent work has focussed on the use of multimodal formats in management and official documents, such as flowcharts, bullet lists and infographics as well as looking at language in digital administration software. He is co-​editor of the journal Social Semiotics. Luisa Martín Rojo is Professor in Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma (Madrid, Spain), and a former President of the Iberian Association for Studies on Discourse and Society (EDiSo). She has conducted research in the fields of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and communication, mainly focused on immigration and racism. Since 2000, she has focused on how inequality is constructed, naturalized and legitimized through discourse. Her publications in this field are numerous; the most significant could be the 2010 book, Constructing Inequality in Multilingual Classrooms. Currently she is exploring the interplay between urban spaces and linguistic practices in new global protest movements: Occupy: The Spatial Dynamics of Discourse in Global Protest Movements, 2016. Mary Talbot is Visiting Professor of Graphic Narrative in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Her academic books include Fictions at Work: Language and Social Practice in Fiction (Longman, 1995), All the World and Her Husband: Women in 20th Century Consumer Culture (Cassell, 2000; co-​edited with Maggie Andrews) and Language and Power in the Modern World (Edinburgh University Press, 2003; co-​authored with Karen Atkinson and David Atkinson), Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) and Language and Gender (3rd ed, Polity Press, 2019). She now writes graphic novels, the first of which, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes (Jonathan Cape, 2012; with Bryan Talbot), won the 2012 Costa Biography Award. Teun A. van Dijk was professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Amsterdam until 2004, and is at present Professor of Discourse Studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He is internationally known for his work on discursive racism, news in the press, ideology, knowledge and context. He is the author of many books and collections. He is currently the editor of the international journals Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication and the internet journal Discurso & Sociedad (www.dis​soc.org). Homepage: www.dis​cour​ses.org. Theo van Leeuwen is Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. He has published extensively in the areas of CDA and Multimodality, Social Semiotics and Visual Communication. His many books include Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (with

xii Contributors

Gunther Kress); Introducing Social Semiotics; Speech, Music, Sound; The Language of Colour and Discourse and Practice. He is the founding editor of the Journal Visual Communication. Ruth Wodak is Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University and affiliated to the University of Vienna. Her research interests focus on discourse studies; gender studies; identity politics and the politics of the past; political communication and populism; prejudice and discrimination; and on ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. She has published widely and her work has been translated into 18 languages. She has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria (2011), and the Lebenswerk Preis for lifetime achievement, from the Austrian Ministry for Women’s Affairs (2018). In March 2020, she became an Honorary Member of the Senate of the University of Vienna. Her latest publications include The Politics of Fear. The Shameless Normalization of Far-​Right Populist Discourses (2021, 2nd revised and extended ed.) and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Migration Control (2020), with M. Rheindorf.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the following copyright holder, Taylor and Francis, for permission to reproduce material in: Chapter 2, a substantially edited and abridged version of Chapter 10 of Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. and Trew, T. Language and Control London, Routledge, 1979. Chapter 13: a revised version of Borba (2021) ‘Disgusting politics: circuits of affects and the making of Bolsonaro’, Social Semiotics, 31:5, 677–​694. The authors have attempted to clear the use of all copyright material reproduced in this volume. In the event that any copyright holder has inadvertently been overlooked, the publisher will make amends at the earliest opportunity. We would like to express our deep gratitude to Louisa Semlyen, senior publisher at Routledge for her encouragement and continuing support throughout our careers. It is no exaggeration that several books would not have been published without Louisa’s guidance and persistence. We are also indebted to Talitha Duncan-​Todd, our Editorial Assistant, who guided us patiently and very efficiently through the final stages of the production process. Our heartfelt thanks also go to all the contributors to this volume, dear friends and fighters for a more equal world. Carmen Rosa Caldas-​Coulthard Malcolm Coulthard Birmingham and Florianópolis, July 2022

Chapter 1

Introduction Carmen Rosa Caldas-​C oulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

As indicated by the title, this is the second edition of the ground-​breaking volume Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (1996), the first edited collection of chapters presenting the theory and practice of critical discourse analysis. The critical discursive turn, exemplified in the book, has now become the dominant approach in many discursive and semiotic investigations. In our short Preface we observed that Critical Discourse Analysis research was essentially political in intent with its practitioners acting upon the world in order to transform it and help to create a world where people were not discriminated against because of sex, colour, creed, age or social class. This was a big step forward from the more linguistic-​descriptive Discourse Analysis of the 80s. In the late 1990s, Critical Discourse Analysis, (henceforth CDA), was predominantly interested in identifying and resisting the ways that language and semiotic systems were used to reflect and sustain inequalities in specific contexts. Our claim was that when we communicated, we made choices that functioned politically to shape identities and forms of social relations. Our analyses were essentially linguistic. But Norman Fairclough later argued that CDA had to have a ‘starting point in social issues and problems’ (Fairclough 2001:229). A quarter of a century has passed and the most important theoreticians and practitioners of the area, many of them present in this collection, are now internationally recognized as having established a new discipline. New methodological trends have emerged from their first research outputs. We now know that CDA does not begin with texts and interactions, but with issues that preoccupy not only discourse analysts, but also sociologists, political scientists and educators, to name but a few. This new collection, which was commissioned on the book’s 25th anniversary, includes contributions by all six of the living authors who were central to the first edition: Fairclough (UK), van Leeuwen (Australia), van Dijk (Spain), Wodak (Austria) and Caldas-​ Coulthard and Coulthard (Brazil/​ UK). To these we added, as the opening chapter, an edited version of a chapter jointly authored in 1979 by Fowler and Kress and published in Critical Linguists, the DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-1

2  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

book that essentially established critical language analysis as a discipline that later morphed into CDA. Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress, now considered the founding fathers of the Critical Studies and Multimodal Studies, have sadly left us. Also departed is Michael Hoey, a leading scholar of the Birmingham Discourse Analysis School, who adumbrated, in his chapter in the first edition, his later ground-​ breaking theory of ‘Lexical Priming’. We want to pay homage to them here and acknowledge their enormous legacy. To the above seven chapters, we have added four written by other leading members of the foundational 1990s International Critical Discourse Analysis group: Phil Graham (Australia), Jay Lemke (United States), David Machin (China) and Louisa Martín Rojo (Spain), and two by young critical discourse researchers who have risen to prominence more recently: Rodrigo Borba (Brazil) and Germán Canale (Uruguay). The volume closes with an innovative and unusual contribution by Mary Talbot, who participated in the first edition and was a member of the Lancaster CDA group. She is now a critical graphic novelist and her concluding chapter is a narrative presented in a multimodal form. This last chapter departs from the traditional academic style of close analysis and argumentation. Instead, it presents, through its graphic style, an important feminist critical issue so relevant for the times we live in. Although this book shares its title, Texts and Practices, with the first edition, as well as nine of the original authors, it is in no way a revised edition composed of simply updated versions of the original chapters. Rather, the content, the concept and indeed six of the authors are totally new. Therefore, we call it Texts and Practices Revised. This book does not replace but rather stands beside the first edition. Rather the aim is to provide a representative sample of very recent work which, while authored by the pioneering researchers of the first wave of CDA, illustrates their current concerns and their latest analytical techniques. This is a set of very high-​profile authors (six Emeritus Professors, six Full Professors and two Associate Professors), widely spread from Shanghai and the Australian Sunshine Coast in the East to Montevideo in the West. They draw on their very diverse experiences to discuss key themes within a CDA perspective with the main aim of readdressing the crucial question of how discourse and other multimodal semiotic modes continue to discriminate against and often exclude, people in public and personal discourses and how political, legal and educational settings produce divisions in societies.

The Development of the Area CDA analysts have, over more than 25 years, branched out into many areas and what started as a critical linguistics-​based enterprise has now developed into

Introduction 3

many different approaches and theories, methods, domains and applications. But all have their foundations, as Graham points out in his chapter, ‘in issues of truth and falsehood’. The existence of the considerable body of work that has been collectively produced in CDA can be verified by consulting the recently published Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (2018), edited by Flowerdew and Richardson, where can be found an impressive list of sub-​disciplines. The approaches illustrated in this book are: Critical Dialectal Reasoning, Social-​Cognitive Discourse Analysis, Discourse-​Historical, Feminist CDA, Forensic Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse and Corpus Based Approaches. Although the early studies used methodological tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics, other methods have now been applied to a variety of data: ethnography, pragmatics, metaphor analysis, argumentation and rhetoric among many others. Recent research is concerned with social divisions and power, focusing on questions of identity politics (class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and age) and on political power as they are materialized in discourse, as illustrated in some of the chapters. Identity politics, and other forms of political expression, for example, concerned with axes of body politics, cannot be abstracted from economic spheres. Identity politics is the politics of demanding recognition, in other words, a politics of semiotic representation. And CDA research is of prime importance in unveiling hidden agendas. Social theories are employed to analyse political and historical issues: neo-​ liberalism, globalization, terrorism and violence, fascist manifestations and right-​wing politics. Interdisciplinarity is a must between the domains of education, the judicial system, ecology, government, the corporate sector, business and the media. However, as Wodak and Meyer (2016) point out, all approaches to CDS [Critical Discourse Studies] engage in an abductive process that fluctuates “between theory and data analysis” (18). We live in a world of challenges and our societies are diverse and very problematic in terms of communication. In the era of WEB3 and new technologies, there is no certainty. Social media platforms, for example, have dramatically altered how information circulates. As Graham points out in this volume (Chapter 10): We are without doubt currently in a state of massive upheaval, political, social, cultural, and economic. And political action is increasingly removed from concrete shared circumstances and experiences based on the social and is rather placed in the realm of the personal. As Critical Discourse Analysts, it is our role to decipher the representations of the world carried by texts and other semiotic resources. We must be aware of how things, events and processes are represented in discourse. This allows

4  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

us to then draw out how semiotic choices mean, in other words, how certain elements and qualities are foregrounded, backgrounded, ignored completely, glossed over or abstracted.

The Structure of the Book The individual chapters discuss both practical and theoretical topics, focusing on specific issues related to discursive constructions of social practices through macro and micro analyses of different public and private situations and contexts. Their approaches contribute to the understanding not only of epistemological and complex questions linked to human diversity, but also of how to continue challenging the discrimination realized in discourses.

Fowler and Kress: Critical Discourse Analysis This is an edited and substantially reduced version of the concluding chapter of the book which initiated Critical Discourse Studies: Language and Control jointly authored by Fowler, Kress, Hodge and Trew and published by Routledge in 1979. It sets out the initial guiding principles for critical analysis and illustrates, using extracts from contemporary newspapers, the kinds of insight such an analytic approach can provide. They argue that if linguistic meaning is inseparable from ideology, and both depend on social structure, then linguistic analysis ought to be a powerful tool for the study of those ideological processes which mediate relationships of power and control. Since progressive narratives are increasingly utilised as markers of social change, most of the seemingly progressive advances in the media are stimulated by market interests rather than by social concerns. Thus, scholars remind us that the contemporary ‘fashionable’ diversity discourses are produced by the same system that worked to create bodily ideals and norms for the sake of profit and upon a closer look, just as diversity is marketable, so are body positivity/​acceptance discourses.

Norman Fairclough: Technologization of Discourse The author’s concern in this chapter is with processes of ‘technologization of discourse’ in workplaces during the past 40 to 50 years, especially in higher education, processes associated with the ‘neoliberal’ form of capitalism. Technologization of discourse combines research into the (re)design of and (re)training in discourse practices. Fairclough discusses the main characteristics of technologization of discourse, its relationship to wider processes of social and cultural change, and how it affects actual discourse practices, using as an example the marketing of education, an extract from a

Introduction 5

British university prospectus. The chapter concludes with a summary of how the marketization of universities has evolved and spun out from the 1980s onwards.

Jay Lemke: Transmedia Identities: Critical Analysis and New Media Critical Discourse Analysis needs to extend its work to new communications media. The transmedia franchise in particular is a new medium with significant ideological potential. Some components of transmedia franchises such as immersive worlds and identification through online communities, as well as their ability to continue to present themselves across many genres, sites and extended periods of time, may make them a more powerful medium for shaping people’s views of what is natural in the social world than did prior media. The chapter proposes a specific analytic model to assess the affordances, effects and dangers of this new medium and its messages.

Theo van Leeuwen: Performance and Politics Performance, in the way in which it was defined by Dell Hymes, as the manner or spirit in which an act is done, is an integral part of all social practices. But perhaps since the presidency of the movie actor Ronald Reagan, who wanted to be, and became, an accomplished presidential performer, it is playing an increasingly important role in politics, as signalled by Fairclough, when he wrote about political style as multimodal and as expressive of political identities and values. In this chapter, van Leeuwen presents a framework for analysing the discursive recontextualization of performance, along the lines of earlier work on the representation of social actors and social actions and applies it to the way the performance of presidents and prime ministers are recontextualized in offline and online media. The chapter ends with a critique of theories such as those of Goffman, which interpret social life entirely in terms of performance, and so, inter alia, risk legitimizing the application of what Habermas called ‘dramaturgical’ validity criteria to politics.

Ruth Wodak: Euphemizing Exclusion and the Racialization of Space Nativism and related body politics advocate a redefined, narrow conception of solidarity, i.e., that governments should prioritize their own ‘pure’ citizens and promote and protect their well-​being and welfare. In this way, authoritarian sentiments and tendencies of ‘the people’ can be addressed and mobilized. The consequence of such body politics is the explicit racialization of discourses and acompanying practices. Such practices focus on notions of

6  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

different cultures, religions and traditions which are perceived to ‘contaminate’ or ‘overwhelm’ the cultural ‘essence’ of the nation. Subsequently and simultaneously a politics of ‘collective threat’ is able to trigger deep resentments and fear towards both professional elites and minorities. Indeed, a range of economic, cultural and social changes drives the rise of the far right, increasing the resonance of ethno-​nationalist, racist, misogynist and authoritarian claims. One factor, however, remains constant and resilient: fear of strangers related to vehement nativist nationalism built on the populist myth of a quasi-​homogenous nation state that has to be preserved and protected against (usually fictive) external or internal dangers. Denying the rapid change from relatively homogenous nation states to diverse, multicultural and multiethnic societies lies at the core of such beliefs. It is therefore not surprising that we are experiencing a revival of the Volk and the Volkskörper in the separatist rhetoric of far-​right populist parties. At the same time, very real walls of stone, brick and cement are also being constructed to keep out the ‘Others’, who are defined as different and deviant. Body politics are therefore integrated with border politics –​in what could be labelled as the racialization of space. In this chapter, Wodak primarily analyses the exclusionary rhetoric of the conservative mainstream in asylum and migration policies, which has shamelessly normalized far-​right ideologies. Specifically, euphemisms, quasi-​rational legitimation strategies and fallacious analogies have become –​inter alia –​part and parcel of what has been called, ‘coarse civility’, (rohe Bürgerlichkeit) and which have made nativist body politics more and more acceptable.

Malcolm Coulthard: The Official Version “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past”. (George Orwell, 1984 p. 44) In many jurisdictions worldwide it is the police and other legal professionals who control the production of the written record of interviews with suspects and of any clandestine recordings and of the way such records are subsequently used in court. This chapter demonstrates the dangers inherent in such a system and illustrates how audiences, including juries, can be unintentionally or even at times intentionally, manipulated. The chapter includes recommendations for improving the systems for collecting and subsequently using verbal evidence.

Teun van Dijk: Manifestos as Social Movement Discourse Studies of social movements since the 1990s have taken a more ‘cultural’ turn, paying more attention to beliefs, ideologies, values, emotions and discourse,

Introduction 7

though largely ignoring the relevant advances in cognitive science and discourse studies of the last decades. Besides many other forms of protest, such as manifestations, occupations or strikes, text and talk are pervasive as a repertoire of contentious action, as in recruitment, manifestos, declarations, slogans, websites, meetings, assemblies, storytelling, Facebook posts, tweets, songs, press releases and much more. Critical of framing studies in social movement research, this chapter offers a more explicit framework for the study of social movement discourse.

Luisa Martín Rojo: The Anti-​e stablishment Discourses of the Radical Right in Spain: On ‘Freedom’ and Libertarianism during the Pandemic Currently, in different countries of Europe, America and Asia, radical right-​ wing parties have gained unusual prominence in the political scene. They have achieved a growing electoral weight, gathering votes from different social sectors, and even occupying positions in government. This has been the case in Spain, where the recent VOX party has gone in just five years from not existing to helping to choose who governs in cities and regional governments. Thus, these parties, which are clearly linked to the most conservative religious and economic powers and which express their nostalgia for dictatorial regimes and fascist movements, paradoxically manage to present themselves as anti-​establishment, and as voicing anti-​politics (e.g., Trump, Bolsonaro). This political turn in which lies a good part of their success is made possible by some of the key features of their discourse. This chapter focuses on these phenomena, and analyses the discursive practices of the radical right in Spain, showing how they build an anti-​establishment image, even a revolutionary one, and how, in the face of hegemonic discourses, they seek to generate new hegemonies that then circulate other knowledges, other values and ideologies, and, simultaneously, deeply polarize societies, resorting to the theories of conspiracy and right-​wing-​libertarianism.

Phil Graham: Negative Discourse Analysis, Narrative, and Marketing in Post-​l iterate Culture This chapter demonstrates a method for analysing the function of narrative in newly emerging ethical formations. It collectively theorises those formations as post-​literate cultures. Post-​literate cultures rely on literate and pre-​literate practices, but they have dimensions that are entirely new, facilitated by new media technologies and new narrative structures, including those found in games, reality television and social media platforms. Whether as remnants, effects or artefacts of emerging forms of popular culture, or as new and incipient political movements, Graham demonstrates how these discourses operate, what they mean and how they can be seen to be changing ethics and

8  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

morals on a mass scale. The corpus he uses to demonstrate the argument includes political speeches, design theory texts and excerpts from social media, all of which can be shown to be interconnected, mutually reliant and focused on the ‘thou-​shalt-​nots’ that underpin any ethically charged utterances.

David Machin: Analysing Discourses in Infographics Software has made it very simple to create diagrams, flow charts and data graphics. They populate many of the instances of communication we come across, in news media, institutional documents, social media posts, on the side of food packaging, in company branding where they show outputs, carbon footprints and forms of performance management outcomes. Such vizualizations are used to illustrate the nature of processes and how they happen, showing which agents are involved, or how parts of an organization or a set of participants relate to each other and work together, or to show patterns of output and resources. They are thought to help visualization, simplification and ultimately the process of understanding, planning and management. The appearance of diagrams, flow charts and data graphics can bring a sense of offering clear explanations, that a process can be represented transparently and unproblematically into parts, processes and units. But these representations can easily abstract, conceal and substitute actual causalities and relationships and shape processes and outcomes in the interest of the communicator. This chapter presents a model for analysing diagrams, flow charts and data graphics. Using the example of how organizations show that they work in terms of sustainability the chapter shows how we can reveal the way that actual things, participants, causalities are in fact never clear, yet there is a sense of clarity, of simplicity and of being systematic. The model involves five semiotic qualities of diagrams, flow charts and data graphics: • • • • •

Symbolisation relates to the meanings linked to the basic shapes of graphic elements; for instance, the purport of curvature or angularity, curved or straight lines. Framing concerns how elements are separated on the grounds of sameness and difference. Often this is done through frames, colours or spaces. Orientation is about organization in terms of spatial composition such as centre-​margin, bottom-​up, left-​right or networks. Classification means looking at how the analytical and taxonomic relations typical for graphic representation make elements part of a certain category. Causality is about how graphic elements are represented as having effects on each other; for instance, through arrows between elements. Is this represented as circular, linear, multidirectional?

Introduction 9

Germán Canale: CDA as Local Praxis: Educational Media and Anti-gender/sexuality Discourse in News Reports in Uruguay Education has been a key research site for the development of Discourse Studies in Uruguay. Previous CDA-​informed research analyzed issues of policy discourse and programs for educational media, such as textbooks, teachers’ guides and classroom interaction and learning. In this chapter, the author examines the current social processes of depoliticization of education in Uruguay that work against classes in schools about gender and sexuality. In order to critique anti-​gender discourses and efforts to depoliticize mainstream education, Canale analyzes how a State-​funded and State-​sponsored teacher guide for gender and sex education in primary school met with anti-​gender discourses in Parliament and the mass media. Through strategies of decontextualization, misreporting and even discursive manipulation, politicians, religious groups and conservative parents’-​movements and organizations construed this teaching guide as unconstitutional, discriminatory and even zoophilic. Canale’s findings illustrate the current backlash against gender and sexuality rights in the region and show the different forms in which it can manifest in local education. They also point to how this backlash fuels a broader ideological struggle between conservative and progressive education.

Rodrigo Borba: Disgusting Politics: Circuits of Affects and the Making of Bolsonaro Jair Bolsonaro, the unapologetically homophobic and ultraconservative Brazilian ex-President, managed to emerge from the margins of the political system and gain electoral momentum during the impeachment hearing of the country’s first female President, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016. The ultimately successful hearing epitomizes the current affective polarization of Brazil, in which sexual dissidence plays an important role. The chapter discusses the politics of discourse, affect and sexuality that have drawn Bolsonaro and his far-​right ideologies into greater political relief. To do so, Borba focuses on a specific occasion when Jean Wyllys, a human rights activist and the only openly gay congress member at the time, spat at Bolsonaro. Wyllys’ action caused a commotion in the country and was massively recontextualized as memes, and in social media, op-​eds, YouTube parodies, etc. This chapter investigates the intense circulation of Wyllys’ action and how it became embedded within the larger affective scenario in the country. The author analyses the socio-​semiotic life of Wyllys’ spit and tracks its textual trajectory in order to discuss the performativity of disgust and the development of political (in)sensibilities with regards to gender and sexuality in contemporary Brazil.

10  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard

Carmen Rosa Caldas-​C oulthard: Ageism, Sexism, and Semiotic Representation Semiotic regimes are the ways in which semiotic practices are regulated in specific contexts. They include codification, tradition, expertise, role models and technology. They also apply to semiotic production as well as to semiotic interpretation. Ageism, as a semiotic regime, is expressed in conflicting discourses: in the media, (e.g., TV/​magazine ads), in urban spaces, in beauty-​brand communication and in personal narratives (where, for example, people express their different views on getting old). Fundamentally, discourses of ageism intersect with questions of gender and race. This chapter addresses the critical question of the semiotic representation of older women taking into consideration that the vast majority of public discourses that refer to middle-​aged and old women tend to support and perpetuate the culturally constructed assumptions that ‘ageing’ is a decline story and has strong negative associations. They also tend to legitimate contemporary bias against older women, which is done through lifestyle procedural/​ persuasive discourses. In order to understand and identify age-​ related stereotyping and the associated issues of gender/​age, sexism/​ageism, Caldas-​Coulthard examines media reports and public multimodal representations of age, through the lenses of social semiotics and feminist theory. She claims that the ageing female body is represented in competing and ambivalent discourses and that in post-​feminist times, ageist and sexist ideologies are powerfully yet covertly present and normalised in public discourses.

Mary Talbot: Multimodal Biography of a Revolutionary Feminist The multimodal narrative format of comics, with which Talbot now works, as a critical graphic novelist, is a highly accessible form, and therefore has great potential for engagement with a large ‘lay’ audience. Her graphic biography of Louise Michel, of which a highly condensed version is presented here, shares the key CDA objective of placing on the agenda the possibility of social change and justice. With the Paris Commune of 1871 at its narrative centre, the graphic biography recounts for a general readership the life of a revolutionary feminist and highlights the capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism of the old social order that she struggled against. Louise Michel spent her life fighting for the rights and dignity of working-​ class people and fighting against social inequalities wherever she saw them, both in her native France and in the French colonies of New Caledonia and Algeria.

Introduction 11

Final Note In order to support those who decide to adopt Texts and Practices as a coursebook, each chapter ends with a set of Further Readings and a few suggested Research Tasks which invite students to apply to their own data the concepts and techniques presented and illustrated in the chapter.

References Caldas-​Coulthard, C.R. and Coulthard, M. (1996) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and Power. London: Routledge. Flowerdew, J. and Richardson, J. (eds.) (2018) Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. London: Routledge. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2016) Critical discourse studies: history, agenda, theory and methodology. In R.Wodak and M.Meyer (eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, 3 (pp.1–​22). London: Sage.

Chapter 2

Critical linguistics 1 Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress

Introduction There are strong and pervasive connections between linguistic structure and social structure. These connections go far beyond, in importance and provocativeness, the correlations between the social groupings in a population and the styles of speech which have been described in traditional sociolinguistics. Our studies demonstrate that social groupings and relationships influence the linguistic behaviour of speakers and writers, and moreover, that these socially determined patterns of language affect non-​linguistic behaviour including, crucially, cognitive activity. Syntax can code a worldview without any conscious choice on the part of a writer or speaker. We argue that the worldview comes to language-​users from their relation to the institutions and the socio-​ economic structure of their society. It is facilitated and confirmed for them by a language use which has society’s ideological impress. Similarly, ideology is linguistically mediated and habitual for an acquiescent, uncritical reader who has already been socialized into sensitivity to the significance of patterns of language. Any text, then, embodies interpretations of its subject, and evaluations based on the relationship between source and addressee. These interpretative meanings are not created uniquely for the occasion; the systematic use of these linguistic structures is connected with the text’s place in the socio-​ economic system, and hence they exist in advance of the production of the text and our reception of it. To generalize further, there are social meanings in a natural language which are precisely distinguished in its lexical and syntactic structure and which are articulated when we write or speak. There is no discourse which does not embody such meanings. Our ‘organized selections’ from among these meanings are responses to our practical theories of the nature of the communicative events in which we participate; we have been socialized into holding these theories and our judgments are largely automatic. It is important to stress the automatic nature of this process. One centrally influential system of assessments that language­users draw upon concerns the differences of power and status between themselves and DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-2

Critical linguistics  13

their interlocutors. Once we become conscious of the ways in which interpersonal structures encode power relationships, it is easy to see spoken interactions as enactments of, or negotiations about, status –​contrary to the ‘common-​sense’ view of, say, the research interviewer or the job interviewer that their discourses are neutral, designed merely to elicit information. The lack of immediate two-​party interaction tends to obscure such classifications and negotiations in written discourse, but they are present nonetheless. If linguistic meaning is inseparable from ideology, and both depend on social structure, then linguistic analysis ought to be a powerful tool for the study of ideological processes that mediate relationships of power and control. There is a prevalent and related dualism in current linguistic theory which we feel has to be challenged –​the belief that ‘meaning’ can be separated from ‘style’ or ‘expression’. Our analyses suggest on the contrary that lexical items, linguistic forms and linguistic processes carry specific meanings. When they are realized in a coherent discourse, systematic options from sets of alternatives are exercised, and the total and interacting effect of these carries a meaning over and above that of the items and processes in isolation. Three basic assumptions underlie our approach: 1 2 3

that language serves a number of specific functions, and that all linguistic forms and processes express one or more of these functions; that the selections which speakers make from among the total inventory of forms and processes are principled and systematic; and that the relation between form and content is not arbitrary or conventional, but that form signifies content.

The first two of these assumptions are taken over from the work of Halliday (see Kress 1976), although in an adapted form. Halliday posits that language serves three major functions: a) to communicate about events and processes in the world, and the entities involved in these (the ideational function); b) to express a speaker’s attitude to these propositions, and to express a speaker’s perceived relation with an interlocutor (the interpersonal function); and c) to present these in coherent, adequate and appropriate texts (the textual function). Distinct areas of the overall grammar of a language are organized in systems to realize these three functions. Speakers make appropriate selections from these systems, so that the choice of a linguistic form is always a choice from among a specific set of options. The choice itself is thus highly significant and its reason can be traced to contingencies experienced by the speaker in a given speech (and social) situation. The larger needs and purposes of a speaker in that situation ensure that the selections which are made are not random but motivated. Speakers, as members of specific social and speech groups, tend to find themselves in recurring situations that make similar demands. This fact accounts very readily for the emergence of codes (or speech-​styles), and for

14  Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress

the fact that the meanings of such codes are readily recognized. However, it is our third assumption –​coupled with the preceding two –​which fully enables us to complete the link between social reality and linguistic form. It is only when we acknowledge the meaning carried by the items themselves that linguistic form can be demonstrated to be a realization of social (and other) meanings. The selection of one form over another points to the speaker’s articulation of one kind of meaning rather than another. Writers, by contrast, have time for planning and an opportunity for revision, but these privileges by no means turn writers into free agents. They work towards specific models which have their social functions; they are likely to use certain forms and structures not as a result of consciously analysing the structure of sentences, but by aiming at the model in a generalized, intuitive fashion. The rightness of the syntactic and the lexical choices for a particular meaning is a gift of the writer’s society, not a creation of his own. When we look in this way at the relationship between society and language, ‘correlation’ ceases to be a neutral facet of sociolinguistic description and emerges as a fact about social organization which invites critical scrutiny. To recapitulate: 1 2 3 4 5

Forms of social organization influence linguistic structure and linguistic usage. This influence operates in a deterministic fashion: social structure x demands linguistic a. The process may be unconscious or, if a speaker does know what is going on, he or she is under great pressure not to resist. Social structure bears on all parts of language, not merely those parts that are ‘about’ personal and group relationships such as personal pronouns or the labels for classes or roles. Different forms of language should not be regarded as cognitively equivalent. They are not ‘merely stylistic’ in effect; but affect the potential expression of concepts, and thus the availability of concepts, too.

The above set of causal links is by itself interesting enough to anyone concerned with the way social structures operate, but when we add the following, the arguments become very provocative: 6 7

Prominent among the social structures which influence linguistic structures is inequality of power. Language not only encodes power differences, but is also instrumental in enforcing them.

Texts are the linguistic part of complicated communicative interactions. These, in turn, are implicated in social processes in complex ways. The structure of discourse and of texts reflects and expresses the purposes and roles

Critical linguistics  15

of its participants, these in turn being products of the prevailing forms of economic and social organization. But communication is not just a reflex of social processes and structures. In the expression of these processes and structures they are affirmed, and so contribute instrumentally to the consolidation of existing social structures and material conditions. Interpretation is the process of recovering the social meanings expressed in discourse by analysing the linguistic structures in the light of their interactional and wider social contexts. The critical nature of this linguistic interpretation has its motive in the fact that so much of social meaning is implicit: that is, it is not contained in the statements of the texts, and often not in the speech acts ostensibly offered by the language structures. An activity of unveiling is necessary in this interpretation, or, to put it in stronger terms, an activity of demystification. We do not say that authors and speakers deliberately obscure or mystify their aims, or that language is generally an instrument of conscious conspiracy to conceal and distort. We suspect that often people do not consciously recognize the purposes they encode in language, and that the aims which they mediate in their ‘professional capacities’ may not coincide with their beliefs and sympathies. Furthermore, it is unnecessary to assume that a speaker or writer analytically chooses or constructs a syntax of mystification (e.g., decides to delete agents). Social structure provides the resources, individuals mediate their realization. So, the resistance which critical linguistics offers to mystificatory tendencies in language is not resistance to language itself, nor to individual users of language, but to the social processes which make language work in communication as it does. It is a critique of the structures and goals of a society which has impregnated its language with social meanings many of which we regard as negative, dehumanizing and restrictive in their effects.

Critical analysis Critical analysis should also be practical analysis. The critic ought not to be content to simply display their own virtuosity (which is the case with most of what passes for literary criticism), but ought to be committed to making a technique of analysis available to other would-​be practitioners. Here the three assumptions we offered earlier in place of the dualism in linguistic theory come into play: a) that language has three predominant functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual; and that, as a consequence, the analyst is entitled to attempt to relate each linguistic item and each linguistic process to one or more of the three functions. b) that choices are made from systems, and in a systematically guided manner, the guidance deriving from the social contingencies and the purposes of the participants in the discourse. This systematic selection

16  Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress

ensures the unity or congruence of the items, structures and processes realized in the text (although we are well aware that speakers may act in confusion or with complex and even contradictory purposes). c) that the meanings are carried and expressed in the syntactic forms and processes, that is, that the analyst can ‘read off’ meaning from the syntax. A final caution: there is no predictable one-​to-​one association between any one linguistic form and any specific social meaning. Speakers make systematic selections to construct new discourse, on the basis of systems of ideas, ideologies and complex purposes of all kinds. To isolate specific forms, to focus on one structure, to select one process, in fact to lift components of a discourse out of their context and consider them in isolation would be the very anti­thesis of our approach. Different features and processes must be related to one another. We now offer our checklist for analysis under five main headings: 1 2 3 4 5

The grammar of transitivity: events, states, processes and their associated entities; The grammar of modality: the interpersonal relations of speaker and hearer; Transformations: the manipulation of linguistic material; The grammar of classification: linguistic ordering; The coherence, order and unity of the discourse.

As we have pointed out above, any one linguistic form or process may (and almost always does) serve several functions, so that our divisions introduce some falsification. We hope, however, that, read in conjunction with our insistence on the multi-​functionality of linguistic form and our emphasis on the systematic nature of selections, the headings will provide some initial help in analysing language. The grammar of transitivity Among the deeper semantic features of a text, it is always revealing to see what kinds of predicates occur: predicates are words for actions (‘run’, ‘raise’), states (‘tall’, ‘red’), processes (‘widen’, ‘open’) and mental processes (‘understand’, ‘sad’), which usually appear as verbs and adjectives in the text, but sometimes as nouns derived from underlying verbs or adjectives (‘completion’, ‘sincerity’). Predicates (and their associated participants) carry the main responsibility for representing the events and situations to which the text refers. They are studied in relation to the roles of the nouns which accompany them. Here is a sentence which highlights the agent-​action semantic structure: ‘Mrs Loppenthien pickles, bottles, preserves her own homegrown fruit

Critical linguistics  17

and vegetables, gives dinner parties with typical French cuisine, and keeps an eye on her 21-​year-​old son’s studies’.2 This is in the context of a newspaper article on women living or working in more than one country. Clearly the semantics of participant and process focus on the role of the subject as actor and the action­-nature of the events. By contrast, an article on the Mull of Kintyre stresses the mental processes and states of the people who live and visit there; these people, unlike Mrs Loppenthien, take the more passive role of ‘affected participant’: ‘The relaxed outlook of the natives combined with the general lack of amenities may dismay younger tourists. At present most annual migrants tend to be middle-​aged with an interest in walking, golfing, bird-​watching or archaeology’. Within the grammar of transitivity there is a small number of highly significant alternative ‘models’ for the presentation of events. Some questions to ask are: 1 2 3

Does the action affect one or more entities? For example: ‘Snow fell (in parts of Scotland)’ compared to ‘A whirlwind smashed £100,000 worth of greenhouses’. Does the action produce a new entity? For example: ‘A local foundry … made up a new mould and bell’. Is the action performed by· the agent on him-​or herself ? For example: ‘The British … understand themselves better when they look at themselves through French eyes’.

4

Is the action initiated by the actor or by another participant? For example: ‘… making sure that air is flowing all the time’, where ‘the air’ moves (i.e., is the actor) but does so because of the action of a controlling and initiating agent.

Such questions will reveal differing linguistic ‘dispositions’ of events. Over and above these it is fruitful to ask who, if anyone, benefits from the action, what other circumstances attend on the event and how they are connected to it, spatially or temporally, instrumentally or causally. What kinds of entities perform actions? The most straightforward type of agent would seem to be animate, either human (teachers) or animal (seabirds): ‘Teachers call off meals boycott’; ‘Tens of thousands of sea-​birds are about to pass through the area …’ . But there are other alternatives, and it is always necessary to look for inanimates, abstractions and names of organizations apparently performing actions: ‘Mushrooms and their hallucinogenic properties are creating a legal tangle in magistrates’ courts’; ‘yellow buses brushing past’. In some discourses all the agentive participants are abstract nouns, often complex nouns derived from sentences or parts of sentences by nominalization: ‘In the cinema vast resources are more likely to inhibit the imagination than to release it …’.

18  Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress

A subject +​verb +​object syntax (‘Egypt +​will continue +​its peaceful efforts’) suggests agency and transitivity; but often this is an illusion. Among the scores of examples of pseudo-​actions are: ‘But the locals had the last laugh’; ‘We make a rapid reconnaissance’. The apparent actions suggested by the syntax actually turn out to be states or mental processes, or things which happen to, rather than are done by, the participant(s) referred to in the subject noun. Here the interest for the analyst lies in the fact that an event of one type (involving just one participant) is presented in the surface form of another event (involving two participants, one the actor, the other the affected). The grammar of modality This covers linguistic constructions which may be called ‘pragmatic’ and ‘interpersonal’. They express speakers’ and writers’ attitudes towards themselves, their interlocutors and their subject-​ matter; their social and economic relationships with the people they address; and the actions which are performed via language (ordering, accusing, promising, pleading). Let us begin with a very simple feature: ‘naming conventions’. An individual may be addressed, or referred to, by any one of a range of choices comprising various parts of his name (Gunther, Gunther Kress, Kress), abbreviations (G. Kress, G. R. K.) or combined with a title (Dr Gunther Kress, Professor Kress). The different possibilities signify different assessments by the speaker/​ writer of his or her relationship with the person referred or spoken to, and of the formality or intimacy of the situation. One extreme of formality is illustrated by the Observer’s ‘Foreign Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Kamel’ (a distinguished foreign politician: title plus complete, unabbreviated name); but status may still be combined with familiarity, as in our own ‘Prince Charles’. A neutral form for the Observer seems to be title plus first name plus last name: ‘Mr Stanley Davis’, ‘M. Marc Becam’. Very well-​known public figures are referred to by title plus last name: ‘Mr Cameron’, ‘Mrs Thatcher’; or, less formally, ‘Boris Johnson’. In the UK footballers are referred to by last name only, a form traditionally associated with servants and social inferiors: ‘Messi’, ‘Kane’, although many foreign players now arrive with playing names given under a different tradition. So ‘Ronaldo’ is a first name and the one-​time Brazilian captain played in Britain with the name Dunga, which is actually a nickname, being the Brazilian name for the seventh dwarf in Snow White, Dopey in English. Personal pronouns always deserve attention. Starting with ‘I’, it is worth reminding ourselves that every utterance has implicitly an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ as a source, but this is usually not present in the surface structure: the above phrase ‘Personal pronouns always deserve attention’ has the deep structure ‘I [R. Fowler, writing on 29th March 1978 later endorsed by G. Kress on 30th May 1978] tell you [future readers] that personal pronouns …’. This removal

Critical linguistics  19

of the pronoun associated with personal speech is felt to be appropriate to the impersonal, generalizing tone of newspapers, textbooks, scientific articles, etc. The ‘I’ of action is also a regular (but less foregrounded) feature of signed investigative and eye-​witness reporting, where it seems to suggest exclusivity and authenticity; ‘One defence lawyer showed me three communiques …’. The plural form ‘we’ displays the added complexity that the source claims to speak not only of and for himself but also on behalf of someone other than himself. The simplest ‘we’ form is ‘exclusive’ ‘we’: the writer refers to himself and some other person(s) but not including his addressees. An extension of this usage is what might be called the ‘corporate “we” ’: the text speaks on behalf of an organization, differentiating it from the addressee, but still personalizing the source. So, this Mercedes-​Benz advertisement insists on this usage in almost every sentence: ‘At Mercedes-​Benz we build cars that find the perfect balance between …’ and so on. This corporate ‘we’ is suspect since the individuals it refers to cannot be identified (but not as suspect as the generalized inclusive ‘we’ mentioned below). And its effect is often alienating: if ‘we’ excludes the addressee, it can be transformed into the institutional ‘they’: ‘We know what’s best for you’ is readily perceived as ‘They think they can push us around’. The second meaning of ‘we’, the ‘inclusive “we” ’, implicates the addressee in the content of the discourse and is therefore, ostensibly, more intimate and solidary; but unless the persons involved are all known and the actions overt and verifiable, it is potentially dangerous. A person can say to the members of her family ‘we had a Chinese take-​away last Saturday evening’ and the utterance may be quite sincere and authoritative. Matters of judgment, feeling or prediction receive inclusive ‘we’ less happily. A lover who says to her/​his partner ‘We’ll be so happy together’ may very well be indulging in wishful thinking, or in the indirect speech act of pleading. Inclusive ‘we’ in written discourse is even more hazardous because the included other is not known. Newspaper editorials use the form; so, from the Observer: ‘What we have, then, is the reality of a coloured population that is likely to grow …’; ‘our obligations under human rights conventions’; ‘once we acknowledge to ourselves that …’. The superficial impression is one of solidarity and involvement –​the liberal Observer and its liberal readers sharing generous and humane motives towards the black population in England. But the ‘we’ and ‘our’ are not wholly sincere. The obligations spoken of are the obligations of the government, not the newspaper or its individual readers. Similarly, in ‘once we acknowledge to ourselves that … there will be no significant reduction in the number of coloured people who are going to live in Britain … we can get on with the building of a decent multiracial society’, the referents of ‘we’ are mystified: the critical reader may well ask who is being asked to do what and who is capable of doing it? One other ‘we’ that makes even stronger assumptions is the ‘we’ used by a superior partner in an interaction, and that confidently, unquestioningly and

20  Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress

unchallengeably includes the other, inferior partner. ‘How are we feeling this morning?’ (doctor-​patient); ‘We’re going to eat it all up’ (parent-​young child); or even ‘Lets all gather round me’ (teacher to group of 5-​year-​olds). This ‘we’ is akin to the Observer’s, except that in the examples above the power difference between speaker and addressee is large (which it is not in the case of the Observer). The most threatening form of this ‘we’ occurs when a newspaper’s ‘we’ (single voice speaking for a large group) is fused with the power-​laden ‘we’ (the doctor-​patient relation) in the pronouncements of those with state-​ power: ‘We are all in this together’. ‘You’ is, as might be expected, complementary in meaning and usage to ‘I/​we’; as every piece of language has an explicit or implicit source, so does it have an implicit or explicit addressee. In spoken language, addressed to a present person or persons, it may or may not appear in the discourse. Its occurrence, and frequency of occurrence, are measures of the speaker’s consciousness of, care for, or, most often, desire to manipulate, the addressee. The Observer shows a wide and fairly predictable variation in the usage of ‘you’ forms. ‘You’ is largely absent from reporting sections, but frequent in features sections directed to the individual’s actions and their reflections on their own actions: ‘Cummerbunds3 are back … You can wear them several ways …’ ; ‘[Gardening] tools are expensive, but a good purchase should last you a lifetime’. Predictably, ‘you’ forms claiming intensely particularized personal reference are most insistently used in advertisements: ‘At Mercedes-​Benz we build cars with one object in mind: to improve life for you as a driver and for your passengers …’. At the other extreme from individual reference, ‘you’ sometimes means ‘anyone’ (as in proverbs like ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink’. This generalized ‘you’ is close in meaning to the generalized ‘we’ noted above. As a general point, when two items seem virtually identical in meaning, an attempt to understand why the speaker/​writer has chosen one form rather than another needs to be made. In this case, ‘you’ addresses someone, an individual or a group, different from the speaker. The addressee is being told something. The collective ‘we’ on the other hand addresses the group, ostensibly from inside, coercively eliminating any potential antagonism between speaker and addressee. There is, in the end, a lot of third-​person reference to classes of implied individuals, often in overt or implied command structures: ‘Savers who can’t afford to take risks with their money have little to complain about just now’; These deserve careful analysis. Governing the use of personal pronouns are factors we can, in a general way, describe as proximity and distance, directness and indirectness. Specific but varying social factors underlie these general

Critical linguistics  21

categories. It is an immensely nuanced system; a metaphor to describe its function might be the court of a feudal oriental potentate. The distance from the throne which any given individual has to observe is precisely regulated depending on his/​her place in the social hierarchy. Some may look directly at the ruler, but others must look to the side or down. Terms of address and the pronoun system are obvious areas in the language to look for similar precisely coded meanings: but, in fact, most of the linguistic system is responsive to these factors and expresses these meanings. One area of critically interesting interpersonal structure is speech acts. As might be expected, the most explicitly directive structures are found in newspaper advertisements: ‘Browse through the many books shown here …’; ‘Fill in the coupon right now’. Something in the social conventions which relate to advertising –​perhaps an assumption about the honest directness of ‘straight talk’, or perhaps consumers’ feeling that they are not threatened by imperatives, because they can opt not to obey them –​allows the advertiser to use forms of directive which in other contexts would be extremely coercive. The most direct forms of speech acts are generally legitimized only when the power-​differential between participants is very large and can be openly acknowledged –​parents and children are (regrettably) the most familiar example. Where the power-​differential is less, or cannot be openly acknowledged, indirectness and distance appear again. Hence most commands (using this as a term to describe the intention of the speaker) do not appear in their direct syntactic form, the imperative. Instead, declaratives and interrogatives are used (with modalizers of different kinds); and the indirectness of the speech-​ act, its linguistic distance from the intended act, signals the social distance and the social indirectness. Again, the kind of surface-​form which is selected gives direct insight into the meaning which is expressed; as before, the relation between intention and surface expression is not conventional or arbitrary. In speech acts the major meanings are concerned with establishing linguistic role-​relations between speaker and hearer (as commander, informer, questioner, and commanded, informed, questioned) and the consequent control of the addressee’s behaviour. Degrees of distance and directness are signalled necessarily, but incidentally. There is, however, a range of linguistic forms that are crucially concerned with the expression of proximity and directness either between speaker and hearer, or between speaker and message (though the latter most often has the former function –​indirectly). Prominent among these forms and frequently discussed are modal auxiliaries: ‘He must have realized this when I met him in Washington’; ‘I should point out …’ Here one needs to ask what meaning the modal verb expresses (obligation, ability, possibility, necessity, expectation, etc.) and whose authority is invoked. Closely allied to these auxiliaries are modal adverbs: ‘possibly’, ‘certainly’, ‘necessarily’. These often occur with the modal auxiliaries, and the meaning of the full construction has to be established as a compound

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of the meanings of the adverbial and the modal auxiliary, and of their joint effect. In ‘… the figure that might conceivably satisfy the Liberals’ the meaning of ‘might’ is (conditional) possibility, ostensibly part of the proposition, though with the speaker as its source. ‘Conceivably’ has an unspecified agent or agents: the commentator, the Liberals, politicians generally; and its meaning points to a mental process in this unspecified agent. Allied to modal adverbs are the so-​called sentence adverbs: ‘Unfortunately the hobbies of some groups conflict …’; ‘ … and farmers, rightly, are demanding …’. Here the speaker provides modal ‘glosses’ on the proposition, without declaring the authority for these judgments. Finally, two other major linguistic distancing devices: time and place. Without going into detail, consider the modal effect of ‘translating’ the following into the present tense: ‘Concorde test rig failed’ (headline). ‘A Civil Aviation Authority Spokesman said: “There are a number of theories at present being investigated to find out why this was so”‘. Presumably, the inability of the test rig to reveal the effects of stress accurately still continues, so that the ‘accurate’ tense should be ‘is’, ‘to find out why this is so’. Anyone engaged in analysing the modal function of language will need to pay the closest attention to tense: what is the effect of choosing one tense over another, in conjunction with modal verbs or full verbs. In many cases the explanation is other than time-​reference. In such analyses it is important to realize that ‘present tense’ is not a modally neutral form: it is one term among others in this system, if anything, a particularly powerful term which signals certainty, unquestionableness, continuity, universality. Temporal ‘distance’ nearly always conveys modal ‘distance’. Similarly. with locative expressions, especially the so-​called demonstrative pronouns, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’, ‘here’, ‘there’. Again, in many cases the spatial ‘distance’ indicated points to conceptual or modal distance. Transformations Among syntactic transformations, two types have been particularly rewarding in our studies: nominalizations and passivisations. They have various, and overlapping, sets of consequences. To take nominalizations first: here we mean nominals which (whether or not they are listed in dictionaries as nouns) are derived from sentences or parts of sentences –​to put it another way, nominal expressions of concepts for which an alternative involving a verb or an adjective would have been available to the writer or speaker. The ‘stylistic’ effect of persistent nominalization is well known: in impressionistic terms, it attenuates any feeling of activity in the language. It is generally discouraged by writing handbooks which advocate a ‘direct’ style; it is particularly disfavoured for narrative. It makes for ‘impersonality’ in style; this is an effect of the deletion of participants, often the actor or the affected, which is possible with nominalization. Personal participants in a nominalized process may be preserved,

Critical linguistics  23

marked with possessives and prepositions: in ‘Giscard’s sure-​footed leadership of the majority’, ‘Giscard’ is clearly agent and ‘the majority’ affected. More often, in complex sentences in written language, participants disappear completely and have to be ‘understood’ from the context. For instance, the first part of the following sentence requires a considerable degree of reconstruction: ‘There was much criticism of the negotiations, which Mr Jarvis4 described as a mixture of melodrama, pantomime and high farce’. The article is about the National Union of Teachers’ response, at their annual conference, to a pay award. To some extent the piece allows the reader to determine who was criticizing whom, who had negotiated with whom about what, but one could not be absolutely sure without a detailed knowledge of who spoke at the conference –​‘much’ indicates more than Mr Jarvis –​and of the constitutional machinery for negotiating teachers’ pay and how it operated on this occasion. Modality and tense disappear in nominalizations. In the middle of a report of the wreck of the oil supertanker Amoco Cadiz, the Observer gives the information ‘French moves to slap drastic restrictions on supertanker movements have been dropped after British intervention’. The nominalizations ‘moves’ and ‘intervention’ have the effect of obscuring the times at which these actions took place, and the newspaper’s attitude to them. Some explanation and judgment follows; however, it remains unclear whether the French ‘moves’ were a consequence of this particular disaster, or had been made before the Amoco Cadiz was wrecked. Two further effects of nominalization may be mentioned briefly. The first is objectification, the rendering of a process as an object: ‘We still need lots of contributions to the jumble sale’; ‘our new development’, the “Interference Absorption Circuit” ’. This in turn affects lexicalization, the provision of words and phrases to code new concepts or consolidate existing ones: ‘strict segregation’, ‘illegal detention’. Lexicalization fixes the object-​as-​process as a single habitualised entity. The passive transformation has a similar range of consequences to those of nominalization, e.g., the deletion of participants (see ‘associated’ and ‘treated’ in the two examples below), and lexicalization (‘heavily­mortared suburban wall’; ‘expected problems’). An additional function, sometimes achieved by nominalization, is thematization; the shifting of a noun-​phrase into the informationally significant first place in the sentence. Passivisation allows a noun denoting an affected participant, a non-​agent, to be placed in the subject position in the sentence. Salt has long been associated with high blood pressure. The Pill, particularly, is treated with caution. This fronting device allows a writer or speaker to emphasize his thematic priorities, to indicate what a stretch of text is ‘about’, even when the entities

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of the theme are, strictly speaking, semantically subordinate (affected rather than agentive). A further development is available, through the implicit connotation of agency which the subject position carries: passivized objects may seem to be agents, despite their real function as affected rather than affecting roles. The first of the two sentences above may easily be read to mean ‘Salt causes high blood pressure’. Classification Turning now to classification, the linguistic ordering of the world, we look first at lexical features of texts –​the words available to and chosen by writers and speakers. We have found the processes of relexicalization and overlexicalization generally to be revealing. Relexicalization is relabelling, the provision of a new set of terms, either for the whole language or for a significant area of the language; it promotes a new perspective for speakers, often in specialized areas which are distinct from those of the larger social group. One form of relexicalization is neologism, the invention of new lexical items which, by being visibly new, force the reader to work out the new concepts they signify: ‘Covid-​19’, ‘Brexit’. An advertisement in the Sunday Times Magazine, 30 April 1978, contained the prominent slogan ‘WE FAX IT ON OUR INFOTEC 6000’ which was on a first reading incomprehensible. The Infotec 6000 turned out to be a new machine which sent copies of documents over telephone lines. ‘Fax’, so mundane to readers now, was a term specially invented for the new process, but to contemporary readers it was a linguistic challenge as it encoded a totally new concept. But not all relexicalizations are so unfamiliar. Sometimes they involve reorientations of the meanings of existing words; pointed, ostentatious inversions of meaning. Slang provides many examples, e.g., ‘wicked’ =​‘good’. Overlexicalization is the provision of a large number of synonymous or near-​ synonymous terms for the communication of some specialized area of experience. A striking example was found in a single brief article on financing a car purchase. The following is only a selection of the many phrases used to designate ‘loan’: ‘credit deal’, ‘credit bargains’, ‘low-​interest finance’, ‘low-​interest-​rate schemes’, ‘special credit scheme’, ‘overdraft’, ‘personal loan’, ‘credit alternatives’, ‘finance house loans’, ‘hire purchase’, ‘bank loans’. The importance for critical linguistics of overlexicalization is that it points to areas of intense preoccupation in the experience and values of the group which has generated it, allowing the linguist to identify peculiarities in the ideology of that group. In classification we find the positioning of adjectives and other modifiers highly revealing. The major distinction is between ‘predicative’ and ‘prenominal’ positions for adjectives (and other modifiers). Predicative adjectives are separated from the noun they qualify by ‘is’ or some other variant of the copula: ‘The commentary, as usual, was informative and literate’; They are all equally impressive’. By contrast, the prenominal position incorporates the

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adjective into the noun-​phrase it modifies: ‘a totally new approach’; ‘an intelligent and sophisticated mood’; ‘a beautiful midfield through-​pass’. Predicative positioning, in English, necessitates a copulative verb between the noun and the adjective, and this must express the writer/​speaker’s commitment to the evaluation he is making. But that element of modality is less overt when the modifier is incorporated within the noun-​phrase. Prenominal modification tends to indicate classification rather than evaluation –​the referent of the noun simply becomes an instance of the category of ‘totally new approaches’, ‘beautiful midfield through-​passes’, etc. Noun-​phrases incorporating modifiers seem to be whole lexical items, unitary rather than analysed concepts; ‘through’ in ‘through-​pass’ seems to be part of a compound lexical item rather than a modifier of ‘pass’. Coherence, order and unity The last topic on our checklist, the coherence, order and unity of the discourse, opens up a whole new area of linguistic investigation. We do not have the space to enter into this here but point our readers to Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English. In the construction of a coherent discourse, the speaker or writer implements his conception of the inner order of the materials he is presenting. The interrelation of events, their respective sequence, importance and interdependence are indicated in the structure of the discourse as a whole. We would ask the intending analyst of language to consider how the different linguistic features we have pointed to interrelate: transitivity with modality; types of classification with modality, transformations and transitivity; transformations and the processes of foregrounding in all areas of the text and so on. The major notion always is that of the predominant unity or congruence of all the linguistic units, because it defines the ideological basis of the discourse itself. (Editors’ note: This quite abrupt ending is just as in the original.)

Further reading Fairclough, N. Language and power, London: Longman, 1989 Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. and Trew, T. Language and Control London: Routledge, 1979 Hodge, B. and Kress G Language as Ideology, London: Routledge, 1993

Research task Read, in Language and Control, the chapter by Tony Trew entitled ‘Theory and ideology at work’. This chapter analyses the ideological significance of differences in newspaper reports about the shooting and killing of unarmed people. Choose reports, from three different newspapers, at least one of them

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a tabloid, reporting the same violent incident and account for the significance of differences in linguistic choices.

Notes 1 This is an edited and substantially reduced version of Chapter 10 of Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. and Trew, T. Language and Control London, Routledge, 1979; a few contemporary examples have been added. 2 This sentence, and indeed the majority of the other examples in this chapter, was taken from the March 26th 1978 edition of the British Sunday newspaper the Observer. 3 A ‘Cummerbund’ is part of men’s evening formal dress, which covers their waist. 4 Mr Fred Jarvis was the general secretary of the English National Union of Teachers from 1975 to 1989.

Reference Kress, G. (ed). Halliday: System and Function in Language, London, Oxford University Press, 1976.

Chapter 3

Technologization of discourse Norman Fairclough

Introduction In this chapter I use ‘discourse’ to refer to any spoken or written language use conceived as social practice, a position I have elaborated on elsewhere (Fairclough, 1989a), and ‘order of discourse’ (a term adapted from Foucault) for the overall configuration of discourse practices of a society or one of its institutions.1 I want to suggest that contemporary ‘orders of discourse’ have a property that distinguishes them from earlier orders of discourse, or which at least has not been manifested in earlier orders of discourse to anything like the same degree; and that this property is of particular significance for the orders of discourse of various types of work, specifically because it is an important factor in changes currently taking place in workplace practices and ‘workplace culture’. I focus below upon workplace culture, and the constitution of social and professional relations and identities at work. Contemporary orders of discourse are, I think, becoming deeply and distinctively affected by what I want to call a technologization of discourse, whose central and defining characteristic is the embodiment in institutional forms and practices of circuits or networks that systematically chain together three domains of practice: research into the discoursal practices of workplaces and institutions, design of discoursal practices in accordance with institutional strategies and objectives and training of personnel in such designed discoursal practices. Elements of this development can easily be attested in earlier orders of discourse, but it is their tendency towards systematic and institutionalised configuration that justifies seeing technologization of discourse as a distinctively contemporary process. My main point of reference will be contemporary Britain, and a few particular types of work therein; I refer most to one domain of professional work, higher education. But technologization of discourse is, I suspect, a widespread accompaniment of changes in workplaces, in industry as well as professions and services, and no doubt on an international scale. This chapter will address the following questions in turn: what are the characteristics of technologization of discourse? How does technologization of discourse relate to wider processes DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-3

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of social and cultural change? What in particular is the connection between technologization of discourse and changes in ‘workplace culture’ –​in social relations and identities at work? How might technologization of discourse affect actual discoursal practices?

Characteristics of discourse technologization My use of the term ‘technology’ derives ultimately from Foucault’s analyses of the alliance between social sciences and structures of power that constitutes modern ‘bio-​power’, which has ‘brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge/​power an agent of transformation of human life’ (Foucault, 1978: 143). Technologies of discourse are more specifically a variety of what Rose and Miller (1989) call ‘technologies of government’: ‘The strategies, techniques and procedures by means of which different forces seek to render programmes operable, the networks and relays that connect the aspirations of authorities with the activities of individuals and groups’ (Rose and Miller, 1989). Referring to liberalism as a mode of government, these authors see the ‘deployment’ of ‘political rationalities and the programmes of government’ as ‘action at a distance’, involving the ‘enrolment’ of those they seek to govern through ‘networks of power’ incorporating diverse agents and ‘the complex assemblage of diverse forces –​laws, buildings, professions, routines, norms’. Discourse is, I would suggest, one such ‘force’ which becomes operative within specific ‘assemblages’ with other forces. The technologization of discourse has, I think, been accelerating and taking on firmer contours since the mid-​1980s, but its lineage is longer. For example, ‘social skills training’ (Argyle, 1978) is a well-​established application of social psychological research, and technology of government, which has a partially discoursal nature. Large units of practice such as interviews are assumed to be composed of sequences of smaller units which are produced through the automatic application of skills which are selected on the basis of the contribution to the achievement of goals. It is assumed that these skills can be isolated and described, and that inadequacies in social (including discoursal) practice can be overcome by training people to draw upon these skills. Social skills training has been widely implemented for training mental patients, social workers, health workers, counsellors, managers, salespeople and public officials. One example given by Argyle is training in the ‘personnel interview’ (used for instance for disciplinary interviews in workplaces), which (and this quotation points to the design element) ‘can make it a pleasanter and more effective occasion’ (Argyle, 1978). I have defined technologization of discourse as an institutionalisation of circuits connecting research, design and training. I shall use the following list of five characteristics of technologization of discourse as a framework for elaborating on that definition:

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1 2 3 4 5

the emergence of expert ‘discourse technologists’ a shift in the ‘policing’ of discourse practices the design and projection of context-​free discourse techniques strategically motivated simulation in discourse the pressure towards standardisation of discourse practices

There have long been specialists in persuasive and manipulative discourse, but what we might call contemporary ‘technologists of discourse’ have certain distinguishing features. One is their relationship to knowledge. They are social scientists, or other sorts of expert or consultant with privileged access to scientific information, and their interventions into discoursal practice therefore carry the aura of ‘truth’. Another is their relationship to institutions. They are likely to hold accredited roles associated with accredited practices and routines in institutions, either as direct employees or as expert consultants brought in from outside for particular projects. For example, staff development and staff appraisal are two recent additions to the institutional practices of British universities. Both the training of staff and the training of appraisers are partly training in a variety of discourse practices –​lecturing, organising seminars, interviewing, designing publishing materials, writing research proposals, and both directly employed staff and outside management consultants are being drawn into specialised institutional roles and practices, partly as discourse technologists. Discourse practices are, I think, normally ‘policed’ –​subjected to checks, corrections and sanctions –​though there is a great deal of variation in how overtly or how rigorously. One effect of the technologization of discourse is, I suggest, to shift the policing of discourse practices from a local institutional level to a trans-​institutional level, and from categories of agent within particular institutions (be it education, law, medicine) to discourse technologists as outsiders. In addition to a shift in the location of policing agents, there is a shift in the basis of their legitimacy. It has traditionally been on the basis of their power and prestige within the profession or institution that certain categories of agent claimed the right to police its practices; now it is increasingly on the grounds of science, knowledge and truth. The discourse technologist as expert as well as outsider. An example would be the discoursal dimensions of the shift in universities from the practices of academics being judged by their peers to their practices being measured and evaluated according to externally generated criteria. Discourse technologists design and redesign what I shall call ‘discoursal techniques’, such as interviewing, lecturing or counselling, to maximise their effectiveness and change them affectively –​recall the objective of making a disciplinary interview ‘a pleasanter and more effective occasion’. Argyle recommends that an interview should end with a review of what has been agreed and ‘on as friendly a note as possible’ – suggestions which involve the design of particular utterances (to be ‘friendly’) as well as the overall organisation of the interview. The tendency is for techniques to be increasingly

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designed and projected as ‘context-​free’, as usable in any relevant context. This tendency is evident in training, where there is a focus upon the transferability of skills –​‘teaching for transfer’ is now a prominent theme in vocational education, for example. Moreover, the projection of such context-​free techniques into a variety of institutional contexts contributes to a widespread effect of ‘colonisation’ of local institutional orders of discourse by a few culturally salient discourse types –​advertising, managerial and marketing discourse, counselling, and, of course, interviewing (Fairclough, 1989a). The redesign of discourse techniques involves extensive simulation, by which I mean the conscious and systematic grafting onto a discourse technique of discourse practices originating elsewhere, on the basis of a strategic calculation of their effectivity. I have in mind particularly the simulation of meanings and forms which appertain to the discoursal constitution of social relationships and social identities –​which have ‘interpersonal’ functions in systemicist terminology (Halliday, 1978). The recommendation that an interview end on a friendly note is an invitation to the interviewer to simulate the meanings and forms (those of language but also other semiotic modalities) of ‘friendliness’, meanings and forms which imply and implicitly claim social relations and identities associated more with domains of private life than with institutional events like interviews. Opening frontiers between the private and the institutional; institutional appropriation of the resources of conversation; ‘conversationalisation’ and apparent democratisation of institutional discourse: these are pervasive features of the technologization of discourse. But they are tendencies rooted in broader currents of contemporary cultural change –​democratisation, consumerisation –​which we can regard as being exploited for strategic and instrumental ends in the technologization of discourse. This makes the cultural values attaching to informal, conversationalised institutional discourse profoundly ambivalent. The final characteristic of discourse technologization in my list is that it constitutes a powerful impetus towards standardisation and normalisation of discourse practices, across as well as within institutions and different types of work. The importance of expert outsiders as discourse technologists, the shifting of the policing of discourse to a transcendent position ‘above’ particular institutions and the trend towards context-​free discourse techniques –​all of these are centralising and standardising pressures upon discourse practice, pressures which meet with resistance, however, as I shall suggest below.

Technologization of discourse and wider processes of change One can relate technologization as a tendential characteristic of contemporary orders of discourse to changes affecting modern social life in various periodicities. One such change is the long-​term shift in the preeminence of ‘government’ over other types of power (Foucault, 1979), which gives general

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salience to technologies of government. Another on a quite different time scale is the set of major upheavals and restructurings which have been affecting various domains of work, especially since the mid-​1980s. These seem to have highlighted to an unprecedented degree discoursal and communicative skills in work, exposed widespread ‘skill’ deficits in this regard, and given sharper definition and contours to the technologization of discourse. Let me refer to upheavals in two domains of work which seem to me to have discoursal dimensions of this order. The first is industry, and specifically ‘post-​ Fordist’ developments in industry. In post-​Fordist production, workers no longer function as individuals performing repetitive routines within an invariant process, but as teams in a flexible relation to a fast-​changing production process. In this context, traditional employee-​ firm relations have been seen as dysfunctional by managements, and they have attempted to transform ‘workplace culture’, setting up for example various institutions which place employees in a more participatory relation with management, such as ‘quality circles’. The description of these changes by managements themselves as ‘cultural’ is not just modish rhetoric: the aim is new cultural values, workers who are ‘enterprising’, self-​motivating and self-​disciplining. These changes point to new discoursal practices in the workplace, a qualitative shift in the discoursal competence of the workforce, a shift of emphasis towards, for example, speaking and listening skills in group discussion and decision-​ making, techniques for elicitation and exchange of information, etc. A role for discourse technologists in engineering such changes is suggested from a training perspective by the ‘communication skills’ elements of British pre-​vocational education programmes I discuss below. There are also upheavals affecting professional work that seem to favour an intensification of discourse technologization. British universities, for example, have experienced major externally imposed changes (cuts in government finance, imposition of market conditions of operation, mechanisms to ensure answerability and ‘relevance’) and internal organisational changes (‘cash economy’, training and appraisal of staff, institutional plans, ‘enterprise units’ as part of degree schemes, etc.) which have been seen as requiring new skills in teaching, management, counselling, and so on, entailing access to knowledges and techniques from outside higher education. The decreasing autonomy of universities has no doubt made them more ‘permeable’ to such external influences. In part, it is externally designed discourse techniques (for lecturing, tutoring, interviewing, counselling) that are being imported.

Technologization of discourse and changing ‘workplace culture’ I have suggested that the technologization of discourse is a factor in changing ‘workplace culture’, a dimension of the application of technologies of

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government in implementing programmes for change in the culture of the workplace –​change in social relationships at work, change in social and professional identities. Of particular relevance here are my comments on the simulation of interpersonal meanings and forms as one characteristic of the technologization of discourse, and the suggestion of a ‘conversationalisation’ and apparent democratisation of institutional discourse –​a widespread appropriation and simulation of informal conversational interaction. One can distinguish two broad categories of shift in social relationships at work that are discernible across many types of work, in which conversationalisation of discourse appears to be an important factor. One is a shift in a more ‘participatory’, egalitarian direction in relationships between managers and workers, and in a general sense between those in higher and lower positions within hierarchies –​the shift from the ‘vertical’ to the ‘horizontal’ firm. The other is a similar shift in relationships between professionals and non-​professionals, ‘clients’ in a broad sense –​between teachers and pupils or students, doctors and patients, lawyers and clients, and so forth. The latter merges into shifting relationships between institutions and their ‘publics’, in the media and advertising. Borzeix and Linhart (1988) refer to the ironing out of differences between hierarchically different categories of employees as the ‘unification’ of the enterprise, and point out that unification is the (only apparently paradoxical) complement of the ‘atomisation’ and ‘individualisation’ of the enterprise as an effect of the reworking of social identities at work. What Borzeix and Linhart are pointing to here seems to be a variant of what Rose (1989) identifies as broad changes in the cultural constitution of the self in the direction of a more autonomous, self-​motivating or ‘self-​steering’ self. It strikes me that conversationalisation of discourse serves both unification and atomisation, which are in any case two sides of the same coin; first, since conversation is a ‘lifeworld’ discourse type which we all have access to, the effect of conventionalisation of institutional orders of discourse is to help equalise discoursal resources; second, in so doing, conversationalisation helps generalise one element of the resources necessary for greater autonomy in work –​ access to an institutionally accepted discourse repertoire. Another dimension of changing identities in work is changes in professional identities. Many domains of work are undergoing processes of deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation. In the case of university teachers, for example, the process appears actually to involve a decrease in autonomy. Traditional constructions of professional identity which centred upon relatively autonomous (and supposedly disinterested) research and scholarship are under pressure from new models which construct the academic as multiskilled, dispersed across a complex set of duties and functions each of which involves training in specific skills –​including research, teaching, administrative, promotional and counselling skills. In terms of the technologization of discourse, these changes in professional identity seem to go along with

Technologization of discourse  33

an impetus to train academics in the range of externally designed discoursal techniques I have already referred to. The shift in relationships between professionals and non-​ professionals (clients) referred to above is not simply in a more egalitarian direction. Such relationships are being pervasively reconstructed on a market model as producer-​consumer relationships, and discourse technologists appear to be playing an important part in this process of reconstruction. The discourse techniques of marketing and advertising are being widely projected as models as well as being the focus of training and, as I noted earlier, are colonising institutional orders of discourse on a large scale. And it is noteworthy that these discourse techniques are themselves already substantially conversationalised. A final observation is that the technologization of discourse as an instrument for cultural change may well have pathological consequences. The designed and strategic nature of more ‘natural’, ‘ordinary’, informal and conversational ways of relating to others and ‘being oneself’ may become patent. And a pathological consequence may be a sort of crisis of sincerity –​ a disorienting uncertainty about whether these culturally valued qualities of discourse are real or simulated in any given instance.

Impact on discoursal practices People in their actual discoursal practice may react in various ways to pressures for change emanating from the technologization of discourse: they may comply, they may tactically appear to comply, they may refuse to be budged or they may arrive at all sorts of accommodations and compromises between existing practices and new techniques. The latter is perhaps the most common and certainly the most interesting case. Study of such accommodations in the discoursal practice of workplaces strikes me as a likely source of insight into the actual impact of technologies of government on practice, and into ongoing processes of change in social relations and social identities. I want to suggest that the production of discourse under such conditions of change places producers in ‘dilemmas’ (Billig et al., 1988), which are an effect of trying to operate simultaneously in accordance with divergent constructions of social relationships and social identities, and that these dilemmas lead to accommodations and compromises which are manifested in the ambivalence and heterogeneity of spoken or written texts. Let me relate these suggestions to a specific example, an extract from a British university prospectus (Figure 3.1). The evolution of university prospectuses clearly reflects pressures on universities to operate under market conditions, and to ‘sell’ their courses, using discoursal techniques borrowed from advertising. Some of the changes that have occurred are immediately evident in the physical appearance of prospectuses: the typical course entry has shifted since the mid-​1980s from a couple of pages of quite dense writing to a mixture of written text, colour photographs, and sophisticated

Figure 3.1 University undergraduate prospectus.

34  Norman Fairclough

Technologization of discourse  35

graphics. But prospectuses also show how academics have responded to the dilemmas that these pressures have placed them in, by accommodation and compromise. These dilemmas centre upon the contradiction between a traditional ­professional-​(or ‘producer’-​) oriented relationship between university and ­applicant, where the university is the ‘authoritor’ admitting or rejecting applicants according to its criteria for entry; and a ‘consumer-​oriented’ relationship being forced upon universities by the economic position they have been placed in, where the applicant is the authoritor choosing (as consumers do) among the range of goods on offer. On the former model, a prospectus would focally give information about courses and conditions of entry, on the latter model it would ‘sell’ courses. In fact, contemporary prospectuses attempt a balancing act between the two: in terms of professional identities, they show academics trying to reconcile being academics and being salespeople. This dilemma shows up in the heterogeneity of the text, and in particular in how its heterogeneity in terms of modalities and genres (written text and photograph on the left, list of courses and graphic display on the right) relates to its heterogeneity in terms of meanings, or more precisely speech functions (the main ones are informing, regulating and persuading). Let me begin with regulating. It strikes me as significant that everything to do with requirements imposed by the university upon the applicant –​entry requirements, course requirements –​is located in the synoptic right-​hand section of the entry. This allows requirements to be separated from any source or authoritor, so that the problematic meaning (problematic, that is, in the consumer-​oriented model) of the university imposing requirements upon applicants does not have to be overtly expressed. This occlusion is evident in the wording of the graphic display: you will need rather than, for instance, we require shifts the onus on to the student, and the agentless passives (will be accepted, candidates who are offered places will be invited). In the written text, requiring is avoided, and aspects of the degree scheme which might normally be seen as requirements are semanticised in other terms. For example, in paragraph 3 taking courses in several disciplines comes across as an assurance (students will gain valuable experience) rather than a requirement; similarly in paragraph 4, taking the three specified courses in the first year comes across as a description (students pursue…) grounded by the preceding clause. Let me turn from ‘requiring’ to the other two speech functions, ‘informing’ and ‘persuading’. The most fully persuasive modality is the photograph, which positions the applicant in some unspecified but most attractive ‘American’ scene, co-​constructing the potential student, the programme and the university within a mythical ‘America’. The sentences of the written text, on the other hand, are in many cases ambivalent between informing and persuading –​persuasion is certainly a significant speech function, but in a mainly covert form which anticipates substantial inferential work on the part of the reader (as of course does the photograph). The opening paragraph for instance appears, on the face of it, to consist of three bits of information (with lively as a transparently persuasive

36  Norman Fairclough

lexicalisation) –​about the tradition of American Studies at the university, the introduction of a specialised degree and the content of the degree. The first two sentences are in an overtly temporal relationship, marked by the contrast between present perfective and simple present verb forms, and the temporal adverbial now. A little inferential work on the part of the reader can construct these markers and bits of information into a persuasive narrative according to which the degree is the culmination of a cross-​disciplinary tradition. Similarly in other paragraphs, persuasion is mainly covert. The academic’s dilemma appears to be resolved through a compromise; the written text is designed to persuade while appearing to be merely informative. There are many variants of such accommodations and compromises between ‘telling’ and ‘selling’, reflecting the dilemmas of professionals in various domains faced with commodification and marketisation and pressure to use the associated discourse techniques. Elsewhere (Fairclough, 1988), I have analysed the effect of contradictory producer-​and consumer-​orientations and authoritor-​authoritee relations on the modality of a brochure about a bank’s financial services. Also (Fairclough, 1989c), I have analysed the compromises effected by a medical practitioner in attempting to adopt a patient-​oriented counselling or therapeutic style of medical interview while maintaining control over medically important aspects of the interview. Similarly, Candlin and Lucas (1986) have shown how a family-​planning counsellor tries to reconcile contradictory pressures to control clients’ behaviour and yet to refrain as counsellors from any form of direction, through the indirect linguistic realisation of speech acts. In all such cases, people are using discourse as one medium in which they can attempt to negotiate their identities and their relationships with others in problematical circumstances of change. There is, however, a significant gap between such practices of accommodation and compromise, and the impetus within the technologization of discourse towards more standardised and context-​free discourse practices; technologies of government generate strategies of resistance. What appear in a social psychological perspective as attempts to resolve dilemmas, appear in the perspective of a politics of discourse as discoursal facets of processes of hegemonic struggle in which the structuring of orders of discourse and of relationships between orders of discourse is at stake. The outcomes are restructured orders of discourse, innovative mixing of genres, and the emergence of new genres and sub-​genres. (Such a hegemonic view of discoursal change is discussed in Fairclough, 1989b.)

Further changes in universities I shall conclude with an overview of changes connected to technologization of discourse that have happened since the first edition of this book and this chapter (1996), drawing upon recent developments in my approach to CDA (Fairclough, 2020).2

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Technologization of discourse has been part of the ‘marketisation’ of universities (Fairclough 1993) and many other social organizations from the 1980s onwards, which had previously operated in different ways from the companies and corporations of ‘the market’. Marketisation was driven by a shift to a new form of capitalism, from the social democratic ‘welfare-​state’ capitalism which had been dominant since the Second World War, to a ‘neoliberal’ capitalism. The marketisation of universities (and other domains) includes the emergence of a stratum of professional managers (‘the management’), which largely took over executive control of universities. It was the management that implemented technologization of discourse. Universities changed in various ways in the direction of market organizations. The extract from a university prospectus discussed above illustrates tensions and dilemmas for academic staff trying to balance being academics and being salespeople. I discussed in Fairclough (1993) an extract from a curriculum vitae I wrote for an academic promotions committee. The advice I received was that you had to ‘sell’ yourself to stand any chance of promotion. I tried to play the game. For instance: ‘I have stimulated research among colleagues and postgraduate students, and helped form what is now being recognized nationally and internationally as a distinctive Lancaster position on and contribution to the study of language and language problems in contemporary British society’. This is a rather restrained example of ‘selling yourself’, but my feeling is that it ought to be up to your colleagues to make such judgements. These are small, particular examples of large and radical effects of marketisation: academic freedom has been undermined, so in the long run has freedom of speech for both academics and students. Jan Blommaert (Blommaert 2020) wrote an insightful and moving reflection on his academic career at a point when he knew was almost the end of it –​he died shortly afterwards. He disliked the increasingly competitive nature and individualization of academic life during his career, and the emergence of a ‘celebrity culture’, noting correctly I think that it was difficult not to be drawn into these tendencies to some extent. I recall the discomfort of being treated like a ‘star’ on occasions, even sometimes acting like one. Part of the marketisation of universities resulted in some members of staff being drawn into the celebrity culture of the entertainment industries. Blommaert sets out his own aims as an academic: ‘give, educate, inspire, be democratic’. He notes that marketized and managerialized universities have made it harder to follow these principles; for example, managers tend to prefer ‘knowledge transfer’ over education. This is connected to the ‘infantilisation’ of universities (Furedi 2017), with universities undertaking to act in loco parentis, where preoccupation with the safety of students and their ever-​increasing problems of mental health would, for instance, make it difficult to ask students to read challenging and difficult books which are way beyond the supposed ‘appropriate’ level of the textbook. But challenging students, not underestimating them, is an important aspect of educating, in Blommaert’s view.

38  Norman Fairclough

All forms of capitalism require legitimation; their success depends upon a general recognition that they are fair and provide security and opportunities. Legitimation is essential not only for capitalism but for any socioeconomic order, because it is inevitable that objections to it will emerge, and may undermine it. Legitimation may not prevent that, but it may delay it. New forms of capitalism require new legitimations (Chiapello & Fairclough 2002). Whereas the legitimation of social democratic capitalism was based upon welfare and the protective arm of the welfare state, the legitimation of neoliberal capitalism is based upon emancipation; the former tended to neglect social emancipation, the latter tends to neglect social protection –​welfare (Fraser & Jaeggi 2018). The legitimacy of neoliberalism is based upon its support for individual freedom and diversity, its protection of whatever identities people have or choose to have, and its advocacy of equality between people of all identities. A political effect is that class politics (focused upon relations between social classes) has declined, while identity politics has become more prominent. Thus the Labour Party, which used to be party of the working class, has shifted its emphasis onto (gender, race, sexuality) identities. Furedi (2021, 2020) recognizes that the need for legitimation drives organizational changes, such as technologization of discourse and what he calls ‘woke capitalism’ though he does not link recent changes to neoliberalism. But his ‘woke capitalism’ does identify a qualitative shift between the technologization of discourse discussed above and more recent changes. Technologization of discourse is an instrument applied by management for achieving their organizational objectives. By contrast, some more recent changes are driven not only by management but also by employees in workplaces, and by both employees (academic and other staff) and students in universities. These changes are not simply instrumental in character, but also moral, with the aim of changing values; and not only students and staff in universities, but also some managers are increasingly motivated by their own convictions. Furthermore, executives of organizations, including the biggest business corporations as well as the most prestigious universities, are increasingly going public with their support for so-​called ‘woke’ causes. Those in workplaces or universities who do not comply with or openly disagree with ‘woke’ positions are sometimes at risk of being targeted, disciplined or even losing their jobs. Freedom of speech is being undermined, and so is democracy, in that unelected powerful figures in corporations can have a substantial influence on governmental policy decisions as well as public opinion. One issue is transgender. ‘Transactivists’ vigorously deny that the division between the male and female sexes is binary, either/​or. It is not just that men or women can make choices about their gender, and start living in what they perceive as the way of the opposite sex, they can allegedly change their sex as a matter of choice. When colleagues in a workplace, students or academics in a university, have insisted that sex is binary, they have on occasions

Technologization of discourse  39

been denounced by others as ‘transphobic’, and even, with the support of managements, been disciplined or even sacked. Neoliberal universities are in a competitive market in which maximization of income from student fees, as well as from external grants for research, is a priority. Universities need to attract and retain their full quota of students, students as fee-​bearers can to some extent shop around, and there are incentives for universities to take care of their students, though while at the same time cramming ‘bums on seats’. Since the 1980s, universities have increasingly offered students counselling services, career advice, protection against harassment and so forth, and sought to make students feel ‘safe’. Furedi (2017) analyses this as the ‘infantilisation’ of students in universities. The views and preferences of students have been encouraged by universities, and some universities have come to support the values of the new generation, notably its support for ‘wokeness’. In 2020, there was something of a cause celèbre at Cambridge University in the UK. There was a proposal from the university management, supported by the students’ union, that required students and staff to be ‘respectful’ of other people’s opinions, rather than just showing ‘tolerance’ towards them. ‘Respecting’ opinions would amount to accepting all opinions, without differentiation, as plausible or reasonable, and members of the university argued that it would be impossible for academics to do so. The proposal would for instance require academic biologists, who would presumably tend to argue that sex is binary, to respect the opinion that sex is not binary. Members of Regent House, the governing body, were asked to vote in December 2020, and 86.9% voted against the proposal. Searle (2010) claims that all institutional reality is created by ‘speech acts of declaration’ whereby ‘status functions’ are assigned to persons or objects. Status functions carry ‘deontic powers’ –​rights, obligations, entitlements, etc. When students are declared to be ‘customers’, their status in the university is changed, as are their deontic powers, including their rights as customers. Searle’s account of the creation of institutional reality provides an important elucidation of what I called the ‘power behind discourse’, as opposed to the ‘power in discourse’, in my book Language and Power (Fairclough, 1989, see also Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012). There is a saying that ‘the customer is always right’, and even though this might not be universally embraced in universities, it is clear how the rights of student customers might clash with the rights of academics whose rights include ‘academic freedom’. When the status function of students is changed, there are likely to be clashes with previously declared status functions of academics. In practical argumentation and deliberation within universities, the deontic powers of academics and of customer-​students provide them with reasons for action which may be contradictory (Fairclough & Fairclough 2012). Students’ arguments based upon their rights to judge the courses they take in terms of ‘value for money’, for example, are likely to come into conflict

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with academics’ arguments based upon their rights to academic freedom which include asserting their authority over the academic value of courses. But these are not just arguments, they are backed by rules and laws which give people real powers or take powers away from them, so these conflicts cannot in some cases be resolved simply through deliberation. The contradictions arising from the original change in the status function of students may multiply and deepen over time until they produce open conflict, as in the Cambridge case. I would regard the attempt by management to impose respect for each and every opinion as indicating a monumental ignorance or disregard of the academic character of a university. They appear to be allowing the arguably exaggerated sensitivities of a prominent section of the student body to override everything. Action was needed and was taken. This case also shows that despite nearly forty years of marketized universities, academic values which have been weakened still exist as a potentially opposing force. If conflict were to emerge on a larger scale, changing the status quo is not unthinkable, though it may seem impossible. Status functions exist in virtue of collective recognition, which may fracture. All the changes that I have reviewed can be traced back to the neoliberal turn and the marketisation of universities in the 1980s, and to the change in the status function and deontic powers of students, consolidated in 2011 in the UK by ‘student charters’ setting out the rights and responsibilities of students on the one hand and universities on the other. But as I said earlier, there has been a qualitative shift between the technologization of discourse and more recent developments. Technologization is a device used by management to achieve its institutional objectives. But students have increased the exercise and domain of their power over time, and management as well as academics have increasingly recognised student power, though selectively: managements seem to defer more readily to students on cultural values than for instance on increasing hours of teaching. It seems utterly amazing to me, retired for 19 years and approaching the age of 82, that universities can support some extreme ‘woke’ positions. It shows the remarkable effects that changes in status function (such as those achieved by the new post-​2010 fees regime) can have on power relations. But we must keep in mind that universities can differ quite a lot. We should also keep in mind that the power students have been endowed with counts for relatively little set against the disappointment that those who go to university for a real education can face, the insecurity of work, housing, pensions, the uncertain effects of climate change on their future and so on. My generation had it a lot easier.

Further reading Mary Evans, Killing Thinking: the Death of the Universities. London: Continuum, 2004 gives a long-​term historical account of ‘the transformation of teaching in

Technologization of discourse  41 universities into the painting-​by-​numbers exercise of the handout culture and of much research into an atavistic battle for funds’. She refers to the first edition of my chapter. Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954. Mary Evans’ book starts from Lucky Jim, an attack on the culture of universities of the time, their ‘misuse’ by a ‘social élite’. Worth reading for a historical perspective on current controversies over the culture of universities. Joanna Williams, How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason. Spiked, 2002. The argument is that ‘even though today’s cultural elite rejects the woke label, woke thinking has come to be accepted as common sense’ by them. ‘It is not difficult to understand why. Claiming to act on the part of the oppressed allows wealthy people to morally justify their own privileged position’.

Two research tasks 1 Drawing upon your own experience as a student, and discussion with fellow students and (academic and non-​academic) staff, do you agree that universities have been ‘infantilized’? If so, give examples of ‘infantilization’ in your own university. If not, give examples of features of your own university which are incompatible with the claim of infantilization. 2 Do you agree with Jan Blommaert’s view that academic staff should set out to educate their students, and that educating students requires challenging them; for instance, asking them to undertake the difficult task of reading and wrestling with books which are difficult for them? Discuss with fellow students whether difficulty is part, or ought to be part, of a university education.

Notes 1 This chapter arose out of discussions about interdisciplinary study of institutional discourse at Lancaster University. I am grateful to Paul Bagguley, Romy Clark, Susan Condor, Mick Dillon, Peter Goodrich, Scott Lash and Celia Lury for responses to earlier versions. 2 This section draws upon collaboration with Isabela Fairclough in publications (including Fairclough & Fairclough 2012, 2018) and papers delivered at conferences.

References Argyle, M. (1978) The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, 3rd edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M. and Middleton, D. (1988) Ideological Dilemmas, London: Sage. Blommaert, J. (2020) Looking back: What was important in my academic life? At https://​alte​rnat​ive-​democr​acy-​resea​rch.org/​2020/​04/​20/​what-​was-​import​ant.

42  Norman Fairclough Borzeix, A. and Linhart, D. (1988) ‘La participation un clair-​obscur’, Sociologie du Travail, 88, 1, 37–​48. Candlin, C. and Lucas, J.L. (1986) ‘Interpretation and explanation in discourse: modes of “advising” in family planning’, in T. Ensink, A. van Essen & T. van der Geest (eds) Discourse Analysis and Public Life, Dordrecht: Foris, 13–​38. Chiapello, E. and Fairclough, N. (2002) “Understanding the new management ideology: a transdisciplinary contribution from critical discourse analysis and new sociology of capitalism’, Discourse & Society, 13(2): 185–​208. Fairclough, I. and Fairclough, N. (2012) Political Discourse Analysis, London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1988) ‘Register, power and sociosemantic change’, in D. Birch and M. O’Toole (eds) Functions of Style, London: Frances Pinter, 111–​25. Fairclough, N. (1989a) Language and Power, London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1989b) ‘Language and ideology’, English Language Research Journal, University of Birmingham, 3, 9–​28. Fairclough, N. (1989c) ‘Discoursal and social change: a conflictual view’, paper delivered at ISA RCS (International Sociological Association Research Committee on Sociolinguistics) conference, Dublin. Fairclough, N. (1993) ‘Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: The universities’, Discourse & Society, 4 (2): 133–​168. Fairclough, N. (with Scholtz, R.) (2020) ‘Critical discourse analysis as dialectical reasoning’, Mots. Les Langages du Politique, 122: 113–​123. Fairclough, N. and Fairclough, I. (2018) ‘A procedural approach to ethical critique in CDA’, Critical Discourse Studies. Special Issue: Ethics in Critical Discourse Studies, 15 (2): 169–​185. Foucault, M. (1978) A History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1979) ‘Governmentality’, Ideology and Consciousness, 6, 5–​21. Fraser, N. and Jaeggi, R. (2018) Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Furedi, F. (2017) What’s Happened to the University? A Sociological Exploration of its Infantilization, London: Routledge. Furedi, F. (2020) Democracy Under Siege: Don’t let Them Lock It Down, Zero Books, John Hunt Publishing. Furedi, F. (2021) ‘The Tyranny of Woke Capitalism’, Spiked, 21 June. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic, London: Edward Arnold. Rose, N. (1989) ‘Governing the enterprising self’, paper given at conference on Values of the Enterprise Culture, University of Lancaster, September. Rose, N. & Miller, R. (1989) ‘Rethinking the state: governing economic, social and personal life’, MS, University of Lancaster. Searle, J.R. (2010) Making the Social World. The Structure of Human Civilization, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Transmedia Identities Critical Analysis and New Media Jay Lemke

How might our engagement with new media change our identities and how we develop them? I will argue here that how we identify with various ideal models offered by our culture is an important part of the overall process of identity formation, and that the global political economy of new media may be changing both the system of models on offer and the ways we are enticed into identifying with them. These new media and identification processes are therefore in urgent need of critical analysis, both as forms of discourse and as deployments of multimedia resources. In particular, we need to extend our tools for critical discourse analysis from print texts and older media such as film and television to new media: websites, online chats and social media, blogging, podcasting and the growing commercial empire of digital games. More significantly, we need ways to analyze the new transmedia franchises (Jenkins, 2003; Leonard, 2001) which present ideological messages and offer identity ideals not just within, but also across multiple media from books and cartoons, to films, merchandise, websites and games. My aim here is first to identify the phenomenon of the distributed or transmedia franchise as a new kind of inter-​medium with significant ideological potential. Second, to argue that some of its features, such as immersive alternative worlds and identification through online fan or player communities, as well as its ability to continue to re-​present itself to us in many guises, in many sites, and across extended periods of time, may make it a more powerful medium for shaping people’s beliefs, values and identities than prior media. And finally, I ask what extensions of critical discourse analysis methods, conceptually and in terms of research practices, may be useful in enabling us to assess the affordances, effects and dangers of this new inter-​medium and its messages.

Critical Discourse Analysis: From Print Texts to Multimedia Franchises Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) began with the study of print texts, particularly newspaper articles and editorials, that displayed an implicit ideological bias (Fowler, Hodge, Kress, & Trew, 1979). Its purview has long since DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-4

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been extended to more diverse media, such as the formal spoken discourse of parliamentary debates (Wodak & van Dijk, 2000) and the multimedia circus of contemporary television news (Chouliaraki, 2002). The linguistic foundations of CDA have been extended by efforts to define the semiotic resources of visual-​graphical representations and video (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). Where in the universe of discourse have we traditionally looked in CDA to find revealing instances of the political ideologies that serve dominant interests? Some classic media genres include: • • • • • • • • • • • •

News articles in print Newspaper editorials Political cartoons News photos Television news commentary and interviews Television news video clips and animations Parliamentary debates Official government documents and statements Print advertisements Television advertisements Commercial corporate documents and media NGO and other not-​for-​profit organizational documents and media.

In addition to these classic media genres, analysis has also focused on other genres of mass media culture, such as films, print fiction and nonfiction and television programming other than news and advertising. We know, however, that today our society is witnessing an explosion of new media. Where should we now be looking, among these new media, for evidence of the changing nature of political ideologies and their modes of expression in society? Any such updated list should certainly include: • • • • •

Webpages and websites (including government, corporate, commercial, organizational, military, educational, portal sites and online services such as Facebook, Instagram and others) Personal webpages and web-​log commentaries (blogs), YouTube Email listgroups, chat groups and discussion sites Personal CHAT and IM (instant messaging) media Digital computer-​and video-​games.

My own interest in the first and last of these newer media has led me to realize that many of the dominant ideological discourses of globalizing commercial culture today are widely distributed across multiple media. This is specifically the case for particular thematic formations (Lemke, 1995) or ‘content’ which can be protected by copyright as ‘IP’ (intellectual property) and then ‘franchised’ or distributed across different media under the logo of a corporate brand.

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For example, the print fictions known under the brand of ‘Harry Potter’ also distribute their messages about the nature of people, ideal identities, desirable values and the social order in the media of films, DVDs, videogames, websites, clothing, toys and even candy (see Amazon.com ‘Harry Potter’ for a sampling: www.ama​zon.com/​s?k=​harry+​pot​ter&ref=​nb_​sb​_​nos​s_​1). The Harry Potter franchise is a new kind of cross-​media or meta-​media object. The complete experience of its ‘discourse’ involves participation with all these media: not just reading the books, but also seeing the films (which differ significantly from the books) and the DVDs (which include material not in the commercially distributed theatrical-​release films), playing the videogames, wearing the clothing, buying the toys, visiting the websites that are linked to the books, films and videogames and even perhaps eating the candy. The websites often include vast networks of online discussions among ‘fans’ about the commercial works, with speculations about future products, and even the production by fans of imitative fictions that further elaborate the alternative reality of the Harry Potter universe (https://​harryp​otte​rfan​fict​ion.com/​). Much the same can be said of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ (LOTR) or the extended ‘Tolkien’ franchises and those associated with brands such as The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek and many others. Some of these franchised worlds began as print fictions, some as films, some as television programs and some as videogames. There are also a number of powerful franchises, particularly for children, which originated in the manga and anime genres and media of Japanese culture, or in the product lines of toys, which spawned animated television series, movies, videogames, websites and online community cultures. From the viewpoint of many fans or consumers of the products of these franchises, it does not matter what the medium or genre of origin may have been. From the viewpoint of those controlling the commercial interests of such ‘intellectual property’, maximizing profits compels a strategy of crossing over as many of these media as possible. It is not just children who are the consumer targets of these powerful franchises. The Matrix and the Lord of the Rings franchises mainly target adult consumers, and many franchises from the manga-​anime culture target high-​school and college-​age students, but may well maintain an influence well on into today’s prolonged ‘commercial adolescence’, a market that has been deliberately extended to consumers well into their 30s. In 2002 a national cable-​TV channel, G4tv, was launched in the United States, operating 24-​hours a day, whose content was primarily devoted to commercial videogames and the related market of consumer electronics it was closed down in 2014. The online platform Twitch.tv still exists and livestreams gameplay and hosts recorded play. A special characteristic of these fan-​franchise worlds is that consumers take on a strong sense of ownership and identification with them and their points of view, even if their sense of control over them or within them is part of the illusion of the medium. News broadcasts or print media present us with a

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point of view and try to portray the social world ‘as it is’ in objective fact, but they ‘address us’ from outside. In the case of immersive worlds, having chosen to enter them, we learn to address each other in their terms. The potential ideological and political effects of immersive virtual worlds are still largely unknown and under-​researched. Commercial opportunism in global corporate culture today is supporting not just immersive worlds in media such as videogames, but these larger world-​franchises that extend their parallel social realities into many other media that pervade ordinary social life. In bookstores you see not just the books, but the large graphical displays advertising them. You go online and are directed by placement of advertising links, or by your own inclination, to both their commercial sites and fan community sites (usually cross-​linked to each other), where you can encounter information and opportunities for identification not available in the other media. You can share your interest in the franchise world with real-​life friends and friends met online. You can write ‘fan fiction’ and read and critique others’ fan fiction. You may, and more people increasingly will, actually cooperate online in the creation of ‘mods’ or modifications of the games to reflect your group’s particular interests. These are relatively new and unprecedented identification phenomena: vast online fan communities that discuss these worlds in depth and at length; the creation of large numbers of texts by readers/​players/​viewers within the conventions of the alternate world; the convergence of identification with characters and themes from the original media with identification through the medium of the online community of real people. Such experiences renew engagement with these alternate worldviews across spatial sites and extended timescales that far exceed our encounters with un-​franchised print and broadcast media. The potential power of this new inter-​medium has not been lost on major political interests, in particular the U.S. military, whose creation of the ‘America’s Army’ franchise (www.ameri​casa​rmy.com/​), beginning with an online computer game, but rapidly developing a large parallel online player community, provides ample opportunity to explore the utility of the medium, not just for recruitment, but for conveying ideological messages of many kinds about the nature and function of military organizations, idealized military culture and identities, natural enemies, desirable weapons systems, justified rules of engagement, etc. This franchise is already so large that it would be considered a major success by commercial standards, even though it is not distributed for profit. We should not, of course, overlook the divergences in ideology and value systems that may occur when fans and players appropriate the resources of a franchise world to express their own views of social reality. A key phenomenon here, I think, is the extent to which large online communities of fans/​ players develop their own cultural values which may be normative for their community, but at variance with those of the creators of the original franchise world and its commercial extensions. There are many cases of conflict

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between such communities and the commercial owners/​managers of the franchise, particularly in the case of persistent online immersive gaming worlds (Everquest, Asheron’s Call, StarWars Galaxies, etc.) where many thousands of players interact both within the gameworld and in their own independent online player communities. A particularly interesting such phenomenon is ‘slash’ fan fiction, where two male hero figures, say ‘Aragorn/​Legolas’ from Lord of the Rings are erotically paired for the amusement of women and gay readers (e.g., www.lib​rary​ofmo​ria.com/​) . This is an extremely common phenomenon, parallel to a variety of manga/​anime mainly for young women in Japan, and certainly at odds with most commercial franchise ideologies.

Models, Identifications and Identity The notion of identity is conceptually complex and perhaps simply unable to bear all the intellectual burdens it is being asked to carry for us today (Caldas-​ Coulthard & Iedema, 2008). For an overview of the different senses and uses of the term, see Gee (2001). I have presented elsewhere some critical questions about important uses of the notion of identity in sociocultural theory (Lemke, 2008). Here, however, I am less interested in a reified notion of personal identity as such, and more in the process of identification with idealized cultural models that may be presented to us by the media, by institutions we participate in (e.g., families, schools, churches, workplaces), or by social networks we belong to. From this perspective we need to be mindful, first of the system of ideal models or social role-​identities that are made available, not just to any given individual, but across media and institutions, to the whole population of a society. The role options and identity models that are presented, and either valorized or vilified, to young working class people, middle class seniors, urban junior managers, etc., are not the same, but they are not unrelated or mutually independent. The complex societies we live in are internally both differentiated and hierarchized. That is, people are encouraged to identify with social models of beliefs, values and behaviors that differentiate them from others by various category criteria: age, social class, ethnic heritage, racial identity, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc. These differentiations are also socially ranked in terms of prestige, power and privilege: middle-​over working-​class; male over female; straight over LGBTQ; white over non-​white; European over African or Asian; Protestant Christian over Roman Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. At least in U.S. society, but similarly in most complex societies, and increasingly in what is emerging as a global consumer culture. All these categories are arbitrary, and differently constructed in different societies, but equally they are all made to seem natural and universal. I will discuss in more detail below the political economy and contradictions of differentiation and hierarchization when applied to global consumer

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markets. The point of that argument will be that a new global culture is being created in which commercial interests are trying to optimize the profitability of the distribution of identities, because these are increasingly, under modern marketing methods, the basis for consumer purchases. This means redefining identities, so that, for example, the same product can appeal to ‘adolescents’ from age 10 to age 40, or to both gay and straight consumers, or both men and women, while other products will appeal to one market segment as contrasting its users with those of another segment (a ‘masculine’ product; an ‘upper class’ product; a ‘gay’ product; a ‘Christian’ product). Increasingly, the identity models offered to us in the mass media have no other social function than to cluster us into more easily targeted consumer markets. The overall system of differentiation and hierarchization of these identities, however, serves many even more important functions of social control. Given this importance of the system of identity models in postmodern society, more and more powerful methods of promoting identification with these models are needed. I believe that new media, and in particular both computer games and transmedia franchises, show us the emergence of these new technologies of identification, as well as people’s reactions to and appropriations of them for our own purposes.

Transmedia Immersion ‘24/​7 ’ I want to argue that the ability of the franchises to extend the experience of engagement with their worlds across space and time is a key feature for their potential ideological influence and identity effects. To highlight this, consider the extreme case of someone (and there are in fact many people today who approach this extreme) who wants to lead a ‘gamer lifestyle’ and is committed to playing games and thinking, talking, hearing and writing about them pretty much ‘24/​7’. This does not mean that the person must sit in front of a computer or laptop in a chair all day and most of the night (or carry their gaming laptop wherever they go). Even more common, and cheaper, are lower-​priced systems such as the Nintendo GameBoy Advance, and newer Nintendo DS, Nokia N-​Gage and Sony PSP, which are small, lightweight, small-​screen gaming consoles, for which all the major franchises are producing graphically simplified versions. Another trend, which has grown rapidly, is toward ‘mobile gaming’ in which cellphones or wireless technology converges with gaming technology to permit online multi-​player games with somewhat reduced graphic complexity. Some genres of mobile gaming do not simply reproduce the console or computer-​ screen game experience, but allow players to interact in real social space ‘in character’ in the terms of the game world (so-​called RPGs, or role-​playing games). Consider also the timescales of engagement, even for the less-​than-​fanatical gamer. Once you are committed to playing an immersive game, you may well

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play for several hours a day, for a period of weeks or even months. If you participate in a persistent-​world game (e.g., Everquest, StarWars Galaxies), where there is no ‘ending’ to the game, you can continue this pattern indefinitely. By the time boredom would finally release you, the commercial producers are sure to be ready with a highly seductive sequel, extension, or other renewal of the novelty and attraction of the gameworld. This represents sustained engagement in a worldview on a timescale far beyond what film offers, comparable to immersion in a substantial novel, but lasting far longer than it takes to read most print fictions. The overall duration may be comparable to one or more seasons of episodic television programming, but the continuous periods of engagement are far longer. The nature of the engagement is also far more active, often from a first-​person viewpoint, as well as in many cases also being socially interactive. It holds not just the attraction of a good story, but has the added attraction of allowing us to act out a fantasy role within the context of that story.

Games and Globalization There is a sense in which global capital is now re-​making nation-​states as the units of economic competition, in the form of national and regional markets as well as capital resources. In the games industry the major players are the United States and Japan as producers, with the UK and some other parts of the EU trying to gain a larger share of the global market. In historical terms, Japan has had surprising success in the U.S. market, particularly with younger children, who may be less acculturated to U.S. norms than adults. The manga-​anime franchises are very strong among U.S. pre-​teen youth and young children, from Pokemon and Digimon to Yu-​Gi-​Oh and at older ages the Final Fantasy franchise. Moreover, the industrial leadership of Japanese companies and their U.S. subsidiaries, such as SEGA, Nintendo and Sony, have given them control of franchises, originating in their cultural ethos, that are now almost cultural icons in the United States. (e.g., Mario Brothers). I am highlighting these connections to the globalization of consumer culture because of the familiar argument that the increasing scale of commercial production and the drive to maximize profits in global markets favors the creation of culturally more uniform and homogeneous markets. To sell LOTR or Final Fantasy in global-​scale markets, you need the power to create demand for what are essentially cultural products (in the sense that desire for these products arises mainly from the need to define and express culturally significant identities). As Bourdieu argues in Distinction, the value of products in a market is largely a function of their appeal to a culturally specific habitus, a disposition or taste that is cultivated in relation to one’s social position (Bourdieu, 1979). It has long been recognized that commercial advertising to mass markets is not just selling products, but selling lifestyles or tastes, and indeed selling a value system and in many respects a culture. Indeed, looking

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across advertisements, what is being sold is an internally differentiated, hierarchically stratified and integrated ‘heteroglossic’ culture (Bakhtin, 1981a; Lemke, 1995). Different brands, even from the same producer, target low-​ end and high-​end markets; children, teenagers, extended adolescents or older adults are defined as sub-​cultural markets. We are all becoming accustomed to accepting the principles of this differentiation, one that is only visible intertextually, and one that is largely covert and implicit from the viewpoint of any particular consumer. The immersive world franchises are also subsumed in this project of re-​ creating stratified global market-​cultures. Just what is the ideological content of this New Cultural Order? That is, just what principles of differentiation and hierarchy are at work to produce what system of values and social relations for the benefit of global marketing and global profits? The global economic order aims to succeed in creating a global culture to which it can market products on a global scale. In doing so, it is caught in a contradiction: on the one hand, it maximizes profits to the extent that there is a homogeneous cultural order (so that one product line, minimizing production and marketing costs, appeals to all), but on the other hand, the conditions of reproduction of capital concentration (i.e., the basis of power and privilege for those making the marketing decisions) demand a differentiated and hierarchical social order (with associated brand differentiation and multiple product lines that in turn bring higher production and marketing costs and lower net profits). Caught in the pressures of this contradiction, global cultural marketing is both working against national and ethnic cultural diversity and working to restructure class-​, age-​and gender-​based market differentiation. At least, I would identify these as major strategies overall. There are also various competing interests and strategies within capital. Those who see their power and privilege as having a national or ethnic basis will continue to try to manipulate mass culture towards hierarchical differentiation on this basis. National producers will be in conflict with cross-​ national producers. Ethnic and religion-​based centers of power will also be in conflict with global marketers. Class-​differentiated markets, however, seem to be a necessary concomitant of economically based power and privilege and the ideologies that support them. Age-​and gender-​differentiations in the global-​culture market may or may not persist. Clearly, they have been and still are to a large degree foundational for the power of global-​marketers. Middle-​aged decision-​makers must continue to pander to the young, minimizing competition for their positions of power by encouraging extended adolescence. They must also attempt to perpetuate cultural naturalizations of gender-​ based differentiations, both to maintain their own cultural sense of the superiority of masculinity and to marginalize competition from highly educated, intelligent, and resilient females. In the present state of rapid technological flux and economic re-​ organization, both 30-​something males and many females have distinct competitive advantages over traditionally dominant 50-​something males. These

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caste-​interest pressures maintain the current age-​and gender-​obsessions of global mass-​marketing culture, even though in principle these differentiations of the market do not maximize capital’s profits. I have not so far mentioned another strong traditional cultural differentiation, that based on sexual-​orientation. So, the New Global Cultural Order is quite happy to homogenize markets across gay and straight consumers, marketing the same products in much the same ways to both groups, and including gay and lesbian minority characters and themes up to a point in films, television, and, one hopes, eventually games. The difficulty with this strategy is of course the strong class-​bias of homophobia in Euro-​American cultures, so that working-​class males are culturally shaped towards an extreme masculinity that makes them more ready to take on dirty and dangerous tasks from building construction to infantry soldiering. That masculinity is based in a complex system of value-​contrasts which has to accommodate both anti-​femininity and male-​bonding, as well as a strong sense that upper-​class occupations are insufficiently masculine to aspire to. Homophobia is thus both a by-​product of the internal contradictions of working-​class sub-​altern male identities and a tool for their cultural reproduction. This class-​linkage makes the risks of gay-​ friendly marketing to working-​ class males outweigh the advantages of homogenizing their market with respect to sexual-​ orientation. Only in distinctively middle-​and upper-​middle class markets is this safely profitable. In Startopia, a droll science-​fiction simulation game of creating and managing a large multi-​species space station, the workers’ brothels include pretty boys as well as pretty girls. In The Sims and its online massively multiplayer variant, one can create gay families and there are even online virtual gay neighborhoods. In both cases, working-​class males would be a small segment of the potential market for these particular games. I hope these observations are sufficient to make the prima facie case that any newly emerging global cultural order will be caught in ideological contradictions that should make its analysis both amenable to critical discourse analysis methods and significant for the critical-​emancipatory aims of such research. I believe that the most interesting new phenomena in terms of how identity effects are carried by semiotic media arise in the new inter-​media world-​franchises, and this is where we need to focus our efforts to develop research techniques and theoretical conceptualizations to more effectively analyze inter-​discursivity across products, media and markets.

Dilemmas and Opportunities There are a number of challenges to critical discourse analysis of inter-​media world-​franchises and their identity effects. The ideological systems of these new media discourses are distributed not just across many texts, but across many semiotic modalities: speech and written language, typography, visual images, graphic presentations,

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3D spaces, hyperlinked databases, animations, full-​ motion video, sound effects and music, interactive displays and computer programs, manipulable objects, etc. Not only do we not have adequate models of semiotic effects and inter-​discursivity for each of these semiotic media individually, but many of the discursive and ideological effects of interest in inter-​media franchise products depend on inter-​relations among presentations in coordinated, multiple media. How do we determine whether a text and an image are presenting the same discourse or somewhat different and even potentially contradictory discourses? How do we define what the ideological and identity effects are of a particular text and image taken in combination, when these go beyond the separately analyzable effects of the text or the image in isolation? I believe it is now well-​established that artifacts, including texts, do not have inherent discursive content or ideological functions. Meaning is produced with these artifacts by the practices of users, and different users may construct different meanings, evaluations and feelings for the same text/​artifact. Moreover, they may each produce multiple meanings, and only the probability distribution of the relative salience of these different alternatives differs consistently and systematically from group to group (van Helden, 2004). From the texts/​artifacts themselves, we can at most identify a meaning potential (Halliday, 1978), or range of meaning probabilities relative to various user communities and their cultural practices of interpretation and use. Accordingly, we need a fairly sophisticated sociological theory (as in Bourdieu’s Distinction) in order to connect the effective or most probable discursive content and ideological effects relative to one user/​consumer group vs. another. I do not believe that we can begin with a ‘master theory’ that purports to apply in all cases. That is, I do not believe that there are universal, objective social categories independent of the particular systems of artifacts and practices we happen to be studying. How can we in fact begin to do critical research to analyze these phenomena?

Some Strategies for Research I would like to briefly sketch some theoretical resources for critical analysis of inter-​media franchises: first a multiplicative, heteroglossic model of meaning and identity effects across media and then more briefly two other cross-​media strategies. The first combines my approach to cross-​ media analysis of inter-​ discursivity (Fairclough, 1995), which builds on Halliday’s meta-​functional principles for textual analysis (Halliday, 1994). I take inter-​discursivity to be most interesting when it is about relationships between different discourses and their ideological effects as instantiated in different registers and genres in different communities or sub-​communities. In this sense it is much the same notion as Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, in which different ‘social voices’ speak

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differently about the world, but their differences are related in the same ways as are their social positions. In Bakhtin’s original formulation there was less of modern critical sociology and more a sense of how these different voices are arrayed in relation to one another in the modern novel (Bakhtin 1981a). I have tried to stress (Lemke, 1995) its potential for collocating our practices of social positioning with other discursive practices. It is not difficult to extend such a proposal to non-​textual genres and non-​linguistic semiotics. We need to ask how all media artifacts present (and allow us to perform) different social identities to different degrees, or not at all, or how they oppose such identifications. Said in another way, we need to ask which groups of people identify with which media artifacts and qualities (types of music, types of art, types of videogames; visual styles, musical styles, gameplay styles), and then discover what principles are at work for differentiating and hierarchizing these groups that can be discerned from the affordances of the media artifacts themselves. Such a project can only succeed, of course, in the case of multimedia; i.e., those that coordinate the use of different semiotic resource systems (language, images, music, etc.) to produce meaning effects and ideological effects for various groups of users, if we also have a way to approach the coordination of meanings across media. For this, I generalize from Halliday’s three linguistic metafunctions (Halliday, 1994), to see these as generalized semiotic functions, each of which is in operation simultaneously in every meaning-​ making act, and each of which must be supported by every meaningful text or artifact. These are the well-​known triad of (1) ideational or representational meaning content, which I generalize as the Presentational function and Presentational meaning; (2) interpersonal-​attitudinal meaning effects such as speech act relationships and evaluative semantics (the general Orientational function); and (3) textual-​textural or structural-​cohesive principles (the general Organizational function). So, in the traditional terminology of art history for images, these would encompass the iconographic, perspectival and compositional aspects of images, respectively. Van Leeuwen has also done important work to extend these notions to the domains of music and other socially meaningful sound effects, and to toys as manipulable semiotic objects (van Leeuwen, 1999; van Leeuwen & Caldas-​Coulthard, 2001). What particularly interests me, however, for the purposes of this project, is not the generalization of the semiotic functions themselves across media, but rather their inter-​coordination within any particular multimedia genre. While each such genre clearly achieves this inter-​coordination in its own way, we can at least begin by asking how the overall meaning effect is constituted by: (1) the product of the Presentational (or Orientational, or Organizational) affordances and effects from each medium: e.g., the Presentational meanings from each of the media cross-​contextualize those from the other media, in general either creating a single more specific Presentational

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meaning effect (mutual narrowing for mutual consistency) or blurring the definitiveness of the meaning from any one medium by lack of perfect consistency with that in the others (see below on incommensurability), and (2) the cross-​ influence of Orientational and Organizational meanings from each medium on the net Presentational meaning effects (and of Presentational and Organizational on net Orientational meaning effects; and of Presentational and Orientational on net Organizational meaning effects). I call this a multiplicative model of multimedia meaning effects because it assumes that meaning effects are not simply additive, but ‘multiply’, because the meaning potential, or set of possible meanings from each component multiplies that from each other component, creating in principle a vast combinatorial space of meaning possibilities. Any particular text-​specific, constructed-​interpreted meaning is then one intersection in that very large space, and so correspondingly more specific in its meaning than it would be as one instantial meaning out of the much smaller set of possibilities obtained by adding each dimension. The basis of this model is the general notion of cross-​contextualization: that the meaning of any word is made more specific by the context of words (or situation) around it. So also, the meaning of any text is made more specific by our assumption that it is consistent with (in some local sense) the accompanying image. And conversely the meaning we make with any image is more specific when we make the meaning in such a way as to be locally consistent with an accompanying text. Provided, of course, that the multimedia genre gives us recognizable cues through its Organizational functions to tell us that the text and the picture are indeed meant to go together. I have been speaking here implicitly of the Presentational meaning of the text and image, and this simple example shows how the Organizational function from another semiotic (say page layout of text and image) influences Presentational meaning. I have found this an extremely rich heuristic for cross-​modal analysis of multimedia genres such as scientific publications (Lemke, 1998), NASA websites (Lemke, 2002b) and political cartoons (Lemke, 1997). There are still two more strategies I want to recommend, particularly for their critical potential. The first is to look for instances of cross-​modal subversion of consistent meaning effects. (Note that I am using the term modal here to refer to semiotic modes or media such as language, images, music, etc.) No two semiotic resource systems are capable of producing exactly the same meaning potential in a text or artifact. There is no image that corresponds exactly in meaning to a word, phrase or sentence. And conversely, there is no perfect description of an image in words that captures all of its meaning affordances. This is the principle of incommensurability. It derives from the simple fact that

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the meaning potential of any sign within a particular semiotic depends on its relationships with other, alternative signs available within that semiotic. And its concrete meaning-​in-​use depends on how that meaning potential is further cross-​contextualized, as discussed above, with culturally significant features of the context of situation in which the sign appears for communicative or other purposes. Not even a thousand words can exactly tell what a picture means. A consequence of this incommensurability is that even a matched text and the picture (e.g., a newsphoto and its caption) each can easily be interpreted in ways that subvert or undermine the meaning of the other. A critical reading, or a critical analysis, can often exploit this incommensurability to disrupt the ideological effects of the joint text-​image construction, or to identify those effects and how they are being produced. As we move to more complex multimedia, with many cross-​modal ideological effects, the opportunities for subversive readings ‘against the grain’ also multiply. And in the case of franchise-​world products, where the ideological effects may be subtly distributed across completely different media (television programs, websites, videogames, calendars), the analytic possibilities of critical cross-​modal analysis seem maximal, if not necessarily easy to carry out. The second critical strategy is one I have called traversal analysis (Lemke, 2002a, 2003). It relies on the fact that, by and large, ideological effects of individual texts and media tend to be confined to particular institutional sites, those where the genre and register of the text or media product are appropriate. Over time, however, people increasingly find themselves moving among different institutional sites, where we encounter different genres, in which some of the same ideological principles of the wider community or culture may also be operative, but in which they are once again never quite the same as in some other genre of ideological context. If we do not connect meanings from one context and site to another, we may not be aware of the potential inconsistencies and contradictions across sites and genres. But the separation of institutions, sites and genres, particularly their separation in time, is being undermined by new information and communication technologies. When we channel-​surf on cable television, or web-​surf online, or get a personal cellphone call, email or WhatsApp message during a business meeting, we find ourselves cycling our attention much more rapidly among various real and virtual institutional spaces and their genres. We find ourselves far more likely to start cumulating meanings along our daily traversals across multiple institutional worlds, and so making meanings in which contradictions may get noticed. This is good for us all, but a special boon to critical discourse analysis. Except for two difficulties. The first is the practical one that it is quite difficult to follow people, other than ourselves, around through their daily or weekly traversals across institutional and attentional spaces. The second is that the new phenomenon of inter-​media franchise-​worlds is in fact something

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of an effort on the part of capital to create more consistent meaning-​worlds across sites, contexts, institutions and media. Assuming, however, that the franchises are not yet entirely successful in this regard, as analysts we ought to be able to start discovering some of the new strategies of this ideological inter-​medium by following such traversals.

How to Do It? An ideal research methodology would combine multisite ethnography with critical discourse analysis of the texts and media encountered by subjects in the course of their life-​traversals (this would of course need to include interviews to assess subjects’ interpretations of each text/​product and also across sites and texts). This approach is, however, quite difficult in practice because of the need to coordinate two levels of data collection and two levels of analysis: one on the timescale of short encounters with media, and the other on the timescale of lived days and weeks, many orders of magnitude greater. It will ultimately require not only using the new technologies to assist in data gathering, but also cross-​project coordination among researchers studying subjects who bring different interpretive viewpoints and construct different traversals. There is still another important pre-​requisite for the conceptual analysis of meaning constructions along traversals, whether for the study of inter-​media franchise-​worlds or not. We need a better understanding of the phenomenological aspects of meaning construction in real time and across media-​and artifact-​rich spaces. Meaning is made in time, and along traversals it is also made dynamically across real and attentional (virtual) spaces. What meanings we make and what feelings we experience as we interact with semiotic artifacts depends not just on their affordances and meaning potentials, and not just on our own interpretative stances, but also on the dynamical qualities of the interaction itself, such as pacing and spacing. Whether we interact leisurely or urgently, whether an interactive response from the medium comes quickly or tardily relative to our expectations, whether we encounter media arrayed in real space as we move through that space, and just how we move from one attentional focus to another in time and through space –​all these matter to the meanings we make and the feelings we experience, even with the same media and artifacts. This is a key aspect of meaning making that we need to more completely understand if we are to successfully analyze traversal-​meanings in general, and cross-​medium franchise-​worlds and their distributed ideological and identity effects in particular. I believe that we can learn a great deal about these processes, and the typical and newly emergent chronotopes (Bakhtin, 1981b) of present-​day and new cultural orders, not just by the difficult, direct study of people-​in-​action across multiple timescales, but also in a case that is much easier to study but should exhibit many of the same general features: that of people making

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meaning across semiotic media/​modalities, in real time, and through virtual spaces, in interaction with virtual semiotic artifacts in the new meta-​medium of 3D computer gameworlds. Clearly, not all the complexity of either real-​life or of inter-​media franchises (which include such games, but also other media) is available in gameworlds, but on the other hand, activity in such worlds on all timescales can be readily recorded for analysis. Moreover, such gameworlds do often contain virtual replicas or instances of other media and multimedia genres: books, films, toys, music, etc. There are even games-​within-​games. In multiplayer game genres, players interact with avatars of other players as well as with the game program, and they may well do so outside the game as well. Many massively multiplayer (hundreds to thousands of simultaneous players) gameworlds are also persistent worlds: architectural, historical and artifactual changes and effects persist for players across different logins, adding additional dimensions of ordinary life traversals on still longer timescales. The gameworlds are moreover ‘immersive’, not just in the sense of trying to create an illusion of immersion in a three-​dimensional virtual world, but in phenomenologically evoking a sense of presence in the gameworld by giving us agency and an active identity there, reinforced by the ways in which other players or the game’s fictional characters interpellate and respond to us. These are powerful new means for encouraging identification with the model identities offered, and with the values and ideologies implicit in these worlds. This research can then be extended outward into the lifeworld of the players, to their encounters with other non-​game instantiations of the franchise, where we will once again encounter all the complexity and practical difficulties of studying the fully general problem we have posed. I hope that this sketch of phenomena, issues and strategies for research goes some way toward helping us to begin the critical analysis of new media, new systems of social identities and new modes of identity formation.

Research Tasks 1

2

Choose your favorite computer game or multimedia franchise and compare one character or scene as it is presented in two different media (e.g., text vs. image or video; or animation vs. live-​action film). In what ways are the two presentations most different? How do you react emotionally to each, and which one do you feel you more closely identify with or want to engage with? Consider one of your favorite games or multimedia content and compare it with another one of the same genre and otherwise as similar as possible, but which you think is meant to appeal to someone of a different gender/​sexuality or social background. What is it about the one you like that appeals to you, and what is it about the other one that puts you off ?

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Further Reading Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T. (2021) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (3rd ed.). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Lemke, J. (2005) ‘Place, Pace, and Meaning: Multimedia Chronotopes’. In S. Norris and R. Jones (eds.) Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp.110–​122. Lemke, J. (2012) ‘Multimedia and Discourse Analysis’. In J.P. Gee and M. Handford (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 79–​89. Lemke, J (2014) ‘Multimodality, Identity, and Time’. In C. Jewitt, (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (2nd ed.). London: Routledge, 2014, 165–​75.

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981a) Discourse in the Novel. In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981b) ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’. In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bourdieu, P. (1979) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1984 edition). Caldas-​ Coulthard, C. R. and Idema, R. (eds.) (2007) Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contestations of Identification. London: Macmillan/​Palgrave. Chouliaraki, L. (2002) ‘Watching September 11th News: Constructing Proximity in the Representation of Distant Suffering’. Dansk Sociologi (Danish Socology Journal) (December 2002). Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Fowler, R., Hodge, R., Kress, G. and Trew, T. (1979) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gee, J. P. (2001) ‘Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education’. In W. Secada (ed.) Review of Educational Research 25, Vol. 25, pp.99–​126. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition. London: Edward Arnold. Jenkins, H. (2003)‘Transmedia Storytelling’. Technology Review (January, 2003). Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Lemke, J. L. (1995) Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis. Lemke, J. L. (1997) ‘Resources for Evaluative Meaning: Verbal Semantics and Visual Semiotics in Political Cartoons’ (Paper presented at the University of Vienna; available online at www.jayle​mke.com/​mul​time​dia-​games) Lemke, J. L. (1998) ‘Multiplying Meaning: Visual and Verbal Semiotics in Scientific Text’. In J. R. Martin and R.Veel (eds.) Reading Science (pp. 87–​113). London: Routledge. Lemke, J. L. (2002a) ‘Discursive Technologies and the Social Organization of Meaning’. Folia Linguistica, 35(1-​2), 79–​96. Lemke, J. L. (2002b) ‘Travels in Hypermodality’. Visual Communication, 1(3), 299–​325.

Transmedia Identities: Critical Analysis and New Media  59 Lemke, J. L. (2003) ‘The Role of Texts in the Technologies of Social Organization’. In R. Wodak & G. Weiss (eds.) Theory and Interdisciplinarity in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Macmillan/​Palgrave, pp. 130–​149. Lemke, J. L. (2007) ‘Identity, Development, and Desire: Critical Questions’. In C. Caldas-​Coulthard & R. Iedema (eds.) (2007) Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contestations of Identification. London: Macmillan/​Palgrave, pp 17–​42. Leonard, S. (2001) Scores of Glory, Fantasy, and Plumbing: The Concise History and Principal Genres of Video Game Mus. At www.seansp​ace.com/​iSph​ere/​sco​res.htm van Helden, C. (2004) Polyvalent meaning in multimodal youth lifestyle media. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis, Valencia, Spain. van Leeuwen, T. (1999) Speech, Music, Sound. New York: St. Martin’s Press. van Leeuwen, T. and Caldas-​Coulthard, C. (2001) Social Semiotics of Toys. Final Report on the Toys as Communication Project. Halmstad: Halmstad University, Nordic Center for Research on Toys and educational media (NCFL). Wodak, R. and van Dijk, T. (eds.) (2000) RACISM AT THE TOP: Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag.

Chapter 5

Performance and politics Theo van Leeuwen

Introduction Performance has long been recognized as an important aspect of sociolinguistics. Hymes called it ‘key’ and defined it as “the tone, manner or spirit in which an act is done” (Hymes, 1972: 62). It is, he said, often expressed non-​verbally (‘with a wink, gesture, posture’) but also involves “conventional units of speech (…) that are often termed expressive, but are better dubbed stylistic, since they need not all depend on the mood of their user” (Hymes, 1972: 62). Most importantly, it conveys deep-​seated cultural values. He gave ‘quantity’ as an example, the amount of speech considered appropriate in a given cultural context, and showed that the values expressed by reticence or volubility, taciturnity or verbosity, profuseness or restraint, and so on, differ in different cultural and situational contexts, but always matter highly to members of the culture. Today, performance has come to play a particularly important role in social life, as perhaps first signalled by Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Social life, Goffman argued, is ‘dramatically realized’ by performances in which social actors create a particular ‘impression’ for an audience of others in order to influence them. Such performances are realized by the setting of the performance (‘the scenery and the stage props’), the appearance of the performers (including age, gender, ethnicity, and so on, as well as dress and grooming) and their manner, the way they play their roles, “their speech patterns, facial expression, bodily gestures and the like” (Goffman, 1959: 33–​34). Like Hymes, Goffman stressed that performance conveys values. He used service roles as an example, where the values that matter can include, for instance, “cleanliness, modernity, competence, and integrity” (ibid:36). But he also stressed that observers are “asked to believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess” (ibid: 28) and that “in the end, our conception of our role becomes second nature and an integral part of our personality” (ibid: 32). Performance and personality merge and feed on the same values. And performances have to be experienced as sincere –​by the performer as well as the audience. DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-5

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Habermas has critiqued this view of social life, as part of a broader argument, based on Weber, that different domains of social life are governed by different kinds of values. Science and technology, for instance, are governed by the values of factual truth and effectiveness, orienting themselves to the “objective world of existing states” (Habermas, 1984: 85). Legal and moral domains are governed by norms. Here the question is not ‘Is it true?’ or ‘Does it work?’, but ‘is it right?’: “A norm exists, is in force, enjoys social currency, when it is recognized as valid by those to whom it is addressed”. It then becomes “binding in regulating specific problem situations” (ibid: 88–​89). In other domains, for instance art and certain forms of therapy, the question is not ‘Is it right?’ but ‘Is it subjectively truthful?’ (or ‘Is it beautiful?’ ‘Do I like it?’). What matters here is sincerity and authenticity, based on the way an actor “evokes in his public a certain image, an impression of himself, by more or less purposefully disclosing his subjectivity” (ibid: 86). Referring to Goffman, Habermas calls this ‘dramaturgical action’, and he critiques it, first of all, because it can lead to “the manipulative production of false impressions” which cannot be recognized as strategic action because it “comes with a claim to subjective truthfulness” (ibid: 94), and secondly, because it presupposes that language is a medium of self-​presentation, which downgrades the representational and interpersonal aspects of language. Habermas wrote this before the advent of today’s social media, but it is as relevant as ever at a time when we are constantly asked to evaluate things only in terms of our subjective reactions (our ‘likes’), rather than, for instance, in terms of ‘Is it true?’ or ‘Is it right?’. Critical discourse analysts have also critiqued performance, not least because it plays such a central role in contemporary politics and because politicians are increasingly understood as performers, also by themselves, as in the case of Ronald Reagan, who “wanted to be, and became an accomplished presidential performer” and who is said to have called his presidency “the best role I ever played” (Cannon, 1991: 50). In such circumstances, critics will tend to ask whether politicians’ performances are truthful or deceptive, rather than whether they are morally right, or effective. In New Labour, New Language, Fairclough (2000) described Tony Blair as “an accomplished showman, an actor” who created a political identity “not just with his words, but with his overall bodily performance, the way he looked and acted, as well as what he said”. Blair, Fairclough said, “mixed vernacular and more formal language”, conveyed “youthful vitality and enthusiasm” and “confidence and self-​assurance”, and gave the impression of being ‘tough’ as well as “relaxed and at ease” (ibid: 8). Fairclough stressed that these attributes were constructed, a performance, as evidenced by a memorandum titled “Consolidating the Blair identity” and written by Philip Gould, a former advertising executive, who coached Blair during his campaign (ibid: 95–​96). In The Politics of Fear (2014), Ruth Wodak writes about the performance of rightwing populist politicians, describing them as well-​trained media

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performers who use styles derived from entertainment culture, see themselves as representing ‘the people’, and as speaking directly to ‘the people’ (e.g., through social media) and who, in doing so, construe ‘the people’ as a ‘pure community’ with a nostalgia for an idealized past (ibid: 47). She, too, emphasizes that they are performers: “We must stress its social construction and how charisma can become routinized” (174). Investigations of performance should not only analyse actual performances but also the normative discourses that ‘regulate’ and legitimate (or de-​ legitimate) performances. As discussed in van Leeuwen (2005), such discourses can take different forms. Some are prescriptive, as for instance in the case of Philip Gould, Tony Blair’s performance adviser. Others are accounts of exemplary –​or deviant –​performances, as in media reports of the performances of politicians, but also in critiques of the performances of actors, singers, musicians, and so on. Habermas (1984: 334) in fact argues that therapeutic and aesthetic critiques are the key genres of evaluative argumentation in the domain of dramaturgical action. With regard to the performances of politicians, the media are a key source of such normative discourses. It is the media that set a performance-​oriented and ‘leader-​centric’ (Strangio and Walter, 2020: 107) agenda, particularly during elections, and thereby influence not so much what people think about politics and politicians, as how they think about them, what interpretive frames they use, and what topics they discuss, as first demonstrated in a highly influential study of agenda setting during a U.S. presidential election campaign (McCombs and Shaw, 1972): “The media teaches the members of the audience the issues and topics to use in evaluating candidates and parties, not just during political campaigns, but also in the longer periods between campaigns” (Weaver et al, 1975: 471). In what follows I will first present a framework for analysing how performance can be represented in English, along the lines of earlier work on the representation of social actors, originally published in the first edition of this volume (van Leeuwen, 1996), and then apply it to an analysis of the representation of the performance of one politician, Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia at the time this chapter was written.

The representation of performance In developing a framework for analysing the representation of performance, I have been guided by two key criteria. Firstly, the distinctions I introduce are based on grammatical criteria, more specifically on the ‘ideational’ aspects of Halliday’s grammar (Halliday, 1994). However, there are several ways in which representations of performance can be realized beyond what might seem an obvious candidate, Circumstances of Manner. This is a consequence of the way representations of performance

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mix representation and evaluation. As early as 1923, Ogden and Richards (1972 [1923]: 152) noted the manifold realizations of ‘emotive meanings’, and more recently Martin and White (2005: 35) linked the expression of evaluation to a wide range of lexico-​grammatical systems. The framework is a discourse-​semantic framework and discourse-​semantic frameworks cut across the components of grammar. The framework is also intended to have critical relevance, in the tradition of critical discourse analysts such as Kress and Hodge (1979) and Fairclough (e.g., 1989, 2003) who first showed that grammatical analysis can reveal deep-​ seated inequalities and ideological preconceptions. As already mentioned, the representation of performance is invariably normative, and hence invariably evaluative. As such it is closely related to appraisal analysis (Martin and White, 2005). However, it differs from appraisal analysis in being based more explicitly on grammatical criteria, and also by its emphasis on performance, i.e., on the ‘impression management’ of actors vis-​a-​vis an audience, or the relation between an agenda-​setting press and the public. It asks a more specific question –​not “how writers/​speakers approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticise” (ibid: 1), but how the performance aspect of practices can be represented. As such it further develops my earlier work on the recontextualization of social practices (van Leeuwen, 2008). My examples are taken from newspaper reports and opinion pieces that appeared during the election campaign of Scott Morrison, augmented by two more extensive accounts of the election and the rise of Morrison (Strangio and Walter, 2020 and Blaine, 2021). Other examples come from a growing collection of newspaper reviews of concerts, plays, and movies discussing the performances of actors, singers, and musicians. Performer-​ vs. performance-​o riented representations I first of all distinguish between representations that focus on the performer (performer-​oriented representations) and representations that focus on the performance (performance-​oriented representations) –​the difference between, for instance, the following two examples: Scott Morrison comes across as powerful. The event [a campaign performance] was a plain and homespun affair. In the first case performance is represented as revealing something about the personality of the performer; in the second case it evaluates a specific performance. Leader-​centric discourses will of course tend to be performer-​ oriented. Other discourses, such as reviews of classical music concerts, will be more performance-​oriented. Although classical music can also have its star performers, it is traditionally a practice in which performers have to be

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faithful to the intentions of composers, and in which it is therefore the ‘work’ that matters most. For example: The early Beethoven sonata was irresistibly exuberant. In reviews of performance of actors, the ‘characters’ they play may be foregrounded in a similar way, as in this sentence from a review of No Time to Die, the latest James Bond film: This Bond is more passionate, more impulsive, more sensitive and –​dare we say –​more romantic, breathing remarkable new dimensions into a decades-​old character. There are several ways in which the distinction between performer-​oriented and performance-​ oriented representations can be blurred. In performer-​ oriented representations, tense can make the difference between, on the one hand, characterizing how the performer performed on a specific occasion, and, on the other hand, more pervasive traits of a performer’s performances that can be understood in terms of personality: He came across as being more prepared. We see in Morrison a leader who is tough, pragmatic, indefatigable. A range of devices can be used to habitualize actions; for example, turning them into personal characteristics, as in phrases such as he has a penchant for, he has a tendency to, or Circumstances of Time, such as often or at times: Mr Morrison has a tendency to be a bully when he doesn’t like the way things are going. His confidence is overzealous at times. Performance-​oriented representations can reintroduce the performer, such as in the form of possessive nouns or pronouns qualifying a nominalized performance characteristic. The representation then nevertheless remains focused on evaluating the performance rather than the performer: His combative style was evident during the second debate. I will use the term incorporating when a performance is represented without reference to the performer. For example: A sense of delight permeated the performance of the Ravel waltzes.

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I will use the term ascribing when a performance-​oriented representation does include the performer. For instance, through a possessive deictic: His confidence was overzealous at times. His Chopin Nocturne was cool and pure. All this underlines the intertwining of performance and personality in many domains of contemporary social life. Labelling and characterizing Performer-​ oriented representations can be of two kinds: They can label the performer, which is realized by a relational clause with the performer as Carrier, and a nominal group functioning as an Intensive Attribute (an attribute that signals that ‘x is a member of the class a’. For example: He is a natural one-​man band. They can also characterize the performer, in which case a quality of the performer functions as the Attribute of a relational clause with the performer, again, as Carrier: We see in Morrison a leader who is tough, pragmatic, indefatigable. While labels categorize performers’ styles, characterizations do not need to suggest defining categorizations. But they may harden into assertions that are no longer represented as debatable when they take the form of an Epithet in a material or behavioural clause with the performer as Actor. For example: A measured and confident Scott Morrison upstaged Bill Shorten.

Characterizing and labelling performances Performances can be also be labelled or characterized, although labelling is somewhat less common as in this example: Economic credibility is a strength for Mr Morrison. The characterization of performance is often realized by Circumstances of Manner, as in: Morrison gestures widely and congruently.

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Many such performance-​ oriented characterizations pertain to a specific performance. But they nevertheless draw on the same kind of values as do representations of more enduring characteristics of a performer’s style, in this case, for instance, ‘quick-​wittedness’ and ‘firmness’: Morrison said quickly and firmly ‘I will’. As in the case of performer-​ oriented characterizations, performance characterizations can become Epithets in nominal groups, which represents them as less circumstantial and more ‘essential’. The smirking facial expression he often displays. Morrison [was] getting in some folksy references to cars and footy. Implicit and explicit performance orientations Implicit representations are realized by material or behavioural clauses which do not explicitly express a positive or negative value but imply it or express it through a metaphor or a process which is at once referential and evaluative. To give a few examples: He does not rely on notes. He has the knack of smothering a line of questioning. He shoots from the hip. ‘He does not rely on notes’ clearly suggests that Morrison is a fluent, articulate speaker, but without saying this explicitly. The examples appear to just observe and describe. They exemplify the kind of meaning-​making Martin and White (2005: 62) call ‘invoked evaluation’, where “the selection of ideational meanings is enough to evoke evaluation, even in the absence of attitudinal lexis that tells us directly how to feel”. As already mentioned, media representations of performances, whether of actors or musicians, or of politicians, always evaluate, and are therefore always based on norms, whether explicitly or implicitly. But implicit evaluation shifts the responsibility for making the evaluative meanings from the writer to the reader. The writer says, as it were, ‘draw your own conclusions’. Interpreting Performances may be explicitly interpreted, by means of relational clauses which use a ‘semiotic’ process, such as ‘mean’, ‘signal’, ‘convey’, etc. Mr Morrison uses open palm gestures which can signal honesty. His measured, genuine delivery conveyed the feeling of speaking one to one with the audience.

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This implies interpretive expertise and therefore carries additional authority. It occurs in reports on televised debates between candidates, in which journalists routinely rely on ‘body language’ experts, but also in opinion pieces where journalists or others are given the right to openly evaluate and interpret, rather than having to attribute interpretations to experts and evaluations to sources with inside knowledge of performers, as in these examples: Older voters viewed him as a ‘Sharks-​supporting salesman’, ‘a typical bogan’, ‘a typical politician’. Cassandra Goldie, CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service recalls Morrison from that time as ‘adaptable, pragmatic, and able to spot a political opportunity’. Such expert evaluations sometimes become prescriptive, giving the performer unsolicited advice. Morrison needs to avoid the smirking facial expression he often displays to avoid appearing too jocular. Morrison sometimes needs to slow down. The diagram in Figure 5.1 maps the distinctions I have introduced in this section. It represents the key choices available for representing performances, which may be either-​ or choices (represented by square brackets) or simultaneous choices (represented by curly brackets). The diagram could of course be expanded by increasing its ‘delicacy’ and showing what kinds of labels and characterizations are possible or what kinds of strategies can realize implicit evaluations, but I have chosen to include here only the most essential, grammatically realized aspects of the representation of performance.

Figure 5.1 System network for the representation of performance.

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Figure 5.2 Scott Morrison on a building site. https://​sta​rtsa​t60.com/​media/​news/​polit​ics/​hows-​your-​aim-​scott-​morri​son-​slam​med-​for-​hilari​ ous-​photo-​op-​fail –​ Twitter/​@Anika Wells

Performing populisms In this section I focus on representations of the performance of Scott Morrison during the election campaign of 2019. At the time of this campaign, Morrison was already Prime Minister. A year earlier, he had become the leader of the Liberal Party (and hence unelected Prime Minister) as the result of a ‘leadership spill’ in which Malcolm Turnbull, the previous Liberal Prime Minister, had been ousted1. The election campaign of his opposite number, Labour politician Bill Shorten, focused on climate change and on economic policies which had the potential of significantly diminishing Australia’s rapidly growing wealth inequality2. Shorten explicitly argued against ‘leadership magnetism’ and in favour of a ‘collective effort’ by his shadow ministry (cf Strangio and Walter, 2020: 116). During his campaign he surrounded himself with prominent colleagues, many of them outstanding female politicians such as Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek, and Kristina Keneally. Scott Morrison, by contrast, appeared either on his own or with his family, trying to lure blue collar voters away from Labour, not with policies, but by performing a likeable suburban Dad, and through vague promises such as that, under his leadership, Australians would be able to “quietly go about their lives and realize their simple, honest and decent aspirations” (Morrison, 2019). During the campaign, media of all persuasions focused predominantly on performance rather than policies (cf Strangio and Walter, 2020). Shorten was relentlessly portrayed as ‘wooden’ and ‘uninspiring’, while Scott Morrison

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was portrayed as an ‘ordinary bloke’ who had the best interest of the ‘quiet Australian’ at heart and promised, in vernacular language, an Australia where “if you have a go, you get a go” (Morrison, 2019). Even when critical of Morrison, the media focused on performance and personality rather than on issues and policies. The following extracts from two representative texts show the representation of performance in action. The first is a report of a televised debate between Morrison and Shorten from The West Australian (30/​4/​2019), a conservative newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch: Federal Election 2019: Body language experts declare PM Scott Morrison more powerful in Leaders’ Debate Perth-​based body language experts Sophie and Lee Halliday-​Zadeh examined the non-​verbal cues displayed by both leaders, from their eye-​ blink rates to hand gestures, to pick up whether they were concealing emotions that may not have matched their words. She said there was contrast between the leaders in their opening and closing statements. “Mr Morrison actually came across as more powerful than Mr Shorten did”, Mrs Halliday-​Zadeh said. “He came across as being more prepared because he looked more confident.” “He was also very expressive with his hand gestures. When hand gestures are used in alignment with words, that’s a positive thing, because it just shows his true feelings align with what he’s said.” She said Mr Morrison also used open palm gestures, which can signal honesty, a closed fist when making certain points and a side head tilt, which can signal empathy and engagement. “If you put all that together, he looked like a more powerful leader than Mr Shorten.” The second, written by journalist Michelle Grattan, is a longer profile of the prime ministerial candidates from The Conversation (13/​5/​019), a not-​for-​profit online platform for analysis, commentary, news, and research, contributed to by journalists as well as academics. Articles from The Conversation are frequently republished by major newspapers such as The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Against the odds, Scott Morrison wants to be returned as prime minister. But who the bloody hell is he? If you had to describe Morrison in a single word, perhaps you’d call him a “journeyman of politics”, in the dictionary definition a player who’s “able but not outstanding”. He’s not cerebral but he’s clever and cunning; he’s competent but not charismatic nor inspiring.

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His combative style was evident during the second debate when he advanced on Bill Shorten, who quipped he was a “space invader”. (….) If someone asked the “real Scott Morrison to please stand up”, two men might rise to their feet. The uncompromising, don’t-​give-​an-​inch Scott, and a more conciliatory, flexible character. As immigration minister cracking down on the borders, he closed off information, selectively leaked stories that were later discredited, seemed untroubled by human rights issues. He had taken a different line in opposition when it had suited him, for example expressing concern about the welfare of people who might be dispatched under Labor’s proposed “Malaysia solution”.3 When he moved to social services, he emerged as a negotiator, with the welfare lobby and the Senate. Cassandra Goldie, CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service, recalls Morrison from that time as “adaptable, pragmatic and able to spot a political opportunity. He showed he was capable of changing direction to build support”. Another source put it more harshly: “He’s a shape-​shifter. He pivots for the opportunity, and his gospel is the gospel of politics”. (…) Morrison entered parliament for the seat of Cook in the Sutherland Shire in 2007, after a highly controversial pre-​selection. Although he’d come from another part of Sydney, he has adopted “The Shire” and everything about it, especially the Sharks rugby league team, as though his family were original settlers. His prime ministerial persona plays up to the footy-​loving, suburban, family-​oriented, curry-​cooking dad. It works with some voters but others are cynical. The first of these two texts is overwhelmingly performer-​oriented and uses mostly characterizations, perhaps with the exception of the conclusion (‘He looked like a more powerful leader than Mr Shorten’). The verbs are infused with the evidentiality of observation (‘look like’, ‘come across’). Most importantly, the text endorses Morrison through expert interpretations of the values expressed by his performance –​authenticity (‘honesty’, his feelings aligned with what he’d said’), empathy and engagement’, confidence (being well prepared and expressive as a performer), and power. But what Morrison actually talked about is not reported here. As a result, voters are encouraged to elect a leader on the basis of his performance of leadership qualities. This is so, not only in Murdoch papers, but also in papers that critique Morrison. For example, in a report of the same debate in The Guardian (29 April 2019), written by political editor Katharine Murphy, who, even though recognizing that Shorten “had a tangible agenda –​not just a strategy to avoid an election loss”, describes the debate as a kind of boxing match: “[Morrison] hovered, assiduous,

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solicitous, waiting for Shorten to fluff his answer, and picked up whenever there was anything loose, clambering on his opponent’s deficiency, (…) trying to take down Shorten in a flurry of energy-​sapping blows.” The second text criticizes Morrison by contrasting Morrison the performer with the ‘true’ Morrison. To a large degree it does so by implication, by reporting past actions of Morrison which voters might interpret as lacking transparency (‘he closed off information’) or empathy (‘he cracked down on borders’; ‘he was untroubled by human rights issues’, or as exposing Morrison as an opportunist (‘he expressed concern when it suited him’). The explicit representations in this text are almost all performer-​oriented; some of them positive, some negative, some lukewarm. They include labels (‘he emerged as a negotiator’; ‘he was a shape-​shifter’; ‘you’d call him a journeyman of politics’) as well as characterizations (‘he is competent’, ‘he is not charismatic or inspiring’). There are only two explicit performance-​ oriented representations –​a reference to ‘his combative style’ and ‘his persona plays up to the footy-​loving, family-​oriented, curry-​cooking dad’. The latter foregrounds that Morrison is playing a role. Although he came from a privileged background, Grattan argues, he profiles himself as a ‘man of the people’, an ‘ordinary bloke’. Thus Morrison’s performance is explicitly described as capable, though not brilliant, but implicitly Morrison is made out to be opportunistic, pretending to be something he is not. As Strangio and Walter (2020: 120) put it, “Relatively unknown outside the ‘Canberra bubble’, he could construct a persona –​ScoMo –​attuned to the needs of the campaign: the ordinary bloke who understood common people.” The two texts differ of course also in another respect. The first deals with one of the televised leadership debates, while the latter deals with the election campaign and profiles the candidates more generally. Looking at other texts in these genres confirms the differences between them. Reports of the leadership debates are more performance-​oriented, focus on characterization, and enlist experts to interpret the candidates’ body language. Reports of Morrison’s performance in his election campaigns are more performer-​oriented, focus more equally on labelling and characterizing, and include ‘habitualizations’. Yet, as already mentioned, the same values underpin both types of text. Identifying the performer characterizations in a sample of 10 articles yields the following list of Morrison’s positive values: Strong (‘powerful’, ‘strong’, tough’, ‘confident’, ‘in command’, ‘authoritative’, ‘decisive’, ‘determined’, ‘vigorous’)? either alphabetise these three lists or put the group name as first item in the list when it occurs or omit it? Authentic (‘genuine’, ‘authentic’, ‘honest’, ‘decent’, ‘credible’) Charismatic (‘inspiring’, ‘charismatic’, ‘enthusiast’) Ordinary (‘folksy’, ‘plain’, ‘homespun’, ‘footy-​loving’, ‘suburban’)

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Empathetic (‘engaged’, ‘approachable’, ‘empathetic’, ‘attentive’) Good performer (‘well prepared’, ‘expressive’, ‘fluent’, ‘articulate’, ‘clear’, ‘relaxed’, ‘at ease’, ‘measured’) Pragmatic (‘quick’, ‘flexible’, adaptable’, ‘clever’, ‘cunning’, ‘pragmatic’) Morrison’s Negative values are less diverse: Elitist (‘arrogant’, ‘elitist’, ‘inflexible’) Untrustworthy (‘flippant’, ‘uncaring’ ‘insipid’, ‘sly’, ‘hypocritical’, ‘two-​ faced’, ‘opportunistic’, ‘smirky’) Poor performer (‘uncomfortable’, ‘nervous’, ‘angry’, ‘uncoordinated’, ‘awkward’, ‘inconsistent’, ‘over fast’, ‘overzealous’) Such negative values in fact reinforce the positive values. Populist politicians cannot be ‘elitist’ and thrive on criticizing their opponents as ‘elitist’. ‘Authentic’ contrasts with ‘two-​faced’. A ‘measured performer’ cannot be ‘over-​fast’ or ‘overzealous’. However, qualities such as ‘intelligent’ and ‘knowledgeable’ are not included. By contrast in voter surveys Shorten scored high on these qualities –​but low on ‘honesty’, ‘trustworthiness’, and ‘inspirational leadership’ (quoted in Strangio and Walter, 2020: 115). The way Australian media characterized Morrison during the 2019 election campaign presented him displaying many of the classic characteristics of populist politicians described by Wodak (2021). Populist politicians position themselves in opposition to political (and other) elites (173) and as authentic, able to understand how ‘the people’ feel and live. Fairclough, too, stresses this in his book about Blair, who had to show himself to be tough and capable of leading the nation in a new direction, but also able to use vernacular language to show that he is “like everyone else” (Fairclough, 2000: 7). However, in doing so, populist politicians from different countries construe ‘the people’ differently, in ways that resonate with patriotic histories of their countries, and nostalgias for imagined cultural homogeneities of the past. As mentioned, for Blair ‘the people’ are “very much middle class and middle England in values, outlook and style” (Fairclough, 2000: 8). For U.S. voters, “manual labour, building one’s own house, chopping wood in the forest and apparently being part of the Wild West mythology are salient attributes for a (white) American man and successful politician” (Wodak, 2021: 173). The Austrian rightwing politician Sebastian Kurz not only ‘speaks our language’ but also has himself photographed “in front of ‘our’ lovely Austrian countryside, featuring mountains and meadows, surrounded by smiling citizens” (Wodak, 2021: 165). Morrison’s ‘quiet Australian’, on the other hand, is decidedly unglamourous and suburban. As Blaine put it (2021: 5) “he wants swing voters to see him as an easy-going slob, not an elitist obsessed with vocabulary, BMI and social status” (Blaine: 5): By drinking a beer at Shark Park on a Sunday arvo, ScoMo4 superimposed himself into rugby league’s rich history of egalitarianisms. His NRL

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fandom and blokey aphorisms provoked mockery from snobs in the inner city, making him even more likable within the hushed-​up suburbs and country towns. (ibid: 10) And Blaine quotes his brother who works in the Northern Territory mines (11): “ScoMo doesn’t talk like a toff. He seems a bloke who’d stick up for his mates and his family if push comes to shove. He goes to the footy and loves a beer like anyone else.” This image of the ‘real Australian’, of course, excludes most Australians –​women, Indigenous Australians, and immigrants (in a country where 26% of the population were born overseas and where more than 40 languages are commonly spoken on a daily basis). Such ‘others’ Morrison does not see as true Australians. In a 2018 speech to the Menzies Centre (quoted in Blaine, 2021) he in fact said: We all love Australia. Of course, we do. But do we love all Australians? That is a different question, isn’t it? Do we love all Australians? Whether they’ve become an Australian by birth ten generations ago, when my ancestors came –​not by choice but in chains5. Although this chapter mostly deals with the linguistic representation of performance, it is important to also pay attention to visual representations, especially to the ‘photo ops’ politicians create during election campaigns. Although the clichés of this genre are often mocked (e.g., politicians posing with babies), the media have no choice but to record the performances politicians stage –​ and staging here includes all the elements listed by Goffman –​the ‘scenery’ and the ‘stage props’, as well as dress, grooming, and ‘manner’ (the latter, in still photographs, necessarily non-​verbal). Here, based on the analysis of a collection of 50 such photographs, are some of the roles Morrison played during his 2019 campaign. The ordinary bloke Morrison had himself photographed as a farmer, a tradesman, a factory worker, and even as a sheep shearer, either solo, or surrounded by other ‘ordinary blokes’. But he also differs from those other blokes. Although he is seen affixing a sheet of plywood at a building site (see figure 5.1) or emptying a bag of polymer in a plastics factory while wearing a baseball cap or a helmet, or a high-​vis vest, he is still also wearing a suit and a tie, even if he has momentarily taken his jacket off. He is the “ordinary bloke doing an extraordinary job” (Strangio and Walter, 2020: 110). His role as an ordinary bloke also includes the pub, where he is seen sitting at the bar with one or two mates, casually dressed and raising a glass of beer, and the football stadium, where he is seen wearing the Cronulla Sharks

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scarf or cap and cheering on his team, or with an arm around one of the players. The family man As a suburban Dad, he poses with his family in a sleeveless T-​shirt and casual summer trousers, showing their closeness –​his arm around one of his daughters, holding hands with his wife, and so on. But there are also more official, stately photos taken from a greater distance. In another photo he is seen building a cubbyhouse for his daughters in his backyard. The commander Morrison also likes being photographed ‘at the helm’ of, for instance, a large lorry, semi-​trailer, or a passenger jet –​in the cockpit, complete with pilot cap. In another photo he poses against the background of a military airport, wearing a bomber jacket. All these correspond to the positive characterizations listed above. However, other kinds of photos do allow a critical note –​shots taken during press conferences, for instance. Although flanked by Australian flags and dressed in a dark suit and tie, at press conferences photographers may catch him

Figure 5.3 Scott Morrison, the suburban Dad –​The Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2019. https://​222.herald​sun.com.au/​news/​natio​nal/​scott-​morri​son-​takes-​fam​ily-​for-​a-​seclu​ded-​isl​and-​ geta​way-​in-​first-​break-​since-​histo​ric-​elect​ion-​win

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Figure 5.4 Scott Morrison at the helm –​The Guardian 13 March 2021, photo: Dylan Coker/​AAP. www.theg​uard​ian.com/​austra​lia-​news/​2021/​mar/​13/​morris​ons-​empa​thy-​gap-​time-​to-​stop-​the-​ dam​age-​cont​rol-​and-​start-​show​ing-​basic-​human​ity

unawares just as he momentarily looks displeased at a question or moves his mouth during a speech in ways that can convey unintentional meanings. Such pictures can portray –​and have portrayed –​Morrison as arrogant, angry, dismissive, and so on.

Conclusion Scott Morrison’s performance during the 2019 election campaign was widely reported as displaying the same characteristics that Fairclough and Wodak have noted in other contexts –​confidence and self-​assurance, combining the powerful and the ordinary, and presenting himself as a ‘man of the people’, though with a particularly Australian inflection –​a suburban family man who loves Rugby League and having a beer with his mates. Critics have pointed out that Morrison in fact grew up in a Protestant middle class family, living in an affluent suburb, and that as a young man played Rugby Union rather than Rugby League6. To gain votes he had to move to a different suburb and reinvent himself as ScoMo, drawing on the increasingly outdated but still popular view of the Australian ‘national character’, as described by the historian Russell Ward (1958) and based on the ethos of shearers, stockmen, and drovers (yes, all of them men, and all from

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Figure 5.5 Scott Morrison during a press conference. ABC News 3 March 2021 (Matt Roberts). www.ac.net.au/​news/​2021-​03-​26/​worst-​not-​over-​in-​morris​ons-​cri​sis/​100029​986

the ‘outback’), represented as loyal to their ‘mates’ and anti-​authoritarian ‘larrikins’ who thumb their noses at the establishment. Outdated it may be in today’s multicultural Australia, but this image still appeals to many and significantly contributed to working class voters leaving Labour and moving to the right. As Blaine commented (2021: 76): Exactly the same people who you’d imagine might be attracted to Shorten’s story of humble beginnings, and economic policies that tangibly benefited their families, shared Facebook memes about him being a criminal and a wimp. Critiques that seek to reveal performances as inauthentic are still based on a ‘leader-​centric’ view, and still affirm the kinds of values I have described in this chapter, provided they are genuine, provided performance and personality align. But what needs to be critiqued is not so much performance as such. As Hymes (1973) showed long ago, performance is always and everywhere part of sociocultural practices. What needs to be critiqued is a view of performance as an all-​encompassing explanation of how social life unfolds. What needs to be critiqued is the view that what Habermas describes as the ‘dramaturgical’ validity criteria of ‘sincerity’ and subjective ‘truthfulness’ are adequate in the case of politics. In politics we need not, or not only, abstract leadership qualities such as charisma, strength, and empathy, but also and above all we need policies that are effective, for instance in relation to issues

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such as climate change and COVID-​19, and morally legitimate, in relation to the growing gap between rich and poor, and the incarceration of refugees and asylum seekers. In all these matters Scott Morrison, strong as he was as a populist performer during his election campaign, soon turned out to be found to be lacking. As for climate policies, Australia still has no policies for reducing its ever-​ rising greenhouse gas emissions and pollution levels. On one occasion Scott Morrison smuggled a lump of coal into Parliament question time, held it up, saying “This is coal. Don’t be afraid”. He also said that electric cars would be too expensive and not able “to tow your trailers or boats or get you to your favourite camping campaign spots” and that they would “end the weekend” (ABC, 17 May 2019). Morrison also continued Australia’s harsh policy of transferring refugees and asylum seekers to small Pacific islands such as Nauru and Manus. He refused to allow sick asylum seekers to get treatment in Australia. This, he said, would “take control from the Government” and “unleash a world of woe” (BBC World New, 11 February 2019). As for empathy, Morrison refused to return from a family holiday in Hawaii when the state of New South Wales experienced its worst bushfires ever, with 2448 homes destroyed and 5.5 million hectares of land burnt. He defended his decision himself by saying that he is not a firefighter (“I don’t hold a hose, mate”). When he finally visited bushfire-​ravaged areas, the ‘meet and greet’ he had planned did not work out and footage of a woman refusing to shake his hand and walking away from him was broadcast nationwide. As for justice, when Brittany Higgins disclosed she had been raped by a colleague in Parliament House, Morrison at first vacillated, then accepted the recommendations of a committee for making workplaces safer for women, which stipulated that employers should accept responsibility for stopping workplace sexual harassment. But later his government voted against a bill to actually implement these recommendations. And as for Indigenous Australians, during a 2021 press conference on Australia Day, the official Australian national day, which celebrates the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney, and which Indigenous Australians refer to as ‘Invasion Day’, Scott Morrison said that, not only Indigenous Australians but also his convict ancestors had walked in shackles: “You know, when those twelve ships turned up in Sydney, it wasn’t a particularly flash day for the people on those vessels either” (The Guardian, 21 January 2021). His stance on all these issues was known well before the 2019 election campaign. Yet people voted for him, not only traditional Conservative voters but also disgruntled working class and traditionl Labour voters. Performance won over policy, image over substance.

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Research questions 1

Use the analytical framework presented in this chapter to analyse relevant articles from a newspaper in order to compare how this newspaper represents the performance of prominent sportspersons and high-​profile businesspeople. What values are at stake in each case? Other comparisons can be chosen instead, for instance male and female politicians, politicians and businesspeople, or sportspersons and popular music stars. Different newspapers could also be included, for instance newspapers with different readership, or newspapers from different countries.

2

Collect normative texts (e.g., training manuals) that describe the qualities valued in specific customer-​facing jobs (e.g., flight attendant or sales representative) and the way these qualities should be performed using the analytical framework presented in this chapter, and pay attention to the dimensions outlined by Goffman (such as setting, appearance, and manner). This could include attention to gender. Also analyse any visuals included in the texts that add further details about setting, appearance, and manner.

Further reading Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. A classic which no student of performance can ignore Wodak, R. (2021) The Politics of Fear –​The Shameless Normalization of Far-​Right Discourse. 2nd Edition, London: Sage. Chapter 6 is an excellent and extended discussion of the performance of contemporary populist politicians by a leading critical discourse analyst. It includes attention to images.

Notes 1 Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s policy for reducing emissions and moving to renewable energy had been resisted by the ‘pro-​coal’ hard right faction of the Coalition (which includes the Liberal Party and the National Party). Turnbull then called a leadership spill (i.e. he declared the leadership of the party vacant and open for re-​election). Although he won the ballot, he realized he had lost the confidence of his party and did not stand. 2 Shorten’s policy included the abolition of negative gearing and franking credits. Negative gearing is a system where investors borrow money to acquire loss-​making assets, which are then tax deductible (and will later make significant profit). Franking credit is a system whereby companies credit the tax they pay on their profits to shareholders who then do not need to pay tax on this income. Labour’s climate policy included 50 % renewable energy by 2030 and significant investment in

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3

4 5 6

renewables. As for the rising difference between rich and poor in Australia, cf. Acoss (2018). In 2011 Australia, then under a Labour government, signed an agreement with Malaysia for transferring 800 asylum seekers from Australia to Malaysia, so as to deter asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia by boat. Morrison, who had been an immigration minister, kept a boat trophy in his office which said “I stopped these”. Scott Morrison launched his own nickname, ScoMo, basing the form on that of the Labour politician Anthony “Albo” Albanese. Many Australians regard convict ancestry as a kind of nobility, the mark of a true Australian. Morrison frequently referred to his convict ancestors Rugby League has traditionally been a sport of Australia’s Irish-​Catholic working class who called Rugby Union players from affluent suburbs “rah-​rahs”.

References Acoss (2018) Inequality in Australia 2018. At www.acoss.org.au/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​ 2018/​07/​ine​qual​ity-​in-​Austra​lia -​2018-​report.pdf. Blaine, L. (2021) Top blokes –​the larrikin myth, class and power. Quarterly Essay 83: 1–​11. Cannon, L. (1991) President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Simon and Schuster. Fairclough, N. (I989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2000) New Labour, New Language. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1 Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd Ed. London: Arnold. Hymes, D. (1972) ‘Models of the interaction of language and social life’. In J. Gumperz and D. Hymes, eds. Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communication, New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, pp. 35–​71. Kress, G. and Hodge, B. (1979) Language as Ideology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Martin, J.R. and White, P.R.R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McCombs, M and Shaw, D. (1972) The agenda-​setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly 36: 176–​185. Morrison, S. (2019) Coalition Campaign Launch. At www.libe​ral.org.au/​lat​est-​news/​ 2019/​05/​12/​coalit​ion-​campa​ign-​lau​nch. Ogden, C.K. and Richards, I.A. (1972 [1923]) The Meaning of Meaning –​Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Strangio, P. and Walter, J. (2020) ‘The personalisation of the campaign’. In A. Gauja, M. Sawer, and M. Simms, eds. Morrison’s Miracle –​The 2019 Australian Federal Election. Canberra, ANU Press, pp. 107–​120.

80  Theo van Leeuwen van Leeuwen, T. (1996) The representation of social actors. In C.R. Caldas-​Coulthard and M. Coulthard, eds. Texts and Practices –​Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 32–​70. van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge. van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press Ward, R. (1958) The Australian Legend. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Weaver, D., McCombs, M. and Spellman, C. (1975) Watergate and the media: A case study of agenda-​setting. American Politics Quarterly 3: 485–​472. Wodak, R. (2014) The Politics of Fear –​The shameless normalization of far-​right discourse, 2nd Ed, London: Sage.

Chapter 6

Walls, Boundaries, and Borders Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Racialization of Space 1 Ruth Wodak

Introduction: Some Functions of Walls In his important book Steinzeit: Mauern in Berlin (2011), the cultural theorist Olaf Briese describes the multi-​layered foundations –​including various remains of walls –​on which the city of Berlin has been built over the centuries. Walls, he claims, have many functions: firstly, and most importantly, walls protect the citizens inside from enemies. Briese traces the protective intention behind the construction of walls from the fortresses of ancient times to the castles and citadels of the Middle Ages. Secondly, walls can also serve to protect cities and villages from floods and other natural catastrophes. Thirdly, they allow trading, while regulating the access of people and goods. In this way, walls function as distinct boundaries although not set in stone, so they can be renegotiated, closed, and opened according to political interests. Borders (and walls) distinguish those who are considered to be deserving to enter cities and countries from those who are –​usually quite arbitrarily –​ defined as not deserving. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent advent of an international system whereby the principle of state sovereignty seemed bound to wane led people to think that the wall would not return. However, the 9/​11 terrorist attacks and the huge migration flows since 2013 sparked a dramatic surge in wall-​building around the world, mostly undertaken by liberal democratic governments that employed and continue to employ a range of legitimation strategies to substantiate their ever-​stricter politics of exclusion. Thus, it appears as if wall-​building has been re-​established and sanctioned as a legitimate strategy to control state borders. As Sicurella (2018: 60) maintains in his analysis of Croatian and Bosnian debates about borders and walls in 2015: although current deterritorialization discourses have enabled us to interpret borders in a less deterministic way than in the past, it has become clear that the “hard” and often coercive nature of their material embodiment cannot and should not be underestimated; […] an epistemological shift has taken place in the way borders are theorized. DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-6

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Borders and boundaries can be conceptualized as social constructions, historically contingent, embedded in their sociopolitical contexts; they express power relations and have a material reality –​potentially resemiotized as walls –​as well as a symbolic meaning. Unlike previous conceptualizations of walls and borders as historical, factual, stable, and material entities, recent approaches highlight their various (in)visible manifestations and their capacity to (re)produce social orders, inequalities, inclusions, and exclusions as well as differentiations. Processes of differentiation and constructions of a dangerous Other are crucial to imaginaries of symbolic and material walls and borders, regulating who is allowed to enter a given territory and who is not. Walls in their function as borders and boundaries are material and social constructions; thus, bordering must be understood as a practice involving those who decide on and implement exclusionary and inclusionary practices (e.g., politicians, border guards, or soldiers) (Bickham Mendez & Naples 2015). In ancient times, invisible boundaries and walls defined and preserved important sites of public discussion for some and not for others (e.g., slaves and women were excluded from democratic deliberations and decision-​making in the Athenian agora). City walls also used to protect the healthy from the ill (leper colonies were constructed outside the city walls). Walls surrounding cemeteries are there to guard the dead and separate them from the living, to protect the ‘pure’ space from the ‘impure’ (in orthodox Judaism, for example). Moreover, walls encircling prisons and prison camps (such as labor camps, the Stalinist gulags, the Nazi concentration camps, and the U.S. high security prison Guantanamo) served and continue to serve to keep prisoners inside and to make them invisible to the citizens living outside. Walls exist inside, outside, and around cities; they define specific areas where distinct groups and communities choose or sometimes are only allowed to live. As the anthropologist Setha Low (2001: 46) illustrates through her extensive fieldwork in U.S. American cities, the rich and wealthy sometimes prefer to live in gated communities that provide security from unwanted outsiders: “Adding walls, gates, and guards produces a landscape that encodes class relations and residential (race/​ class/​ ethnic/​ gender) segregation more permanently in the built environment” (ibid, 45). Borders (and walls understood as materially resemiotized boundaries) have thus become the contingent manifestation of highly dynamic processes and institutions that need to be constantly managed, maintained, and socially reproduced. As Newman and Paasi (1998: 201) maintain: The study of narratives and discourse is central to an understanding of all types of boundaries, particularly state boundaries. These narratives range from foreign policy discourses, geographical texts and literature (including maps), to the many dimensions of formal and informal socialization which affect the creation of socio-​spatial identities, especially the notions of ‘us’ and the ‘Other’, exclusive and inclusive spaces and territories.

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Processes of inclusion and exclusion, of racialization and culturalization therefore often involve conflicting discourses, narratives, and related identities about boundarying, about access and rejection, that are consistent with fundamental claims of critical discourse studies (CDS) –​that is, that discourses and social realities are mutually constitutive and that discursive practices may have major ideological effects, helping to produce and reproduce unequal power relations and legitimize inclusion and exclusion, particularly in regard to ethnic and religious minorities, refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers.

Walls, Ghettos, and Borders: Inclusion and Exclusion The view that borders have social, cultural, and political significance has become a central tenet within critical scholarship focusing on the ambivalences underlying border (and bordered) subjects and identities. More generally, there is now widespread agreement among geographers, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and discourse analysts alike that borders and boundaries (and walls) are inevitably loaded with (often contested) symbolic, cultural, historical, political, and ideological meanings and that such meanings may arise from a variety of social practices, discourses, and narratives (Newman & Paasi, 1998; Paasi, 1999; Wodak, 2021: 67–​99). Migration is increasingly constructed as a problem that needs to be regulated, whereby “ ‘the border’ has become a key discursive icon and manifestation of controlling migration” (Vollmer, 2017: 3). Similar meanings are attributed to walls, as in the U.S. context. Border controls and their fortification are discursively linked to national security and the control of movement. Concomitantly, borders are being increasingly militarized with huge and insurmountable walls symbolizing inaccessible boundaries, with people being prevented from climbing over them via different high and low tech means. In addition to fortification, we observe restrictive border regimes which, inasmuch as they are proposed or implemented in the EU, are controversial and discussed under the label of Fortress Europe. Indeed, the term Fortress Europe, which was once used by the Nazis has been recontextualized since the refugee movement in 2015 (Rheindorf & Wodak, 2020). Moralization, Mediatization, and Securitization Increasing processes of securitization and militarization can be noticed not only at political levels but also at normative levels in what Vollmer (2017: 4) terms the moralization of bordering. Moralization of bordering takes place when considering the balancing act of excluding a selection of people, but at the same time standing on

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the high moral ground […]. This exclusionary practice has been morally legitimized over the years by an array of policy frames […] but also by a narrative of deservingness, that is, by following the principle that “some people do not deserve to be treated equally or in the way we (the ‘host’ society) treat human beings. The moralization of borders thus requires a range of legitimation strategies (e.g., van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999: 104). Territorial borders have become more than a means of providing security and control, and symbolize social meanings that cut to the core of human life. In this vein, most migration control regimes were transformed –​especially in the so-​called age of terrorism –​into securitization regimes, a change accompanied by debates about distinctions between who is a ‘migrant’ and who a ‘refugee’ and, even more significantly, about who is a genuine asylum seeker and who is a ‘bogus asylum seeker’. These developments have caused migration-​and border-​ politics to be increasingly framed as body politics, constructing nation states as bodies that have to be protected from invasion, penetration, infection, or disease. In close connection with mediatization effects (Rheindorf & Wodak, 2018) a ‘securitization of migration’ in relation to terrorism has been observed in post-​9/​11 migration policies, in the Schengen agreements and in the gradual dismantling of national borders within the European Union. In this context, mediatized politics can be understood as politics that actually depend upon the mechanisms and reach of mass media and which are therefore ineffective without them. Hence, migration is being constructed as a “risk to the liberal world […] normalizing the view that immigrants are a threat” (Ibrahim, 2005: 163). These meanings are captured in the notion of securitization. Securitization occurs when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object –​that is, the state, incorporating government, territory, and society. A state representative can traditionally, by declaring a state of emergency, claim the right to use whatever means are necessary to counter a threatening development. In the U.S.-​American case, this actually implied categorizing migration in the same way as –​for ­example –​a natural catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, as when Donald Trump sent troops to the Mexican border in October 2018. The special nature of security threats can be invoked to justify the use of extraordinary measures to handle them –​that is, governmental power acts such as forced registration of refugees, use of police and military force, constructing walls, and so on. This is a securitizing move insofar as threats are discursively constructed in the sense that they do not simply ‘exist’ independently of our knowledge and representations of them. Securitization, moralization, legitimation, and mediatization are thus all interlinked in intricate ways when political actors depend on mass media to construct a referent as an existential security threat.

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Walls and Segregated Spaces Debates about walls are not new. The history of the Jewish ghetto is a case in point. Jews in early-​modern Europe were often forced to live in specific areas surrounded by walls –​ghettos. In the oldest European ghetto, in Venice, dating back to 1516, Jews would leave behind the world of the ghetto every morning –​their clothing marked with a yellow circle for men or a yellow scarf for women –​to work or to shop among gentiles only to return to the ghetto each evening before sundown. The enclosure of the Jews came, it is reported, after an outbreak of syphilis assumed to be linked to the arrival of the so-​called Marrano Jews from Spain. With an act of the Venetian Senate on March 29, 1516, some 700 Jewish households were forced to move into the Ghetto Nuovo, with entry controlled by two gates that were locked at sundown. At that time, while the ghetto developed as an urban space isolated from the outside world, it also provided the Jewish community with some protection from regularly occurring pogroms. Thus, Hayley (2008: 348) argues that the ghetto could be perceived as a space between expulsion (in Spain and France) and incorporation (in the Muslim world). While segregation from the outside world brought an oppressed community together, it also turned the oppressed inward in new ways. This example relates to the racialization of urban space across many dimensions. Racialization in this instance began with the forced relocation of a group of people distinguished as (morally) different and identified by a particular ethnic feature –​their religion –​to a physical space that was isolated from other areas of the city. As Sennett (1994: 248) argues, “the space of the Ghetto reinforced […] beliefs […]: behind the Ghetto’s drawn bridges and closed windows, […] shut off from the sun and the water, crime and idolatry were thought to fester”. Of course, during the Nazi era and the Holocaust, the specifically created ghettos in many cities and villages in occupied Poland became sites of forced exclusion, preparing deported Jews from across Europe for extermination in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Since the beginning of 2018, the racist rhetoric employed by the Austrian extreme-​right populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), the junior partner in the former Austrian national conservative government coalition (2018–​2019), provides a salient current example of such exclusionary rhetoric and practices: Their slogans recontextualize antisemitic and racist appeals of the 1930s which excluded Jews from council housing, schools and professions. For example, “The slogan must be: No more Muslim migrants in municipal housing in Döbling [the nineteenth district of Vienna, a wealthy area, RW].2 Such blatant anti-​ Muslim racism is dangerous for any pluralist and liberal democracy, because it is hugely divisive, excludes specific people on the basis of their religion, and is instrumentalized to trigger nativist sentiments and movements. Extensive historical research confirms that such proposals and appeals have not been seen

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or heard in Vienna and Austria since Nazi times (SOS Mitmensch, 2019: 4). In such rhetoric, migrants are dehumanized, their number exaggerated to suggest an ‘invasion’ by an alien and dangerous culture that will subsequently destroy the ‘pure’ Christian Austrians, a process which subsequently legitimizes the moralization of borders and walls (Wodak, 2018b; 2019). City planner and legal scholar Peter Marcuse (1997: 228) distinguishes between ‘enclaves’, ‘citadels’, and ‘ghettos’, different kinds of guarded spaces defined with respect to their functions in dividing insiders from outsiders. The so-​called ‘black ghetto’ in U.S. cities, he claims, is for outcasts; those within are subject to exclusion from the mainstream economic, political, and social life of the city. These ghettos are not necessarily surrounded by visible walls, but are rather defined by other spatial and semiotic characteristics such as street names, district names, visual signs of poverty, worse infrastructure such as bad roads, higher unemployment, crime, and so forth. An enclave, by contrast, houses cultural communities of migrants. Finally, citadels were and still are established by higher-​income groups, and thus differ both from ghettos and enclaves. So, space, class, ethnicity, religion, and race play decisive roles in organizing cities and urban wealth or poverty in neoliberal economies. Walls may separate such areas, but they need not; boundaries can be visible but need not be; the ‘others’ internalize borders emotionally and cognitively, even if having accessed the areas populated and owned by the insiders.

Legitimizing Exclusion: Discourse, Argumentation, and Legitimation Usually, in liberal democracies, politicians must seek the approval of the population for major policy changes, appeals which obviously depend on the mass media support to convince the electorate. The discursive practices used have a strong impact and have been studied as strategies of legitimation. As a sociopolitical act, legitimation is characteristically accomplished through discourse using persuasive and sometimes manipulative means. Regarding the linguistic realization of legitimizing acts, Martin-​Rojo and van Dijk (1997: 531–​32) distinguish between pragmatic, semantic, stylistic, interactional, and social dimensions. Importantly, the propositions employed in legitimation are commonly organized by complex argumentative scheme, including premises that concern the nature of the proposed action and the phenomena it relates to, which is usually presented or established in descriptive or narrative modes, as well as conclusions that concern the said action’s social, moral, or political acceptability (Wodak, 2018a). Given its sociopolitical nature, it follows that legitimation routinely draws on recurring argumentation schemes in order to persuade and convince the public of the acceptability or necessity of a specific action or policy. Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) distinguish between four broad types: authorization, moralization, rationalization, and mythopoesis. Legitimation by

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authorization depends on reference to personal, impersonal, expert, or role model authority, but may also appeal to custom in the form of tradition or conformity. Legitimation qua moralization is based on abstract moral values (religious, human rights, justice, culture, and so forth), straightforwardly evaluative claims, or analogy to ostensibly established moral cases. Legitimation through rationalization references either the utility of the social practice or some part of it (instrumental rationalization by way of goals, means, or outcomes), or to assumed ‘facts of life’ (theoretical rationalization by way of definition, explanation, or prediction). Rationalization may be established as ‘common sense’ or by experts in the domains of knowledge used for legitimation (e.g., economics, biology, or technology). In legitimation through mythopoesis, the proponents of the policy in question will rely on telling stories that may serve as exemplars or cautionary tales (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1 Types of legitimation (adapted from Wodak, 2018a) Authorization Authority

Custom

Moralization

Rationalization Instrumental Rationalization

Theoretical Rationalization

Mythopoesis

Personal Authority: Based on institutional status of individuals/​groups Impersonal Authority: Originating from laws, policies, regulations, etc. Expert Authority: Academic, scientific, or other type of credible expertise Role Model Authority: Popularity and acceptability of positions held by role models or opinion leaders Authority of Tradition: Acceptability of what is claimed to have always been done Authority of Conformity: Acceptability of what everyone or most people do Abstraction: Abstract depiction of practices that links them to moral values Evaluation: Legitimation of positions and practices via evaluative adjectives Analogy: Legitimation relying on comparisons and contrasts Goal Orientation: Focused on goals, intentions, purposes Means Orientation: Focused on aims embedded in actions as means to an end Outcome Orientation: Focused on outcomes of actions as if already known Definition: Characterizing activities in terms of already moralized practices Explanation: Characterizing people as actors because the way they do things is appropriate to the nature of these actors Prediction: Foreseeing outcomes based on some form of expertise Moral Tales: Narrating rewarding decisions and practices of social actors Cautionary Tales: Linking nonconformist practices to undesirable consequences

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In the formal analysis of argumentation, the three basic elements investigated are argument, conclusion rule, and claim (Reisigl, 2014: 75). Conclusion rules (also referred to as topoi) are central to the premise inasmuch as they justify the transition from argument to conclusion (see Wodak, 2021: 74–​76 for an extensive discussion). A key strategy of discourse analysis is to make tacit or implicit topoi explicit in the form of conditional or causal paraphrases (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001: 69–​80). While topoi are often ‘shortcuts’ and not explicated in discourse, they are not necessarily fallacious. In the context of legitimation, the analysis of topoi may reveal flawed logic and manipulative or erroneous conclusions inasmuch as what they ignore or sidestep can be fallacious. Most recently, Lehner and Rheindorf (2018) –​analyzing political discourse in Austria –​identified the following topoi in relation to arguing for or against the inclusion/​exclusion of refugees and asylum seekers. It becomes apparent that overlaps exist between some legitimation strategies and related topoi (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2); ‘authorization’, for example, frequently makes use of the topos of authority, or the ‘authority of tradition’ is linked to the topos of history. Indeed, the topos of history plays a significant role in this context as many political parties, NGOs, and politicians allude to past dealings with refugees and migrants, such as in World War II or during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. The topos of comparison integrates well with moralization by analogy; mythopoesis is related to the argumentum ad exemplum, and so forth. In this way, the interdependence of legitimation strategies and argumentation schemes becomes explicit. In my brief example below, I will refer to both legitimation strategies and topoi when tracing former U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric for building walls to keep ‘illegal migrants’ out3. Debating the Building of Walls States and transnational organizations are developing policies and promoting practices in different directions: On the one hand, these policies are enhancing the free movement of labor and people, as in the European Union; on the other, billions are being spent to erect new and highly ‘technologized’ effective barriers, electrified walls, and surveillance apparatuses to control and reduce the free movement of ‘unwanted’, ‘illegal’ migrants (Wodak, 2018b). When President, Donald Trump led the anti-​immigrant war with wall-​building as a rearguard action, drawing on Israel’s wall to contain the Palestinians in the West Bank, obsessive restrictions on migration and asylum were spreading throughout the world in an ‘age of walls’. This started a war of protectionism, turning the world upside down as the Chinese government under Xi Jinping paradoxically became the supreme defender of world free trade. In a similar vein, Rheindorf and Wodak (2018) investigated the Austrian debates about erecting fences and/​or walls during the refugee crisis of 2015/​16 and

Walls, Boundaries, and Borders  89 Table 6.2 Topoi in Austrian media during the ‘refugee crisis’ (adapted from Lehner & Rheindorf, 2018) Topos

Warrant

Topos of abuse/​ definition

Most of the people arriving at the moment are not in danger of being persecuted; therefore, they are not refugees but (economic) migrants Providing for so many refugees places an inordinate burden on Austria and Austrians; therefore, Austria should only accept a limited number The people arriving at the moment are mostly uneducated and/​ or illiterate; therefore, they are an inordinate and unacceptable burden on the welfare state The people arriving at the moment do not share ‘our’ values and are therefore difficult/​impossible to integrate; therefore, Austria should only accept a limited number The people arriving at the moment are mostly young men who have never learned to or cannot exercise restraint; therefore, they are a danger to Austrian women Austria does not have the resources (money, housing) to provide for so many refugees; therefore, Austria should only accept a limited number The Geneva Convention was designed for a different (historical) situation and does not apply to the current situation; therefore, Austria should not be bound by it According to international treaties (Dublin II, Geneva Convention), refugees must apply in the first safe state they reach; therefore, most of the people arriving at the moment are not eligible to apply for asylum in Austria Austria has a natural right to control its borders and know the identity of everyone who is in the country; therefore, borders must be closed entirely and strictly policed If the EU does not control its external borders, Austria must take national measures The universal human right to asylum is a theoretical ideal, not a reality, unlike limited resources; therefore, granting this right is optional for Austria Because they are Austrian (like us), homeless or poor, Austrians deserve our help more than refugees; therefore, Austria should help them instead

Topos of burden Topos of culture/​ burden Topos of culture/​ burden Topos of culture/​male nature and burden Topos of economic resource limitation Topos of historical dissimilarity/​ conditionality Topos of law and order Topos of national borders Topos of national responsibility Topos of reality

Topos of solidarity (within the group/​ charity begins at home) Topos of (potential) Some of the people arriving at the moment are/​could be/​may in threat/​danger the future become radicalized and commit acts of terrorism; therefore, Austria should close its borders and police them strictly

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identified major policy and frame shifts: Overall, a discourse of empathy with and pity for the thousands of refugees fleeing from Syria and Iraq in August and September 2015 rapidly changed to a rhetoric of exclusion after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and the sexual harassment case in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015. This significant frame shift resulted in viewing strangers primarily as threatening rather than as needy or suffering. The frame-​shift also involved the use of different strategies of legitimation (moralization, mythopoesis) and topoi (focus on topoi of culture, crime, and threat). The study traced and documented the step-​by-​step normalization of walls, boundaries, and borders: borders are ‘moral’, also in the sense that politicians can make a claim to be acting responsibly, using cost-​and-​benefit analyses in an effort to protect social security and cohesion. Because of such frame shifts and related policy changes, it is possible to reformulate the interdependence between borders and boundaries (Kinnvall & Nesbitt-​Larking, 2013: 346): The fact that borders are politically constructed means they have to find their legitimacy in boundaries, i.e., the cultural and political narratives about a society, its culture, territory and history; about who is a member of that society and, consequentially, who is an outsider. In an extensive study, Demata (2019: 276ff) analyzed several Donald Trump speeches in which he promised –​as one of his most important electoral pledges –​to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. As Demata argues, while Trump promises to ‘Make America Great Again’ by building a wall to stem the flow of immigrants, he is merely resurrecting the divisive politics of nativism that have a long historical precedent in America. Demata observes: Trump’s anti-​immigration rhetoric reinforces a vision of the nation and of its borders which is based on a power which is realized through the legitimization of the identity of some subjects and the alienization or exclusion of others: in Trump’s nationalist narrative the alienized subject is marginalized and kept out of the space of the US homeland. Through his wall proposal, which is instrumental in providing social actors with certain (negative) roles, Trump exploits a prevalent narrative which views the US-​Mexico border as a gateway to the nation for unwanted and threatening enemies. Trump wants to ‘make America great again’ through immigration reform because, by demarcating borders, both geographically, physically and socially, and by excluding the ‘alien’ element, he can draw the rhetorical outlines of group identity, and specifically of who should be, and who should not be, American. (ibid., 291)

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When Trump announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015, the ‘them’ in this specific speech consisted of foreign countries that were apparently taking advantage of America by sending immigrants who were inferior social outcasts. To Trump, the former great nation had thus become a victim (a well-​known demagogic strategy labelled as victim-​perpetrator reversal). Thus, he asked: ‘When do we beat Mexico at the border?’ He then continued to disparage the entire Mexican nation, accusing the country of not sending their best people to the United States, but of exporting a host of social problems. His solution: build a big wall to protect the Americans. At the end of this speech, Trump proclaimed that he alone could save America from its ostensibly downtrodden position: “Sadly, the American dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again” (Time Staff, 2015). Trump fallaciously depicted America as a nation that had failed to protect its people. His answer was to construct a wall on the southern border of the United States to curb illegal immigration, thus employing rational and moral legitimation, substantiated by topoi of numbers, burden, law and order, and criminality (see Table 6.2). Obviously, much argumentation which had been used in European debates is apparent in this rhetoric, albeit in this case directed against ‘all illegal migrants coming from South America’. The Italian author Roberto Saviano in an extensive and carefully researched essay demonstrates that these migrants who are characterized as threatening the U.S.-​Mexican border are in fact mostly refugees, fleeing from torture, slavery, and death in their countries of origin, including Columbia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela: In recent months, some have said of the migrants, “Instead of running away, they should try to change the situation in their country!” Only those unfamiliar with the Honduran situation could say such a thing. Anyone who opposes it, anyone who criticizes it or tries to change it, risks death. Between 2010 and 2016, more than 120 environmental and human rights activists were killed in Honduras. (…). President Trump talks about the migrant caravan as if it were an attempted invasion. In reality, Honduras and Central America have paid an enormous price precisely because of US policies. The dire situation in Honduras right now is shaped by the drug market, and the world’s largest consumer of cocaine is the United States. (Saviano, 2019: 2) Trump promised to build a ‘big, fat, beautiful wall’ thus discursively constructing and presenting himself as ‘the savior’ of the United States. Indeed, as Pasch (2019) argues, Trump would rather spend money building the wall than to combat climate change. In a similar vein, Milbank (2019) maintains –​quite sarcastically –​that

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(t)he trouble with the wall isn’t that it’s evil, but that it’s medieval (….) To turn the 2000-​mile border into a walled fortress […] Not only will we need a 30-​foot ‘glorious wall’ (Trump will like that term) with towers rising to 50 feet, but we’ll also need two more ‘curtain’ walls, a moat and an earthen berm to keep away the invading migrants’ siege towers, ladders, battering rams and pole axes. Trump triggered an enormous scandal in August 2018, when dozens of parents were being split from their children each day –​the children being labeled ‘unaccompanied minors’ and placed in government custody or foster care, the parents allegedly being criminals and sent to jail. However, this is not the first time in recent decades that the United States has rejected unaccompanied adolescents and children from applying for asylum in the United States. As Lind (2017) elaborates, the United States (and other countries in the Western Hemisphere) could have saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, but instead they closed their borders. The United States even rejected a proposal to allow 20,000 Jewish children to flee to the United States for safety. Of course, many politicians and people did not know at that time how terrible the Holocaust would become. But, Lind states, Americans did know that Nazis were encouraging vandalism and violence against Jews –​many Americans had been alarmed by Kristallnacht in 1938, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued a statement condemning it. But America didn’t feel strongly enough about the mistreatment of Jews to allow them to find a safe harbor in the US. That is a moral stain on the nation’s conscience, and it’s what led the US and other countries, after the war, to create a way for persecuted people to seek and find refuge. In the following, I briefly present the steps in the argumentation distilled from four of Trump’s speeches (from New York 21/​11/​15; Birmingham 8/​12/​15; Iowa 16/​6/​16; Las Vegas 11/​7/​16): 1 “We have illegal immigrants who are being taken care of better than our incredible veterans”. “People flow through like water”. 2 “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending us not the right people”; “They’re sending people they don’t want”. “When Mexico sends its people, …they’re sending people that have lots of problems”; “[they] take our jobs, and then we pay them interest”; “It’s going to get worse and worse”. 3 “ISIS authorizes such atrocities as murders against non-​believers; beheadings and unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women”; “They want to kill us”. “These are people [who] don’t want our system. They don’t want our system and lead a normal life”.

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First, Trump depicts a dangerous situation in which, he claims, the United States presently finds itself: He employs the almost universally used metaphor of MIGRANTS AS FLOODS, which implies that there is no way to defend oneself against such a natural catastrophe. Americans, thus, have to be defined as victims. Moreover, he appeals to resentment by employing the topos of comparison, setting veterans against ‘illegal immigrants’ who, he claims, receive more support than veterans, a highly respected group in the United States. His second step then depicts Mexican migrants as criminals and enemies, unworthy to enter the United States. They threaten the ‘true and pure’ Americans as they would, he further claims, take their jobs away. Finally, he mentions ISIS (which of course is not connected to Mexico) but serves to re-​enforce the danger created by strangers. Maybe, via analogy, listeners might perceive similarities between radical fundamentalist ISIS warriors who kill, rape, and murder innocent people, and ‘illegal immigrants’ from Mexico. After all these claims, Trump continues with the ‘data’, the evidence for the alleged danger, and the conclusion. 1 “We’re out of control. We have no idea if they love us or hate us. We have no idea if they want to bomb us”. “And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast” 2 “We have to be vigilant”, “We have tremendous eyes and ears”, “We have millions and millions and millions of eyes and ears”; “Database is OK and watching them is OK and surveillance is OK”, “I want to know who they are” 3 “To make the country strong, we have to stop them at the border”, “We have to establish borders and we have to build a wall”, “We have to and we will” 4 “You can’t be great if you don’t have a border” Here, Trump claims that the government is out of control and has to win back control in order to protect the United States and its people. Trump does not provide any evidence for his claims. However, this move is reinforced by the topos of urgency as otherwise a crisis and a catastrophe are to be expected. Urgency implies that decisions have to be taken quickly. And, as is presupposed throughout this argumentation scheme, only he as leader of the American people would be able to take these decisions and guarantee more security. In this way, the discursive construction of fear and resentment is linked to the promise of hope, of a savior protecting the American people. Law and order, Trump argues, would have to be strengthened via more surveillance and control –​specifically if a wall is built. Only then, he concludes, will America be great again! A simple argumentation scheme (e.g., Toulmin, 1972) is employed here: crisis and dystopia are presented as immediate dangers that can only be

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prevented if a wall is built that would keep the ‘illegal immigrants’ out –​who are claimed to be the cause of all social and economic problems in the United States. This is a typical scapegoating strategy, coupled with the evocation of fear and –​in a second step –​hope, with the promise of a savior –​Trump –​who will urgently implement all necessary steps to make all problems disappear and will ‘make America great again’ (see figure 6.1). Building wall will provide security.

US is in danger

Since walls have protected other countries in the past, a wall will protect the US now (topos of history + topos of security)

There is enough money; Construction can be done

Figure 6.1 Simple Toulmin argumentation scheme: “If the US is in danger, a wall will provide security”.

Conclusions The revitalization of debates about borders, boundaries, and walls and their mediatization in Europe, the European Union member states, and beyond since 2014 could be regarded as a response to the mounting influx of refugees from war zones in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, etc. However, these debates reflect a worldwide tendency –​i.e., the fortification and securitization of borders, the building of walls, as a way to protect state sovereignty against globalized phenomena such as migration and terrorism –​that began in the early 2000s as Sicurella (2018) argues, if not much earlier. The social scientist and essayist Ivan Krastev argues in his essay Twilight in Europe (2017) that the experience of demographic decline should be awarded a central role in explaining the rise of the far-​right populist vote and the political agenda to keep ‘strangers’ out. Krastev has developed his argument mostly in light of his East European experiences and particularities. However, his observations also apply to more general developments and therefore merit consideration. Thus, we might ask: What actually happened after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989? After 1989, most East European countries have indeed seen their populations reduced: Poland has lost 2.5 million people, Romania 3.5 million, Bulgaria and East Germany each around 10% of their previous

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populations. This is why, Krastev argues, the remaining population, mostly older, less educated, and less mobile, suffers from ‘demographic panic’: the “fear that a country and its population cease to exist” (Krastev, 2017: 50–​51). This fear, he continues, might explain why these people are unable to consider migrants and immigration as a solution to fill the demographic gap: they fear that their ‘culture’ will become extinct. Also, in receiving countries after 1989, xenophobia and antisemitism started rising –​against the influx of migrants from the former Eastern bloc. Austrians, for example, felt threatened by East Europeans and employed similar exclusionary rhetoric as in 2015, however without first focusing on religion and Islam. These experiences provide much evidence that emigration and immigration can be politically instrumentalized; scapegoats are easily created as alleged causes of huge economic and social problems which obviously have their roots elsewhere. Thus, economic problems, specifically after the financial crisis of 2008, ‘the demographic argument’, and fears of acceleration/​ globalization emphasize the serious disruptions of the social fabric and cohesion of the life world and civil society in late capitalist societies. The racialized exclusionary rhetoric of ‘our land’, Heimat, and the wish to protect ‘our country’ from outside influences attracts many who harbor such fears and simultaneously hope that far-​right populist leaders might be able to turn back the clock to an imagined homogenous society which is nostalgically believed to be safe. In this way, debates about walls signal a massive tension between different ideologies and visions (Bauböck, 2019): the anachronistic vision of ‘the homeland’ in the midst of turmoil, insecurity, and loss of stability on the one hand, and on the other the importance of defending democratic values and human rights against authoritarian governments that would rather watch refugees and migrants drown than open the borders of their countries.

Research Tasks 1

2

Analyze the debates in several newspapers (both broadsheets and tabloids) about immigration into your country during one week in April 2020 (the first lockdown of the COVID-​19 pandemic) and discuss in which ways discursive strategies of legitimation and related argumentation schemes are similar or different from those used in the debates about Trump’s wall. Do the broadsheets differ from the tabloids and if so, do the differences depend on the differing ideological positioning of the newspaper? Discuss the policies of constructing borders, boundaries, and walls in your country during the 2015/​16 refugee movement. What were the main arguments for ‘keeping refugees out’? Which other policies became apparent and how were they legitimized? How did differing proposals resonate with different kinds of audience and sectors of the electorate?

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Further Reading Dell’Orto, G. and Wetzstein, I. (eds.) (2018) Covering Europe’s Refugee Crisis: Journalistic Practices, News Discourses and Public Debates in Austria, Germany and Greece. London: Routledge. Musolff, A. (ed.) (2019) Public Debates on Immigration, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Rheindorf, M. and Wodak, R. (eds.) (2020) Sociolinguistic perspectives on migration control: language policy, identity, and be​longing. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wodak, R. (2019) ‘Entering the “Post-​Shame era” –​the rise of illiberal democracy, populism and neoauthoritarianism in EU​ rope: the case of the turquoise-​ blue ­government in Austria 2017/​2018’. Global Discourse 9:1, 195–213 https://doi.org/10 .1332/204378919X154704876454 Wodak, R. (2021) The Politics of Fear. The Shameless Normalization of Far-​right Discourse. London: Sage (2nd revised and extended ed.).

Notes 1 This is a substantially revised and updated version of “The Language of Walls –​Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Racialization of Space”, first published in the Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Racisms, edited by John Solomos, 2020: 160-​177 (see also Wodak, 2021: 115–​23). 2 For the full text of the document from which this was taken see www.ots.at/ presseaussendung/OTS_20181113_OTS0187/fp-eischerresch-spoe-steuertzuwanderung-gezielt-nach-doebling (accessed July 21, 2021). 3 In this context, it is important to mention Trump’s abusive attacks on Democratic members of Congress who pointed to the horrific practices implemented at the U.S.-​Mexican border when, for example, separating refugee children from their parents (Wodak, 2021: 90-​94).

References Bauböck, R. (2019) ‘Mare nostrum: the political ethics of migration in the Mediterranean’. Comparative Migration Studies 7:4. Bickham Mendez, J. and Naples, N. A. (2015) ‘Creating a dialogue between border studies and social movements’. In N. A. Naples and J. Bickham Mendez (eds.) Border Politics. Social Movements, Collective Identities, and Globalization. New York and London: New York University Press, 357–​379. Briese, O. (2011) Mauern in Berlin. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz. Demata, M. (2019) ‘“A great and beautiful wall”: Donald Trump’s populist discourse on immigration’. In A. Musolff (ed.) Public Debates on Immigration, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 274–​294. Haynes, B. (2008) ‘The ghetto: origins, history, discourse’. City & Community 7:4, 347–​352. Ibrahim, M. (2005) ‘The securitization of migration: A racial discourse’. International Migration 43: 5, 163–​187. Kinnvall, C. and Nesbitt-​Larking, P. (2013) ‘Securitising citizenship: (B)ordering practices and strategies of resistance’. Global Society 27:3, 337–​359. Krastev, I. (2017) Europadämmerung. Ein Essay. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Walls, Boundaries, and Borders  97 Lehner, S. and Rheindorf, M. (2018) ‘ “Fortress Europe”: the construction of borders in Austrian media and EU press releases’. In G. Dell’Orto and I. Wetzstein (eds.) Covering Europe’s Refugee Crisis: Journalistic Practices, News Discourses and Public Debates in Austria, Germany and Greece. London: Routledge, 40–​55. Lind, D. (2017) ‘How America’s rejection of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany haunts our refugee policy today’. At www.vox.com/​pol​icy-​and-​polit​ics/​2017/​1/​27/​14412​082/​ refug​ees-​hist​ory-​holoca​ust (accessed February 20, 2019). Low, S. M. (2001) ‘The edge and the center: gated communities and the discourse of urban fear’. American Anthropologist 103:1, 45–​58. Marcuse, P. (1997) ‘The enclave, the citadel, and the ghetto’. Urban Affairs Review 33:2, 228–​264. Milbank, D. (2019) ‘Trump’s wall isn’t evil. It’s medieval’. Washington Post. At www. was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​opini​ons/​tru​mps-​wall-​isnt-​evil-​its-​medie​val/​2019/​01/​09/​80dfa​ 20a-​1458-​11e9-​90a8-​136​fa44​b80b​a_​st​ory.html?utm_​t​erm=​.9b4c4​cf99​83a (accessed February 20, 2019) Newman, D. and Paasi, A. (1998) ‘Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography’. Progress in Human Geography 22: 2, 186–​207. Paasi, A. (1999) ‘Boundaries as social practice and discourse: the finnish-​russian border’. Regional Studies 33: 7, 669–​680. Pasch, K. (2019) ‘Disasters and disagreements: Climate change collides with Trump’s border wall’. The Conversation. https://​thec​onve​rsat​ion.com/​disast​ers-​and-​disagr​ eeme​nts-​clim​ate-​cha​nge-​colli​des-​with-​tru​mps-​bor​der-​wall-​109​773 (accessed July 25, 2021). Reisigl, M. (2014) ‘Argumentation analysis and the discourse-​historical approach: a methodological framework’. In C. Hart and P. Cap (eds.) Contemporary critical discourse studies, London, UK: Bloomsbury, 67–​96. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and discrimination. Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge. Rheindorf, M. and Wodak, R. (2018) ‘Borders, fences and limits –​protecting Austria from refugees. Metadiscursive negotiations of meaning in the current refugee crisis’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16:1–​2, 15–​38. At www.tand​fonl​ine.com/​ doi/​full/​10.1080/​15562​948.2017.1302​032 Rheindorf, M. and Wodak, R. (2020) ‘Building “Fortress Europe”: Legitimizing exclusion from basic human rights’. In M. Rheindorf and R. Wodak (eds.) Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Migration Control: Language Policy, Identity, and Belonging. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 116–​47. Rojo-​Martin, L. and van Dijk, T. (1997) ‘“There was a problem, and it was solved!” Legitimating the expulsion of ‘illegal’ migrants in Spanish parliamentary discourse’. Discourse & Society, 8: 4, 523–​556. Saviano, R. (2019) ‘The migrant caravan: made in USA’. The New York Review of Books (published March 7, 2019). At https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/07/ migrant-caravan-made-in-usa/ (accessed February 6, 2023). Sennett, R. (1994) Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: W. W. Norton. Sicurella, F. G. (2018) ‘The Language of walls along the Balkan route’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies,16:1-​2, 57–​75.

98  Ruth Wodak SOS Mitmensch (2019) Antimuslimischer Rassismus hat in Spitzenpolitik Fuß gefasst . At www2.sosmi​tmen​sch.at/​antim​usli​misc​her-​rassis​mus-​in-​der-​spi​tzen​poli​tik (January 31, 2019) Toulmin, S. (1958) The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: CUP. van Leeuwen, T. and Wodak, R. (1999) ‘Legitimizing immigration control: A discourse-historical analysis‘. Discourse Studies, 1:1, 83–​118. Vollmer, B. A. (2017) ‘A hermeneutical approach to european bordering’. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 25:1, 1–​15. Wodak, R. (2018a) ‘“Strangers in Europe”: A discourse-​historical approach to the legitimation of immigration control 2015/​16’. In S. Zhao et al. (eds.) Advancing Multimodal and Critical Discourse Studies. London: Routledge, 31–​50. Wodak, R. (2018b) ‘The revival of numbers and lists in radical right politics’. CARR: Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right: at www.radic​alri​ghta​naly​ sis.com/ ​ 2 018/​ 0 6/​ 3 0/​ t he-​ revi​ val-​ o f-​ numb​ e rs-​ a nd- ​ l ist ​ s in- ​ radi ​ c al- ​ r ight- ​ p olit ​ i cs/​ (acces​sed January 6, 2019). Wodak, R. (2019) ‘Entering the “post-​shame era” –​the rise of illiberal democracy, populism and neoauthoritarianism in Europe: the case of the turquoise-​ blue ­government in Austria 2017/​2018’. Global Discourse 9:1, 195–213 https://doi.org/ 10.1332/204378919X154704876454 Wodak, R. (2020) ‘The language of walls: inclusion, exclusion, and the racialization of space’. In J. Solomos (ed.) Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Racisms. London: Routledge, 160–177. Wodak, R. (2021) The Politics of Fear. The Shameless Normalization of Far-​right Discourse. London: Sage (2nd revised and extended ed.).

Chapter 7

The official version 1 Malcolm Coulthard

Discourse is a major instrument of power and control and Critical Discourse Analysts … feel that it is … part of their professional role to investigate, reveal and clarify how power and discriminatory value are inscribed in and mediated through the linguistic system. (Preface to Texts and Practices, 1st ed. p.xi)

Introduction As the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics expresses it, Forensic Linguistics is locatable within Critical Discourse Analysis, because its mission is “to work to improve the delivery of justice though the analysis of language”. In this chapter I will focus on some of the linguistic problems which interfere with the delivery of justice and show how they are solvable. People the world over are convicted, often partly and sometimes totally, on the basis of what they (are said to) have said. Thus, the accuracy of the record of what was said can assume tremendous importance. Ideally, the Court would be presented with a complete, reliable, and accurate verbatim record of (evidentially crucial excerpts from) what was said; that is, in Austin’s (1962) terms a locutionary record, so that the Court can make its own decision about the meaning and, if relevant, the behavioural consequences of what was said, that is, the illocutionary acts and perlocutionary sequels. However, for a whole series of reasons, the situation is rarely ideal. A famous example of a problematic case is that of Derek Bentley and Chris Craig, dating from the early 1950s in the UK. The two young men were apprehended by police as they were trying to break into a warehouse. Bentley, already under arrest at the time, was said to have shouted to Craig, who had a gun, ‘Let him have it, Chris’; shortly afterwards, Craig fired several shots and killed one of the policemen. There was a debate in court over the interpretation of the ambiguous utterance –​did it mean ‘give the policeman the gun’ or ‘shoot the policeman’. The presiding judge instructed the jury a) that the correct interpretation was the incriminating performative, ‘I hereby urge you DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-7

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to shoot him’, and b) that the perlocutionary sequel, the consequent death of the policeman, made Bentley legally an accessory to murder, through his verbal incitement, for which he was duly convicted and subsequently hanged. The legal-​linguistic argument is itself questionable, but Bentley did not choose to dispute the Court’s interpretation, but rather, more radically, the fact that he had even uttered the phrase: he asserted that it was a complete fabrication by the police officers involved in his arrest. Craig added to the legal-​linguistic confusion by asserting that, even if Bentley had uttered the words with the intention to incite, he had not heard them, so how could they have constituted an act of incitement? Craig’s claim made Bentley’s disputed utterance at best an unhappy performative and the guilty verdict, which crucially depended on the now recognizably unhappy perlocutionary force of incitement, baseless. Bentley’s claim, that linguistic evidence had been fabricated by the police –​ there were more examples in a confession statement also attributed to him –​ (see Coulthard et al, 2017:163-​70 for a detailed analysis), was to be reiterated by many others in the UK down the years, although claims by the convicted that they had been ‘verballed’ were usually viewed with great skepticism by the general public, who held the police in high regard –​at least until 1989. However, the consensus began to change following the case of one Paul Dandy, in which it was irrefutably demonstrated, by means of Electro-​Static Deposition Analysis (ESDA) –​that is, document analysis by a machine that allows the analyst to read impressions and indentations that have been created by the pressure of the pen or pencil used to write on the sheet above (see Davis, 1994) –​that the final page of an otherwise authentic, but anodyne, interview record had been rewritten, in order to allow the insertion of the two incriminating utterances, 7 and 8, below:2 1 2 3

Have you got a brother named Roy? Yes. On the 31st October 1986 you deposited £1,000 into the T.S.B. Where did that come from? 4 The sale of the GTi with ‘Rabbit Injection’ written on the back. 5 Will you sign an authority for us to look at your bank account? 6 No. 7 I take it from your earlier reply that you are admitting been [sic] involved in the robbery at the M.E.B. 8 You’re good. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and you’ve caught me. Now you’ve got to prove it. 9 Do you want to read over the notes and caption and sign them? 10 I’ll initial the mistakes, but I won’t sign them (end of interview). A rash of similar cases of proven ‘verballing’ of interview records and statements followed and the disbelieving English public saw in quick

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succession: the disbanding of the Birmingham-​based West Midlands Serious Crime squad, with the subsequent suspension of fifty-​ one officers and the conviction of several for falsification of evidence; the quashing of the convictions of the ‘Birmingham Six’; the release of the ‘Guildford Four’ and the successful appeal of the ‘Tottenham Three’. By the mid-​1990s, the pendulum had swung so far that the tendency was rather to disbelieve the police in cases of disputed confessions and some 800 cases, where it was claimed that there was some police interference with or actual falsification of verbal evidence, were under consideration by the Home Office for referral to the Court of Appeal. And investigations still continue; recently (October 2021), I gave evidence in the English Court of Appeal about falsified police interview records in a case dating from 1979.

On collecting verbal evidence At the time of the cases referred to above, the system in the British Isles for recording what was said during a police interview with a suspect was as follows: there would usually be two police officers present; one would ask questions and the other would make a handwritten verbatim record not only of the suspect’s answers but also of the questions that elicited them. Provided this procedure was adhered to, although as we have seen on too many occasions it was not, this record gave those who were not present a reasonable post-​hoc access to the interview. The contemporaneous verbatim handwritten records were subsequently typed up and it was those versions that were almost always used later as evidence. There are of course problems inherent in this system. While people tend to speak at 200–​250 words a minute, police handwriting speeds were closer to 20–​25 words a minute, so, either interviews would proceed very slowly or there would be omissions and paraphrases of what was said, which could also change the meaning. Despite such inaccuracies, what the suspect was recorded as having said was crucially represented in first-​person words. In other words, the record was verbatim, that is, without anyone standing between the suspect and the reader and indicating what they understood the suspect to have said –​‘he admitted that’, ‘she agreed that’, etc. Despite deficiencies, this system was significantly better than that still in force in many places in the world. In Brazil, for instance, the interviewing officer is aided by a scribe, whose job is not to preserve what the suspect said in verbatim form, but rather to make a summary. The scribe often uses reported speech, when a reporting verb can encode interpretation –​‘he claimed that’, ‘she insisted that’ –​and at times simply produces a content summary, with no indication of what was actually said, for instance: ‘he confessed he had…’, ‘the nature and the reasons for the assault on the wife were discussed’. In other words, when the record is a summary, not only is the suspect’s voice lost completely, but the reader has access only to the scribe’s decisions

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about what it was important to report and to his interpretation of what was meant. And, if the scribe misunderstands and misreports when producing his summary, as we see in Gibbons’ (2001) report of evidence-​recording in Chile, there is no way the suspect can challenge the accuracy of the record, Thus, if he tells the same, but officially mis-​reported, story in Court, he will be thought to be attempting to change his story, rather than to correct a mistake by the scribe. Anyone who watches television or films will be familiar with police officers and forensic scientists dressed in personal protective clothing –​scene suits, over-shoes, and gloves; there is a commendable obsession with avoiding contamination of the physical evidence. It is therefore all the more surprising that so little care is taken to preserve the verbal evidence which, arguably, is even easier to contaminate. Clearly, it is vital to have a comparable system which is proof against contamination not only at the point of collection, but also during storage, when converted into written form and then when used in Court as evidence. In 1984 the British Parliament passed the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) which, among other things, introduced the compulsory audio-​ recording of police interviews with suspects. The equipment used was simple, a cassette tape-​recorder using stereo cassettes with one channel already pre-​recorded with a voice marking the time every ten seconds in order to control against any post-​editing. Suddenly everyone, all the participants and anyone who was later interested in the interview, had access to a totally reliable record of what was said, at least what had been said while the recorder was switched on. The advantages of audio-​ recording quickly became clear to both sides and some jurisdictions have now introduced video-​recording to ensure the preservation of the multi-​ modal features of the interview as well. However, a depressingly large number of jurisdictions worldwide have not yet adopted even audio-​recording, which means the police continue to be in a more powerful position because they control the interview record and, to rephrase George Orwell, ‘he who controls the interview record, controls the evidence’ (1984, p. 44). Even in jurisdictions that have adopted the audio-​ recording of interviews, there still remain several major problems related to how best to process the audio-​recorded evidence for use in Court, about which I will say more below, but the introduction of audio-​recording was a major advance; the next will be when it is adopted standardly worldwide.

An illustration from a problematic interview that was not audio-​recorded In July 2019 an English 18-​year-​old, holidaying in Greek Cyprus during her summer vacation between leaving school and starting university, was engaging in consensual sex with an Israeli ‘holiday fling’ while, without her knowledge,

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their encounter was being filmed by a group of his Israeli friends, for later posting on the internet. Worse was to follow. A large number of these friends decided to ‘join in’ for what they later claimed was consensual group sex. The following day the teenager reported the encounter to the police as gang rape by up to 10 males –​the ages of the group ranged from 15 to 22. Following an examination, a police doctor said the complainant had bruising and injuries consistent with rape, while three of the Israeli men she had accused had injuries consistent with resistance to rape. All the Israelis denied rape saying either it was consensual sex or denying that they were involved. Three of those ‘not involved’ later changed their story to ‘consensual sex’ when their DNA was identified on swabs. Eleven days later, at the end of an 8-​hour uninterrupted interrogation conducted in English by Cypriot police officers, the teenager signed a three-​ paragraph handwritten statement saying that her rape allegation was a ‘fake report’. The Israelis were then allowed to return to Israel. But despite her claiming that her retraction statement had actually been dictated by police officers and that she had only written and signed it because she was promised that she would then be allowed to go home to her family and start her university career, the teenager was instead accused of ‘public mischief’, sent to prison for a month, and then held on the island until she was tried, convicted, and sentenced in January 2020. Indeed, having withdrawn the rape allegation, she was told she could even be prosecuted for the crime of having sex with a minor. The crucial second paragraph of the teenager’s handwritten retraction statement, which the police insisted she had produced ‘unaided’, even though they admitted that they had in fact dictated paragraphs 1 and 3, is as follows. The report I did on the 17th of July 2019 that I was raped at Ayia Napa was not the truth. The truth is that I wasnt (sic) raped and everything that happened in that appartment (sic) was with my consent. The reason I made the statement with the fake report is because I did not know they were recording & humiliating me that night I discovered them recording me doing sexual intercourse and I felt embarrassed so I want to appologise (sic), say I made a mistake3. It is obvious to anyone with a basic command of English that this paragraph is not written in native-​speaker English –​an English first language speaker would not ‘do a report’ nor ‘do sexual intercourse’, as Dr Andrea Nini pointed out in an expert report presented to the Cypriot court. And a Greek expert later identified interlanguage features in the phrases ‘the report I did’ and ‘doing sexual intercourse’, for which Greek unlike English would standardly use a verb translatable as ‘do’. I could go on pointing out other linguistic oddities in the paragraph, but my intention, in citing the case, is not to analyse the disputed paragraph, but rather to stress that such an analysis

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should not have been necessary. Had the Cypriot police already introduced a system whereby all significant interviews, including any statement-​writing activity, were audio-​recorded, it would have been easy to determine who was telling the truth.

Ways of improving the collection of verbal evidence by means of police interviewing There are in fact five features of best practice for police interviewing which, had they been in force in Cyprus at the time of this rape case, would have avoided the accusations and counter-​accusations. All of them are already in force in a few jurisdictions worldwide, with forensic linguists working to have them adopted more widely. Firstly, it is essential that all significant interviews are audio-​recorded. While, as already noted, audio-​recording is standard in some English-​speaking countries, significantly it is not in the United States, nor is it in the majority of jurisdictions worldwide. There is no rational legal objection to the practice, and the history of miscarriages of justice argues in its favour. The police are, not surprisingly, always reluctant to allow it at first, but they soon realise that most of the time recording is actually an advantage for them –​having to make a contemporaneous handwritten record slows the interview down and removes that pressure on an interviewee which rapidly sequenced questions can create. If there had been an audio-​recording of the 8-​hour Cypriot interview or the interaction that produced the Bentley statement, it would have been a simple matter to discover if the disputed paragraphs had been partially, substantially, or totally dictated by the police officers. Recommendation 1: All significant interviews with suspects, including any statement-​taking, must be at the very least audio-​recorded. Secondly, suspects should be advised of their right to remain silent. Both the UK police Caution and the U.S. Miranda Warning4 explicitly advise suspects of their right and also explicitly warn them that in speaking they could provide evidence against themselves that could be used in a future court case: UK Police Caution You do not have to say anything…. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Miranda Warning 1 You have the right to remain silent. 2 Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. In principle, if a suspect is not informed of their right to remain silent, anything they do say should not be allowed as evidence against them –​but

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in many countries silence is not seen as a basic right and in others suspects are simply not informed that they have the right –​while Brazilian police have available a translation of the Miranda Warning, Jorge (2018) noted it was often not used. And even though the Miranda warning is superficially positive: ‘you have the right to remain silent’, Ainsworth’s (2021) analysis of the application of the Miranda warning demonstrates that whereas, when it was first introduced the police had to elicit an explicit waiver in order for anything a suspect happened to say to be usable as evidence, over time successive Supreme Court judgments have produced a situation in which it is very difficult, if not virtually impossible, for a suspect to actually claim their right to silence. This is an area where all the necessary descriptive groundwork has been done to provide a solid basis for a campaign to restore the constitutional right to silence in the United States and also to introduce it in those jurisdictions where it has never been a right. What is now needed is worldwide pressure to assert the right. In the Cyprus case it would obviously have been very much in the teenager’s interest to have remained silent. Recommendation 2: Silence should be a right and a right clearly communicated before any questioning begins and not forfeitable unintentionally. Thirdly, the Miranda Warning continues 3 4

You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him (sic) present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning, if you wish one.

Many jurisdictions certainly do not provide lawyers for those who cannot afford to pay and indeed do not even tell suspects they have a right to have a lawyer present. However, even when there is a stated right, as in the United States, Ainsworth (ibid) shows that police officers can, and indeed sometimes do, deny the availability and/​or the fact that the provision is free. And, even when the right is communicated, it can be difficult to exercise the right. Ainsworth shows how the Supreme Court has gradually allowed a situation in which indirect speech acts are judged not to function in the way they do in interactions in the outside world –​only bald-​on-​record demands now count as a legitimate invocation of the right. So, ‘I feel like I should have an attorney’ and even ‘I’d like to speak to an attorney’ were judged not to count as invocations of the right; only requests in the direct explicit form were regarded as happy speech acts: ‘I want (to appoint) a lawyer to assist me now’. In the Cyprus rape case, while the Israeli boys had lawyers, the teenager endured some eight hours of interrogation without one. It is not known whether she was actually denied access or simply did not know she had the right, but it is certainly highly unlikely that, with a lawyer by her side advising

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her of the consequences, she would have ‘produced’ the retraction statement. And of course, even without an audio-​recording s/he would have been able to resolve the dispute about the authorship of the disputed paragraph. But, of course, theoretical provision, such as that apparently offered by the Miranda Warning, is not enough; it should also not be in practice virtually impossible to linguistically claim the right to a lawyer. Recommendation 3: The right of access to a lawyer should be communicated to all suspects and provision at no cost should be standard practice. And law enforcement and the judiciary should be compelled to not cynically rule that indirect speech acts have no illocutionary force inside the interview room. Fourthly, judicial systems must accept the need for state-​provided interpreters. In Australia, for instance, police officers are required not to interview non-​ native suspects without an interpreter present –​even if the suspect considers their English sufficiently good. And any evidence acquired in the absence of an interpreter is judged inadmissible. In the Cyprus case, native-​Greek-​speaking police officers interviewed the teenager in English. In the United States, native-​English-​speaking officers frequently interview suspects in broken Spanish; while in Mozambique, where interpreters are simply not available and some 43 native languages are spoken on a daily basis, any suspect who belongs to the 50% of the population who do not have even minimal access to the official language of the legal system, Portuguese, has to hope that the police interrogator speaks at least a language related to one of those he also speaks. In fact, to limit the number of miscarriages of justice worldwide, it is essential that, when officer and suspect are not native speakers of the same language, the suspect has the assistance of an interpreter. Some countries at least have the provision of interpreting by telephone, although in the United States the interpreter may be located some 3,000 miles away and in a different time zone. Even if provided, audio interpreting by telephone link is unsatisfactory; a video link is a minimal requirement and adequate video quality is now widely available as a consequence of the pandemic. Even so, having the interpreter in the same room as the suspect is the ideal. The major problem for the implementation of an adequate policy at the moment is not even financial, but the lack of a sufficient number of well-​trained interpreters. Even if all these problems were solved, there would remain in many jurisdictions the difficult task of convincing the policing and legal professionals of the necessity of providing high-​quality interpreting. As a start, in Australia, Sandra Hale (2021) reports contributing one lecture on court interpreting to a regular course for trainee judges and the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics runs hands-​on courses for police officers teaching them how to work successfully with an interpreter. But this is just a drop in the ocean. In an ideal world all police, and those legal professionals who work in countries with a large number of people who do not speak the language of the legal system,

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would have a short course on the importance of interpreting and on how to work effectively with an interpreter, as an integral part of their training. And finally, there is another barrier to the professionalization of interpreting –​poor remuneration works against attracting the best into the field. Recommendation: 4: All significant interviews with non-​native suspects must be interpreted. Finally, there is the pervasive problem of coerced confessions, discussed by Gaines and Lowrey-​Kinberg (2021) and Ainsworth (2021), a problem that is further aggravated in the United States where police officers are allowed to lie in order to secure a confession. In the Cyprus rape case, the victim says she was not allowed to go to the bathroom for eight hours, was verbally abused, and then falsely promised she could go home immediately afterwards if she wrote and signed the retraction statement. And this is not to mention those interviews where the suspect suffers physical aggression. Recommendation 5: Coerced confessions must be forbidden and lying by police officers not simply forbidden but punished.

On transcribing recorded evidence Converting the spoken to the written, as anyone who has attempted it is well aware, is not an unproblematic task. However, there appear to be in most police forces worldwide no explicit guidelines to officers about what they could or should legitimately include and what omit and thus they reinvent the procedures for themselves5. In this context it is useful to consider Slembrouck’s (1992) observations on the production of Hansard versions of proceedings in the British Parliament, where similarly linguistically naive scribes are charged with the creation of highly important verbatim records of what was said. Slembrouck was fortunate enough to have recordings to compare with the published Hansard transcripts, and he notes that there is filtering out of ‘disfluency’ and other obvious properties of spokenness, (e.g., intonation, stress) … repetitions, (even when strategically used…), half-​pronounced words, incomplete utterances, (un)filled pauses, false starts, reformulations, grammatical slips, etc. are equally absent … [and] Hansard does not represent… accent or use of a regional variety. It also interferes with the level of formality…: contracted verb forms are not used and informal variants are generally avoided. (Slembrouck, 1992:104–​5) As Slembrouck observes none of these alterations are ‘value-​free’, because they all affect the way the lay reader evaluates what is (recorded as having been) said. However, at the same time there is no suggestion that the records are biased in any other way –​it appears that politicians of all parties, classes,

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nationalities, and sexes are equally ‘improved’ and homogenised. And in addition, Members of Parliament (MPs) who feel they have been misquoted or misrepresented by a scribe’s reformulation are able to appeal after the event to the tape-​recorded version and ask for a correction to be made to the official written record. By contrast, and in a different context, court stenographers, when asked about their procedures when faced with non-​standard usage, report that their conscious strategy is (to use Pitt Corder’s famous distinction), to correct the grammatical ‘mistakes’ made by judges and barristers who obviously know better, but to record the ‘errors’ produced by witnesses who probably don’t. In other words, we see a transcription convention at work, which on the one hand regards and therefore represents the educated professional as a speaker of standard English, whatever the objective evidence to the contrary, but on the other sees semi-​or un-​educated witnesses as speakers who may be characterised as such by the faithful representation of their non-​standard speech. In these situations, however, the witness, unlike the MP, never has access to, let alone the chance to correct, the written record. Fortunately, the vast majority of police records seem to be, just like the Hansard records, linguistically unbiased tidied up representations of what was said, but there is always the possibility of the police scribe choosing to record, or even mis-​record, unilaterally non-​standard usage by the accused. That is, even when the police usage in terms of phonological, grammatical, and discoursal choices is very similar to that of the accused, it can be differentially transcribed and thereby imply significant differences to the Court. So, while the speech of the local police who arrested and interviewed Mr Clay, a low intelligence suspect in a murder case, was similarly non-​standard, they were represented as speakers of standard English, but he was represented as a dialect speaker: CLAY, I know what I did, I worked 11 to 8 and after work went straight home, had me tea, watched telly and didn’t go out all night me mum and dad will tell you’. ‘I know what I’ve done and you are not pinning anything on me because I’ve done nowt wrong. This convention of sprinkling a text with non-​standard, colloquial, and/​ or slang features and even obscenities to give a characterising flavour is a standard literary technique. In other words, if they make such choices the police scribes are, consciously or unconsciously, operating in the same way as creative writers and using how people speak in part to characterise them. Transcription problems will always occur when the transcription is being done, as is recommended, by civilians who were not present, especially when the quality of the recording is poor, as often happens with tapes produced in undercover surveillance operations. Listening is not a simple operation and

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not infrequently a listener is forced to guess, based on being able to hear only some of the phonemes, and thus produces a contextually appropriate but actually incorrect word or phrase. For example, a police transcriber of a clandestine recording of a man later accused of manufacturing the designer drug Ecstasy, mis-​transcribed a word as ‘hallucinogenic’:   but if it’s as you say it’s hallucinogenic, it’s in the Sigma catalogue… Whereas, the man had actually said, unincriminatingly but if it’s as you say it’s German, it’s in the Sigma catalogue… In another case, a murder suspect with a very strong West Indian accent was transcribed as having said in a recorded police interview that he ‘got on a train’ and then ‘shot a man to kill’; in fact, what he had said was the completely innocuous and contextually much more plausible ‘show[ed] a man ticket’, (Peter French, personal communication). French himself (in Baldwin and French 1990) reports a much more difficult case, which appeared to turn on the presence or absence of a single phoneme, the consonant that distinguishes can from can’t. The problem is that while the written form marks the negative by ‘t’ in normal continuous speech the ‘t’ is very frequently omitted, so both words have the same ‘can’ form. Native British English speakers mark the semantic difference by a lengthening of the vowel of the negative form. In French’s case a doctor, who spoke English with a strong Greek accent, had been surreptitiously tape-​recorded apparently saying, whilst prescribing tablets to a drug addict, ‘you can inject those things’. He was prosecuted for irresponsibly suggesting that the patient could grind up the pills and then inject them. His defence was that he had actually said just the opposite, ‘you can’t inject those things’. An auditory examination of the tape-​recording showed that there was certainly no hint of a /t/ ​at the end of the ‘can’ word and thus confirmed the orthographic accuracy of the police transcription. However, the question remained, was the transcription morphologically incorrect; that is, was the doctor intending, and actually saying his version of, ‘can’t’? Auditory analysis of a taped sample of the doctor’s speech showed that there was standardly an absence of final /t/ in his production of ‘can’t’. In addition, his ‘a’ vowels, when produced in words which, it was possible to deduce from the context, were unambiguously intended as either ‘can’ or ‘can’t’ were virtually indistinguishable, even to a trained phonetician. So, whichever the doctor’s intended meaning on any particular occasion could only be determined by the untrained listener from the context and not though the collection of sounds produced. So, there would indeed be occasions when there was genuine ambiguity. The problem in this case was resolved before trial, but Haworth (22021) reports a more serious example from the trial of a Dr Shipman, the UK’s worst serial killer. She transcribed a crucial exchange in the police interview as:

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POL.: re the drugs, you don’t keep drugs in your surgery, is that correct SHIP.: I don’t keep any drugs, if you’re talking about controlled drugs However, the police transcript, as presented for court use, mis-​transcribed Shipman’s reply as SHIP.: I’ve given you drugs. Are you talking about controlled drugs? As Haworth points out this version implies that Shipman did indeed keep drugs and had actually handed some over, “when in fact he did exactly the opposite: he hid them and lied about it” (2021: 148–​9). The British legal system requires all evidence to be verbalised in court, so the written transcript of what the accused said in the police station does not itself count as evidence; the words have to be heard by the judge and jury. The original tape-​recording could be played in court, but the preferred system is for the transcript to be ‘performed’ by the witness and the lawyer, in this case by the police officer ‘playing’ himself and the lawyer acting the part of Dr Shipman. This introduces yet more chances for the evidence to be corrupted. As professional actors, and indeed many lawyers, are well aware, it is possible to alter meaning significantly by the placement of stress and the choice of intonation. In this case the prosecutor cross-​examining Shipman actually produced an evidentially stronger version, one assumes accidentally, by adding the word ‘all’: SHIP.: I have given you all the drugs. Are you talking about controlled drugs?5

Concluding observations As a profession, forensic linguists are working towards a utopian future where anyone who is arrested both understands their rights and is able to claim them; where anyone who needs the help of an interpreter has access to one; where the prejudicial effect of interpreting on the legal process is reduced to an absolute minimum; where all legally significant interactions are audio-​or video-​recorded; and where written transcriptions are faithful to the original.

Research tasks 1 2

In your country, how is the verbal evidence produced during police interviews recorded and preserved? If a case goes to court in what form is the verbal evidence presented? Can you suggest ways to improve the system? Investigate for any country except the UK: a) what rights –​e.g., to silence, access to a lawyer, etc. –​does a suspect who is about to be interviewed have? b) how are these rights communicated? c) how does a suspect avail themself of these rights? d) if the rights are not communicated or wrongfully denied

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what redress does the suspect have? e) in order to support their case does ths suspect have access to an audio-​record or a written record of the interview?

Further reading Ainsworth, J. (2021) ‘Curtailing coercion in police interrogation: the failed promise of Miranda v Arizona’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, 95–​111. Coulthard, M., May, A. and Wright, D. (2017) An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, Chapters 4, 6, 8 and 9. Gaines, P. and Lowrey-​Kinberg, B. (2021) The language of false confession in police interrogation. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics,127–​43. Haworth, K. (2021) ‘Police interviews as evidence’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-​Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, pp.144–​58.

Notes 1 This is a radically rewritten and updated version of my chapter in the first edition of Texts and Practices. In rewriting I have drawn substantially on ideas first presented in my contribution to ‘Concluding Remarks: Future Directions’, being Chapter 43 of the Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, pp. 709–17. 2 All the examples in this chapter are taken from real cases, although in some of the extracts the names have been changed. 3 For more details see www.dailym​ail.co.uk/​news/​arti​cle-​7846​555/​Langu​age-​exp​ert-​ Con​fess​ion-​Brit​ish-​wom​ans-​Cyp​rus-​rape-​case-​dicta​ted-​pol​ice.html, last accessed on May 5th 2022 4 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). 5 There is a major ongoing research project at Aston University on transcription, led by Dr Kate Haworth (see Haworth 2021). The team are working with English police forces on the development of a standardized methodology for the transcription of Records of Taped Interviews (ROTIs). The intended outcome is a set of guidelines to ensure both that ROTIs encode more of the meaning conveyed in the original spoken interaction and that there is consistency in readers’ (i.e., fellow investigating officers, staff of the Crown Prosecution Service, lawyer, judges, and especially juries) interpretation of such features as repetition, punctuation, and pauses.

References Ainsworth, J. (2021) ‘Curtailing coercion in police interrogation: the failed promise of Miranda v Arizona’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, 95–​111. Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words, London: Oxford University Press. Baldwin, J. and French, J.P. (1990) Forensic Phonetics, London: Pinter. Coulthard, M., May, A. and Sousa-​Silva, R. (eds.) (2021a) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge.

112  Malcolm Coulthard Coulthard, M., May, A. and Sousa-​Silva, R. (2021b) ‘Concluding remarks: Future directions’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-​Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge 709–​17. Coulthard, M., May, A. and Wright, D. (2017) An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge. Davis, T.A. (1994) ‘ESDA and the analysis of contested contemporaneous notes of police interviews’. Forensic Linguistics, 1, 1, 71–​89. Gaines, P. and Lowrey-​Kinberg, B. (2021) ‘The language of false confession in police interrogation’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-​Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge,127–​43. Gibbons, J. (2001) ‘Legal transformations in Spanish: an “audiencia”’. In Chile, Forensic Linguistics, 8 (1) 24–​43. Hale, S. (2021) ‘The need to raise the bar: court interpreters as specialised experts’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-​Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, 485–​501. Haworth, K. (2021) ‘Police interviews as evidence’. In M. Coulthard, A. May and R. Sousa-​ Silva (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, 144–​158. Jorge, S. (2018) Analysing Brazilian Police Interviews in Cases of Violence against Women, unpublished PhD thesis, UFSC, Brazil. Slembrouck, S. (1992) ‘The parliamentary Hansard “verbatim” report: the written construction of spoken discourse’. Language and Literature, 1, 2, 101–​19.

Chapter 8

Manifestos as Social Movement Discourse Teun A. van Dijk

Introduction Among the vast repertoire of contentious activities of social movements, various types of discourse play a fundamental, but often ignored, role. Without text and talk, activists are unable to express their claims, organize their activities, or communicate their concerns to the general public, the media, or governments. Typical protests such as demonstrations, strikes, or occupations not only involve non-​verbal actions, but are also accompanied by slogans, banners, declarations, and press releases. Meetings and assemblies are essentially forms of discursive interaction and each constitutes a special genre. Discourses of social movements also express the personal and social cognitions of their members, represented in mental models of personal experiences, shared knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, norms, and values. These cognitive aspects of social movements have received little theoretical or analytical attention (but see Passy and Monsch, 2020), though sometimes they are subsumed under the notion of ‘frame’, without further cognitive analysis. Among the discourse genres defining the communication activities of social movements, manifestos have important roles and functions. They are often the first public discourse of a movement or are published when a movement has changed it aims or methods or when important social or political events require their comments and a position statement. Yet, such manifestos have been studied relatively infrequently. This chapter offers a theoretical foundation for the study of manifestos and provides some sample analyses. It contributes not only to the study of social movements, but also to Critical Discourse Studies, because manifestos are a prominent discourse genre of protest, resistance, and solidarity. My theoretical framework is multidisciplinary, systematically linking discourse structures with social structures via a cognitive interface. It continues my earlier research on (anti) racist discourse, news in the press, ideology, and knowledge. This chapter is intended as a contribution to my current project on social movement discourse and cognition. DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-8

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Discourse Analysis of Social Movements The study of social movements usually focuses on their organization and contentious non-​verbal activities, or their relations to governments, or to the general public and potential members (see, e.g., Della Porta and Diani, 2015). The cultural paradigm of studies of social movements, emerging in the 1990s, also paid attention to discourse, but usually did so in terms of the rather vague concepts of frames and framing (Benford and Snow, 2000), instead of using the more detailed and explicit theories and methods of contemporary discourse studies. Many genres of discourse are a pervasive part of the repertoire of social movements. Besides the manifestos examined in this chapter are such activities as personal conversations, informal meetings and assemblies, storytelling, declarations, press releases, advertising, campaigns, letters, and much more (see, e.g., Steinberg, 1999; Skillington, 1997). Many forms of text and talk accompany other forms of contentious action, as is the case for slogans used during demonstrations, strikes, or occupations. Discourse plays a crucial role in the acquisition of the specialized knowledge of social movements, as well as sharing attitudes or ideologies among its members. To make their claims known to governments or the general public, social movements need to engage in many forms of text and talk. In sum, social movements are unthinkable without the pervasive role of discourse. Yet, the study of social movements, especially in the social sciences, has only paid marginal attention to discourse. Despite interest in the repertoires of contentious actions, few have analysed their discursive aspects (but see the study of revolutionary words by Tarrow, 2013). With the exception of the study of stories and storytelling (e.g., Davis, 2002; Polletta, 2006; Polletta, Chen, Gardner and Motes, 2011), contemporary handbooks of social movement research (such as Della Porta and Diani, 2015) do not even feature chapters on discourse. Within the cultural paradigm of social movement studies, text and talk have received more interest, but often in terms of traditional content analysis, or in terms of frame, which can be used to stand for a large variety of discourse structures, such as themes, topics, rhetoric, style, or perspective, without a more detailed and systematic analysis in terms of the structures studied in contemporary linguistics, discourse studies, conversation analysis, stylistics, rhetoric, or pragmatics (for critical analysis, see van Dijk, 2020). A review of discourse analysis in social movement research is beyond the scope of this chapter, so I will only briefly mention some scholars who have paid attention to social movement discourse. In particular, Hank Johnston has advocated discourse analytical and cognitive approaches, while critically discussing pervasive framing research. He emphasizes especially the role of the pragmatic categories of the speech situation (some to be discussed below for manifestos) in his study of interviews and fieldwork in Catalonia (see, e.g., Johnston, 1995, 2002).

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And Marc Steinberg, whose prize-​winning monograph Fighting Words (Steinberg, 1999) on working-​class formation, collective action, and discourse in early nineteenth century England, stresses that discourse is a ‘key component of social life’, and that it mediates the processes of class formation and class conflict. An article linking frame analysis with discourse analysis is Caiani and Della Porta’s (2011) study of the elite populism of the extreme right in Italy and Germany. Within a discourse analytical paradigm, Flowerdew (2017) offers a discourse historical study of the Umbrella Movement in Hongkong.

Studies of Manifestos Most analytical studies on social movement manifestos (some 400 books and articles) focus on party and election manifestos, which are part of a class of ‘foundational texts’ (Holland and Nichele, 2016), such as party programs, principles, policies, agendas, plans, and other important discourses of social movements, as is the case for mission statements of organizations and institutions (see, e.g., Connell and Galasinksi, 1998). Besides party and election manifestos, the most studied are artistic or literary manifestos (see, e.g., Lyon, 1999; Scott, 2019). The most impressive collection of such manifestos and related discourses consists of 150 feminist texts cited and presented by Weiss and Brueske (2018), one of which I will analyse below. While there is an international comparative project analysing (political) manifestos directed by Ian Budge (see, e.g., Budge and McDonald, 2006), few such studies engage in systematic discourse analysis and fewer define manifestos as a genre.

Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework used in this chapter is multidisciplinary. It not only features notions of linguistics and various fields of discourse studies but also notions of the social sciences, on the one hand, and cognitive studies, on the other hand. This socio-​cognitive approach to discourse emphasizes that there is no direct (causal) link between discourse structures and societal structures. Within a constructivist paradigm, we claim that societal structures only influence discourse structures through the personal and socially shared cognitions (interpretations, representations, etc.) of language users as social actors and as members of social groups and communities. The same is true for the influence of discourse on society. In my earlier research, I elaborated on and applied this framework to describe and analyze the reproduction of racism (and antiracism) in society, notably through elite discourse in politics, the media, and education (van Dijk, 1984, 1991, 1993). Racism as a form of ethnic power abuse or domination,

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expressed by many forms of discrimination and exclusion, including racist discourse, is based on socially shared racist ideologies and attitudes and racist personal mental models. These forms of personal and social cognition are largely acquired by the many forms of racist public discourse in politics, education, and the media, especially of the symbolic elites that have preferential access to these discourses, as well as those members of social media influenced by these elites. It is in this way that I relate (racist) discourse structures to (racist) practices via the interface of racist personal and social cognition. My claim is that in these relationships, discourse plays a crucial role: without racist discourse there would not be racist cognition and without racist cognition there would not be racist practices and hence no dominant system of racism. The same relationship holds between antiracist discourse, cognition, and practices. This framework can be used for the analysis of social movements –​and its discourses. Whether as protest or as solidarity movements, their practices presuppose personal mental models (experiences) of their members or socially shared knowledge, opinions, attitudes, ideologies, norms, and values about events and structures of oppression, exclusion, or marginalization. These forms of personal and social cognition are expressed and presupposed by the myriad of discourses of the members of social movements. These discourses themselves are not only part of the repertoire of social movements, but also co-​constitutive of their other practices, such as internal organization, meetings, assemblies, protests, demonstrations, strikes, or occupations, on the one hand, and the relations with potential members or supporters, the media, the government, or other organizations, on the other hand. In other words, without discourse no social movement is conceivable. Shared knowledge of communities (van Dijk, 2014) is very relevant for the study of social movement manifestos as well as the ideologies of social groups such as social movements (van Dijk, 1998). Manifestos presuppose knowledge about the (usually negative) social situation (since ideologies are part of the basic structures of social groups, and their generally polarized (us vs. them) structure; they are also expressed in foundational texts such as manifestos. Indeed, as has been observed for party and election manifestos, manifestos of social movements are perhaps the most direct discursive expressions of underlying ideologies). Given this crucial role of discourse for the formation and reproduction of social movements, its analysis needs to be taken seriously. This means that the sophisticated theories and methods of multimodal discourse studies developed in the last 50 years need to be applied to manifestos. Popular notions used in many social movement studies, such as ‘frames’, need to be made more explicit in such a framework, and no longer used to vaguely describe such different discourse structures as those of semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, stylistics, narrative or argumentation, among others.

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On the other hand, studies of social movements may contribute to discourse studies by their social and political analysis of social movement practices, their underlying social cognitions and their discourses. In this chapter, the study of the roles and functions of manifestos in social movement research contributes to our insight in the structures and strategies of such a discourse genre, as part of Critical Discourse Studies.

Contexts of Manifestos Before I examine the discourse structures of some manifestos below, I must emphasize the fundamental role of contextual analysis for the study of discursive genres in general, and manifestos in particular. Therefore, I distinguish between a close ‘pragmatic’ context, defining the communicative situation, on the one hand, and a broader ‘semantic’ context presupposed by the meaning of discourse. Within my socio-​cognitive framework, the communicative context is not an ‘objective’ situation, but a subjective one as defined by the participants as mental context models, which feature the parameters for the appropriateness of the discourse (van Dijk, 2008, 2009). It is only this cognitive model that enables the control of the cognitive processes and structures of discourse. The standard categories of the context model are Time, Place, Participants (and their Identities, Roles, and Relations), the Communicative Act (and its Goals), and the Knowledge (about the Knowledge) of the participants. These categories define the indexical expressions of discourse. It is especially this ‘pragmatic’ communicative context that defines manifestos as a genre. The broader social-​political context is also cognitively mediated, through the (shared) knowledge of the relevant socio-​political situation, that is, all the actors, situations, and events introduced or presupposed by text and talk. The general discussion on the relevance of contexts for discourse analysis also holds for the study of genres of discourses in general, and for the study of manifestos in particular. Indeed, we may even hold that without such a contextual analysis, manifestos as a genre cannot be properly or completely described in terms of discourse properties. The first type of relevant context of manifestos, thus, is the communicative context, at least consisting of Time, Place, Participants (and their Identities, Roles, and Relations), the ongoing social Actions, and Knowledge.

Participants Speakers or authors of manifestos generally are collectives, such as social movements in our case, or artistic movements or political parties, even when manifestos may be originally composed by leaders or secretaries. They are published as manifestos of the collective, and not of an individual person. Even though individual authors have published texts they called ‘manifestos’,

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they are not so interpreted by the public at large as recipients, but rather as literature, confessions, autobiographies, and so on. But authors of manifestos are not just any collective of social actors. Indeed, governments may produce discourses that have some aspects in common with manifestos, such as programs, policies, or declarations of principles, but these would not generally be called manifestos either. The same is true for generic collectives, such as all women, or all men, or all doctors or all professors –​ simply because they are not a bound collective that is able to plan and collectively act and hence produce discourse. As is the case for this chapter, social movements, as well as artistic movements, are the prototypical authors of manifestos. We have seen above that new political parties may also publish a manifesto, as do established parties on special occasion, such as elections, but such manifestos are –​and should rather be –​called programs. A further constraint on the identification of the authors of manifestos is that they are often collectives in opposition against, or critical of, established power structures or majorities, e.g., because they have been excluded, discriminated, marginalized, or otherwise treated badly by the powers that be. In this case, the manifesto is itself an act of protest or resistance by any collective defined in terms of lacking power because of their gender, ethnicity, origin, nationality, sexual orientation, age, etc. In other words, it is not just the collective that is author, but the identity of the collective.

The Socio-​p olitical Context The communicative context of manifestos, as described above, is of course part of a broader socio-​political context. This context also influences manifestos in a more indirect way, for instance through the social cognition of the authors about their own movement, its history, ideas, actions, and aims, its relations to other social actors, institutions such as governments or other social groups or organizations, and especially the very social situation that has motivated the formation of the movement in the first place. As is the case for the communicative context, it is not the ‘objective’ nature of this socio-​political context that influences manifestos, but the ways this context is interpreted, and hence mentally represented in the shared social cognitions of the authors. Indeed, grievances of social movements are not about ‘objective’ social situations, but how movements interpret these situations. In my analyses below, we’ll show in more detail how social, political, and cultural contexts influence manifestos.

The Discourse Structures and Strategies of Manifestos It is within the cognitively construed influence of the communicative and sociopolitical context of a social movement that its manifestos are produced and structured. Part of this structure is controlled by the grammatical rules of the language of the manifesto, and by the genre structure of manifestos as

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known to the authors (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995). This may also mean that the authors may use other concepts to describe manifestos or have a concept of manifestos that is different from the one shared by other groups or movements of the same discourse community. Let me begin with a brief analysis of a specific manifesto: the manifesto of Black Lives Matter as published on the website of the movement: 1 What We Believe 2 Four years ago, what is now known as the Black Lives Matter Global 3 Network began to be organized. It started out as a chapter-​ based, 4 member-​led organization whose mission was to build local power and 5 to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the 6 state and vigilantes. In the years since, we’ve committed to struggling 7 together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-​Blackness, 8 where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power 9 to thrive. Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to 10 state-​sanctioned violence and anti-​Black racism. Our intention from the 11 very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who 12 have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The 13 impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate 14 violence inflicted on us by the state. First of all, the manifesto is not explicitly named as such, but its title focuses on the important cognitive dimension of the movement, its beliefs. These beliefs are specified by the plural first person pronoun we, the general pronoun of much political discourse in general, and referring to the social movement as the ingroup, and more specifically to the authors of the manifesto or the leaders of the movement. The fact that these beliefs are referred to explicitly in the headline confirms that this cognitive aspect is crucial for the identity of social movements in general and this movement in particular, and at the same time a distinctive property of the overall semantic structures of manifestos. More specifically, the headline is indexical, not only because it refers to the authors of the communicative situation, but also to their beliefs, as construed in the context models of the authors. My next analytical step is to relate semantic structure with relevant properties of social movements. A first relevant semantic category is that of History. Many discourses of social movements, and especially foundational texts such as manifestos, count the history of the formation of the movement, as I have also found in parliamentary debates on university quotas for black students in Brazil (van Dijk, 2020). This semantic category has the broader function of narrative: manifestos may engage in storytelling, as does this manifesto. In this case, the narrative dimension is pervasive, because also the next sentences are about past events and developments: it started out, in the years since,

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began, from the very beginning, was, and still is. In other words, the overall cognitive category of ‘what we believe’ is described in historical terms and as part of movement storytelling. The next overall category of this manifesto is Identity expressed in the very first sentence: what is now known as the Black Lives Matter Global Network began to organize. Besides indexically relating the history to the present (now) and hence stressing its continuity as well as change, the movement is (now) known not just as Black Lives Matter, but also as a Global Network. Thus, the name and identity of the movement is no longer just local or national, but international, obviously implying a change of status and fame. We see that this brief expression not only functions as part of the Identity of the manifesto (and the movement), but also as an expression of the important Location of the movement. After the word organize in sentence 1, sentence 2 (lines 3–​4) adds other relevant categories, such as Organization in the expression member-​led, implying that the movement is not hierarchical, but horizontal and democratic. Crucial in the same sentence is the fragment ‘whose mission was to build local power and to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes’. The keyword mission may be the name of the next category, and more generally refers to the name of the Aims or Goals of a/​this movement. The metaphor TO BUILD expresses and emphasizes the second major action of the movement, and hence may be categorized as part of the important Action of manifestos, of course inherently related to its goals. The expression (build) local power introduces another important category of movements and their manifestos: the Resources of the movement, generally the resources needed to struggle and to resist, here expressed by the verb to intervene. The rest of that (passive) sentence expresses another fundamental category of social movements and their manifestos: their very raison d’être or Motivation, why the movement was created in the first place: in this case as a movement resisting (systemic) violence, implicitly also interpreted as a serious violation of social norms. Indeed, BLM was not founded for petty embarrassment by the police. At the same time, this sentence expresses the Beneficiary of the (actions of the) movement, the Black Communities, as expressed as Patient in the grammatical structure, as well as the Opponent or Enemies of the movement, the State, making violence systemic, and vigilantes, making it widespread and uncontrolled. The next sentence (lines 5–​7) continues the Action category with the classical movement metaphor of struggle, and the Identity category adding the Unity of the movement with its Beneficiary, and finally the crucial cognitive (imagining) category of Vision, representing a situation where the motivation of the movement (police violence, etc.) is no longer a problem, in this case further specified as anti-​blackness, and the aim of a generalized Resource (various kinds of power) for all, a strategic generalization to stress the importance of the movement for the Black community. Presupposed by

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this sentence, thus, is that BLM is an antiracist movement, thus further specifying its Identity. The sentence in lines 7–​8 partly repeats not only the History category (BLM began) and the Motivation the movement (anti-​blackness) but repeats and emphasizes the responsibility of the state, and hence its role as the main Opponent of the movement, ultimately responsible for police violence. Indeed, further analysis may distinguish between actual Opponents or Enemies (of which the black community is the victim), but at another level, the institution that is actually politically responsible for the negative situation of police violence: the State, thus adding also an Explanation to the manifesto. The sentence Our intention in lines 9 and 10 continues the History category of the narrative function of the manifesto (from the very beginning), the category of Action (to connect), and the Aims category (our intention), the Beneficiary (black community), this time extended to its place (all over the world), thus again stressing the global importance of BLM, as well as a cognitive aspect attributed to this community (shared desire for justice) introducing one of the crucial Values shared between BLM and black communities, as well as part of shared Action (act together). The final sentence (lines 10–​11) repeats and hence emphasizes the Cause of the movement (impetus), continues the story of the History of the movement (was, and still is), the Motivation of the movement (violence) rhetorically emphasized (rampant and deliberate), and the Responsible Opponent or Enemy of the movement (the State). The final pronoun us implies the shared Identity between BLM and the black community in its grammatical and semantic role of Patient and Victim of the actions of the State. This brief analysis of a typical example of a recent (short) manifesto of a famous movement shows that the text can be analysed in relevant semantic macro-​categories, that index the main social and cognitive categories of the social movement, and at the same time organize the (discontinuous) expressions of the text, defining it as a manifesto of a social movement, and at the same time expressing its overall coherence. The categories can be summarized in the following schema, as a hypothesis of manifesto superstructure: • • • • • • • • •

Identity Actions Time History Present Place Beneficiary Opponents Aims/​Vision

The schema could be further simplified with a category of Actors, of which the movement, the Beneficiary, and the Opponents are participants in

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different roles, each with their own actions. Since the categories are quite general, the schema might hold not just as major categories of a theory of social movements, but also as discourse categories of their foundational discourses such as manifestos. There is another important corollary of the schematic structure of movement theory and its manifestos: in my earlier work on the structures of ideologies, I postulated an ideology schema consisting of the following categories (van Dijk, 1998): • • • • • •

Identity (who are we?) Action (what do we do?) Goals (what do we want?) Norms/​Values (what is good/​bad for us?) Relations (who are our allies and enemies?) Resources (what defines our –​lack of –​power?)

The similarity of the structure of the ideology of a movement and its manifesto is of course not a coincidence. Indeed, as has been observed by analysts of party manifestos (see above), a manifesto is a discursive expression of an underlying ideology, but always adapted to the communicative situation as represented in the context model of the authors. Both are fundamental: an ideology is a type of fundamental social cognition shared by an (ideological) group, and a manifesto a foundational text of a movement, precisely with the aim to express, publicise, and communicate its underlying ideology. It is also for this reason that the BLM manifesto is titled What we believe. The global semantic categories of the manifesto do not define and explain all its structures. We have seen that the grammar of sentences expresses the role of actors, time, and place, and its rhetorical strategies emphasize the global meanings of the text locally by various predicates –​properties they share with all discourse or all political and persuasive discourse. The global semantic categories discussed above, on the other hand, define the general semantic structure of the genre of the manifesto. We need further analysis to see whether this is indeed the case for other manifestos. Relevant for ideological discourses such as manifestos is that the ideology is usually expressed by polarized structures, emphasizing the ‘Good things of Us’, and the ‘Bad things of Them’ (van Dijk, 1998). This is also the case in the manifesto of BLM, which emphasizes (by repetition and lexical selection) the bad things of the police and the State, and the good things of BLM (build local power, intervene when violence is conflicted against the Black community, struggling, imagining a world free of anti-​Blackness, etc.) or the Black people (shared desire for justice to act together in their communities). Also, positive self-​presentation of BLM is expressed in its democratic organization: member-​led, its commitment, and its international role).

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It is theoretically and analytically crucial to distinguish between underlying ideologies as shared forms of social cognition, on the one hand, and the discourses controlled by such an ideology, of which the current manifesto is just one specific example, produced by the current organization, published on a website, at a specific time, place, etc., that is, a specific communicative situation. The same anti-​racist ideology will probably control many other discourses of BLM as well as other black or anti-​racist organizations. This ideology specifically also controls more specific forms of socially shared cognition, namely attitudes, in this case the specific attitude about police violence against the black community in the United States. Thus, the specifics of this manifesto are not only controlled by a general anti-racist ideology, but also by a more specific (anti-​racist) attitude about police violence, as will be the case for all or most discourses about police violence against the black community in the United States. The actual (indexical) structures of the manifesto are controlled by the communicative situation as represented in the context model of BLM as author of this manifesto. This is shown in the specific temporal information (four years ago, now known, was and still is, and the passive tense of the ‘historical’ sentences) and the pronouns (our intention). The various levels of sociocognitive discourse analysis, hence, are the following, from bottom to top, ignoring the details of the underlying and applied grammatical knowledge of English:

Social Cognition • • • • •

General (shared) sociopolitical knowledge about police violence, anti-​ Blackness and the role of the State in the United States General genre knowledge about manifestos Specific knowledge of BLM about its history, activities, intentions, commitments, etc. General anti-​racist ideology Socially shared (ideological) attitudes about police violence against blacks in the United States

Personal or Group Cognition • •

Specific (BLM) mental models about its past and current activities Current context model of the communicative situation of the current manifesto

Discourse Structures •

The overall schema (superstructure) consisting of manifesto categories (Identity, etc.)

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• • • •

Polarized ideological organization of the global semantics of the manifesto Expression of locally and globally coherent sentences expressing these semantic structures Stylistic appropriateness and rhetorical emphasis in the selection of the words of the sentences Expression/​production, in English, as part of the website

The Stop Mare Mortum Manifesto in Spain My next example is a manifesto in Catalan of the Stop Mare Mortum movement in Catalonia, Spain, especially active since the many deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean since 2015, especially from Syria, and other countries in the Middle East and Africa. The manifesto was published on the website of the movement (https://​sto​pmar​emor​tum.org/​). Stop Mare Mortum La sensibilització, la incidència política i la mobilització de la població Qui som? Som una plataforma ciutadana que té per objectiu fomentar un canvi en les polítiques europees migratòries i d’estrangeria per tal d’aconseguir que es garanteixin i es respectin els drets humans. Treballem per assolir que s’estableixin vies legals i segures d’accés a territori europeu per evitar totes les morts en el camí. Com a plataforma creiem en la llibertat de moviment sense restriccions de totes les persones i que els drets humans han de ser garantits sense fer distinció entre persones migrants i persones refugiades. En aquest sentit, considerem que les polítiques migratòries europees i la manca de voluntat dels estats membres de la Unió Europea i de la mateixa organització han esdevingut el major obstacle per salvar les vides dels milers de persones que moren a les portes d’Europa. Entenem que el que passa al Mediterrani és una nova forma de genocidi del segle XXI. Stop Mare Mortum vam néixer a finals d’abril de 2015 com a reacció a la mort de gairebé un miler de persones durant el naufragi de l’embarcació amb què esperaven arribar a costes sicilianes. La primera acció va ser davant la seu de la Comissió Europea a Barcelona. Stop Mare Mortum (translation) Awareness, political advocacy and population mobilization Who are we? We are a citizen platform that aims to promote change in European migration and immigration policies in order to ensure that human rights are guaranteed and respected. We are working to ensure that legal and safe access routes to European territory are established to prevent all deaths along the way.

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As a platform we believe in the unrestricted freedom of movement of all people and that human rights must be guaranteed without distinguishing between migrants and refugees. In this sense, we believe that European migration policies and the unwillingness of the member states of the European Union and the organization itself have become the biggest obstacle to saving the lives of the thousands of people who die at the gates of Europe. We understand that what is happening in the Mediterranean is a new form of genocide in the 21st century. Stop Mare Mortum was born in late April 2015 in reaction to the deaths of nearly a thousand people during the sinking of the boat on which they were hoping to reach the coast of Sicily. The first action was in front of the headquarters of the European Commission in Barcelona. For convenience, my analysis will be based on the English translation, though with some specifications that are necessary for the original in Catalan. The headline of the manifesto not only is self-​referential to the author and identity of the movement, but its grammatical structure and pragmatic function at the same time signifies an order or recommendation –​namely to stop a ‘Dead Sea’. The verb to stop, as a change of state, presupposes that at the moment there is indeed a dead sea, metonymically implying dead people at sea, and local knowledge permits the inference that the sea is the Mediterranean. As is generally the case for headlines, they express the semantic (global) coherence of the text as well as its global semantic macrostructure or topic, controlling also the local coherence of the manifesto. Without detailed semantic analysis, as shown for the BLM manifesto, let us first establish the overall manifesto schema we have postulated, possibly correcting or expanding it for this manifesto. After the title, this manifesto is headed also by three keywords or slogans identifying the three main Activities of the movement: Awareness, Political Advocacy, and Population Mobilization, whereas the noun Awareness implies the act of making people aware, activities that also define the movement as sociopolitical. The next manifesto categories are then expressed as follows: Identity: Who are we? We are a citizen platform; As platform Opponent: Member states of the European Union History: Stop Mare Mortum was born in late April 2015 Motivation: In reaction to the deaths of nearly a thousand people; EU migration policies Activities: To promote, are working to ensure; The first action was in front of the headquarters of the European Commission in Barcelona. Cognition (ideology): We believe in the unrestricted freedom of movement of all people and that human rights must be guaranteed without distinguishing between migrants and refugees.

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Cognition (knowledge): European migration policies, unwillingness, obstacle, etc., the lives of the thousands of people who die at the gates of Europe Cognition (opinion, attitude): Unwillingness, obstacle, genocide Aims: Change in European migration and immigration policies, safe access, prevent all deaths Norms and Values: Human rights, legal and safe; freedom of movement We see that that this manifesto features typical semantic categories also observed in the BLM manifesto. In fact, the Cognition categories are more detailed here, focusing on knowledge (of a bad situation: deaths, policies), opinions/​attitudes (about EU policies), and a more general human rights ideology. In addition to this semantic schema organizing the manifesto and at the same time defining the main dimensions of the social movement (and its ideology), we observe the ideological polarization between Positive Us (the movement) and Negative Them (the EU member states), throughout the text. Part of (positive) Us are not only the positive actions and critical opinions of the movement, but also their identity as a democratic citizen platform –​and not a huge NGO. The polarization is stylistically expressed by such relatively polite criticism as unwillingness, biggest obstacle, and rhetorically enhanced by the usual numbers game (thousands of people) and the pragmatic speech act of an accusation of genocide. The few elements of knowledge expressed in the manifesto summarize a vast body of publicly shared knowledge in Europe about the plight of the refugees, the deaths in the Mediterranean and the negative migration policies of the EU member states. It is also this epistemic dimension of the text that defined the first slogan mentioned under the headline: making people aware of the situation. The other main dimension of the underlying cognition of the manifesto is the (general, critical) attitude about EU migration policies. Finally, the norms and values of the manifesto (legal and safe access, etc.) as something to be ensured, presuppose that this is not the case at the moment, hence the activities and aims of the movement.

The Manifesto of the First Continental Summit of Indigenous Women Puno, Peru May 27–​2 8, 2009 The third manifesto to be (briefly) analysed here is the manifesto of indigenous women of the Americas, adopted in Puno (Peru) in May 27–​28, 2009). The Editor of the collection of feminist manifestos explains the context of the manifesto as follows: “At the Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples held in Guatemala in 2007, women decided to hold their own gathering

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preceding the fourth summit in Peru. Over two thousand Indigenous women came together in Puno, Peru, on May 27, 2009”. In this introduction to the manifesto, she describes this meeting in terms of the marches, ceremonies, panels and workshops, and a session of 4 hours in which the manifesto was decided –​information crucial for the sociopolitical and communicative contexts of the manifesto, including the prominent presence and active participation of the women. The manifesto consists of the following text, translated into English, and followed by Resolutions and Agreements, not analysed here: 1 Manifesto 2 We, indigenous women gathered in the sacred lands of Lake Titicaca, 3 after two days of discussions and deliberation raise our voices in these 4 times when Abya Yala’s womb is once more with childbirth pains, to 5 give birth to the new Pachakutik for a better life on our planet. We, 6 indigenous women, have had a direct input into the historical process 7 of transformation of our peoples through our proposals and actions 8 in the various struggles taking place and engendered from the indigenous 9 movements. We are the carriers, conduits of our cultural and genetic 10 make-​up; we gestate and brood life; together with men, we are the axis 11 of the family unit and society. We join our wombs to our mother earth’s 12 womb to give birth to new times in this Latin American continent 13 where in many countries millions of people, impoverished by the 14 neoliberal system, raise their voices to say e n o u g h to oppression, 15 exploitation and the looting of our wealth. We therefore join in the 16 liberation struggles taking place throughout our continent. We gather 17 here at this summit, with our hearts, minds, hands and wombs, for the 18 purpose of seeking alternatives to eliminate injustice, discrimination, 19 machismo and violence against women, and to return to our ways of 20 mutual respect and a life of harmony with the planet. Whereas women 21 are part of nature and the macrocosm, we are called to defend and take 22 care of our mother earth, because from her comes our ancient history 23 and culture, that make us what we are: indigenous peoples under the 24 protection and spiritual guidance of our parents and grandparents who 25 gave life to all the human beings that now inhabit this wonderful planet, 26 even though a few oligarchs and imperialists seek to plague it with death 27 in their quest for their god called greed. Therefore, before the memory 28 of our martyrs, heroes, leaders, we present to our extended families 29 (Ayllus), communities, peoples and nations of the world the conclusions 30 of our rebellious hearts. The relation of the indigenous women’s manifesto with its communicative context is expressed in its indexical expressions, for the Authors as

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active Participants (We, indigenous women), the Place (sacred lands of Lake Titicaca), the Time (after two days of discussion in these times when…), and the current Communicative Act of the manifesto (to raise our voices). The social or sociocultural context of the meeting and the manifesto is expressed not only in the place of the Titicaca lake (at the border of Peru and Bolivia), but also by the specific use of the metaphor Abya Yala’s womb, the Kuna expression for the “Continent of Life” or “Land of its Full Maturity” referring to the Americas or the lands of the Indigenous people, an expression presupposed to be known by the authors of the manifesto and its addressees. Also, the times are metaphorically described in terms of childbirth pains, implying these are hard times. The same is true for the Quechua word Pachakutik, signifying rebirth, change, or transformation, implying a change of times in the lands of indigenous people, and more generally on the planet. We see that the context model of the authors defining the communicative situation also needs to be related to broader sociocultural contexts and the knowledge shared by indigenous people. More specifically, the selection of the metaphor of c h i l d b i rt h pa i n s , and describing the lands as a woman, also signifies and stresses that the authors of the manifesto are women. The metaphors in the rest of the manifesto confirm this identity of the authors. Besides these pragmatic categories of the manifesto expressed in its meaning, the global semantic categories of the manifesto, as studied above, deserve special attention. Let us briefly discuss some of these. The global semantic categories of the manifesto, as studied above, deserve special attention. Let us briefly discuss some of these. The general category of all or most manifestos is the Identity of the authors, as well as the very movement of indigenous women for whom they are speaking, as members of two general categories: women and indigenous people, as expressed or implied by the following expressions in the manifesto (followed by the line numbers of the text): • • • • • • • •

We, indigenous women (lines 2, 5) From the indigenous movements (line 7) We are the carriers, conduits of our cultural and genetic make-​ up (lines 7–​8) We gestate and brood life; we are the axis of the family unit and society (lines 8–​9) We join our wombs to our mother earth’s womb to give birth to new times in this Latin American continent (lines 9–​10) We therefore join in the liberation struggles (line 12) We gather here at this summit, with our hearts, minds, hands and wombs (line 13) (…) to eliminate injustice, discrimination, machismo and violence against women (lines 14–​15)

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• •

Whereas women are part of nature and the macrocosm, we are called to defend and take care of our mother earth (lines 16–​17) (…) that make us what we are: indigenous peoples (lines 17–​18)

We see that with more detail than in the other manifestos analyzed above, the double Identity category of the authors and participants of this manifesto and communicative event, as women and indigenous people, is spelled out. This happens again in metaphorical and metonymical terms, such as (we as: c a r r i e r s , c o n d u i t s , a x i s o f t h e fa m i ly , wo m b s , etc.) emphasizing both material and biological identities, specifically related to childbirth. Also, the reference to families in the manifesto may be interpreted as a special concern of women. Indeed, there is no doubt about the gender identity of the authors as well as the participants of the movement. More briefly there is even a third participant identity implied in such expressions as We therefore join in the liberation struggles (line 12) implying that the women are active members of the indigenous movement and its struggle, and hence also fighters. The same is true for their resistance against machismo (lines 14–​15). Besides the gender identity of the women, the indigenous identity is expressed throughout the manifesto, as well as implied by references to their lands, the continent, the indigenous movement, history and culture, family relations and memories: • • • • • • • • • • •

We, indigenous women sacred lands of Lake Titicaca Abya Yala’s womb the new Pachakutik the indigenous movements our mother earth’s womb to return to our ways of mutual respect our mother earth our ancient history and culture indigenous peoples under the protection and spiritual guidance of our parents and grandparents the memory of our martyrs, heroes, leaders

We see that the sociocultural context of the manifesto, presupposed and only partly expressed here, plays a prominent role, also to specify the indigenous identity of the authors and participants in the movement, and as aim and motivation for their struggle and other actions of resistance. The Opponents/​Enemies of the (women’s, indigenous) movement are only briefly expressed, namely as machismo men, and as oligarchs and imperialists (line 20), implying not only their gender, but also their sociopolitical identity as oppressors. But at the same time, men are also briefly mentioned as Allies of the movement (line 8).

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From the start, as is typical of many manifestos and other forms of resistance discourse, the History category is also expressed, stressing that such historical contribution of women is often ignored in movements and manifestos of men: We, indigenous women, have had a direct input into the historical process of transformation of our peoples through our proposals and actions in the various struggles taking place and engendered from the indigenous movements (lines 5–​7). Besides the detailed Identity category, the most prominent category is that of the self-​described Actions of the indigenous women: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

(…) women gathered (2 x) discussions and deliberations raise our voices to give birth (2 x) had a direct input proposals and actions in the various struggles we gestate and brood life we are the axis of the family we join our wombs we join the liberation struggles seeking alternatives to eliminate… return to our ways we are called to defend and take care of our mother earth

The nature of these actions, and the (often metaphorical) ways they are described, deserve some further comments. First of all, and especially relevant for this chapter, are the discursive forms of resistance (discussions and deliberations, raise our voice, proposals), including the manifesto itself. Secondly, of course, are the references to the actions specific to women (to give birth, we gestate and brood life, join our wombs, we are the axis of the family). Thirdly, are references to all (other) forms of resistance (join the liberation struggles, seeking alternatives to eliminate injustice), and all acts associated with being indigenous women (return to our ways, take care of our mother earth, etc.). The manifesto emphasizes ideological Norms and Values, such as a better life, mutual respect, harmony. It is followed by a 500-​word list of ‘Resolutions and Agreements’, including specifications of the manifesto, such as the defence of human rights of indigenous women, defence of mother earth, training, international representation, solidarity with indigenous peoples and their struggles, the inviolability of our lands, and condemnation of all forms of violence and ethnocide.

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Conclusions Discourse is a prominent, but often ignored, contentious part of the repertoire of social movements, often also part of their non-​verbal activities, as is the case of slogans during a march or an occupation. If studied at all in the social sciences, only vague notions such as ‘frames’ are focused on. One of the ‘foundational’ discourse genres of social movements is their manifestos, so far hardly analysed systematically as a genre, and even less so in terms of a discourse analytical paradigm. Most studies of manifestos have been offered in political scientific approaches to party or election manifestos, although these studies focus on political aims and policies, and not on the detailed discourse structures of these texts as a specific genre. These studies do mention the role of ideologies as polarizing beliefs of political manifestos. Within a multidisciplinary framework, this chapter provides a theoretical framework for the systematic study of social movement manifestos. The first relevant dimension is a pragmatic analysis of their communicative situation, represented in the context models of the authors and expressed in the manifestos. The next dimension is a global semantic analysis of typical ‘superstructural’ or schematic categories organizing the meanings of manifestos, such as Identity, History, Activities, Participant Actors (allies and enemies), Aims, Norms, and Values, and Resources representing the main sociological categories of social movements. These global semantic categories are locally expressed by the formal (lexical and grammatical) styles of the manifestos, typical of the communicative situation, as well as through the rhetorical structures emphasizing the polarization between Us and Them.

Research Tasks 1

2

Identify a social movement in your own country, and search for a ‘foundational’ text such as a manifesto and analyze the ways its structures are related to (a) the ideology of the movement and (b) the organization of the movement. Identify other public discourses of this movement, and analyze (a) the communicative situations that define the genres of these discourses and (b) the ways the categories of these situations are expressed (‘indexed’) in these discourses.

Further Readings García Agustín, Ó. (2015) Sociology of Discourse. From Institutions to Social Change. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Company. Saunders, C. and Klandermans, B. (eds.) (2020) When Citizens Talk about Politics. London New York, NY: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. (2021) Antiracist Discourse. Theory and History of a Macro Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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References Benford, R. D. and Snow, D. A. (2000) ‘Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment’. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–​639. Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T. N. (1995) Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Budge, I. and McDonald, M. D. (2006) ‘Choices parties define –​Policy alternatives in representative elections, 17 countries 1945–​1998’. Party Politics, 12(4), 451–​466. Caiani, M. and Della Porta, D. (2011) ‘The elitist populism of the extreme right: a frame analysis of extreme right-​wing discourses in Italy and Germany’. Acta Politica, 46(2), 180–​202. Connell, I. and Galasinski, D. (1998) ‘Academic Mission Statements: an exercise in negotiation’. Discourse and Society, 9(4), 457–​479. Davis, J. E. (ed.) (2002) Stories of Change. Narrative and Social Movements. Albany: State University of New York Press. Della Porta, D. and Diani, M. (eds.) (2015) The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flowerdew, J. (2017) ‘Understanding the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement: a critical discourse historiographical approach’. Discourse and Society, 28(5), 453–​472. Holland, J. and Nichele, E. (2016) ‘An ideological content analysis of corporate manifestos: a foundational document approach’. Semiotica, 208, 79–​101. Johnston, H. (1995) A Methodology for Frame Analysis: From Discourse to Cognitive Schemata. In Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (eds.), Social Movements and Culture, (pp. 217–​246). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lyon, J. (1999) Manifestoes. Provocations of the Modern. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Polletta, F. (2006) It was Like a Fever. Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Polletta, F., Chen, P., Gardner, B. and Motes, A. (2011) ‘The sociology of storytelling’. Annual Review of Sociology, vol 37, 109–​130. Scott, D. (ed.) (2019) Manifestos, Policies and Practices. An Equalities Agenda. London: UCL Institute of Education Press. Skillington, T. (1997) ‘Politics and the struggle to define: A discourse analysis of the framing strategies of competing actors in a new participatory forum’. British Journal of Sociology, 48(3), 493–​513. Steinberg, M. W. (1999) ‘The talk and back talk of collective action: A dialogue analysis of repertoires of discourse among nineteenth-​century English cotton spinners’. American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 736–​780. Tarrow, S. (2013) The Language of Contention: Revolutions in Words, 1688–​2012. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (1984) Prejudice in Discourse. An Analysis of Ethnic Prejudice in Cognition and Conversation. Amsterdam Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. van Dijk, T. A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. (1993) Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. van Dijk, T. A. (1998) Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London, England: Sage Publications.

Manifestos as Social Movement Discourse  133 van Dijk, T. A. (2008) Discourse and Context. A Sociocognitive Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (2009) Society and Discourse. How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. New York: Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (2014) Discourse and Knowledge. A Sociocognitive Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (2020) Antiracist Discourse in Brazil. From Abolition to Affirmative Action. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Weiss, P. A. and Brueske, M. (eds.) (2018) Feminist Manifestos. A Global Documentary Reader. New York: New York University Press.

Chapter 9

The anti-establishment discourses of the radical right in Spain On ‘freedom’ and libertarianism during the pandemic 1 Luisa Martín Rojo

Introduction How to regenerate political discourse to win power Madrid, one of the 17 ‘autonomous’ regions that comprise the Spanish State and a traditional right-​wing fiefdom, paradigmatically illustrates the current tendency of traditional conservative parties to combine neoliberal political theory with an anti-​establishment and even rebel discourse, exhibiting a right-​wing populism, strongly influenced by the discourses of the most conservative version of American libertarianism. In May 2021, at the height of the pandemic, the conservative president of the Madrid Region, Isabel Díaz-​ Ayuso, of the Partido Popular (People’s Party), called for an early election process due to the high demands of the parties with which she governed in coalition (the liberal and the radical right party, VOX), ultimately being re-​ elected in an uncontested election. In this successful campaign, she mobilized a number of discursive strategies studied in this chapter to generate new hegemonies. Through them, she put into circulation values and ideologies and persuasively spread political rationality based on conspiratorial and right-​wing-​libertarian theories, and she defended a neoliberal political rationality opposed to state intervention in all spheres of human life. The result was that she almost reached an absolute majority and is currently governing with significant support from VOX. Crucial to this victory has been the effects of the COVID-​19 pandemic and how she tackled it, using a ‘populist strategy’ (like that of former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro) and a pervasive confrontation with the progressive central government of Spain. Spain had one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe: from March 14th until the beginning of May 2020, all residents were ordered to remain at home except to purchase food and medicine; all non-​essential shops, restaurants, and businesses were also mandatorily closed, and children were only DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-9

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permitted to go outside after April 26th for an hour each day. After these lockdowns in spring and a summer in which the restrictions were slightly relaxed, in November 2020 Madrid re-​entered a state of emergency that ran until May 9, 2021. Furthermore, during the whole crisis, the Socialist Party and Unidas Podemos (United We Can, a left-​wing political party), governing the country in coalition, had increased not only their presence in regulating public life, curtailing citizens’ mobility, promoting vaccination, etc., but also in the economic field. The latter occurred largely through coping with economic stagnation, reinforcing public services –​in particular the health system –​and intervening to a greater or lesser extent in the market by preventing layoffs, subsidizing electricity bills, and halting evictions to support those who suffered most from the negative consequences of the pandemic. In this context, Díaz-​Ayuso’s messages in the election campaign, after over a year of the pandemic and persistent lockdown, appealed to citizens’ feelings of weariness with restrictions and the illusion that the health crisis was over. She contrasted ‘freedom’ with ‘restrictions’ and denied part of the seriousness of the coronavirus (by following the logic that saving a single person is not worth quarantining everyone) and urged prioritizing the economy through non-​intervention in the market (refusing to close bars or restaurants). Furthermore, she often reproduced the neoliberal belief – specifically Hayek’s postulate (2011) – that government intervention in the form of centralized planning strips away individual liberties. These messages in favor of both individual and market freedom concealed how, under her management, Madrid topped all the negative rankings: from contagions to deaths and the scale of abandonment of the elderly in nursing homes. As a result of the opposing policies between the central and regional government(s), pandemic-​mitigation strategies have been a cause of unusual political confrontation. The intensity and bitterness of the confrontation are partly explained by the new political landscape, in which Unidas Podemos, a party to the left of the socialist party, has formed a coalition government with the latter, and in which the extreme right, which has split from the conservative party, has achieved significant representation in parliament for the first time. These tensions have had considerable impact on the discourse of all political formations. In this sense, the example of the region of Madrid is significant, as we shall see, because the figure of President Díaz-​Ayuso has a leading role in the discursive construction of new hegemonies that support new political rationalities under the banner of a now redefined concept of ‘freedom’. To analyse these discursive strategies, I will apply a critical approach within the theoretical framework of Discourse Studies, based on both the concept of problematization and on the Foucauldian triad discourse-​ knowledge-​ power (Foucault 1994, 2015; Foucault and Berten 1988; Martín Rojo 2021). This approach allows us to trace how the knowledge produced by these discourses pursues the production and entrenchment of a political rationality that puts democratic systems at risk and enacts new, but, at the same time,

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very traditional forms of domination. Problematization, within this framework, means questioning why and how concepts such as freedom and rights, or gender, race, and class differences become significant ‘issues’ at a given moment in history, around which disciplines produce knowledge that spreads and takes root in society as a whole (Castro-​Gómez, 2015; Martín Rojo, 2021, Martín Rojo and Gabilondo, 2000). Problematization necessarily leads to a concept of discourse that cannot be reduced only to what it means, but also to the knowledge it generates at a particular time and place, and how it is linked to specific power techniques. Thus, as we shall see, discourse, knowledge, and power techniques converge in the concept of political rationalities; in this case, social democracy vs. neoliberalism and the current form of libertarianism known as paleolibertarianism (Rothband 2019), which proposes a new articulation between libertarian and conservative principles. In this way, exploring the historical formation of discourses will allow us to approach the political thought and political struggles we live today. Following this problematizing approach, firstly, I will not take concepts such as ‘political correctness’, ‘gender ideology’, or ‘freedom’ for granted. Instead, this chapter tries to trace their genesis, formation, and history, within which it is necessary to examine and interrogate the discourses through which they have emerged. In addition to this Foucauldian framework, the analysis developed in this chapter integrates several key concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory (Laclau and Mouffe 2014), such as: discursive antagonism, hegemonic intervention, and floating signifiers. The integration of these two very different conceptions of discourse is one of my main challenges. Secondly, following this procedure, I explore the relationship between these discourses and the techniques of domination, that is, how these ‘problems’ or ‘issues’ are approached at this particular time and place (how freedom is ‘treated’) (Martín Rojo, 2021). I will explore the links between the historical formation of current political discourses and how they have shaped political thought and institutions today. From this critical position, we can not only outline a genealogy of mentalities, but also how these become political rationalities that shape and explain the forms of social and discursive control. Thus, I will focus on the neoliberal formulations of freedom mobilized by traditional neoliberalism and by conservative libertarianism and on how they legitimize its often violent exclusions and attacks not only to build the power of capital, but also to delegitimize progressive forces and projects. In the Spanish language there is only one term that consolidates the English terms ‘freedom and liberty’: ‘libertad’. I have translated ‘libertad’ as ‘freedom’ in all the cases; this choice can be seen as a simplification, but to do otherwise would have meant re-​signifying the analysed discourses. Finally, my research is also situated within the current political context. The function of problematization is not to lead others by telling them where the truth is and how to find it. On the contrary, it is to create the conditions

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for other understandings and pronouncements that every person must make for themself. Thus, this chapter concludes by asking what can be done in the current political context to challenge neoliberal and libertarian discourses that endanger democracy itself.

How does the radical right build an anti-​e stablishment and anti-​p olitician discourse to take over the political scene The analysis of the Díaz-​Ayuso phenomenon –​specifically her political success and discourse –​must be placed in the current political context, in which the radical right has increased its political prominence around the world. Many authors have analysed what has made this resurgence and political success possible at this particular moment in history. Among them, Pablo Stefanoni (2021), in his recent book with the suggestive title Has rebellion become right-​ wing? How anti-​progressive and anti-​correction politics are building a new common sense (and why the left should take them seriously), analyses the genesis and roots by which radical right-​wingers are taking over the banner of rebellion that has traditionally been in the hands of the left. He underlines two main strategies by which these political formations present themselves as rebellious and even anti-​establishment: on the one hand, the aura of anti-​ political correctness and provocation appeals particularly to young people; on the other, their anti-​political positions connect with many sectors of the population that are disenchanted with politics. Both phenomena have been exacerbated during the pandemic, which has also reinforced another component traditionally associated with anti-​politics and conspiracy theories. Discourse studies can in fact contribute to dissect and unpack a remarkable paradox: (i) on the one hand, the discourses of the radical right feature conservative and retrograde positions such as a mixture of national-​liberalism, anti-​state positions, welfare chauvinism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and positions against equal marriage, all of which clash with hegemonic values; (ii) on the other hand, anti-​political-​correctness allows these formations to present their discourse as ‘liberated’, honest, and authentic, one that expresses itself without restraint or complexes, breaking with the cultural hegemony that is presented as the result of the progressive (elitist) sectors of society. What I consider relevant in this chapter is the extent to which traditional conservative parties have appropriated this discursive strategy and how it is currently used to build new hegemonies that present forms of government that weaken the welfare state, and support anti-​democratic policies. Stefanoni and other authors (Kakutani 2018: 49, among many others) agree that the left has failed to achieve its economic project and has failed to mitigate the capitalist system and the current expansion of neoliberalism. In fact, there are many examples of how Labor and Socialist parties have

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given in and adopted positions that authors such as Nancy Fraser and Wendy Brown have called ‘progressive neoliberalism’. However, at the same time, they have won some victories in cultural wars for dominance over values, beliefs, and practices on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values. Thus, according to Fraser (2017) and other authors such as Dardot & Laval (2014) during the 1990s, the New Democrats and New Labor parties (particularly in the United States, but also in other countries, such as the UK, Spain, and the United States) adopted neoliberal economic policies while, at the same time, created alliances with new social movements (feminism, anti-​racism, multiculturalism, and LGBTQ rights) and with high-​end ‘symbolic’ and service-​based business sectors (such as Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, in the case of the United States). These new coalitions were embodied in figures such as Obama in the United States or even Zapatero in Spain, and sustained the victory of the left in the cultural wars and its hegemonic capacity to shape public opinion in defending multiculturalism and globalization, while also condemning the insurgence of sexist, xenophobic, and racist attacks. The U.S. alt-​right movements call this victory and these hegemonic positions ‘cultural Marxism’, an obligatory label in words of the libertarian Bermeo, which “allows them to keep alive and capitalize on the historical terror of communism” (quoted in Stefanoni 2021: 74). The mission of the current ultra-​conservative wave is to defeat this progressive neoliberalism and replace it with an ultra-​conservative and libertarian neoliberalism. In this context, governments such as the current left wing one in Spain, which combine pro-​progressive positions with social democratic policies, constitute a much greater challenge for these neoliberal forces. As we will see below, social democratic policies are certainly the great enemy in the speeches of the President of the region of Madrid. At the discursive level, we can observe a similar paradox. On one side, right-​ wing libertarian discourses incorporate ultra-​traditional forms, with which alt-​ right politicians and political parties reassure their interlocutors that they are fighting to preserve their power and regain their pride, mostly through the use of anti-​politically correct language and the reappearance of expressions and vocabulary associated with the past (in the case of Spain, for example, this is illustrated with the recovery of a lexicon used during the Franco era, such as the permanent use of the term ‘homeland’ instead of ‘country’, even in statements such as “the homeland sullied by separatists and communists”). On the other side, a profound impact of post-​modernity can also be attested in the way in which discourse is managed and proclaims with a unified voice the context-​ dependence or knower-​dependence, the relativity or subjectivity, of all truth claims (see, also, Maestre 2021). Radical right movements echo the ‘philosophy of suspicion’ and the concept of post-​truth. Thus, they often reproduce the postulate that there are no absolute truths but only a plurality of ‘alternative facts’ (which is made evident using the term truth with a possessive like in ‘my truth’, ‘your truth’) (Block 2018; McIntosh 2021). And most relevant here, they

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show profound knowledge of theories on hegemony and discourse. Thus, it is not difficult to find references to the term ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci 1971) and an explicit willingness to generate new hegemonies that support other forms of government: claims such as “La hegemonía progre pronto llegará a su fin” (Progressive hegemony will soon come to an end) are found in VOX discourses. This paradox has been particularly evident during the COVID-​19 pandemic. From now on, I will focus on how new conservative neoliberal hegemonies are being generated under the banner of freedom. I will analyse three steps as part of these attempts to construct this new hegemony: 1) polarization, ‘mutual minorityhood’, and discursive antagonism; 2) a counterhegemonic reframing; and 3) the struggle to fix the signifier ‘liberty/​freedom’. Polarization, ‘mutual minorityhood’, and antagonism: anti-​ correction, anti-​p rogressivism, and anti-​e stablishment As McIntosh (2021) explains, those who scorn politically correct language ideologies refuse the assumption that word choice creates social problems and can hurt people. Still, they also refuse to cede power to formerly marginalized groups. Furthermore, among their critics, Political Correctness (PC) appears as classist, associated with university campuses and aligned with the ‘professional-​managerial class’ (McIntosh 2016; Enrenreich and Enrenreich 1977). During the past few decades, anti-​politically correct language movements have spread all over the world and Spain is no exception. VOX, the recently formed far-​right party (2014), has ironically coined the category los correctos, or even, in a more derogatory form correctitos (the diminutive form in Spanish can take on this derogatory value especially in a discourse that extols strength and greatness) to identify this progressive conglomerate that defends politically correct language. Thus, in their first rally (2018), with a surprising number of attendees in Madrid, one of their main leaders, Rocío Monasterio, used this term with great success: Example 1 Que no vienen los correctos a decirnos que somos turbas de circo romano por gritar Puigdemont a prisión2. (www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​8B_​i​AyQ5​GAU) In ­example 1, we immediately identify a discursive strategy of polarization (van Dijk 2006; Martín Rojo 1995), which crafts a division between ‘us’ (VOX supporters) and ‘them’ (the PC militia). It therefore constructs a positive ‘we’ (we are not a Roman circus mob calling for blood) and a negative ‘them’ (they accuse us falsely). Polarization is an omnipresent strategy in both political and everyday discourses. It is often used, whether unconsciously or intentionally, to activate

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a war frame and exacerbate the audience’s feelings, inciting the mobilization of rejection, hatred, and other negative emotions. In this case, it contributes to generating an antagonism (Laclau & Mouffe 2014) between two discourses, which prepares the ground for the two other discursive steps I will analyse later. Among the effects that can be attributed to this discursive move, the first is how it agglutinates and demonizes the left as a whole, establishing a common enemy, despite the diversity of political positions, ranging from social democracy to the radical left: ‘cultural Marxism’, Bermeo, 2017) or ‘progressivism’, which, as we shall see, is associated with the ruling and university elite (the term ‘progre’ in Spain has the same negative connotations in radical right and in traditional right discourses). This enemy is accused of having imposed its discourse (a ‘dictatorship of political correctness’, a ‘progressive catechesis’ or dogma, as Díaz-​Ayuso puts it), which oppresses, silences, and invalidates other discourses from a position of moral superiority. This invalidation is done by accusing ‘normal’ or ‘common sense’ people of being sexist or racist (Tobak 206). It is not surprising, therefore, that to question the legitimacy of these positions is precisely to deny to the opponents any moral superiority, as we can see in the tweet of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso: Example 2 Los socialcomunistas son mentirosos patológicos, se creen con superioridad moral y son manipuladores compulsivos.3 (Díaz-​Ayuso in Twuiter, June 14, 2019) Secondly, this discursive movement portrays those who defend ultra-​ conservative values, including racist or sexist positions as victims of censorship for being honest and saying ‘what common sense dictates’ or ‘what everyone else thinks’. McIntosh calls this discursive effect ‘mutual minorityhood’, given that “historically marginalized people wish for greater consideration in language, and feel their own ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’ may be imperilled by verbal denigration. But opponents of PC language claim they feel oppressed themselves, making anti-​PC practices feel, to them, like justice or even retaliation” (McIntosh 2021: 12). Thus, this stance against politically correct language redefines the political field by introducing an antagonism of discourses and political subjects that goes beyond the right-​left opposition. On this basis, defenders of social and ethnic rights become supremacists and dictators. As Sclafani (2018) notes in the case of Trump, rhetorical style conveys attitudes more than content. Specifically, Trump moved significantly away from conventional political discourse, suggesting to his supporters he would rid Washington of the supposedly insincere, inefficient beltway insiders. As McIntosh (2021: 17) notes, the interpretation of these stylistic forms always depends on the ideological starting points of the listeners and followers. In the case of Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso, she also

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resorts to an anti-​politically correct language. Other features of a direct and abrasive style are seen by their detractors as evidence of their ‘unpresidential’ qualities. She insults the opposition (‘Scoundrels!’, ‘Bolsheviks’, ‘criminals’, ‘petty’, ‘withered mouth’, ‘caviar left’, etc.) at the Madrid Parliament every week during the control session, in which members of parliament question the regional government administration. Díaz-​Ayuso often responds to this questioning with personal attacks on the left-​wing deputies –​Más Madrid, PSOE, and Unidas Podemos. Tired of these attacks and of the polarization that ‘confused’ the ‘political debate’, the opposition launched a campaign on social networks under the slogan ‘Ayuso has insulted me too’. They collected the offenses against the opposition, and above all, they highlighted those offenses that were directed at citizens in general: people who stood hungry in queues, supported by subsidies, health workers represented as thieves and saboteurs, as well as a long list of trade unionists, presidents, and feminists, even the pope. However, for Ayusos’s fans4, the use of insults and personal attacks have been considered a sign of hostility to the conventionally scripted (and thus manipulative) performances of ordinary politicians, and revenge against the elites. In this line, the term anti-​establishment has changed and now tends to express dissatisfaction with mainstream institutions such as the central government, corporations, the media, and the education system, which are perceived as adhering to progressive social norms. These cultural and discursive battles have notably intensified during the pandemic. As we will see in the next section Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso has specifically relied on the anti-​ establishment discourse to generate a narrative against state action and public policies, particularly health policies, that will be analysed in the following section. Finally, I will discuss how antagonism, which divides the political scene into two completely opposed fields, is a fruitful context for the creation of new hegemonies. A counterhegemonic reframing Overcoming a pandemic requires an effort of political action that brings into play different political rationalities and different forms of social control. Thus, as Foucault (1977: 195) explains, changes in the way the Great Plague was dealt with at the end of the 17th century as opposed to how leprosy was treated in the past gave rise to a regime of power: the disciplinary regime. While the leper was isolated and expelled from the community, thus stopping the spread of the plague throughout the city, in the Great Plague, people were confined to their homes and their movements monitored. In our present time, the situation is not far from this description: confinement, compartmentalization, absolute surveillance, and constant analysis of the viral spread in the population. However, while in the 17th century contravening confinement policies were punishable by death, today, in the Covid epidemic, quarantine

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is mostly self-​imposed. This would be in line with the passage from a disciplinary regime to a governmental one (Martín Rojo & Del Percio 2019). In fact, in Spain, the government also called for social discipline during the strict lockdown and the subsequent stages of ‘normalization’, where responsibility and unity of action are central ingredients for the nation’s recovery. In just a few days, the neoliberal discourse of self-​control has permeated citizen practices and accelerated the emergence of new surveillance techniques (from neighborhood control to cell phone tracking). And that is precisely where the success of this form of government lies: we are all carrying out measures of social control. Moreover, as in governmental regimes, it is behavior that is strongly regulated with the consent and agency of subjects, in this case, ways of relating and interacting in crowded spaces such as supermarkets (physical distance, elimination of hugs, communicating virtually), and even clothing (gloves, masks) and gestures (MIRCo 2020). However, despite social discipline and even social consent, many disputes have arisen around these policies in Spain, including territorial disputes over their control. Within this framework of dispute, as elsewhere, the extreme right has stirred up conspiracy theories, such as referring to the pandemic as ‘plandemic’, and considering the measures taken to control contagion –​a plan to impose a health dictatorship. As I found in Madrid linguistic landscaping, an utterance was repeated in the graffiti all over the city: ‘covid=​ dictatorship’. The following tweet by the president of the radical right party VOX, Santiago Abascal, summarizes how the lockdown and restriction policies are reframed in order to change the way the public sees them: instead of seeing them as a defense of public health, a protection of public services, to see them as a constriction of liberty. Example 3 Los políticos de todo signo que promuevan el confinamiento domiciliario. “Deberían ser procesados como responsables subsidiarios de la ruina que provoquen en cada español”. Tendrían que se “confinados” ellos mismos, pero entre barrotes.5 (Twitter, November 4th, 2021) In this tweet, the agents of negative actions are the politicians, among whom the writer does not include himself, despite being a member of parliament (previously and currently) and president of a political party. The Spanish people for whom he makes himself a spokesperson exist in opposition to them. He thus denounces the fact that Spaniards are victims of negative actions of politicians, reframing the restrictions of the pandemic in terms of police and military repression: ‘sentencing’, ‘house arrest’. The appearance of the verb ‘to want’ (‘they want to sentence us’) supports conspiracy theories in that it implies a will to do harm, which is what his followers interpret as illustrated

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by the thread of responses to his tweet: “No nos arrestan para salvar nuestras vidas, nos arrestan para asesinarnos y seguir imponiendo su dictadura comunista” (They are not arresting us to save lives, they are arresting us to kill us and to continue implementing a communist dictatorship.) Indeed, the Prime Minister of Spain, the socialist Pedro Sanchéz, was depicted as a big brother demanding obedience in protest demonstrations that took place in Madrid’s wealthier neighborhoods during the pandemic. Like in other countries (particularly the ‘Nouvelle Droit in France’), the Spanish radical right has used Orwell’s imaginaries to delegitimize their enemies (see Maestre 2021). Examples included a giant banner displayed on a building in Madrid or smaller ones carried by demonstrators that depicted him saying: ‘encerrados sois libres’ (locked up you are free), among other similar messages. With this reframing, the discourse of the extreme right and also that of President of the Community of Madrid, Díaz-​Ayuso and her party in Madrid (despite crucial nuances) react head-​on against the discourse of solidarity, of caring for others, and present it as a return to a disciplinary regime, revitalizing the spectre of communism. This discourse, which connects with the concerns of many citizens about the loss of social and political freedoms –​ which they only accept if it is a temporary suspension for the common good –​ supports nevertheless, a more complex discourse in the political arena, such as the discourse that Díaz-​Ayuso concentrated around the one-​word slogan of ‘libertad’ (freedom). In this term and in its change of meaning, a political rationality is embodied that recovers a conservative component of neoliberalism, and defends the State from intervening in regulating economic activities or even health policies during a pandemic. Freedom or privilege? What I will discuss in this section can be understood as a ‘hegemonic intervention’ (Gramsci, 1971; Laclau & Mouffe 2014), that is, a concerted effort to re-​articulate discourses and achieve the dominance of one particular perspective, in a competition for hegemony (Rear 2013). To do so, hegemonic projects need to construct and stabilize the nodal points that structure social orders by articulating elements –​ i.e., floating signifiers –​ into one unambiguous set of meanings (Laclau & Mouffe 2014) within a specific terrain. The struggle over signifiers is articulated in different ways by opposing political projects. In the Spanish case, the struggle to build a new hegemony is the key to the constitution of the signifier ‘freedom’ as a nodal point that binds together other pre-​existing signifiers such as ‘democracy’, ‘state’, ‘market’, and ‘private property’, rearticulating them into new meanings different from those used in competing discourses. For these authors, a nodal point can be thought of as a floating signifier (Jorgensen 2002: 28), which is an element that is particularly open to different ascriptions of meaning. For example, ‘freedom’ is

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a nodal point in the political discourse around the pandemic and a floating signifier in the struggle between the discourse of the Spanish central government?6, focused on social discipline and solidarity, and the discourse of Madrid regional governments. The struggle over the signifier ‘freedom’ highlights a dilemma that the world’s main governments have put on the table in the political management of the pandemic: should they save their economies or protect the lives of their citizens? Some places, like those represented by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson or the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, have opted for the first: Profit over people, in Díaz-​Ayuso’s words, opposing what the central government wants to do, which is to ruin Madrid. This position privileges economic criteria at the expense of public health. Its main objective is, therefore, to prevent an economic emergency and thus avoid any intervention on productive activity, even if this means underestimating the scope of the disease, as did the presidents of Brazil and Mexico at the beginning of the pandemic. Those who defend that health comes first, as in the case of the Spanish central government, opt to hibernate all non-​essential economic activity in order to ensure the effectiveness of confinement and thus contain the health emergency. This axis of tension confronts different positions regarding the role that the State should assume in the face of possible crises of this nature. That is, to what extent is intervention appropriate and what to prioritize: life or the market, economic benefits or public health, the well-​being of a few or the common good. In every case, the lack of public resources and their unequal distribution has put the survival of the elderly and the social health protection of the working classes and the most disadvantaged ethnic minorities at risk. The struggle for signifiers and the semantic shifts reflect this tension, especially in the case of the terms freedom (‘economic and individual freedom’, defended by the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven) and solidarity (which now refers to not acting, to ‘staying at home’). As mentioned above, in the Spanish language there is only one term that consolidates the terms ‘freedom and liberty’ in English: ‘libertad’, which is the term chosen by Díaz-​Ayuso as the motto of her election campaign. So, this lexical choice explains why in Ayuso’s discourse we find an attempt to reduce the fluctuations of meaning of the signifier ‘freedom’ by using it in a chain of signifiers (such as the collocation: ‘Madrid es libertad’-​Madrid is freedom) that establishes closure: in this case, the neoliberal policies implemented in Madrid represent freedom. As in Díaz-​Ayuso’s sentence: “Nace un nuevo modelo de libertad: compro donde quiero, consumo donde me da la gana” (A new model of freedom is born: I buy where I want, I consume where I want). In this process, meaning travels by contiguity from one element to another in the chain so that one meaning contaminates the others. During April 2021, prior to the May elections, Diaz-​Ayuso was producing, repeating, and disseminating chains in which the term freedom appeared,

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generating new placements that closed its meaning. Or equating market freedom to freedom from political correctness. The following is the succession of statements produced during that month: Example 4 -​April 8th: “La defensa de la tauromaquia es hoy más que nunca la defensa de la libertad”. -​April 8th: “La libertad es una forma de entender la vida; de pelear, de luchar, de sufrir, de pagar muchos impuestos… todavía”. -​April 17th: “Nos podemos ir a una terraza a tomarnos una cerveza y vernos con los nuestros; con nuestros amigos, con nuestra familia, a la madrileña”. -​April 27th: “Nace un nuevo modelo de libertad: compro donde quiero, consumo donde me da la gana”.” -​April 27th: “Si voy a misa o a los toros, o me voy a la última discoteca, lo hago porque me da la gana. Y elegimos dónde, a qué hora y con quién. Vivo así. Vivo en Madrid y por eso soy libre”. -​April 28th: “La libertad es salir a trabajar y poder ir un ratito a ver una película, ir al teatro o salir a tomarse algo”.7 In all these chains of lexical units, the meaning of freedom is restricted to conservatism (the defence of bullfighting, going to mass), leisure and enjoyment (going out for a beer), living as one lives in a big city, and consuming (going shopping); all this is summed up in the colloquial expression, ‘do whatever I want’, in an example of individualism par excellence. This meaning is clearly opposed to the one that was hegemonic before this hegemonic intervention. If we compare the chains of equivalences in which the term freedom appeared before the pandemic with the President’s current use, we observe an important change of meaning. Thus, as observed in the chain ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, the motto of the French Republic as a cry against oppressive governments in the 19th century, the meaning of liberty was fixed in the realm of civil and political liberties. This is the meaning it took on during Franco’s dictatorship, where liberty referred to freedom of expression and the democratic freedoms claimed. This is still expressed in Article 1.1 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978: “Spain is hereby established as a social and democratic State, subject to the rule of law, which advocates as the highest values of its legal order, liberty, justice, equality, and political pluralism” (Spanish Constitution 1978).

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The Spanish civil rights framework was equally active during the political transition when people were fighting for freedom of expression, of association, and of political prisoners. Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso modifies these chains, relying on the changes introduced by the extreme right. At the outset of the campaign, her slogan was ‘Communism or Freedom’, and the term also appeared in chains such as: freedom of the market, freedom of choice, Madrid is freedom, ‘living Madrid-​style’ is the new freedom. We see how the meaning is enclosed in the following examples: Example 5 Although I get up early and suffer, in the afternoons I shop where I want, I consume where I want. And if I go to mass, to the bulls, or to the latest club, I do it because I feel like it. I live in Madrid and that’s why I’m free. (Isabel Díaz Ayuso: pic.twitter.com/​ccwna20kHB; April 27, 2021) Example 6 You come to Madrid to live “a la madrileña” (the Madrid way). This is a very characteristic way of living. Many people say “I am free because I live in Madrid.” You only have to compare it with those who are in other communities and say: ‘How lucky’. (Isabel Díaz Ayuso pic.twitter.com/​hqsoVhycmI). Spanish? When discourses successfully become hegemonic, the social practices they structure can appear so natural that members of a society are blinded to the fact that they are the result of political hegemonic practices. In this case, freedom is framed in two parallel and interconnected discourses: those of individual and market rights. Following Hayek’s neoliberal thought, there is ‘only freedom’ if the State does not intervene in regulating economic activities or health and education policies. Thus, a key aspect of the hegemonic interventions is that they divide the political scene into two antagonistic spaces: here, those in favor of freedom and the communists. It is a ‘freedom’ without nuances. Despite the success of this discursive intervention, as evidenced by the fact that at the end of the election campaign, her slogan was simply ‘Freedom’ with no need for other signifiers, there has also been resistance to this change of meaning. The main one was observed in discourses that try to unveil the individualistic and anti-​ state character, pointing out that the term ‘freedom’ was actually being used to refer to the privileges of the wealthier classes who opposed confinement and claimed the right to travel to their second homes, open their businesses, not wear masks, and meet in bars. An example of this resistance is the following Tweet, which was virally replicated, among many others that circulated before

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the protests in the neighborhoods with higher per capita income in Madrid, which were loaded with sarcasm: Example 7 La revolución será con palos de golf o no será –​Yves Saint Laurent.8 (Monica Limón pic.twitter.com/​ZsZrFsMrsS, May 14th, 2020) In the next section, I’ll focus on the political project that is built from antagonism, new frames, and the struggle over nodal points and a floating signifier.

A conservative neoliberal political rationality: paleolibertarianism Unlike Gramsci, Laclau and Mouffe do not view society as a single field of hegemonic struggle. Hegemonic struggle takes place over and within many domains of social life, not only along the axis of class. This view opens up the concept to include struggles over a variety of social relations. Discourses thus reach the level of ‘common sense’ in that their origins and intrinsic contingency are forgotten (Laclau & Mouffe 2014; Deetz 1992). In fact, the political rationality Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso builds and spreads meshes perfectly with the key tenets of neoliberalism. In her discourse, she shows her commitment to limited government and through its belief in the inherent value of self-​regulating markets. This does not represent an innovation, but instead it should be seen as a return to an older liberal tradition, which considers property and free markets as the most solid bases for guaranteeing individual freedoms. It also proposes the elimination of taxes and the dismantling of the welfare state (see Stefanoni 2021 for a detailed description of the different forms of libertarianism). Her political stances also evoke a current form of libertarianism, known as paleolibertarianism, a term coined by Murray Rothbard, who proposed a new articulation between libertarian and conservative principles. Rothbard himself defined his common thinking as radically reactionary in reference to his desire to return to the United States before 1910, when the state had few functions, taxes were low, the currency was sound, and the country lived in blissful isolationism. For Rothbard, the goal of paleolibertarianism is to do away with the State, relying on traditional social institutions such as the family, the church, and enterprise. It is not difficult to find similarities between these ideas and Díaz-​Ayuso’s political program that seeks to weaken the State, where the free market is a moral and practical imperative, the vision of the welfare state is deemed an organized robbery, the egalitarian ethic is morally condemnable for being destructive to property and social authority. In this sense, Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso’s slogans ‘communism or freedom’ or ‘Madrid is freedom’ seem to refer to a space in defense of individual liberties

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and in which there are no taxes, and public services are weakened, being privatized through what is called public-​private cooperation, etc. As in other cases, Díaz-​Ayuso combines the defense of a neoliberal and conservative political rationality with an anti-​establishment discourse and attacks on political correctness and progressivism, along the lines of the radical extreme right. The roots of Ayuso’s concept of liberty in traditional values is once more attested in her vivid defense of traditionalism, Catholicism and Spanish nationalism. In 2019, President Díaz-​Ayuso spoke at the Organization of American States following the decision to change the name of a holiday from ‘Colombus Day’ to ‘Indigenous People’s Day’, which she critiqued saying that Spain had brought ‘university’, ‘civilization’, and ‘western values’ to the Americas, which she said continue today in liberal democracies. And more recently, she has openly shown her involvement in this cultural war, keeping in her defense of the impact of Spanish colonialism in Latin America, stating it brought “el español y el catolicismo y, por tanto, la civilización y la libertad al continente americano” (the Spanish language –​and through missions –​Catholicism and, therefore, civilization and freedom to the American continent.) Furthermore, as part of her historical revisionism, she has described Indigenism (‘indigenismo’) as a ‘new communism’ that threatens to create a false history of what happened in the past and to dynamite ‘the Spanish legacy in America’.

Concluding remarks: activism in research A critical analysis based on the problematization of discourses implies analyzing the effects of the knowledge they convey on political and ethical practices (Foucault and Rabinow 1998). Thus, the result of revealing how the complicity between discourse, knowledge, and power is rationalized has an eminently political value. Through this critique, it is possible to question the solutions to the ‘problems’ of an era such as, for example, the management of the Covid pandemic thereby encouraging the political will for change. In this sense, a problematizing examination, such as the one I have made of the term ‘freedom’, takes on the value of a methodological procedure that allows us to understand how discourses have shaped the political thought and political struggles that we have today. But its value goes beyond that. A critical approach can also move the desire for change, not in a deterministic way or in a particular direction, but in multiple directions and forms. In this chapter, we have seen how conservative political parties, inspired by a traditional and conservative form of neoliberalism, but also by the most radical libertarianism, present today in radical wing parties, are currently generating a discourse that allows them to present themselves as anti-​establishment. They are, at the same time, part of the establishment, as I have exemplified through the paradigmatic case of the president Isabel Díaz-​Ayuso in the region of Madrid. We have also seen the rejection of politically correct language and the recourse to conspiracy sympathies in a significant portion of society, all

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the while building enemies and polarizing society and imposing a constant framework of antagonism and war. It is within this frame that the concept of freedom can be redefined as part of the defense of market freedom and class privileges, merging neoliberal economic principles with deep conservatism. I have also discussed here that the different discursive tools examined end up building new hegemonies and promoting hyper individualism, which are contrary to the defense of civil rights and public services. This new hegemony is spreading in societies today and gaining sympathy and electoral successes in different parts of the world. We must therefore ask ourselves if a critical reading of these discourses can contribute to problematizing this new common sense and move citizens towards recovering the term ‘freedom’ as a mechanism of opposition to this neoliberal, individualistic, and conservative sense. And perhaps an effective way to do this is to re-​embed this term within the revolutionary triad and associate it with liberty, care, and fraternity.

Research tasks 1

2

How does individualism, promoted by current neoliberal ideologies, shape the discourse of today’s conservative and alt-​right parties? And how do these ideologies circulate and how are they tested and copied in different continents and among different political formations? What is the role of social networks, the media, and political consultants in the current spreading and promoting libertarian neoliberalism?

Further readings McIntosh, J. and Mendoza-​ Denton, N. (eds.) (2020). Language in the Trump era: Scandals and emergencies. Cambridge University Press. Stefanoni, P. (2021) ¿La rebeldía se volvió de derecha?: Cómo el antiprogresismo y la anticorrección política están construyendo un nuevo sentido común (y por qué la izquierda debería tomarlos en serio). Siglo XXI Editores. Traverso, E. (2019) The new faces of fascism: Populism and the far right. New York: Verso Books.

Notes 1 This chapter has benefited from discussions with members of the UAM MIRCo (Multilingualism, Discourse and Communication) Research Center. 2 The PC militia must not come and tell us that we are Roman circus mobs for shouting Puigdemont to prison 3 “The social-​communists (referring to the coalition of socialists and Podemos governing in Spain as a whole) in government are pathological liars, they believe themselves to have moral superiority when they are compulsive manipulators”.

150  Luisa Martín Rojo 4 Some Díaz-​Ayuso’s fans created a Web page with merchandising of the president: https://​ayus​hop.es/​coll​ecti​ons/​all; something that is clearly exceptional in the case of Spain. 5 Politicians of all political persuasions who want to sentence Spaniards to another house arrest should be prosecuted as subsidiarily responsible for the ruin they cause every Spaniard. And they should be confined themselves, but behind bars. 6 In fact, Spanish left-​wing parties have reacted little and late to this appropriation of the concept of freedom. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, replied to Díaz-​Ayuso that “Libertad es todo menos el desmadre de hacer circular el virus” (We can call freedom anything but the madness of circulating the virus). 7 April 8th: Defending bullfighting is today more than ever definding freedom. April 8th: Freedom is a way of understanding life; to fight, to struggle, to suffer, to pay many taxes… still. April 17th: We can go to a terrace to have a beer and meet with our friends, with our family, in the Madrilenian style. April 27th: A new model of freedom is born: I buy where I want, I consume where I want. April 27th: If I go to mass or to the bulls, or go to the latest discotheque, I do it because I feel like it. And we choose where, at what time and with whom. That’s how I live. I live in Madrid and that’s why I’m free. April 28th: Freedom is going out to work and being able to go to see a movie, go to the theatre or go out for a drink. 8 The revolution will start with a golf club or it won’t be –​Yves Saint Laurent

References Bermeo, J. A. (2017) ‘Mitos y verdades del marxismo cultural’. 14, 2017. Centro Mises. At www.mises.org.es/​2017/​11/​mitos-​y-​verda​des-​sobre-​el-​marxi​smo-​cultu​ral/​ Block, D. (2018) Post-​truth and Political Discourse. Palgrave Pivot. Castro Gómez, S. (2015) Historia de la Gubernamentalidad I: Razón de Estado, Liberalismo y Neoliberalismo en Michel Foucault (Vol. 2). Siglo del hombre editores. Dardot, P. & Laval. C. (2014) The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society. Verso Trade. Deetz, S. (1992) Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life. SUNY press. Enrenreich, Barbara & John Ehrenreich. (1977) ‘The professional managerial class’. Radical America, 11(2): 7–​32. Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. Foucault, M. (1994) ‘Le souci de la verité’. In M. Foucault, Dits et Ecrits. (pp. 668–​ 678). Tomo IV. París: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2015) ‘Qu’est-​ce que la critique?’. In D. Lorenzini and A. Davidson (eds.), Qu’est-​ce que la Critique?: Suivie de la Culture de Soi (pp.33–​81). París: Vrin. Foucault, M. and Berten, A. (1988) ‘Entretien avec Michel Foucault’. Les Cahiers du GRIF, 37–​38: 9–​19. Foucault, M. & Rabinow, P. (1998) ‘Polemics, politics and problematizations’. In P. Rabinow (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–​1984. Tomo 1. Nueva York: New Press.

The anti-establishment discourses of the radical right in Spain  151 Fraser, N. (2017) ‘El final del neoliberalismo progresista. Sin permiso’. At www.sin​ perm​iso.info/​tex​tos/​el-​final-​del-​neo​libe​rali​smo-​prog​resi​sta?fbc​lid=​IwAR 0VZUXz 2ourolBck82DFrivIZGpBwFtwzY7vRK6XFSZ7m83OjfSEkTe9X M Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers. Hayek, F. A. (2011) The Constitution of Liberty. University of Chicago Press. Jørgensen, M. & Phillips, L. (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage. Kakutani, M. (2018) The Death of Truth. Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. Tim Duggan Books. Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (2014) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical democratic Politics. Verso Trade. Maestre, A. (ed.) (2021) De los Neocón a los Neonazis: La Derecha radical en el Estado Español. Madrid: Fundación Rosa Luxemburg. Martín Rojo, L. (1995) ‘Division and rejection: from the personification of the Gulf conflict to the demonization of Saddam Hussein’. Discourse and Society, 6(1), 49–​80. Martín Rojo, L. (2021) ‘Michel Foucault: discurso y política’. AGlo: Anuario de Glotopolítica, no. 3: 35–​56. At https://​glotop​olit​ica.com/​indi​ceag​lo3/​mic​hel-​fouca​ ult-​discur​soy-​polit​ica/​ Martín Rojo, L. and Gabilondo, A. (2000) ‘Michel Foucault’. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-​ Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcaen (eds), Handbook of Pragmatics: 2000 Installment (pp. 1–​22). Ámsterdam: John Benjamins. Martín Rojo, L. and del Percio, A. (2019) ‘Neoliberalism, language and governmentality’. In L. Martín Rojo and A. del Percio (eds.), Language and Governmentality. London: Routledge, pp. 1–​26. McIntosh, J. (2016) Unsettled: Denial and Belonging among White Kenyans (Vol. 10). Univ of California Press. McIntosh, J. (2021) ‘Introduction: the Trump era as a linguistic emergency’. In J. McIntosh and N. Mendoza-​ Denton (eds.), (2020) Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies. Cambridge University Press. MIRCo (2020) ‘Pandemic discourse and the prefiguration of the future’. Language, Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 227–​241. Rear, D. (2013) ‘Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis: an introduction and comparison’. Unpublished paper, 1–​26. Rothbard, M. (2019) El Igualitarismo como Rebelión de la Naturaleza. Buenos Aires: Fundación Club de la Libertad-​Barbarroja-​Unión. Sclafani, J. (2017) Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity. London: Routledge. Spanish Constitution (1978) published in the Spanish Official State Gazette on December 29. Stefanoni, P. (2021) ‘La rebeldía se volvió de derecha?: Cómo el antiprogresismo y la anticorrección política están construyendo un nuevo sentido común (y por qué la izquierda debería tomarlos en serio)’. Siglo XXI Editores. Tobak, S. (2016) ‘Donald Trump war on political correctness: Fox Business article’. August 9, 2016. at www.foxb​usin​ess.com/​featu​res/​don​ald-​tru​mps-​war-​on-​politi​cal-​ corr​ectn​ess van Dijk, T. (2006) ‘Ideology and discourse analysis’. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11:2, 115–​140.

Chapter 10

Negative discourse analysis, narrative, and marketing in post-literate culture Phil Graham

Introduction This chapter provides an analysis of the marketing function in newly emerging cultural formations. It theorises those formations as post-​literate cultures. Post-​literate cultures rely on literate and pre-​literate practices, but they have dimensions that are entirely new, facilitated by new media technologies and new narrative functions. Whether as remnants, effects, or artefacts of emerging forms of popular culture, or as new and incipient political movements, I demonstrate how post-​literate marketing discourses operate, what they mean, and how they are implicated in the disruption of ethical, moral, and political structures. At the core of these new cultures is the marketing function, a set of practices and texts that was first set in motion at the outset of WWI and which has continued unchecked ever since. The practice of target marketing, especially in the political sphere, is shown to be especially problematic. This is most evidently the case in present-​day Ukraine, which the Russian military invaded in late February, 2022. The ongoing war has unfolded across multiple dimensions, not the least of which is the dimension of political discourse and propaganda. The Ukraine-​Russia war is touted as symbolic of a growing worldwide antagonism between supporters of democratic ideals and supporters of illiberal autocracy, with Russian President Putin saying outright that Democracy and Liberalism have failed (Applebaum, 2022). Just as Vietnam is known as the first ‘televison war’, the Ukraine-​Russia war of 2022 is becoming known as ‘the first TikTok war’ (Chayka, 2022). That is, just as the Vietnam war was tried and prosecuted on live television in the court of public opinion, so the fight for public opinion in the present war is being most clearly contested on TikTok, a micro-​media platform comprised only of short, usually amateur videos (Andrews & Maloy, 2022). Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, prior to his ascension to the Presidency was

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-10

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a former comedian and media producer. This, say commentators, is the key to his apparent success in his country’s David and Goliath battle with Russia: Video clips from his past life have begun circulating on social media, including his winning Ukraine’s first season of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and voicing Paddington Bear for the local cuts of the movies. While they might seem jarring in light of the current war, his years as an entertainer seem to have prepared him for this moment. (Andrews & Maloy, 2022) The new narrative technologies facilitated by the combination of social media, artificial intelligence algorithms, and digital marketing have supercharged the marketing function on a global scale. Not only has it gained more immediacy, it has made audience members infinitely more accessible and targetable than ever before. A startling consequence is that the marketing function has now spread to every level of society such that even individuals are understood as ‘brands’. Marketing has also intensified partisan politics to a hyper-​competitive pitch, radicalising the voting public, with adherents of allegedly ‘left’ and ‘right’ parties increasingly engaged in outright physical violence, intimidation, and abuse. All of this, I suggest, can be characterised by the term ‘post-​literate culture’ in which ancient techniques, impulses, and tendencies have re-​emerged to be uncritically overlaid on fully literate cultures to produce entirely new, barely understood cultural formations.

Critique and the status quo We are without doubt currently in a state of massive upheaval, political, social, cultural, and economic. The much hoped for utopia of a knowledge economy that was supposed to spring from a globally connected humanity and an internet replete with information of every kind has rapidly soured to become an all-​in global fracas across every social and cultural faultline. We can see this in issues ranging from gender orientation to global environmental concerns, from issues of racial supremacy to issues associated with the COVID-​19 pandemic. Strange coalitions form and fall apart around issues du jour with increased rapidity, such as the coalition of feminist ‘wellness gurus and far-​right men’ who joined forces to protest and undermine COVID-​19 pandemic mandates (Adams, 2021). The much advertised QAnon movement represents another bizarre coalition of interests, including anti-​slavery, child protection, anti-​authority, omnibus conspiracy theorists, and 5G paranoids. Those issues-​based discourse bubbles, forming and disappearing almost daily, have been described elsewhere as ‘radical tribalism’, and an expression of a fast-​emerging post-​literate culture (Graham & Dugmore, 2022). I define post-​literate culture in historical relation to pre-​literate and literate stages of culture, with literate culture taking up a fairly short period in human

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history. Literate cultures emerge, not with the invention of writing, but with the emergence of nationally educated reading audiences, widespread and very large print industries, standardised school systems, and relatively standardised curricula (Havelock, 1986; Ong, 1958, 1982). Those conditions account for not much more than the last 150 years or so in the West, prior to which a long period of semi-​literacy prevailed, with access to literacy being restricted to an educated elite which varied in size and proportion over the previous two millenia. Pre-​literacy is an entirely foreign environment for literates and, as literates, we can barely begin to imagine the social habitus required to codify and maintain complex natural, social, and technical knowledge over millenia in primarily oral/​aural cultures. What we do know is that social memory was managed using mnemonic devices that we now think of as mere entertainment, such as poetry, song, drama, and dance; narrative forms rooted in rhythm, melody, and rhyme (Havelock, 1986, Goody, 1986; Yates, 1966/​2014). As devices for managing the knowledge, values, technology, and morés of a people, it has been convincingly shown that pre-​literates used pleasing, memorable aesthetics and stock standard characters with fairly stable attributes in stories and phrases that were repeated over and over again, and across many performances, providing pre-​literate cultures with the means of cultural maintenance and reproduction (Havelock, 1986; Lord, 1960). Today, with 4.6 billion people connected to the internet and every possible mode of communication easily accessible to anybody with a smartphone, our media environment supercedes strictly literate conditions in a number of important ways. First, quotidian communication with a global reach no longer relies directly on literacy, even though such communication can and will continue to include literate practices. With a global internet has come the proliferation of one-​to-​one and one-​to-​many platforms enabling anyone anywhere to connect with audiences of massive size using almost any mode. Not even at the height of the broadcast era, in which capital requirements for global broadcast limited technical access to massive corporations or state-​owned media, could organisations easily connect to a global audience without having in place complex logistical, legislative, commercial, and technical arrangements at corporate and legislative levels. Second, many new modes of expression facilitated by smartphones, with high-​quality audio, video, graphics, and photography at the fingertips of the phone owner, are compact and explosive. TikTok and Twitter are exemplary, with TikTok recently extending its video time limit from one to three minutes and Twitter doubling its video time limit but only allowing 280 text characters. Third, in the most far-​reaching forms, context is stripped from communication to a degree well exceeding the decontextualising pressures of television that Postman noted (Postman, 1985, Ch. 7). The assault on collective attention and memory associated with the television described by Postman pales into insignificance when compared with smartphones and endless TikTok reels. Finally, the proliferation of globally connected social media platforms involving many millions of people has brought with it historic levels of aggressive political polarisation. For

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example, a recent study showed that nearly 40% of Democrat and Republican voters in the United States agreed that violence for political ends ‘was at least partially justifiable … up from less than ten per cent just two and half years earlier’ (Global Terrorism Index, 2020, p. 3). Another important way that current circumstances evidence a post-​literate culture is in an almost total lack of requirement for literacy among people wishing to communicate with digitally connected audiences. Similarly, with cultural memory in general and technical knowledge in particular, one need no longer read the instructions (which have become more and more unreadable in any case). Instead, one can learn from the best in the business, whether in physics, knitting, music, or software programming, through whichever audiovisual means, often without the learner having to read a single written word. Whether or not such pedagogies are more or less effective than those of the strictly literate era is beside the point, as is the fact that audiovisual teaching materials also typically include the written word. From the perspective of discourse analysis, our new global media environment signals a massive shift in social epistemology that goes to the very heart of questions about what we know, how we know it, and how we treat each other as a consequence. Above and beyond all such post-​ literate pedagogical issues is the all-​ pervasive practice of marketing. It has become the most influential means by which people are taught about new and old commodities, about technological processes, about society itself, and most importantly, about political standpoints and their various advocates. Further, the marketing function works to break society into often opposing factions through market segmentation, or target marketing. I argue here that, while being fairly benign when applied to markets for basic commodity forms, such as soap or dry goods, political market segmentation is ultimately destructive and responsible for many of the massive social divisions we are currently experiencing. The discourses, practices, and techniques of contemporary marketing have their roots in war propaganda. The militant biases of contemporary marketing are pervasive, its techniques being taught to people at the earliest levels of schooling (Graham, 2017). What I show here is that the various discursive positions generating rapid social division and fragmentation can be seen as a direct effect of marketing practices and discourses. Issues are now deployed as a kind of currency with which political personnel buy votes and power. Consequently politics is becoming increasingly short-​term, eating away at the possibilities for developing political programs for future societal benefit, while simultaneously appearing as expressions of programmatic thought.

NDA and problems of purity I have proposed elsewhere a method called Negative Discourse Analysis (NDA) to understand the motivational aspect of political discourse (Graham, 2019). It is based on a reading of Kenneth Burke’s argument that the negative admonition can help us understand foundational, even primordial,

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aspects of language (1952a, b, c). A focus on the negative admonition can also help us understand how political utopias work and the kinds of futures being proposed by any given political group or advocate. Political utopias are necessarily described as ‘now-​minus …’. That is to say, the utopias are typically marketed using proposals to eliminate current irritations and practices antithetical to the realisation of whichever utopia is being proposed (Graham, 2019). In our fairly recent political past, at least in the West, fairly stable alliances were established around partisan political efforts with, for example, one party declaring themselves for workers, another for big business, and another for the environment. In such cases we would see, respectively, proposals for a workers’ utopia, a corporate utopia, and an environmental utopia. However, the opportunity to watch a worldwide crisis unfold has shown another insight that can come from an NDA approach: identifying the abandonment of programmatic politics in favour of a reactionary marketing strategy which has only the appearance of a utopian program. Put differently, we see such discourses as a form of currency that politicians use to buy votes based on marketing surveys. Here is an example from the radical right of Australia. It is a press release attributed to Craig Kelly, defecting member of the Australian Liberal Party, Australia’s main conservative party: “Six months ago, I resigned from the Coalition government. I had reached the stage where my conscience would not allow me to continue in silence for political expediency,” Mr Kelly said. “It became increasingly obvious to me that the Liberal Party had abandoned its traditional values. “My intention at the time was to contest the next election as a maverick independent MP in a southern Sydney seat and use Don Chipp’s line of keeping the bastards honest. However, over those past six months, I have witnessed the very fabric of our society unravelling. “With endless authoritarian lockdowns, the emergence of a police state, censorship, and our state borders shut contrary to the vision of our federation, I no longer recognise the country I grew up in. I fear for our nation’s future if we continue on the current path,” Mr Kelly said. “I have therefore decided to accept the offer to lead the United Australia Party into the next election in order to help provide a true alternative to failed oppressive two-​party system. “The United Australia Party will be fighting to end the lockdowns and offer an alternate approach to the current mayhem and destruction that the Labor, the Liberals and the Greens have created. “We will be putting freedom over fear, liberty over lockdowns and choice over compulsion,” he said. (United Australia Party [UAP], 2021a)

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I have highlighted the key negatives that define a somewhat anemic and limited utopia: namely one without COVID-​19 restrictions. Kelly also took the stance of a vocal anti-​ vaxxer and pronounced himself in favour of COVID treatments like Ivermectin, a livestock dewormer, bleach, and other treatments previously recommended by former U.S. President Trump. His new party, funded by a mining magnate for financial ends, had an almost entirely negative program. Its policy pillars (the list of its major policy proposals) included: ‘End Lockdowns’, ‘No Domestic Vaccine Passports’, ‘Abolish National Cabinet’, and ‘End Australia’s Energy Crisis’. Even seemingly positive items asserted an implicit negative exhortation that is later elaborated in text. For example, under ‘Protecting Free Speech from Foreign Tech Giants’ is the following elaboration: ‘Foreign tech giants that operate as platforms (not publishers) such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter should not be able to censor Australian political debate’. The same kinds of negative implications were part of the party’s other seemingly positive macro-​proposals: ‘Strengthen Australia’s Defence’ (anti-​immigrant), ‘Process Australian Minerals at Home’ (anti-​foreign trade), and ‘Protect Australian Values’ (anti-​foreign influence, especially Islam). Any list of programmatic negative admonitions is a utopian recipe aimed at a perfection of minds, bodies, and bodies politic alike. Those negatives therefore typically express some form of purist motives: racial purity, cultural purity, ideological purity, sexual purity, industrial purity, bodily purity, religious purity, food purity, and so on. An urge to purity is an exhortation to remove or otherwise prevent adulterations to a purported value that must, according to dogma, be kept pure (e.g., religion, food, politics, culture, and so on). The COVID-​19 pandemic seemed to give impetus to all sorts of latent tendencies in communities committed to purity of almost every kind. The various political attributions assigned to food and health stances, for example, have gotten rapidly confused in the symbolic wildlands of social media amid global lockdowns. Attitudes to vaccines are presently among the most rancorous of issues: Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist, studied this phenomenon, asking parents about their values, political affiliation, and beliefs about vaccines. His team found that people who were skeptical of vaccines tended to list ‘purity’ and ‘liberty’ as important values. “Purity overlaps substantially with the ‘crunchy granola’ crowd,” Omer explained. “The left interpretation of liberty is human rights, and the right is libertarianism”. (Butler, 2020) All purity discourses are by definition exclusionary and abolitionist, demanding constant critical scrutiny. Purity of anything is of course impossible in any real sense, along any dimension, and so purity discourses necessarily struggle with the contortions and contradictions required for

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propagating impossible aims. Such aims, it seems, tend towards extremism of the most damaging kinds. They are always necessarily oriented toward some utopian future at the expense of ‘other’, ‘impure’, kinds of people.

Links between the negative and attitudinal meaning Critical discourse studies have their foundations in issues of truth and falsehood, the is/​is not, or what Burke calls the ‘scientistic’ aspect of language, including the ‘scientistic negative’ (Burke, 1952a; cf Graham, 2019). In all cases a negative utterance instantiates an evaluation along the semantic seams of attitudinal meaning, those fairly restricted categories that in English are used to evaluate proposals and propositions: Desirability, Significance, Warrantability, Normativity, Usuality, Humorousness, and Comprehensibility, all of which can be expressed in positive and negative degrees (Lemke, 1998; Graham, 2006). It is this axiological aspect that permits critical examination of any text, if only because it is the algorithmic criterion for all judgements of right and wrong action. NDA operates by focusing on the negative admonitions a given utterance proposes, explicitly or implicitly. Such abolitions are ultimately expressed in negative exhortations based on judgements of un-​Desirability moderated by degrees of Significance (Graham, 2006). The most vehement prohibitions of any culture will be defined by what its members consider to be most un-​ Desirable and most Significant categories of action. Those categories are sometimes contingent, moving with the exigencies of the moment, as with COVID-​related protests; others are more stable over the long term because they are deeply embedded in the culture of a group. An example of the latter is the prohibition against murder. Presently we can see the ways abolitionist discourses are vividly instantiated around issues concerning the COVID-​ 19 pandemic, especially around vaccinations and mask wearing. Here is an example from radical Australian Senator George Christensen: We demand that there be no more lockdowns. We demand that there be no more curfews. We demand that there be no more mask mandates. We demand that there be no more State border closures. We demand that there be no more privacy invasion with mandatory QR code check-​ins. We demand that there be no discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated Australians. We demand that our freedoms be restored! (Christensen, 2021) Christensen, like Kelly and other Trump-​inspired Australian politicians, has consistently railed against COVID measures, promoted unproven or rejected

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treatments for COVID, and campaigned against vaccination requirements. Predictably, he is on record as a climate change denier, anti-​Muslim immigration, and anti-​regulation for business. As evidenced by their short-​term and opportunistic nature, the abolitions Christensen proposes are neither innovative nor programmatic. They are simply a form of political currency, a means to gain power, which in democratic political systems means selling point of view. His admonitions and posturings are part of a short-​term sales strategy that seeks to appeal to and identify with ‘the base’, that section of the community whose sentiments are felt by marketing professionals to align with the positions advocated by Christensen. The utopian aspects of his discourse are Libertarian in colour and reactionary in political terms. Given the very different, often opposing positions Christensen previously expressed, which can be viewed easily on his parliamentary website, one can only assume the motivation for his public utterances is simply to buy and sell votes with the latest currency of reaction. Such exercises are based on marketing polls of likely voters (Newman, 2002). They are constructed as compulsory for current circumstances: It has become impossible not to incorporate a marketing orientation when running for political office. Politics today is increasingly being influenced by marketing, and the same technological methods used by corporations to market products and services are also being used by politicians to market themselves and their ideas. The modern-​day leader must rely on marketing not only to win the election, but also to be successful as a leader after entering office. (Newman, 2002, p. 2) Yet it is the marketing function that is so evidently damaging to bodies politic the world over and its outright cynicism underpins the trajectory of the current situation (Graham, 2017, ch. 7).

Post-​l iterate culture, narrative syntax, and marketing discourse As noted above, pre-​literate marketing techniques were launched into literate cultures as war propaganda, even before the advent of mass communication technologies (Graham, 2017). The effects have been devastating, long lasting, and mostly hidden, if only because they have become so commonplace. At the core of all pre-​literate mnemonic techniques are narratives, or stories. Stories have been a foundation of pedagogic methods since pre-​ history (Lord, 1960; Havelock, 1982). A key feature of pre-​literate stories is what Havelock describes as ‘the grammar of linguistic propriety’ which requires “that combinations of words make sense, as we say, in agreement with the common experience of the group using the language” (Havelock, 1978, p. 17). The grammar he describes is not about parts of speech or word order; it is

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about the expectations of the group, the “custom of the language”, which in turn simultaneously implies and recommends “a set of proprieties” through which “the language itself carries the tradition of the culture” (p. 19). Sitting atop that grammar is what Havelock calls “a general awareness of custom-​ law” expressed as “a body of maxims or sayings” which ‘describe the proprieties of behaviour both private and social’ for the culture (p. 23). Those sayings are reiterated over and over in rhythmic and melodic forms that are sung and danced into bodies, and dramatised for the members of the culture. They are jingles, forms of “contrived speech” shaped to the function of intergenerational cultural transmission in oral environments: Within a strictly nonliterate culture, storage will range in coverage from the closed saying through the ritual hymn to the longer myth and the extended epic. … an oral culture will found itself on a compendious body of stored information, directive or descriptive, which is expressed in rhythmic language apart from the vernacular and which can be thought of as an enclave of contrived speech existing within the vernacular … To this enclave the oral society will entrust the overt expression of its nomos and ethos, its mores, its “values,” to use a literate and rather misleading term. (Havelock, 1978, p. 30) Contrived speech, ornamented to induce mnemonic effects in an audience, was initially geared to the preservation of the moral and technical knowledge of a culture. Havelock notes that it is “a mistake to separate the bard from the priest and prophet in oral society” and is “equally mistaken to view him as a mere entertainer. Entertainment was, to be sure, one of the objectives of performance … but this was subordinate to the performer’s functional role as the reciter of preserved statements” (p. 31). The entertainment factor is a powerful element of cultural mnemonics, something that has been obscured to us by centuries of literate and semi-​ literate practices. Havelock notes that “[d]‌ ance, song, and instrumental playing … command an immediacy of response which language alone cannot, even when rhythmically arranged” (1978, p. 40). Also central to the task of organising and communicating cultural knowledge under oral conditions is what Havelock calls “narrative syntax” to which he opposes “syntax of analysis”: Rhythm in all its forms, vocal, instrumental, choreographic, involves physical motion regularised in recurrent patterns, and this motion is of organs of the human body. As performed in union with words uttered, the rhythms are likely to tempt the brain to choose for utterance words which themselves describe action and movement. The verbs used in such statements will be such as will signalise action in the form of doings or

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happenings, of actions or events. The subjects of such verbs will have to be agents or represented as agents, actors in the framing of a perpetual drama of representation. (pp. 41–​42) The techniques of marketing over the last century, along with their more overtly militarised forms such as psychological warfare, have taken on a deeply potent pre-​literate narrative syntax, virtually unbridled and unchecked, except where matters of truth are concerned (Graham & Luke, 2003). Otherwise there are few constraints on marketers where the deployment of attitudinal semantics is concerned. The construction of Desirability and Importance for a thing, policy, or attitude can be undertaken by almost any means so long as the advertiser is not caught out lying. Nor are there typically any restraints on marketers in the ways they consciously divide society through the practice of target marketing.

Politics in targeted societies: wedge issues and discourse-​i ndustrial sectors The Australian Federal government gives encouraging advice about the practice of developing ‘target markets’: A target market is a group of potential customers that you identify to sell products or services to. Each group can be divided into smaller segments. Segments are typically grouped by age, location, income and lifestyle. Once you’ve defined your target audience, you’ll find it easier to determine where and how to market your business. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2021) Variations of the same definition can be found in any marketing textbook, in any marketing ‘how-​to’ book, or on the website of almost any advertising or public relations agency: find your market then split it into pieces. In itself, the idea of market segmentation seems practical, perhaps even harmless. However, when we understand that each segment of an identified target market is subsequently subject to discourse practices cooked up by marketing professionals, wrapped in music, drama, and other modes (graphic art, photography, toys, and so on), with the social segment being constructed in an exclusive way through entertainmentised discourses such as news, finance, advertising, lifestyle texts, and polling stories, all of which have been reduced to the level of entertainment, one can begin to understand that serious social fragmentation is an inevitable outcome. That is all the moreso when the market is segmented to solicit votes in political campaigns. It is one thing to segment a market for soap, telling one group that the soap will make them more attractive to the opposite sex, another

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group that it will repair their ageing skin, and yet another group that it will save the embarrassment of body smells in the workplace. It is entirely another matter to segment markets for political power. For political marketing, negative discourses are typically organised around a suite of current wedge issues that mark people as either left-​leaning or right-​leaning depending on their attitude towards those issues. Those attitudes function as political currency with which each party buys its votes. Current wedge issues include immigration, religion, race, gender, sexuality, welfare, environment, climate change, colonial history, and labour relations, with various issues being specific to different countries, as with the issue of gun ownership in the United States and abortion in multiple countries. I need not go into which attitudes to which issues mark people off as left-​or right-​leaning, so evident and widespread are they. Targeting and market segmentation of voters around wedge issues is big business. It involves political parties, market research companies, polling companies, public relations companies, news companies, internet companies, online influencers, and the various production companies that make video, music, print, and digital messaging for parties and political candidates. Such being the case, each political wedge issue has become the basis of its own discourse-​industrial sector, generating millions or billions of dollars in revenue for participants. Even brief consideration of one of those issues –​immigration will do –​reveals a massive and complex network of people and organisations dedicated to fighting for or against immigrants and immigration, whether as advocates, legal services, security and detention personnel, massive government bureaucracies, commercial detention companies, migrant resettlement experts –​the list is long and comprised of influential interests. Because economic statistics do not count numbers for discourse sectors, putting accurate numbers to them is difficult. A Chamber of Business report will suffice to give an estimate of the economic value of just one aspect of immigration, being the value of short term foreign workers to the overall economy: “ … the 457 skilled temporary visa holders (now the temporary skills shortage visa) delivered a total net fiscal impact of $9.7 billion to the Federal Budget” (Lambert & Guraruj, 2018).1 None of the massive money-​making that goes on around political wedge issues would be possible were it not for the huge commercial discourse complex that consciously works to inculcate opposing positions on those issues and divide societies in the name of political expediency. Seen from that level, whether people or organisations are for or against immigration of any kind is irrelevant, so long as they are active in keeping the controversy open. The systematic division of attitudes and the playing up of conflict serves to build business for all involved and so perpetuate the immigration discourse industries. The marketing of attitudes is essential to contemporary politics. I need not go into detail about the various news media involved, with whole corporations dedicated to propagating either left-​wing or right-​wing views, if one can take

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such labels seriously under current circumstances. What I want to emphasise here is that news stories are at the front line of the campaigns to incite social fragmentation for commercial gain. The news organisations constantly feed their audiences a steady attitudinal diet comprised of wedge issues, legitimised by the marketing idea that what they publish is what their audience wants to read, watch, or hear, regardless of how true it is. Here is an example. It is one of many disturbing stories about ‘African gangs’, a fairly recent racist trope promoted by NewsCorp publications and the current Federal (conservative) government in Australia. Again, focusing on the thou-​shalt-​nots of the text:

Revenge attack fear as suburbs gripped by terror POLICE fear an escalating battle between two rival African gangs could turn suburbs into a war zone after a bloody melee involving 20 people led to a man’s death in Brisbane’s north. It is believed a brutal 12-​on-​1 baseball bat bashing of a man at Redbank Plains last week may have sparked Sunday’s deadly retaliation attack involving three carloads of young men at Zillmere on Sunday. Machetes and broken glass were used in the ambush, which left Girum Mekonnen, 19, (pictured) dead and 10 people injured. A resident said the attack was a “pure massacre”. “We heard screaming, just screaming, there were bodies everywhere,” the resident said. (Williams & Clark, 2020) The point here is not whether the story is true or false, it’s that it menaces civilised values and helps set public opinion against ‘African gangs’ and, by extension, African immigration. As part of recently reinvigorated white supremacist, anti-​immigration propaganda the story is but a single data point. Its attitudinal power is in the histrionic delivery, its construction of African immigrants as delinquent, and the fact that the two suburbs involved are at either end of the Brisbane metropolitan region giving the impression that the alleged problem is everywhere in the city. The discourse functions here to confirm fears of immigration, buy votes for anti-​immigration parties in Australia, and sell the news outlet itself to a fearful audience.

Selling the social soul News Corp’s marketing department is well aware of the power of public narratives: Like the smoke from a fire, stories spread from our past to our present. They capture centuries in sentences and link the smallest idea to the grandest vision. Our continent’s stories connect the first encounters

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between cultures to the nation we are now, and the one we will become. […] The powerful combination of our large scale digital network, quality audiences and attention allows us to share your story with Australia. Let’s go on a journey together: to evolve and adapt, to honour and learn from the past, as we look to the future and find new ways to grow. (News Corp, 2021) That piece of commercial poetry, with its action item punchline, is aimed at businessses who might want to advertise with News Corp Australia. The advertisement goes on to say: News Corp reaches 17.4 million Australians across our network of premium and trusted print and digital brands. Our audience networks provide the opportunity to reach highly engaged audiences consuming content that aligns with their interests across News, Food, Prestige, Women’s, Travel, Sport, Business, Auto and Home. (News Corp, 2021) Here ‘content’ is positioned as currency to buy audiences based on their ‘interests’. Those audiences can then be onsold to advertisers. The business model was developed in the broadcast era and designed to capitalise upon ‘audience labor’, the work audiences do in producing themselves as saleable commodities for advertisers (Smythe, 1981, p. 23). Social divisions achieved by target marketing are greatly intensified by data-​driven, artificial intelligence (AI) applications that can focus on ever-​ smaller segments, right down to the individual. The Harvard Business Review tells us that AI can streamline the sales process by using extremely detailed data on individuals, including real-​time geolocation data, to create highly personalized product or service offers. Later in the journey, AI assists in upselling and cross-​selling and can reduce the likelihood that customers will abandon their digital shopping carts. (Davenport, Guha, & Grewal, 2021) It is already known that the social media platforms use AI to put their workers into personalised ‘filter bubbles’ that deliver the kinds of messages that the individual prefers to read, watch, or listen to (Fletcher, 2019). When translated to news about politics, the implications are dire. For example, an Australian man was recently convicted of ‘using a carriage service to menace, harrass or cause offence’ after he threatened an Australian politician (Fiona Patten) using a video posted on social media. Here is what Wilson said in part of that video:

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The recording ended with Wilson warning Ms Patten to “pick your side” or face the same physical violence as the “bitches who collaborated with the Nazis”. “If you collaborate with these bastards then I’m telling you now, mate, we’re fucking shaving your head, man, like we fucking did after World War II in Paris,” he said in the video shown to the court. “We’ll shave your head mate and we’ll drag you up the street naked. “We are at war and there’s no middle ground.” (Siganto, 2021) The same polarised political sentiments expressed by Wilson in that story propelled the 2021 January 6 riot and insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., demonstrating the ultimately lethal trajectory of politics and news under heavily marketised and technologised conditions. It is yet another reminder that today’s marketing techniques were forged to incite people to war by activating negative attitudes toward particular cultures (Graham, 2017). Wilson gives us yet another example of post-​literate political negativity here. It is characterized by the ‘if … then’ prescriptions evident throughout Hammurabi’s code specifying punishments for particular transgressions (Havelock, 1978, p. 43); the existential, identifying, or attributive clauses involved in negative scientistic definition (in this case ‘there’s no middle ground’); and the outright ‘do not’. Here we can identify folk political philosophies, whether of politicians or anybody else, and more importantly, what they propose to prohibit and, in some cases, how.

Conclusion McLuhan shows that ‘an age in rapid transition is one which exists on the frontier between two cultures and between conflicting technologies’ (1966/​2010, p. 141). We are without doubt amidst massive, rapid, and chaotic cultural transitions, thus implicating the many new technological systems to which we are daily subjected. Any cultural transition is necesssarily a reordering of values because culture is at its root axiological (Graham & Dugmore, 2022). And it is here, I argue, that we need to focus attention as discourse analysts so that we can respond to the current circumstances in some productive way: a reordering of values is occurring daily at societal –​and nation-​wide –​levels. We can see that reordering most clearly in the narrative genres of power. News is an excellent example because it has long operated on the body politic by setting selected remote events from the wider world in personal relationship with its audience members (Lippmann, 1922/​1997, p. 29). The revelatory aspect of critical analysis in which the truths obscured by ideology are shown up is an important and valuable contribution. Under current circumstances, though, truth appears less an issue than morality,

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the reasoning of which has deteriorated under conditions of literacy. In this ultimately rich and varied media environment, overwhelmingly focused on exhortations of how to do, be, and think, we as a species seem to have lost the capacity to fruitfully discuss the morality, the civic impact, of doing almost anything. McLuhan cites the problem as a loss of rational capacities thanks to the weight of an homogenising industrialism and an amoral focus on price: To put the matter simply, we no longer have the rational basis for defining virtue or vice. And the slogan “Crime Does Not Pay” is the expression of moral bankruptcy in more ways than one. It implies that if crime could pay, then the dividing line between virtue and vice would disappear. (McLuhan, 1951/​1957, p. 43) The thorough swamping of culture by technological principles, greatly accelerated by the social amorality of neoliberal economics and its price system, has brought with it a profound and consequential moral vaccuum, mainly by negating morality as a discussable element of social and political life. That is all the more so for the practices of business, which seem to be considered above or outside the doctrines of all propriety, at least up to the point at which massive death, environmental devastation, or blatant thievery are concerned. It is as if business is expected to operate on amoral principles, which in many legislatures is precisely the case. Presumed amorality seems also to be the case for politics and politicians. It is as if politicians are expected to mislead the public, an expectation increasingly used as promotional currency by politicians when they talk about ‘draining the swamp’ or freedom from COVID restrictions. It is also an expectation promoted in popular culture, with politicians, police, and federal bureaucrats routinely portrayed as corrupt and malignant in their intent and practices. Such systemic cynicism cannot be sustained for too long. In effect it forecloses on future change and programmatic politics in which some vision for the future of humanity is proposed and argued about. As both a business and political force, marketing appears to be not only amoral but morally invisible, except where the matter of lies is concerned. As I hope to have shown here, however briefly, marketing is in fact at the vanguard of social fragmentation. It has social, political, and personal fragmentation designed into its operations. Addressing marketing in any coherent way is an enormous task. It is even difficult now to know where marketing practices start and stop: advertisements, tracking technologies, anonymous social media profiles, artificial intelligence bots, robot phone calls, ongoing tracking of tastes and preferences, unattributed press releases passed off as news, reality televsion, product placements in movies, sponsorships … the list of sources for anonymous and ambient messages aimed at selling everything from soap to warfare is endless and huge. New communication

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technologies have facilitated a flood of new messaging potentials and these are taken up by marketers at a faster rate than by any other sectors. Our inability to challenge the morality or ethics of any of our current communication systems is hampered by an inability to argue in moral or ethical terms beyond the semantics of Truth. That in turn is a function of failures in language education, once the foundational staple of all pedagogies. Our problems are further complicated by issues of mass and speed. There has never in history been a system that generates anywhere near the number of literate and audiovisual texts as our current environment. There is simply no reference. As critical analysts of language, our methods and practices are legacies of literate culture. They are tuned to the broadcast era, with its systematic, institutional, and relatively stable patterns of genres and ‘genre chains’ (Fairclough, 1992, 2000). We are now faced with tremendous challenges. Despite the many excellent inroads into multimodal analyses by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001), Machin (2013), Way and McKerrell (2017), Richardson (2019), and others, we find ourselves today challenged by a torrent of material that is as intermodally diverse as it is relentless. It is also unpredictable in terms of influence. Even in the remnants of literate culture, one could assume with relative certainty that socially transformative texts would come from a limited number of institutions: government, news, education, corporate sector. Today there is no such certainty. World changing messages can and do come from practically anywhere. The Black Lives Matter protests were the result of mobile phone footage taken by bystanders. Instagram, YouTube, Parler, TikTok, Twitter, Telegram, Facebook, and many other platforms are being used to produce sometimes drastic social change, often anonymously. The challenges are qualitative and quantitative, and they require us to adjust our methods and assumptions accordingly.

Research tasks 1 2

Keep a media diary for 3 days noting what you experienced through which media, what each media item taught you, and what you think each piece was promoting. Track a current event or issue through as many media as you can –​the more controversial the issue the better. Detail the different ways each side portrays the issue.

Further reading Havelock, E. A. (1986) The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present. New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press. Graham, P. (2017) Strategic Communication, Corporatism, and Eternal Crisis: The Creel Century. New York, NY: Routledge.

168  Phil Graham Graham, P. (2019) ‘Negative Discourse Analysis and utopias of the political’. Journal of Language and Politics, 18 (3): 323–​345. Lemke, J. L. (1998) ‘Resources for attitudinal meaning: Evaluative orientations in text semantics’. Functions of Language, 5 (1): 33–​56. Ong, W. J. (1982) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge.

Note 1 The 457 Visa program is an Australian skills-​based scheme that facilitates local employment for foreign nationals. The visas are temporary.

References Adams, J. (2021) ‘Wellness gurus and far-​right men: How the two became COVID’s strange conspiracy bedfellows’. Women’s Agenda. At: https://​women​sage​nda.com. au/​lat​est/​welln​ess-​gurus-​and-​far-​right-​men-​how-​the-​two-​bec​ame-​cov​ids-​stra​nge-​ con​spir​acy-​bed​fell​ows/​ Andrews, T. M. and Maloy, A. F. (2022, February 28) ‘Zelensky’s past as an entertainer may have prepared him for his most crucial role’. The Washington Post. At:  www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​arts-​entert​ainm​ent/​2022/​02/​28/​zelen​sky-​pad​ding​ ton-​danc​ing-​with-​the-​stars/​ Applebaum, A. (2022, March 31) ‘There is no liberal world order: Unless democracies defend themselves, the forces of autocracy will destroy them’. The Atlantic. At:  www.thea​tlan​tic.com/​magaz​ine/​arch​ive/​2022/​05/​autocr​acy-​could-​dest​roy-​ democr​acy-​rus​sia-​ukra​ine/​629​363/​ Burke, K. (1945) A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1952a) ‘A dramatistic view of the origins of language’. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 38 (3): 251–​264. Burke, K. (1952b) ‘A dramatistic view of the origins of language: Part two’. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 38 (4): 446–​460. Burke, K. (1952c) ‘A dramatistic view of the origins of language: Part three’. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 39 (1): 79–​92. Butler, K. (2020, June 18) ‘The anti-​ vax movement’s radical shift from crunchy granola purists to far-​right crusaders’. Mother Jones. At: www.moth​erjo​nes.com/​ polit​ics/​2020/​06/​the-​anti-​vax-​moveme​nts-​radi​cal-​shift-​from-​crun​chy-​gran​ola-​puri​ sts-​to-​far-​right-​crusad​ers/​ Chayka, K. (2022, March 3) ‘Watching the world’s “First TikTok War” ’. The New Yorker. At: www.newyor​ker.com/​cult​ure/​infin​ite-​scr​oll/​watch​ing-​the-​wor​lds-​ first-​tik​tok-​war Christensen, G. (2021) ‘Demand your Freedom’. George Christensen: Federal member for Dawson. Mackay, Australia. Available online at: www.george​chri​sten​sen.com. au/​free​dom Commonwealth of Australia. (2021) ‘Identify your target market’. Business.gov.au. Canberra, ACT: . At: https://​busin​ess.gov.au/​market​ing/​ident​ify-​your-​tar​get-​mar​ket Davenport, T. H., Guha, A. and Grewa, D. (2021), How to design an AI marketing strategy: What the technology can do today –​and what’s next’. Harvard Business

Negative discourse analysis, narrative, and marketing  169 Review, July-​ August. At: https://​hbr.org/​2021/​07/​how-​to-​des​ign-​an-​ai-​market​ing-​ strat​egy Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (2000) ‘Discourse, social theory, and social research: the discourse of welfare reform’. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4 (2): 163–​195. Fletcher, R. (2019) The Truth behind Filter Bubbles: Bursting some Myths. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. At: https://​reute​rsin​stit​ute.polit​ ics.ox.ac.uk/​risj-​rev​iew/​truth-​beh​ind-​fil​ter-​bubb​les-​burst​ing-​some-​myths Global Terrorism Index. (2020) Vision of Humanity. Sydney, Australia: Institute for economics and peace. At: https://​visio​nofh​uman​ity.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2020/​ 11/​GTI-​2020-​web-​1.pdf Graham, P. (2006) Hypercapitalism: New Media, Language, and Social Perceptions of Value. New York, NY: Lang. Graham, P. (2017) Strategic Communication, Corporatism, and Eternal Crisis: The Creel Century. New York, NY: Routledge. Graham, P. (2019) ‘Negative discourse analysis and utopias of the political’. Journal of Language and Politics, 18 (3): 323–​345. Graham, P. and Dugmore, H. (2022) ‘Public pedagogies in post-​literate cultures’. Discourse and Society, 33 (6): 819–832. Graham, P. and Luke, A. (2003) ‘Militarising the body politic: New media as weapons of mass instruction’. Body and Society, 9 (4):149–​168. Goody, J. (1986) The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. London: Cambridge University Press. Havelock, E. A. (1978) The Greek Concept of Justice: From its Shadow in Homer to its Substance in Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Havelock, E. A. (1982) The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Havelock, E. A. (1986) The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy From Antiquity to the Present. New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press. Heath-​Kelly, C. (2010) ‘Critical terrorism studies, critical theory and the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Security Dialogue, 41 (3): 235–​254. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Lambert, J. and Guraruj, K. (2018) Migration Works for All of Us: Delivering Benefits to All Australians. Barton, ACT: The Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. At: www.austra​lian​cham​ber.com.au/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2018/​12/​FINAL-​Aus​tral​ ian-​Chamb​er_​P​olic​y_​Mi​grat​ion_​WEB.pdf Lemke, J. L. (1998) ‘Resources for attitudinal meaning: evaluative orientations in text semantics’. Functions of Language, 5 (1): 33–​56. Lippmann, W. (1922/​1997) Public Opinion. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Lord, A. B. (1960) The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Machin, D. (2013) ‘What is multimodal critical discourse studies?’ Critical Discourse Studies, 10 (4): 347–​355. McLuhan, H. M. (1951/​1967) The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York, NY: Beacon Press. McLuhan, H. M. (1966/​2010) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

170  Phil Graham McLuhan, H. M. (2006) The Classical Trivium. The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of his Time. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press. Newman, B. I. (2002) ‘The role of marketing in politics’. Journal of Political Marketing, 1 (1): 1–​5. News Corp. (2021) Stories Have the Power to Weave a Web of Connections: A Whole News Way to Grow. Sydney, NSW: NewsCorp. At: www.newsco​rpau​stra​lia.com/​ stor​ies-​have-​the-​power-​to-​weave-​a-​web-​of-​conn​ecti​ons-​2/​ Ong, W. J. (1958) Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Ong, W. J. (1982) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge. Postman, N. (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. London, UK: Penguin. Richardson, J. E. (2019) ‘British fascism, fascist culture, British culture’. Patterns of Prejudice, 53, (3): 236–​252. Siganto, T. (2021, September 28) ‘Queensland man John James Wilson convicted over ‘threatening, intimidating’ video against Victorian MP’. ABC News. At: www. abc.net.au/​news/​2021-​09-​29/​qld-​coro​navi​rus-​covid-​court-​vic-​mp-​video-​abuse/ ​ 100500​812 Smythe, D. (1981) Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada. New Jersey: Ablex. Way, L. C. S. and McKerrell, S. (eds.) (2017) Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Williams, E. and Clarke, C. (2020, September 15) ‘Revenge attack fear as suburbs gripped by terror’. The Courier Mail. Available online at: https://www.couriermail. com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts/zillmere-gang-fight-residents-police-fearrevenge-attack/news-story/5b46c0cbb75adb6c3a04ca2c8a3a1273 Yates, F. (1966/​2014) The Art of Memory. London, UK: Random House.

Chapter 11

Analyzing discourses in infographics David Machin

Introduction Infographics are visual forms of information representation formed from different combinations of words, numbers and data, graphics, and pictures. They are thought to help visualization and ultimately aid the process of understanding. Complex issues and processes can be captured in a simplified form, saving the time that would be required to give longer explanations. And, of course, they can make information visually attractive and engaging. A news story may use infographics to summarize and create order out of complex social phenomena in an interesting and stimulating manner –​for example, to represent patterns in migration, combining statistics, flows of movement, and maps. A school book may use them to show particular historical changes over time. Institutions and organizations use them as part of planning and management, representing a sort of map of the production process, or to show how a new structure of operation will work. In such cases there will be a sense that the core details of a thing have been expertly isolated and technically presented so that we can work on them in a clearly managed and strategic fashion. Yet, as with any form of communication, they involve selective versions of processes, causalities, and interrelationships. In Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) we are interested in how events, processes, and persons are represented in language and other forms of communication. In particular, we are concerned with how persons, events, and processes are represented in ways that serve the purposes of dominant ideologies (Caldas-​Coulthard and Coulthard, 1996). In this chapter I look at how to ask the same questions of infographics. These have very specific affordances to shape how participants, processes, and causalities are represented. I use the case study of sustainability as a way to explore how an actual thing, or process, in the world, becomes represented and shaped in infographics. Here I reveal whose interests such representations may serve.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-11

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Critical discourse analysis, multimodality, and analysing infographics CDA has been greatly influenced by a social semiotic approach to communication (Fairclough 1992, van Leeuwen, 2008). The basic idea is that when we communicate, we draw on an available repertoire of choices that can be deployed in different contexts to make meaning. This could be the choice of words, as has been the core interest in CDA. So, we account for a particular social or political event by using the available language choices we have. Or it could be the choices made when we communicate visually, as has been the interest in more Multimodal-​Based Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) (van Leeuwen, 2005). Here choices may involve how we represent a social or political event in images, or an infographic. In social semiotics it is assumed that available choices in communication are not simply neutral. Rather, they will shape the meaning of the things we represent. Choices will always mean that certain elements and qualities are foregrounded, backgrounded, ignored completely, glossed, or abstracted. And in social semiotics all semiotic resources, such as words and images, are thought to be already loaded with the ideas and values that underpin how societies function and are managed at any moment in time. Such resources can have a taken-​for-​granted nature at the time of their use, for example, notions such as ‘democracy’ or ‘sustainability’, which are complex and contestable, can appear as neutral and transparent. The work of CDA and MCDA, therefore, comprises the analysis of details of language and multimodal communication to draw out exactly what version of events or processes are being presented. Such ‘versions’ or models of what is taking place, drawing on Foucault (1971), are called ‘discourses’. The detailed attention to choices made by communicators allows the analyst to draw out the discourses that might be less obvious to the casual reader or viewer. By identifying discourses we are able to expose the ideological interests that these serve (van Dijk, 1998). Ideologies might seek to legitimize, naturalize, and maintain discourses that lead societies to function in a particular way. Importantly, CDA and MCDA do not comprise simply the analysis of texts in isolation (Fairclough, 1992; Ledin and Machin, 2020). To fully understand the representations of the world carried by texts we must know something about the actual things, events, and processes that are represented. This allows us to then draw out how semiotic choices mean that certain elements and qualities are foregrounded, backgrounded, ignored completely, glossed over, or abstracted. This means that analysis of texts in CDA and MCDA involves wider research into scholarship and sources that best allow us to account for the actual things, events, and processes that are represented. And this text analysis means that we need to also understand the nature and origins of those texts.

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In this chapter I show how we can analyse infographics using the case study of those produced by different institutions and organizations to represent how they are working towards sustainability. However, this analysis must be placed in the contexts of what sustainability actually is, who is doing it, where and why. This allows us to understand more about the actual goals, processes, causalities, and participants involved. And, through this, we are able to understand more about the texts, the infographics themselves. These different levels of analysis, I show, are necessary to understand the representations the infographics carry as well as the discourses and ideologies that they communicate.

A tool kit for analysing infographics The tool kit presented here draws in particular on the work of a number of scholars working in social semiotics, namely van Leeuwen (2005), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), Kress (2010), and Ledin and Machin (2018). The specific points of analysis are the following: •

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Symbolisation: This relates to the meanings linked to colour, basic shapes, and sizes of graphic elements; for instance, large or small, curved or angular. Here meanings are conveyed by metaphorical association; for example, to communicate something more organic or something technical. Bolder shapes might represent stability as compared to more delicate shapes. Brighter colors might represent optimism compared to darker colours or a more restrained color palette. Classification: This means looking at how elements are represented as being part of a particular category, or are rather placed into hierarchies. Classifications can be done in writing though grammatical forms or visually through graphic shapes, which can symbolize similarities and differences. In both cases we can ask what kinds of paradigms or categories are being made. Paradigms are categories of things culturally accepted as being of the same order. Important here, therefore, is to look at the extent to which these might be considered reasonable or ‘true’ paradigms and categories. We also ask what is included and what is excluded. Framing: This concerns how elements are separated on the basis of sameness and difference. Framing can be done through borders, colours, or spaces. Here we can ask how much such classification and grouping might work ideologically and if they involve different things being placed in the same or opposite grouping. Again, metaphorical association can be important here, suggesting different kinds of barriers and degrees of separation or integration. Causality and temporality: Infographics can communicate how people and things are linked and how processes take place over time. Since

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•

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both causality and temporality can be represented symbolically, we can ask how this is done. Are these represented as circular, linear, or multi-​ directional? We can look for what kinds of causalities and temporalities are foregrounded and backgrounded, present or omitted. Here too metaphorical association can bring meaning to how things like arrows and structures can communicate more or less solid, and more or less direct causalities. Iconography: This is about the kinds of pictures, photographs, and drawings and elements found on the design that can be used to connote certain discourses. For example, do elements suggest a discourse of where agriculture relates to a pretty version of nature, rather than the role of big industry? This can also relate to how participants, things, and processes are represented by kinds of elements, which may be metonymic, such as education being represented by a book. Composition and orientation: We find typical configurations of elements in infographics. These configurations, due to metaphorical association, can suggest a meaning such as a sense of building upwards, of moving forwards, of cycles, of networks, or pathways. Such configurations can suggest fixed rigidity and immovability or flexibility and fluidity. In the application of the tool kit carried out shortly in this chapter, the examples are presented in terms of ten of the most typical forms of configuration, accounting for the meaning of each. These configurations provide a kind of template into which systems, processes, and relationships can be presented.

Using a case study: sustainability as a buzzword Before I move on to the infographics representing sustainability, I will first look very briefly at the concept itself. This is important as it allows us to then throw light onto the recontextualizations that take place. It means we can better identify where and how these recontextualizations happen. And it allows us better to understand the nature of these texts and why they are created. And this too, I show, is part of understanding the ideologies they carry. At the time of writing, as concerns about the effects of human life on the planet became more socially and politically salient, sustainability had become a common buzzword. It was something thought to be relevant to and desirable by all people, institutions, organizations, and products. Universities and corporations were expected to have sustainability strategies, and governments and regulators talked about sustainable businesses or sustainable economies. Cars, fashion, and bananas were all better if they were labeled as ‘sustainable’. The term ’Sustainable Development’ entered policy and politics when it was used by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in their 1987 report “Our Common Future”. This report defined Sustainable

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Development as “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (p.42). However, observers have shown that the term ‘sustainability’ has never been clearly defined, neither at a scientific nor at a political and policy level (Bolis, Morioka, and Sznelwar 2017), indeed becoming less clear as so many varied organizations and parties with a vested interest became involved (Lindsey 2011) since each foregrounded different priorities, models, standards, and ways of monitoring (Arena, et al, 2009). In the end, it has been argued, sustainability has been burdened with a proliferation of objectives or goals, usually where it is impossible to judge how these are to be implemented or measured (Lindsey 2011). Terms such as ‘food security’, ‘affordability’, ‘access to food’, ‘food and health’ can be mentioned under the umbrella of sustainability without any sense of how they hang together to form a coherent whole or if there are contradictions or tensions between them (Risku-​Norja and Muukka 2013). Sustainability documents include lists of concepts such as ’local’, ‘organic’, ‘sustainable’ as if they are synonyms (in fact, local or organic foods may not be sustainable) along with others such as ‘cost-​effectiveness’, ‘appropriateness of technology’, and ‘people-​centered initiatives’, while it is never asked if one implies a trade-​off against others (Lang, 2010). As Aguirre (2002) argues, such policy documents are built on ambiguously defined, overlapping, and contradictory concepts which fail to add up to any clear plan of action. The UN and EU sustainability strategies, upon which institutions and organization around the world are obliged to act, have been criticized for being of this very problematic nature (Costanza, et al, 2016). Benson and Craig (2014:779) argue that sustainability was not so much a bad idea. But it was never clear what was to be sustained, where and how. Of particular importance is that there has also been an observed shift in the association of sustainability with the economy. Sustainability became merged with the concept of ‘sustainable development’, which merges economics and the environment (Benson and Craig, 2014). Across the EU, for example, sustainability policies now foreground the international competitiveness of European industry in the global economy (Rayner, Barling and Lang, 2008). This includes an emphasis on the role of the latest technology and ‘innovation’ in production and processing across agri-​chemical, food processing, and manufacturing. In such documents the environmental implication of growth economy is rarely problematised. Perhaps most importantly, it has been argued, such documents simply fail to address the nature of the global food industry dominated by mega corporations operating within global supply chain systems, served by neoliberal trading rules (Rayner, Barling, and Lang, 2008; Oelreich and Milestad, 2017). For example, it has been argued that while policy deals with the undefined notion of sustainability the corporate-​based global food industry is characterised by greater liberalisation, increasing concentration of land

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ownership, food corporation, and the power of supermarkets (Holt-​Gimenez and Shattuck, 2011). Extensive research documents how trade agreements, based on neoliberal free trade principles, remove tariffs in the interests of transnational agricultural corporations and globally operating supermarkets (Hamilton, 2018; Lorr, 2020). Agricultural production can be transformed and steered to respond to changing consumer demands in wealthy economies, driven by marketing and food trends, such as the rise of demand for soya products and exotic foods. Demands for highly priced products in the United States and the EU has led to vast deforestation, loss of biodiversity, water depletion, and environmental damage in South America, for example (Ochoa Ayala, 2020). It has been argued that, fundamentally, sustainability, originally a term seen as a criticism of capitalism, has been colonized by neoliberalism as part of the marketization of all practices, things, and knowledge (Irwin, 2008). It becomes another resource to be consumed or capitalized upon (Holford, 2016) and in its neoliberalized form, infuses government, NGOs, education policy, pan-​global organizations, etc. (Irwin, 2008). The danger is of course that ‘neoliberal metaphors’ will distract from the ability to act (Irwin, 2008: 172). As Jessop (2012) argues, this neoliberal model provides us with a mental map of a hugely complex reality, where saving the planet can be subsumed alongside other forms of performance indicators and measures of outputs. Given this context, we can look at how sustainability is represented in infographics created by a range of institutions and organizations. We can draw out what discourses of addressing environmental problems these carry.

Analyzing infographics The following section is organized by looking at ten typical composition types of infographics. In practice these often work in combinations. The point of analysis is not to label, nor to create a definitive typology of compositions but to observe the work that the composition and design does to create meaning. Building block compositions In Figure 11.1 we see a simple infographic. The UN has 17 sustainable development goals. The 17 goals are always represented as blocks, often seen stacked up in different combinations. These goals become requirements for member governments. In each country national institutions, companies, schools and universities, and other organizations are required to show how they are working towards such goals. As we have seen in the literature referred to above, sustainability has been criticized where it becomes lost and meaningless as too many things are loaded onto it. These UN goals are a typical case. In Figure 11.1 we see the

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Figure 11.1 UN building blocks for sustainability.

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huge range of things that the goals cover. So sustainable development means dealing with world hunger, with gender inequality and responsible consumption and production, with poverty, as well as sustained economic development. In short, solving all the world’s problems. We can ask how these things are classified on the infographic. On the one hand each is different, having its own separate box, framed off from the others. Boxes do not overlap or merge in any way. So, these are represented as discrete units, each framed with a little white space between itself and its neighbors. Each is a different colour from the others. And each is given its own unique icon used to symbolise ‘no poverty’ or ‘industry, innovation, infrastructure’, etc. The framing and representing of these as discrete things has the effect of suppressing interrelationships, tensions, and causalities that exist between them. For example, there are no arrows suggesting a link between ‘economic growth’ and ‘inequalities’. There is a sense that all these individual goals need to be worked upon separately. On the other hand, these things are classified as being of the same order. Each element is placed in a same-​sized and -​shaped box. On a different infographic, hierarchies or ‘difference’ can be symbolized by boxes and frames of differing shapes and sizes. And the icons here are of the same style, where each element is simplified, suggesting that all, including all poverty in the world, equality, or ‘well-​being’ can be simply captured. The colors too, while different for each element, carry the same qualities. They are all bright and pastel. Such a representation suggests that these are of the same order, to be worked on in the same way. Certainly, it does not foster a view of complexity and uniqueness. It is useful to think of such classifications as presenting elements as a kind of shopping list or what is known as a paradigm. Paradigms are culturally agreed-​upon lists of things that belong to the same category. So, a typical paradigm might comprise a list of types of sport. In such a list we would not expect to find elements outside of the paradigm. For example, we would not expect to find a variety of red wine. This set of boxes suggests a paradigm, the culturally agreed-​upon list of elements which form sustainability. We can also ask what elements might be missing from this ‘list’. What is missing here are international regulators, trade organizations and treaties, global banking, transnational corporations, and the massive power of supermarkets, as well as other industries including fashion and petrochemicals. We can consider what each box, or element in the paradigm, is comprised of and what this paradigm foregrounds or suppresses. The boxes carry hugely complex things. ‘Industry, innovation, and infrastructure’ comprises vast, complex, and contestable issues. ‘Poverty’ and ‘inequality’ suggests that all forms of these things, each with diverse and complex social, political, and economic natures, can be represented as one simple thing –​here represented by the icon of a row of people of different ages holding hands. ‘Reduced inequality’ is an ‘=​’ sign sitting in a circle of reducing width. We might

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Figure 11.2 Lists and tables showing sustainable health diets. https://​twit​ter.com/​Yogu​rtNu​trit​ion

consider in such cases what other symbols or representations could have been used to more clearly represent actual processes of reducing inequalities. These ‘building block’ compositions can take different shapes, or form pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, of leaves, footprints, trees, etc. They can even represent children’s building blocks (and in fact at my university in Sweden this was the form used at a sustainability fair on the campus). The boxes can include more information, even percentages. What is important is that this boxing helps maintain a sense that the goals are discrete elements that can be acted upon alone. Important is that there is no interrelationship implied here. Lists and tables Figure 11.2 is an infographic for healthy diets, used by a yogurt marketing group to show their alignment with sustainability. Again, we find the elements defined as being the components that comprise this social practice of

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sustainable diets: ‘health’, ‘environment’, ‘society’, and ‘economy’. Important here is what we find in the bullet lists within each box. As with the previous composition we find individual elements placed in their own frames. They are made distinctive by color and icons, but nevertheless are symbolically classified as being of a related order as colors are of the same quality and the boxes and icons of the same order. In this case health is given more salience as it is given a larger box and more elements than ‘economy’, which is reduced to two. As in the building block composition, there is no sense of how these elements interrelate, nor if there are any tensions as each sits in its box forming one part of the whole. Within each of the boxes we find a bullet list. Again, these present a list, a paradigm. Such bullet lists have the affordance of suggesting a sense of systematically breaking each down into its core components, which can then be managed. We see in the ‘environment’ box that both ‘seasonal local produce’ and ‘preserved biodiversity’ are ticked off. As critics note, such issues as ‘local’, ‘sustainable’, ‘organic’, etc., will most likely involve tensions, which here are suppressed. One affordance of the bullet list is that the list of parts, while being presented as the ‘core components’ of a thing, can be represented not in running text, where links and causalities are accounted for, but as isolated components. So, a bullet list might include ‘profitable’, ‘sustainable’, and ‘equal’, each with a ‘tick’ icon, as if it is a simple matter of checking off each independently. We also see that while the bullet lists present contents as paradigms, we find differing grammatical forms, for example, through nouns (seasonal local produce) and verbs (Reduce food waste). This means that the linguistic choices do not fulfill the linguistic requirement of being a paradigm. Yet here it is connoted that we are dealing with a systematic tick list. Center-​m argin compositions In Figure 11.3 we see the center-​margin composition. This is also from a yogurt marketing report. In this form of composition, the elements are placed around the central element and represented as its components. So, in this case the paradigm is a category called ‘food challenges in relation to sustainability’, where things like ‘all forms of malnutrition’ are of a similar order as ‘environmental degradation’. Here positioning in the periphery classifies the elements as being of a related order. Again, they are all classified through the same kinds of style of iconography. The orbiting elements are given no causal relationship to the core element. Arrows point not inwards but outwards to the elements. These arrows indicate neither causality nor temporality but point the way to relevant information, telling us ‘here are the aspects, the paradigm, of the current challenges’. In such compositions the central placement of a concept such as ‘current food system challenges’ or ‘sustainable food system’ works ideologically to represent it as a given. We can ask how the element placed in the center

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Figure 11.3 Yoghurt promotional material showing that it can be healthy and sustainable. https://​twit​ter.com/​Yogu​rtNu​trit​ion

shapes how the very issue itself is represented. This element is never neutral and is here represented, in neoliberal speak, as ‘challenges’, rather than say ‘problems’. The term ‘challenges’ suggests things to be worked upon, managed, where we need strategies, rather than radical change. We could

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imagine the difference if we put ‘global capitalist food production’ at the center. The kinds of arrows that we find is also of importance. Here we find lighter colored, wavy arrows, which are cute in the style of icons, and carry less urgency. Thicker straight arrows, carrying a dark colour would have suggested something more alarming. In such cases arrows can also be formed from broken, dotted lines, which can symbolize something less certain or forceful. Again, in this infographic, the power of global corporations and supermarkets is absent. So this infographic suppresses the kinds of causes of environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity caused in one continent when land is acquired to produce healthy and organic products for consumers in another continent. Center-​margin compositions can take different forms (e.g., where bars or elements can radiate outwards). The planet Earth could be placed at the center, from where lines lead out to issues where statistics are given. But the basic meaning is the same. We can also find concentric circles, where there is the idea of more core and periphery elements, which will also be ideologically defined. Cycle compositions The infographic in Figure 11.4 is from Yale University where there is an account of how sustainable food systems work. In cycle compositions a problem such as sustainability is represented as an ongoing process of a cyclical nature, such as we might find in nature to represent rainfall or the life-​ cycle of a butterfly. The use of the cycle here suggests something natural, that has its own inbuilt momentum, rather than a set of arbitrary stages. In Figure 11.4 the ‘sustainable food system’ is represented as a cycle. Here bright, green, curved, arrows indicate directionality and temporality. The hand-​drawn style of the arrows symbolizes ease and a human touch rather than something technical. Again, we find the elements represented as of the same order through the same graphic style and color and sizing. The supermarket is here symbolized by a trolley and basket, thus foregrounding the consumer experience rather than corporate power. Farming is represented, not in terms of a globalized industry shipping products around the planet, transforming regions of the world for market demand in another, but as small scale with a single traditional tractor. Transport is represented by a small lorry, not by aircraft nor shipping that take exotic berries and avocados from one side of the planet to the other, all year round. In this kind of composition we can ask in what order elements are presented and what causal relations are set up. In this case production/​processing is placed after agriculture in the cycle, with the supermarkets a step further on. The cycle does not represent how agricultural production and land use may be

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Figure 11.4 Yale University representation of a sustainable food system. https://​sus​tain​abil​ity.yale.edu/​exp​lain​ers/​yale-​expe​rts-​expl​ain-​sust​aina​ble-​food-​syst​ems

shaped by the demands of supermarkets or food marketing. And causalities here, which may in reality include things like successful marketing campaigns in new territories, are represented by pleasant green arrows. This diagram also carries a center margin component. In the middle of the cycle we see three icons framed together. These are classified together as the components of a sustainable food system: one that is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. Typically, as we saw in the literature on sustainability, no contradictions are assumed between saving the planet and economic development and human rights. Left-​r ight compositions Figure 11.5 is from a company website that offers sustainable solutions, which includes marketing and communication. On their site they have this infographic to represent ‘The food system’. Left-​right diagrams, at least in cultures where texts tend to progress from left to right, represent sequences that are temporally developing in the direction of reading. In Figure 11.5 temporality is symbolised by the right pointing arrows. These compositions can be ideologically used to represent elements that are far more complexly interrelated, or are not really temporal in nature at all. Or, as is the case in this diagram it can place the main agents in a

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WHAT IS THE FOOD SYSTEM? THE COMBINATION OF ALL PROCESSES AND INFRASTRUCTURES NEEDED TO FEED PEOPLE TYPICALLY FALLS INTO THREE PRIMARY CATEGORIES:

AGRICULTURE

MARKET PREP

CONSUMER USE

GROWING

PACKAGING

MARKETING

HARVESTING

DISTRIBUTION

CONSUMPTION

PROCESSING

TRANSPORTATION

DISPOSAL

CHARLESTON | ORWIG

Figure 11.5 Composition from a company website that offers sustainable solutions, which includes marketing and communication. https://​co-​nxt.com/​

process, here the supermarkets, as the final step in a causal chain. And here the supermarket is represented as ‘consumer use’, where we see much of the icon comprised by the cars of the shoppers. So, the nature of the supermarket as a corporation is substituted for the needs of the consumer. Also important in this infographic, in its drive for simplification and being engaging, is that the three components are the same size and each has its own bullet points, or paradigm, to show its components –​each having three. We can consider what kinds of elements are presented in each case as the paradigm. For example, we see that ‘marketing’ is placed as part of ‘consumer use’ and not as part of ‘production’. Pathway compositions This form of composition works similarly to the left-​right composition, where there is a given flow of temporality or causality. But here there is also a sense of a journey. This can be historical, or show a current ongoing process; for example, products moving from farms to the home. Again, we can ask what kind of sequence is set up and what is included and excluded in the stages. We can ask at what point the pathway starts and ends. Figure 11.6 is part of a promotion for a university MBA program that has a sustainability elective. This infographic aims to show ‘How sustainability has developed from a niche thing to a globally practiced business model’. As with the left-​right composition we have clear start and end points. At the start point are the origins of sustainability in the concerns of 19th-​century

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Figure 11.6 Pathway diagram showing the clear evolution of sustainability. https://​onl​ineb​usin​ess.north​east​ern.edu/​blog/​the-​evolut​ion-​of-​sus​tain​abil​ity/​

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thinkers. We see them looking serious in the smoke from the factories of the industrial revolution. While there are known 19th-​century critics of industrialization, the thinkers chosen here include the likes of Adam Smith, credited as the founder of laissez faire free competition economics, who believed the state should not interfere in the running of capitalism. While this collection of thinkers could be seen as relevant for a business course and the origins of capitalism as we know it, it could be seen as an odd choice for the origins of environmentalism. From the starting point we see a road, representing a journey through time. Along the way there is a fairly random collection of treaties, acts, and programs in the United States. None of the various international documents that began using the concept of sustainability from the 1970s are included. There is no sense of how it developed and became more complex and overloaded as a concept. This appears to be a journey to success, where, as the title says, sustainability becomes a standard global business model. The things that are included in the pathway are uneven, yet classified in the same way, captured by the usual simplified icons –​Earth Day and The Kyoto agreement. And, in fact the position of many of these things, here represented as good examples of sustainable practice, are highly contested. The Kyoto Protocol has been criticized (see Rosen, 2015) for having no concrete plan and demonstrable outcomes (Connor, 2007). Rather it fostered the idea of individual carbon footprints, and carbon trade and offsetting, rather than actual systematic changes through political action. This infographic carries choices that set up a discourse where sustainable thinking begins with early Capitalist thinkers and then travels on a journey to the present day past various points of success. Segmentation compositions Figure 11.7 represents how a local council in the UK represents its ‘sustainable food culture’. It uses a pie-​chart type design, connoting segments, or proportions of the whole. In such compositions, as in this case, it may be that the segments symbolise proportions rather than being exact percentages of the whole. This is the case in this example. Or the segments, while being proportional, may involve inclusions and exclusions that are contestable, as in the lists we have seen already. Infographics often include numbers and percentages, as we see in Figure 11.7. But looking more closely such numbers can be confusing. The ‘share’ segment in Figure 11.7 shows that 7401 families get assistance from a local food bank. We might question as to why this is represented as part of a sustainable food culture. There is no sense of the social or political reasons why these families find themselves in this situation. Nor, as we look at other numbers and segments, is it clear how such a number can be represented as a segment of a whole. In fact, we see ‘share’ symbolised by icons that include children playing sport, as well as others that resemble the UN goals. This will be used by the local authority as part of meeting required metrics of sustainability.

newgenrtpdf

www.sudbur​yfoo​dpol​icy.com

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Figure 11.7 A municipal authority represents its successful sustainable food system.

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The food bank segment is preceded by the 16+​community gardens growing food. What kind of provision these gardens made for the 1.5 hundred thousand residents of Greater Sudbury is not clear. But again it will count as a metric. The number 16+​is clearly not related to the 7401 families in any proportional sense. This is, of course, not claimed in language, but is symbolised by the use of the segments that have the affordance of representing proportions. In fact, all of these segments, here symbolizing parts of a whole, which is ‘sustainable food culture’, are rather unconnected and decontextualized things, which can be used to show that the authority is fulfilling its obligations to work to sustainable goals. The infographic is part of how this is symbolized as something coherent, logical, and transparent. The segment showing families receiving food is followed in the cycle by percentages of people eating sufficient fruit and vegetables. But do these numbers involve the same people? And how does this number then follow to the next step in the sequence which is recycling? Bottom-up compositions Figure 11.8 is from a website where individuals or companies can sponsor tree planting. This infographic is intended to be humorous with vegan suggestions for a Valentine’s date and can be shared and liked on social media as a form of marketing. But, even so, this example can nevertheless tell us much about how these bottom-​up compositions work. It also shows how routinely the loose jumble of the sustainable elements are thrown together, meaning we are never clear about what we are acting upon sustainably. An upwards direction in these compositions, drawing on experiential metaphors, carries meanings of aspiration, building, growth, rising standards, and improvements. It also allows the diagrams to suggest that what lies at the bottom is the base or the foundation. In such a composition the UN sustainable blocks could be represented as leaves on a tree, to suggest growth and flourishing or as the blocks in a house, to suggest building a robust structure. Other typical vertical structures include pyramids, which can be used to show building to a focused point. In Figure 11.8 the thermometer is used to symbolise the rising levels of hotness of a date. The different measures on the thermometer represent a range of things which might be loosely clustered under the concept of sustainability. We find the idea of having a virtual date to have a dance class or a terrarium-making class, in other words, where needless travel is avoided. Others include having a vegan meal, sharing organic wine and getting outdoors. It is, of course, not clear why some are ranked higher than others and since this is playful this is less relevant in this instance. But here, even in humor, we find the naturalisation of these different things appearing without links, or without a sense of if there are tensions between them. Organic foods may clash with aspects of sustainability. Vegan foods may contain exotic ingredients, and be the result of intensive farming where formerly biodiverse land has

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ATTEND A VIRTUAL TERRARIUM MAKING CLASS HAVE AN ORGANIC WINE TASTING FOR TWO TAKE A VIRTUAL DANCE CLASS TOGETHER STREAM A VALENTINE’S DAY CONCERT HAVE A PICNIC IN YOUR LIVING ROOM GET OUTDOORS HOWEVER YOU CAN PLAY A GAME (NAUGHTY OR NICE) COOK A VEGAN MEAL TOGETHER

TURN UP

THE HEAT WITH 8 SUSTAINABLE DATE IDEAS ONETREEPLANTED Figure 11.8 ‘Sustainable dating’ diagram from sponsored tree planting website. https://​one​tree​plan​ted.org/​

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Sustainable food systems for sustainable societies

Economic sustainability Competitiveness Food affordability Commercial viability and profits Fair share of added value Jobs Income Green growth

Inclusive growth

Social sustainability

A sustainable food system (SFS) ensures environmental, social and economic sustainability

SFS

Inclusiveness – just transition EcoPublic health and nutrition social Food safety and food security progress Vital rural/coastal areas and farming/fishing communities Animal welfare

Environmental sustainability Biodiversity Climate change mitigation Reduction of food loss and waste Zero pollution Soil health

Figure 11.9 Diagram from PowerPoint presentation used as part of discussion of UN goals on sustainable development. https://​fit4f​ood2​030.eu/​webin​ars/​

been claimed by corporations to meet market food demands. Such foods may use expensive packaging and involve chic marketing campaigns, etc. Venn diagrams Venn diagrams show how issues, concepts, and things share common domains. Figure 11.9, taken from an online webinar on creating sustainable food systems, draws on these affordances. In Figure 11.9 three basic elements of sustainability, economic, social, and environmental, overlap. In the central area we are shown that a sustainable food system results where the three elements overlap. There are also areas of overlap between pairs of domains. In the economic circle there should be ‘competitiveness’ and ‘profits’. But at the environmental level there must be ‘climate change mitigation’. Where the two overlap we find ‘green growth’. There is no sense of how the drive for profit may impact on the environment. At the overlap between the circles for the economic and the social there is no sense of how we can also have inclusiveness as well as profit. As in other diagrams the elements framed in one circle are represented as part of the same category of things. So, in economics ‘fair share’ and ‘profits’ are simply part of economics. How these work together is not clear.

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Figure 11.10 A PowerPoint presentation showing how sustainability works at Strathclyde University. https://​slid​epla​yer.com/​slide/​14635​443/​

Network compositions Figure 11.10 is from a Powerpoint presentation showing how sustainability works at Strathclyde University. Networks and taxonomies can show structures of organisations in terms of flows of instructions or work interactions. These may reflect the intentions of the management as much as the reality of how things work. Figure 11.10 is a type of network diagram. In network infographics elements can be connected by lines or arrows suggesting links, directions of movement, or causality. Here the parts of the organisation are represented as cogs, symbolizing that the parts work together like a machine. The relative size of the cogs creates a hierarchy of importance. This also forms a center margin structure. Here elements like ‘Widening Community Engagement’ and ‘Enhanced Biodiversity and Greenspace’ are the paradigm of being sustainable towards which the inner cogs are working together to achieve. Here a university must act in a sustainable way with regard to the goals listed, for example, ‘Enhanced Biodiversity’, and ‘Healthy and Sustainable Food’. The cogs suggest that the parts, teaching, learning, and research, are to work in a way that is a central mechanism through which the sustainable goals are met. In practice staff will have to use metrics to demonstrate that this is taking place.

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We can ask what kinds of tension and contradiction are suppressed. Here teaching and research are collapsed into one cog. The two comprise very different kinds of activities, each being measured and assessed by its own set of metrics. For staff, work life can mean juggling the two. Yet here they are represented as one entity. There will also be tensions involved where staff are committed to teaching and research but at the same time have to act in relation to the metrics of biodiversity or widening community engagement. Network infographics may use very different forms of iconography and symbolism. What is important analytically is to consider pathways of connectivity, causalities, and hierarchies created by size and positioning.

Conclusion This chapter has provided an introduction to the critical analysis of infographics. It has invited more critical studies of this form of communication. The chapter provided a set of tools to approach infographics but also showed how analysis must go beyond the texts themselves. Analysis must show how the discourses carried by infographics relate to the things, processes, and events they claim to represent. In this chapter by first looking at sustainability as a concept, where policy documents fail to account for the basic nature of global capitalism, I was able to show how these infographics allow organizations to align with the moral act of working ethically to save the planet. We saw how they presented us with clear, technical, and engaging visualisations of their activities and plans. Yet ultimately these infographics do little more than contribute to the confusion and abstraction surrounding the concept of sustainability. The same principles and steps can be applied to the analysis of infographics used to represent processes and systems in other contexts. And from my perspective as a Critical Discourse Analyst, such a process of analysis is important to help reveal how texts, such as those representing sustainable action, in fact rather serve to gloss over, maintain, and legitimise forms of social problems and inequalities. Ultimately the infographics analysed in this chapter serve only the purpose of distracting from the real threats to the planet and environment.

Research tasks 1

Choose two infographics that represent a particular process. This could be how an organization works, how the fashion industry operates, what took place in a battle, the nature of a pandemic, the history of a country or an idea, etc. Then compare how the two infographics work. Apply the points of analysis used in this chapter to account for how they each classify and create paradigms, how they symbolize causalities and processes.

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2

What are the main similarities and differences? Are there any obvious things that you think have been left out? Is there anything about the representation of causalities that you might have questions about? You should now read up on the nature of the processes that lie behind each. This will give you further insights into how the infographics recontextualise actual social processes and events.

Further reading Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2020) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London, Bloomsbury. Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2020) ‘The misleading nature of flowcharts and diagrams in organizational communication’. Semiotica, 236-​237, 405–​425.

References Aguirre, B. E. (2002) ‘Sustainable development as collective surge’. Social Science Quarterly, 83(1):101–​118. Arena, M. Duque Ciceri, N., Terzi, S. Bengo, I. Azzone, G. Garetti, M. (2009) ‘A state-​ of-​the-​art of industrial sustainability: definitions, tools and metrics’. International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 4(1) 207–​251. Audley, J. J., Papademetriou, D. G., Polaski, S., Vaughan, S. (2021) ‘Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’. “NAFTA’s Promise and Reality”, page 6. At https://​carneg​ieen​dowm​ent.org/​files/​naf​ta1.pdf Accessed Feb. 1, 2021. Bolis, I. et al. ‘Are we making decisions in a sustainable way? A comprehensive literature review about rationalities for sustainable development’. Journal of Cleaner Production, 145 (2017): 310–​322. Caldas-​Coulthard, C. R & Coulthard, M. (1996) Text and Practices. London, Routledge. Connor, S. (2007) ‘Scientists say Kyoto protocol is ‘outdated failure’. Independent, 24 Oct. Costanza, R. Fioramonti, L. Kubiszewski, I. (2016) ‘The UN Sustainable Development Goals and the dynamics of well-​being’. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(2):59. Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. London, Polity Press. Foucault, M. (1971) ‘Orders of discourse’. Social Science Information, 10(2), 7–​30. Hamilton, S. (2018) Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race. Yale University Press. Harm Benson, M. and Kundis Craig, R. (2014) ‘The end of sustainability’. Society and Natural Resources, 27:7,777–​782. Helmi Risku-​Norja and Eija Muukka (2013) ‘Food and sustainability: local and organic food in Finnish food policy and in institutional kitchens’. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B –​Soil and Plant Science, 63:sup1, 8–​18. Holford, J. (2016) ‘The misuses of sustainability: Adult education, citizenship and the dead hand of neoliberalism’. International Review of Education, 62: 541–561. Holt Giménez, E. and Shattuck, A. (2011) ‘Food crises, food regimes and food movements: rumblings of reform or tides of transformation?’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38:1, 109–​144.

194  David Machin Irwin, R. E. (2008) ‘After neoliberalism: environmental education to education for sustainability’. In A González-​Gaudiano and M. A. Peters (eds.) Environmental Education: Identity, Politics and Citizenship, 171–​193. Jessop, B. (2012) ‘Economic and ecological crises: green new deals and no-​growth economies’. Development, 55(1), 17–​24. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006) Reading Images. London, Routledge. Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality. London, Routledge. Lang, T. (2010) ‘From ‘value-​for-​money’ to ‘values-​for-​money’? Ethical food and policy in Europe’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 42(8):1814–​1832. Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2018) Doing Visual Analysis. London, Sage. Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2020) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London, Bloomsbury. Lindsey, T. (2011) ‘Sustainable principles: common values for achieving sustainability’. Journal of Cleaner Production, 19(5), 561–​565. Lorr, B. (2020) The Secret Life of Groceries: the Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket. London: Penguin. Ochoa Ayala, M. O. (2020) Avocado: the ‘green gold’ causing environment havoc, World Economic Forum. At: www.wefo​rum.org/​age​nda/​2020/​02/​avoc​ado-​envi​ronm​ent-​ cost-​food-​mex​ico/​ Oelreich, J. and Rebecka Milestad, R. (2017) ‘Sustainability transformations in the balance: exploring Swedish initiatives challenging the corporate food regime’. European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(7), pages 1129–​1146. Rayner, G., Barling, D. and Lang, T. (2008) ‘Sustainable food systems in Europe: policies, realities and futures. Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, 3(2/​ 3):145–​168. Rosen, A. M. (2015) ‘The wrong solution at the right time: the failure of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change’. Politics and Policy, Volume 43(1): 30–​58. van Dijk, T. A. (1998) Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London, Sage. van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London, Routledge. van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse Practices. London, Routledge.

Chapter 12

CDA as local praxis Educational media and anti-​g ender/​s exuality discourse in news reports in Uruguay Germán Canale

Introduction Discourses in/​about education are of key interest to CDA and CDS. Education is by definition a political activity, in that it is a form of civic engagement (Freire 1994); thus critical analyses need to situate educational discourse in its broader sociopolitical context (Giroux & Penna 1979) to explicate the complex relationship between the overt curriculum (i.e., explicitly taught) and the hidden curriculum (i.e., implicitly transmitted) of the school and the role they play in reproducing or transforming power relations, social practices, and ideologies. The school curriculum is always an arena of political and ideological struggle in which powerful groups fight to either maintain or restore their supremacy in society. They do so by controlling official knowledge (Apple 2019), i.e., ideological propositions, worldviews, rationalities, and values which –​through naturalization in the schooling process –​aim to become part of our common sense (Fairclough 1995a). In the past decades several educational programs have been implemented around the world to challenge long-​ingrained heteronormative curricula by fostering diversity awareness and countering structural, institutional, and relational gender and sexuality discrimination. However, Gender and Sexuality Education is usually met with resistance by some conservative, religious, and other anti-​gender/​sexuality discourses arguing for the need to ‘restore traditional family values’ and advocating against the State and schools ‘stepping over’ parents’ right to choose their children’s education. This chapter addresses anti-​gender and sexuality discourse in/​about education in Uruguay by tracking their circulation and reproduction in news media. My main interest lies in studying its mediatization and thematization in national media communication: what pieces of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse get reported by the media to construct a ‘newsworthy’ event? How do they get reported? What social actors are voiced? What does this tell us about

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-12

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the circulation and reproduction of heteronormativity and anti-​gender/​sexuality ideologies? To answer these questions, I focus on news reports of one event: the release of a State-​sponsored teacher guidebook for Sexuality Education. The analysis shows that (i) through strategic thematization news discourse turns reactions against the guidebook into a newsworthy event, contributing to the circulation of several anti-​gender/​sexuality voices (politicians, religious leaders, conservative groups, and movements), and (ii) through strategies of victimization, self-​representation, and silencing, these voices reproduce anti-​ gender/​sexuality discourse condemning the guidebook and, more implicitly, attacking gender/​sexuality discourse and rights. Findings contribute to our current understanding of the strategic orchestration of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse and the role the media play in its circulation and reproduction.

Anti-​g ender/​s exuality discourse and education Anti-​ gender/​ sexuality discourse and actions have been growing in Latin America (Corrêa ed. 2020) and Europe (Kuhar & Paternotte 2017), among other regions. While highly organized actions have been mainly carried out by religious, conservative, and extreme-​right movements, the reproduction of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse covers a much wider spectrum of political views and ideologies. Even though Uruguay was secularized by the beginning of the 20th century and public education is by definition non-​religious (Caetano & Geymonat 1997), religious groups have played a key role in mobilizing anti-​gender/​ sexuality discourse. As in other countries, some of these groups have gained visibility in national television, are active in digital media, and also participate in politics (Argueda Ramírez 2020). Together with other conservative movements (Martinis & Rodríguez Bissio 2020), these groups target gender/​ sexuality education and rights by drawing on the notion of ‘gender ideology’ to identify both the wrong (i.e., a supposed world conspiracy against the traditional family, Butler 2019) and the wrong doer (i.e., the so-​called ‘new global left’, Patternote & Kuhar 2017). To counter this, they call for legislative action to protect the traditional family and, almost paradoxically, for less involvement of the State in the private sphere (De Sousa Santos 2014). However, it should be noted that the actions taken by these groups have also fuelled debates with more progressive religious groups who advocate for gender and sexuality rights, such as free choice in abortion (Rostagnol 2010). Most of the progressive policies regarding gender and sexuality that took place during the previous three left-​wing governments (2005–​ 2019) were initiated and promoted by activist groups and movements. While left-​ wing governments and these groups had an ambivalent relation (Johnson, Rodríguez Gustá & Sempol 2020), both faced heavy criticism by anti-​gender/​ sexuality voices. For instance, attacks on the inclusion of gender and sexuality

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as official knowledge in education revolved around the overt curriculum (what should/​n’t be taught), the role of teachers (what they should/​n’t do in the classroom), parents’ rights (to choose what values their children will be socialized into), and the potential conflicts between the State and parents in the schooling process. Many of these arguments were mobilized by organized movements such as “Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas” (Don’t Mess with my Children), “A Mis Hijos No Los Tocan” (Don’t Touch my Children), and “Red de Padres Responsables” (Network of Responsible Parents).

Educational media and the DPSE The National Program of Sexuality Education (2006) included gender and sexuality in the national school curriculum. Two years later, the National Law of Education 18.437 posited Sexuality Education as a key theme throughout the whole schooling process. As a strategy toward the implementation of this law, several guidebooks were designed either by the State or by NGOs, some of which were funded by international organizations. These educational media became thematized in the news, in digital media, and in parliamentary discourse. Reactions against them manifested in a wide range of actions: media campaigns, street demonstrations, and administrative and legislative actions, to name a few. I will focus here on the guidebook entitled “Propuesta didáctica para el abordaje de la Educación Sexual en Educación Inicial y Primaria” (A Didactic proposal for addressing Sexuality Education in Pre-​and Primary School, DPSE, henceforth)1, published in 2017 by the National Council of Pre-​and Primary School Education. The DPSE was designed by the NGO “Gurises Unidos” and the Council of Sexuality Education, and funded by the United Nations’ Population Fund. It was conceived as an optional and complementary resource for teachers to use with students aged 4–​12.

Corpus and contextualization To investigate the reproduction and circulation of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse, I take the publication of the DPSE as a polemic focus event. For this purpose, I collected and analyzed, during the first month after the publication of the guidebook (29 July-​29 August 2017), 14 news reports2 in national online press and news portals with different political and ideological views. After the publication of the DPSE, several public figures criticized it in their personal websites, in periodicals, on the radio, on Twitter, and on national television. The same bits and pieces of the guidebook were repeatedly thematized: a drawing of a nude heterosexual couple having sexual intercourse was used as an example of its ‘erotic’ load’3, a quote claiming ‘there are girls with penises and there are girls with vulvas’ was used to show that the guidebook was ‘scientifically inaccurate’ and that it could ‘confuse children’,

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and a task in which children are asked to tickle, caress, or hug one another was used as an example of the way in which the guide was ‘erotizing’ and ‘abusing’ children.4 To counter the DPSE, the Catholic Church launched “Aprender a Amar” (Learning to Love), an online Sex Education course targeting parents, children, and schools. For their part, the Network of Responsible Parents issued a petition to national education authorities for teachers not to use this guidebook –​even though its use was not mandatory –​on the grounds of ‘conscientious objection’. The petition was overruled twice but media polemics around the DPSE continued. This failed petition later turned into the drafted bill “Educación sexual en instituciones educativas” (Sexuality Education in Schools). To date, the DPSE is still available on the official website of the National Education Council, but there are no statistics as for how many pre-​ school and primary teachers currently use it.

Analysis In this section I will examine four discursive strategies in the circulation and reproduction of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse in the news. Through thematization, news texts background the actual release of the DPSE and foreground negative reactions to it as the newsworthy event, contributing to the circulation of anti-​gender/​sexuality voices. Through victimization, self-​ representation, and silencing these voices reproduce arguments that strategically attack gender/​sexuality discourse and rights.

Thematization I will refer to thematization here as the editorial, discursive, and textual processes by which media institutions, journalists, or other social actors construct an event as newsworthy (Canale 2022). There are some striking similarities in how the news texts analyzed construct the newsworthy event by heavily thematizing (negative) reactions to the guidebook rather than its release. They do so by extra-​textualization and by attributing negative evaluations to external sources. In other words, news texts leave much of the evaluative work to such external sources, thus establishing ‘under-​determined’ relations between external voices and the journalist’s own voice (White, 1998). This is mainly achieved through voice management and voice detachment. As for the ways in which voices are managed, the same social actors are given voice and their voices usually repeat the same quotes, thus creating some sort of regulatory effect of media discourse. Voice management points to two representational imbalances. Firstly, a wider range of professional, institutional, and religious/​secular voices are entertained to condemn the guidebook: a left-​wing journalist and lawyer, Hoenir Sarthou, who was one of the first to write an editorial against the DPSE, Evangelical leader Sebastián

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Villar, Catholic leader Daniel Sturla, right-​wing Parliamentary Representative Graciela Bianchi, and several anti-​gender and sexuality5 activist movements. These voices are represented as ‘the reception’ of the DPSE, i.e., audiences who reject it. The only voices recurrently introduced to defend the guidebook are those of educational authorities, such as Pablo Caggiani, and NGOs who participated in the design of the DPSE. The voices of teachers and students are mostly silenced, while the voices of parents are represented exclusively via anti-​gender/​sexuality movements. As for voice detachment, journalists tend to report the polemic by (direct) quoting these voices, thus distancing primary from secondary discourses, or the voices of the reported from that of the reporter (Caldas-​Coulthard 1994; Fairclough 1995b). This serves to strategically reproduce anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse while at the same time detaching it from the journalists’ own voice and stance, which are thus discursively constructed as ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’. This can be illustrated by the selection of reporting verbs: (1) Bianchi debated yesterday with Caggiani on Channel 12 and she said6: “I agree with Sturla in that the Constitution is being violated. Education is the responsibility of parents. This guidebook violates secularism”. T77 (2) “There are elements in the guidebook to claim that the underlying aspiration supposes gender identity and even sexual identity can be choices or impositions”, Sarthou wrote. T88 As (1) and (2) illustrate, the reporting verbs more frequently used are neutral structuring (Caldas-​Coulthard 1994), such as say or write, through which journalists avoid any explicit evaluation of the voices reported. In fact, instances of more explicit evaluation are scarce: (3) (Sturla) did not measure his words and dared to affirm that these guidebooks are typical of ‘totalitarian States’9. T10 In (3), the negative evaluation of the guidebook by Cardinal Sturla is introduced by an assertive metapropositional verb (affirm), which evaluates the very act of speech –​the contribution of the speaker –​rather than the content of what was said (Caldas-​Coulthard 1994). However, the content of Sturla’s words is appraised by modalization (dared to affirm). In contrast with most reports in the corpus where Sturla ‘said’, ‘wrote’, ‘commented’, ‘pointed out’, here ‘dared to’ dialogically disaligns the journalist’s voice from Sturla’s words by negatively appraising the latter as a sort of overstatement or overreaction: “Sturla didn´t measure his words and dared to affirm…”. However, these instances are very rare in the data. In summary, the discursive mechanisms mentioned earlier –​and others that are not considered here due to space constraints –​indicate that the generic structure of these news texts is that of ‘issues stories’ or ‘issues reports’ (White

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1998; Economou 2009) rather than ‘event stories’. This allows for negative reactions to become heavily reported and thematized and, in turn, for the release of the DPSE to become backgrounded. In the rest of this chapter, I will discuss how the reported voices reacting against the DPSE reproduce anti-​gender/​sexuality arguments via three key discourse strategies.

Victimization In the news texts, victimization does not usually revolve around specific individuals; instead, a collective victimhood is claimed. This is rhetorically strategic in that collective victimhood does not lead to a lack of agency but to the identification of a common perpetrator (i.e., the so-​called ‘gender ideology’) against which the collective is urged to fight (Mack 2013; Oaten 2014). Collective victimization serves to delegitimize the DPSE and Sexuality Education but, more broadly, it serves to legitimize anti-​gender/​ sexuality discourse since the inclusion of gender and sexuality contents in education is represented as a violent attack on society and on societal values. Three types of collective victimization strategy become realized in news discourse: victimizing heterosexuality, victimizing parents, and victimizing children. The co-​occurrence of these strategies is not coincidental: all three reproduce the moral conservative panics around the ‘demise’ of the heterosexual/​heteronormative traditional family (Apple & Oliver 2003), for which ‘gender ideology’ is to blame. In turn, these strategies also contribute to reinforcing positive ingroup representations (van Dijk 1992) of those who support anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse. Heterosexuals as victims A main sub-​strategy is victimization by rhetorical reversal of discrimination, which has also been documented in racist (van Dijk 1992) and right-​wing populist discourse (Wodak 2015). Arguments deployed to condemn the DPSE –​and to condemn Sexuality Education –​refer to heterosexuals as the ‘real victims of gender ideology’: (4) According to Bianchi, “they want to impose gender ideology on children, where we heterosexuals come to be a discriminated minority”.10 T5 (5) Bianchi would agree with the teacher guidebook: “as long as it were not permeated by this ideological wave in politics for which everything that pertains to homosexuality and change of roles is predominant. It is like reverse discrmination, she said.11 T12 (6) Among the main recriminations, the guidebook is accused of “imposing gender ideology” according to which “heterosexuals become a discrminated minority”.12 T11

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(7) According to Sebastián Villar: “Who assures me as a parent that the teacher has the same principles I have? The guidebook is poorly made. We ask that the guide be removed and that it be modified. One cannot discriminate against the heterosexual family, and we feel discriminated against”.13 T6 Graciela Bianchi was then Representative of the right-​wing National Party in the Parliament. She played a key role in criticizing the DPSE, education, and the left-​wing government on national television, social media, and newspapers because she had formerly held a position at the National Council of Education (CODICEN) and had also been head of a main public secondary school. Her criticisms were strategically legitimized by her usual self-​representation as an “Atheist in favour of depenalizing abortion and gay marriage” (T7). This self-​ representation rhetorically served to anticipate potential criticism about her anti-​gender/​sexuality comments by framing her as a legitimate judge due to her self-​aligning with a more progressive stance. As (4–​ 5) illustrate, her arguments include two main moves: her self-​ identification as heterosexual (‘we heterosexuals’) and her appeal to reverse discrimination to position heterosexuals as victims of gender ideology: “we heterosexuals come to be a discriminated minority” (4), “it is like reverse discrimination” (5). These appeals operate as a sort of calculated ambivalence to satisfy potentially different readers (Wodak 2015): they do not negate the existence of discrimination against LGBT+​people, as implied in the lexical meanings of ‘reverse discrimination’ (5), but they mostly foreground heterosexuals as ‘new’ or ‘real’ victims by reversal, as implied in ‘come to be’ (4). Victimizing heterosexuals also requires oversimplification and exaggeration: gender/​sexuality discourse is presented as ‘gender ideology’ and its effect is amplified (“everything that is homosexuality and change of roles is predominant”). This contributes to representing gender/​sexuality discourse as hegemonic or totalitarian and thus as powerful to discriminate against (the less powerful) heterosexuals. As shown in (6), on some occasions Bianchi’s words are brought into the text but she becomes unspecified by indetermination (van Leeuwen 2008). The selection of Spanish ‘se’ serves for the specific social actor (agent) to become anonymized (se acusa is accused of), which I roughly translate as a passive voice in (6). The discursive effect is that Bianchi’s comments are both anonymized and generalized: “the guidebook is accused of imposing gender ideology”. This serves two main purposes in the reproduction and circulation of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse. On the one hand, generalization amplifies and broadens the scope of her arguments, which are shared by other social actors in society. On the other hand, anonymization makes her argument appealing to some segments of society for whom her political figure is too controversial, and so detaching her voice from her identity is indeed strategic.

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Victimization of heterosexuals is also reported in the voice of religious leaders. In (7) Evangelical pastor Sebastián Villar positions himself as a member of the discriminated group (“we feel discriminated against”) by representing the DPSE as an attack on morality (“one cannot discriminate against the heterosexual family”). The conservative notion of the family as the nuclear unit of society ‘under attack’ by Sexuality Education positions teachers as potential indoctrinators who menace the family. More importantly, the role of parents in the education of their children is foregrounded, as realized in his rhetorical question: “Who assures me as a parent that the teacher has the same principles I have?” While at face value this type of victimization seems to call for heterosexuals to rebel against the ‘new oppression’, in reality it also serves the purpose of reproducing and reinforcing dominant heteronormative and homophobic ideologies by which anything that challenges the heteronormative and traditional family is a threat to children, parents, and society at large. This leads us to another sub-​strategy: victimizing (heterosexual) parents. Parents as victims Anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse represents the DPSE as a tool for indoctrination into ‘gender ideology’ through which the government, the schools, and teachers bypass parents’ authority in deciding what values children will be socialized into. By positing Sexuality Education in terms of ‘moral values’ –​strategically excluding it from the realm of health policies, public policies, and Rights Education –​parents are represented as victims whose authority is menaced by the DPSE. This rhetorically presents them with a moral dilemma over the role of education and the duties/​restrictions of the State, i.e., they are ‘victims’, but they are potentially agentive in reclaiming their right to educate their children: (8) Cardinal Daniel Sturla affirmed that the State seeks to impose an ideology and that this goes against Article 41 of the Constitution, which gives parents the duty and right to care for and to educate their children. Something that in his opinion “is typical of totalitarian states” but “cannot be that of a democratic one.14 T9 (9) According to Sebastián Villar: “The guide proposes to leave aside the parents so that it is public education that establishes a bond with the child. I am against that. And as a father I feel invaded; we parents are no longer going to be those who teach such an intimate thing to our children. Gender ideology has triggered controversy all over the world.15 T6 The voice most recurrently reported is that of Cardinal Daniel Sturla (8). Interestingly, Sturla’s arguments do not overtly revolve around religion, but

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instead evoke legal discourse (“this goes against Article 41 of the Constitution”) thus legitimizing the law as authority and, more implicitly, accusing the left-​ wing government of being undemocratic (“Something that in his opinion “is typical of totalitarian states” but that “cannot be that of a democratic one”). While in other Latin American countries religious leaders usually foreground religious morals and beliefs in their attacks on gender/​sexuality rights, in the case of Uruguay, perhaps due to its long-​standing secularization, these become backgrounded to foreground legal discourse. In so doing, parents are represented as both victims and agents: they are victims of a State which stands in the way of parents’ rights and are called to fulfil their obligations as parents by acting against the DPSE and, more broadly, against Sexuality Education. As illustrated by (9), other religious actors self-​represent as victimized parents. This self-​representation usually requires two rhetorical moves. The first move consists of reclaiming gender and sexuality as private matters (“we parents are no longer going to be those who teach such an intimate thing to our children”), thus excluding them from public life. This is a more indirect way to call for the State not to intervene in issues of gender and sexuality and, concomitantly, to call for the (heterosexual, heteronormative) family to continue to do so. The second move consists of constructing an emotional feeling around parents to foreground victimhood (“As a parent, I feel invaded”). By making these two moves ‘gender ideology’ is represented as a global, powerful enemy (“Gender ideology has triggered controversy all over the world”). These moves are strategic in both urging parents to mobilize against Sexuality Education and politicizing parenthood (Graff & Korolczuk 2022). Children as victims Not only are parents represented as victims, but also their children, who must be protected from the harms of ‘gender ideology’. (10) Under the slogan “Don’t Touch my Children” a demonstration will take place (…) they will request for the guide to be withdrawn because its use will cause “devastating consequences” to minors.16 T1 When children are victimized, the agency of parents (and other adults) in organizing themselves (marching, demonstrating, taking legal actions) is usually blurred. For example, in (10) “Don’t touch my children” is not represented as an organized movement but instead it is objectivized (van Leeuwen 2008) as a slogan used during the demonstration, and organized actions are nominalized (“a demonstration will take place”). Another way to discursively construct children’s victimhood is by authorization, or introducing professional and institutional voices that are represented as external to anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse and groups:

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(11) However, psychologist and teacher Alejandro De Barbieri questioned that since students are minors and the exercise is proposed by an adult, a child can “find it difficult to say no, that he does not like that”, as he wrote in his Twitter account.17 T9 (12) In Voices, Sarthou wrote that this playful regime is more of “an ideological correctional institution” than a teaching environment.18 T11 Through individualization and functionalization a psychologist and teacher (11) and a renowned journalist and lawyer (12) are turned into ‘elite social actors’ (van Leeuwen 2008) authorized to represent children –​mostly referred to as ‘minors’ –​as agentiveless victims (“the child can “find it difficult to say no, that he does not like that””, “will cause devastating consequences to minors”).

Heterogeneity as ingroup self-​r epresentation The third main strategy of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse is that of ingroup self-​representation as heterogeneous. Representations of us and them are highly operative in reproducing group ideologies, creating membership, and asymetrically positioning outgroups (van Dijk 2005). To explain how this operates in anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse, I will focus on the ways in which the voice of a particular movement (Don’t Touch my Children) is reported for purposes of self-​representation. Again, it must be noted that reports do not explicitly evaluate this self-​representation, but instead frame it as an external voice to which journalists do not necessarily commit: (13) “Many organizations, parents and people are against it” because the images in the guide are “explicitly pornographic”, reads the call for demonstration signed by pastor Sebastián Villar19 T1 (14) Villar affirmed that Don’t Touch my Children is different from other groups who are also against this guide “because it does not have a political aim or any religious activity behind it” “Here we have atheists, Shamans, Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, all”, he pointed out, adding that in his group there also are “voters of Frente Amplio, Partido Nacional, Partido Colorado, Partido de la Gente and others who are fully apolitical”20 T3 As (13) and (14) illustrate, the movement is strategically represented by appealing to heterogeneity (except for gender and sexuality diversity). This helps to foreground different overlapping scales through which the guidebook is resisted: “Many organizations, parents and people are against it” (13), different religious beliefs: “Here we have Atheists, Shamans, Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, all” (14), and different political affiliations, which range from left to right and from progressive to conservative: “he pointed out, adding that in his group there also are “voters of Frente Amplio, Partido Nacional, Partido Colorado, Partido de la Gente and others who are fully apolitical” (14).

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This apparently heterogeneous constitution of the group serves different purposes. At the level of text argumentation, it sets apart this movement from other anti-​gender/​sexuality movements usually associated with specific conservative and religious ideologies. In other words, it serves as ‘evidence’ that there is no hidden motivation for demonstrating against the DPSE –​and against Sexuality Education: the movement comes to be represented as a spontaneous, natural, and logical reaction. Also, this self-​representation of the group as heterogeneous serves to legitimize its existence through embracing a sort of pluralistic ideology in which the mere plural constitution of the group authorizes its agenda. At the level of text interaction, this self-​representation as a heterogeneous movement also appeals to the audience by virtually aligning the movement with any potential individual (from a believer to an atheist and from a right-​ wing to a left-​wing voter). Most segments of society can thus feel represented and participate in this ‘fight against indoctrination’. Along these lines, heterogeneity in self-​representation is a particularly interesting strategy in that it differs from traditional anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse, which appealed to a more restricted set of worldviews around political ideology, religion, and family (Pérez & Torres 2020).

Silencing children and teenagers (as learners) Access to voice is key to issues of power and representation in the news (Caldas-​Coulthard 1994) because it contributes to explicitly or implicitly evaluating actors, actions, circumstances, and, more broadly, social reality, at the same time that it constructs an event in a particular way. News texts reporting reactions against the DPSE show a clear pattern in silencing the voice of learners. Children and teenagers –​in their social role of learners –​are not only represented (by others) as defenceless victims, but also their own voices are usually excluded. While the voice of teachers is not very frequently introduced, the voices of learners are even less frequent. There are only two exceptions to the systematic exclusion of learners’ voices. The first one is a news text in which the demonstration against the DPSE is reported. It revolves around the views of “Don’t Touch my Children” about the guidebook image which has been accused of being pornographic. In this report, several images of the demonstration are shown. Small children holding banners such as “Down with this guidebook in schools” and “I learn about sexuality at home, at my own pace” appear in two images. The written report adds: (15) “I myself educate my son” and “Down with to this Sexuality Education guide” were the most recurrent chants uttered by this group in which there were several children.21 T2

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In (15) (small) children as social actors are represented as part of a collective –​the demonstrators against the guidebook. Their reported voices condemning the guide are represented by routinized verbal processes (chants, mottos, banners) that strategically represent parents and children under a unified voice. Despite the fact that the children’s voices are linguistically collectivized with those of adults, the images of small children holding the banners visually foreground them as social actors who stand out from the broader demonstration. The other text in which learners are voiced is a news report on a previous national survey by the ONG Ovejas Negras about LGBT+​learners and their experiences in school. After reporting that 81% of the 423 LGBT+​learners in the survey claim they feel insecure at school and that most of them feel afraid to tell their teachers about it, the news text adds: (16) Behind these figures are stories of discrimination. Felipe, who is a woman but dresses like a man, is an example. Tired of the teasing and the humiliation, he says that he does not ask to be called Felipe because he does not want to explain to everyone that he feels like a man: “I don’t want the school to discriminate against me every time they take attendance.” Other times those who harass are the teachers themselves. This happened to Benjamín. When she was Estefanía, the teacher humiliated her for how she dressed and wouldn’t let her hug her friends. She called her mother to complain because her daughter “dressed and acted like a boy,” she says.22 T11 Unlike (15), which represents learners as small children, in (16) learners are teenagers. Intertextually, their voices are introduced –​via the survey –​to contextualize the DPSE as a response to a broader problem: gender and sexuality discrimination in schools. Testimonies of two transgender adolescents are brought in to justify the need for Sexuality Education and potentially legitimize the guidebook. Negative meanings construe these transgender teenagers as victims (discrimination, teasing, humiliation, harassment) of both their peers and their teachers, but they are at the same time represented as agentive in their own gender transition. While school bullying, homophobia, and their negative impact on children and adolescents’ wellbeing is being documented locally (e.g., Gelpi & Montes de Oca 2020; Ovejas Negras 2016), these issues are not usually thematized in the news or even mentioned when debates over Gender and Sexuality Education are reported. Unlike example (16), news reports do not usually address the very sociopolitical, cultural, and economic conditions of these learners. By mostly reproducing discourses that represent learners as victims and, at the same time, excluding their voices and their stories, debates around educational media and Sexuality Education are usually framed by adult, cis-​, and heteronormative worldviews, morals, emotions, and rationalities, which do not capture the complex sociocultural realities of many local learners.

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CDA as local praxis: some final remarks In this chapter I have addressed the ideological struggle over Gender and Sexuality Education in Uruguay by attending to news discourse and how it thematizes reactions against the release of a teacher guidebook, fuelling a broader ideological dispute between conservative and progressive views of education and of gender and sexuality. News texts –​of different political and ideological alignments –​tend to overreport anti-​gender/​sexuality voices that delegitimize the guidebook, question Sexuality Education and, more implicitly, question gender/​sexuality rights. In so doing, these reports are constructed as ‘issues stories’ rather than ‘events’, allowing for a more interpersonal –​rather than ideational –​orientation to the story being reported. Evaluation is foregrounded (over information), but it is strategically left to external voices without compromising the voice of the journalist. In other words, ‘gossip’ (i.e., reactions against the DPSE) becomes foregrounded over the event itself (i.e., the release of the DPSE) (White 2003) to make news items more ‘scandalous’ or ‘spectacular’ to the audience. In so doing, news texts secure author-​audience solidarity because journalists’ own evaluations are not advanced; instead, the audience is left to make their own ideological readings of the reported voices (White 1998). To be sure, potential responsibility over the circulation and reproduction of anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse is blurred. On the contrary, the voices introduced in these reports do present explicit negative evaluations. In order to attack ‘gender ideology’, they systematically deploy strategies of victimization, self-​representation, and silencing that resonate with heteronormative and conservative moral panics around the traditional family and the role education and the State should (not) play. Since CDA praxis is not only about diagnosis but also prognosis (Wodak 2001) or generative critique (Macgilchrist 2016), we could ask ourselves: What role can CDA praxis play in these social processes? How can local critique open spaces for social transformation? Local research certainly faces a great challenge in contributing to Gender and Sexuality Education when the very notion of education as a form of political engagement is at stake. As an attempt to actively participate in this process, we –​members of the research group Núcleo de Análisis del Discurso en Sociedad –​have engaged in joint actions, such as collaborating with textbook authors and exploring the process of educational media design, working with school teachers on strategies to address gender and sexuality in the classroom and co-​designing lessons and tasks with them, participating in local gender and sexuality movements, and designing collaborative projects with activists to raise awareness of media texts and gender/​sexuality-​based discrimination. These steps, albeit small, represent great learning experiences for us and, at the same time, they open up spaces for collective ideological creativity for us to move from critical reading to productive activity (Kress 1996).

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Research tasks 1

2

Identify a recent polemic in education in your country (it may pertain to issues of gender and sexuality or to any other issue). Track how it circulated in local news over two weeks. What aspects of the polemic were foregrounded and backgrounded in news texts? Whose voices were included and excluded? How did they represent the polemic event? Reflect on what the answer to these questions might tell you about the way in which education is thematized in the media. Reflect on your own schooling process: What aspects of gender, sexuality, and heteronormativity were overtly addressed by the curriculum? Ask people of different ages about their own schooling process: Are their recollections similar or different from yours? What do these similarities and differences respond to? What do they tell you about official knowledge and the curriculum of schools?

Further reading Borba, R. (2022) ‘Enregistering “gender ideology”. The emergence and circulation of a transnational anti-​gender language’. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 11, 1: 57–​79. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​jls.21003.bor Pakula, Ł. (ed.) (2021) Linguistic Perspectives on Sexuality in Education: Representa­ tions, Constructions and Negotiations. Palgrave Macmillan. Sauntson, H. (2018) Language, Sexuality and Education. Cambridge.

Notes 1 The full text is available at www.anep.edu.uy/​15-​d/​propue​sta-​did-​ctica-​para-​el-​ abord​aje-​educ​aci-​n-​sex​ual-​en-​escue​las (8/​18/​2021). 2 A full list of the news texts can be found in the Appendix. 3 An analysis of the visual recontextualization of this image in the news is provided in Canale (2022, Chapter 5). 4 The task requires learners to reflect on physical proximity and contact by answering questions such as “When do we like being kissed/​tickled, etc? What can we do when we don´t?” 5 These groups do not self-​represent or identify themselves as “anti-​gender/​sexuality” but rather as “anti-​gender ideology”. 6 All emphases throughout the chapter are mine. 7 “Bianchi debatió ayer con Caggiani en canal 12 y dijo: “Estoy de acuerdo con Sturla en que se está violando la Constitución. La educación es responsabilidad de los padres. En la guía se viola la laicidad”. 8 “Hay en el texto elementos para sostener que la aspiración de fondo (…) pretende que la identidad de género e incluso la identidad sexual pueden ser también elecciones o imposiciones”, escribió Sarthou”. 9 “(Sturla) no midió sus palabras y se atrevió a afirmar que estas guías son típicas de “Estados totalitarios”.

CDA as local praxis  209 10 Según Bianchi, “se quiere imponer a los niños una ideología de género, donde los heterosexuales pasamos a ser una minoría discriminada”. 11 Bianchi estaría de acuerdo con la guía “siempre y cuando no esté atravesada por esta corriente ideológica de la política, que todo lo que es la homosexualidad, cambio de roles, es lo predominante, es como una discriminación al revés”, dijo. 12 Entre las principales recriminaciones, se le acusa de querer “imponer una ideología de género” según la cual “los heterosexuales pasan a ser una minoría discriminada”. 13 De acuerdo a Villar: “¿Quién me asegura a mí como padre que el docente tiene los mismos principios que yo? La guía está mal hecha. Pedimos que la guía se baje y se cambie. No se puede discriminar a la familia heterosexual, y nosotros nos sentimos discriminados”. 14 El Cardenal Daniel Sturla afirmó que el Estado busca imponer una ideología y que ello va en contra del artículo 41 de la Constitución que da a los padres el deber y derecho del cuidado y la educación de sus hijos. Algo que a su entender “es propio de estados totalitarios” pero que “no puede serlo de uno democrático. 15 De acuerdo con Sebastián Villar: “La guía plantea dejar de lado a los padres para que sea la educación pública la que genere ese vínculo con el niño. Yo estoy en contra de eso. Y como padre me siento invadido; ya no vamos a ser los padres los que les enseñemos eso tan íntimo a los niños. La ideología de género ha generado polémica en todo el mundo”. 16 Bajo la consigna “A mis hijos no los tocan” se realizará una protesta (…) pedirán que la guía sea retirada de circulación porque su implementación dejará “consecuencias devastadoras” en los menores”. 17 Sin embargo, el piscólogo y docente Alejandro De Barbieri puso en cuestión el hecho de que al ser menor y el ejercicio estar planteado por un adulto, al niño le puede “resultar difícil decir que no, que no le gusta eso”, según escribió en su cuenta de Twitter”. 18 En Voces, Sarthou escribió que este régimen lúdico resulta “más parecido a un correccional ideológico que a un ámbito educativo”. 19 “Muchas organizaciones, padres y personas estamos en contra” ya que las imágenes del libro “son explícitamente pornografía”, dice la convocatoria firmada por el pastor Sebastián Villar”. 20 “Villar aseguró que A mis hijos no los tocan se diferencia de otros grupos que están en contra de la guía “porque no tiene un fin político ni ninguna actividad religiosa detrás” “Acá tenemos ateos, macumberos, evangélicos, católicos, mormones; de todo”, señaló, y agregó que en sus filas también hay “frentistas, blancos, colorados, del Partido de la Gente y otros que son totalmente apolíticos”. 21 “A mi hijo lo educo yo” y “no a la guía de educación sexual” fueron las consignas más repetidas por el grupo que incluía a varios niños. 22 Detrás de estas cifras hay historias de discriminación. Un ejemplo es la de Felipe, que es mujer pero se viste como hombre. Harto de las burlas y de las humillaciones, cuenta que no pide que lo llamen Felipe porque no quiere explicarles a todos que se siente hombre: “No quiero que me discrimine medio liceo cada vez que pasan la lista”. Otras veces los que acosan son los propios docentes. Esto le sucedió a Benjamín. Cuando era Estefanía, la maestra la humillaba por cómo se vestía y no la dejaba abrazar a sus amigas. Llamaba a su mamá para rezongarla porque su hija “se vestía y actuaba como un nene”, cuenta.

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References Apple, M.W. (2019) ‘On doing critical policy analysis’. Educational Policy, 33(1): 276–​287. Apple, M. and Oliver, A. (2003) ‘Becoming right: Education and the formation of conservative movements’. In M. Apple (ed.) The State and the Politics of Knowledge. New York and London: Routledge Falmer. pp. 25–​50. Argueda Ramírez, G. (2020) ‘ “Gender Ideology”, catholic neointegrismo, and evangelic fundamentalism: the anti-​democratic vocation’. In S. Corrêa, (ed.) Anti-​Gender Politics in Latin America. Country case studies summaries. Rio de Janeiro: G&PAL, pp. 20–​33. Butler, J. (2019) ‘What threat? The campaign against “gender ideology”’. Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation, 3(1): 1–​12. Caetano, G. and Geymonat, R. (1997) La Secularización Uruguaya (1859–​ 1919): Catolicismo y La Privatización de lo Religioso. Montevideo: Santillana. Caldas-​Coulthard, C. (1994) ‘On reporting reporting: the representation of speech in factual and factional narratives’. In M. Coulthard (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 295–​308. Canale, G. (2022) A Multimodal and Ethnographic Approach to Textbook Discourse. London and New York: Routledge. Corrêa, S. (ed.) (2020) Anti-​Gender Politics in Latin America. Country Case Studies Summaries. Rio de Janeiro: G&PAL. De Sousa Santos, B. (2014) Si Dios Fuese un Activista de los Derechos Humanos. Madrid: Trotta. Economou, D. (2009) Photos in the News: Appraisal Analysis of Visual Semiosis and Verbal-​Visual Intersemiosis. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Sydney. https://​ses.libr​ary.usyd.edu.au/​han​dle/​2123/​5740 Fairclough, N. (1995a) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Harlow: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995b) Media Discourse. London: Hodder. Freire, P. (1994) Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Continuum. Gelpi, G.I. & Montes de Oca, D. (2020) ‘Heteronormatividad institucional en enseñanza media: la percepción de los adolescentes en Montevideo’. Athenea, 20(3): 1–​26. Giroux, H.A. and Penna, A.N. (1979) ‘Social education in the classroom: the dynamics of the hidden curriculum’. Theory and Research in Social Education, 7(1): 21–​42. Graff, A. and Korolczuk, E. (2022) Anti-​Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. London and New York: Routledge. Johnson, N., Rodríguez Gustá, A.L. and Sempol, D. (2020) ‘Claves para explicar avances y retrocesos en los derechos de las mujeres y las personas LGTB en Uruguay. Múltiples presiones, resistencias políticas e inercias estructurales’. In E. J. Friedman, F. Rossi and C. Tabbush (eds.) Género, Sexualidad e Izquierdas Latinoamericanas. El reclamo de derechos durante la marea rosa. CLASCO, pp. 71–​107. Kress, G. (1996) ‘Representational resources and the production of subjectivity: questions for the theoretical development of Critical Discourse Analysis in a multicultural society’. In C.R. Caldas-​Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds.) Texts and

CDA as local praxis  211 Practices. Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 15–​31. Kuhar, R. and Paternotte, D. (eds.) (2017) Anti-​ Gender Campaigns in Europe. Mobilizing against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Macgilchrist, F. (2016) ‘Fissures in the discourse-​scape: critique, rationality and validity in post-​foundational approaches to CDS’. Discourse & Society, 27(3), 262–​277. Mack, A.N. (2013) ‘Destabilizing science from the right: the rhetoric of heterosexual victimhood in the World Health Organization’s 2008 HIV/​ AIDS controversy’. Journal of Homosexuality, 60(8): 1160–​1184. Martinis, P. and Rodríguez Bissio, G. (2020) ‘Ofensiva conservadora y educación en Uruguay’. Revista Temas en Educação, 29(3): 155–​180. Oaten, A. (2014) ‘The cult of the victim: an analysis of the collective identity of the English Defence League’. Patterns of Prejudice, 48(4): 331–​349. Ovejas Negras (2016) Encuesta Nacional de Clima Escolar en Uruguay 2016. At: https://​ oveja​sneg​rasb​log.files.wordpr​ess.com/​2016/​12/​encue​sta-​nacio​nal-​de-​clima-​esco​lar-​ en-​urug​uay-​2016-​vers​ion-​final-​dic-​2016-​1.pdf Patternote, D. and Kuhar, R. (2017) ‘“Gender ideology” in movement: introduction’. In D. Patternote and R. Kuhar (eds.) Anti-​Gender Campaigns in Europe. Mobilizing against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 1–​22. Pérez, S.I. and Torres, G. (2020) ‘Discurso religioso: “Ideología de género” y grupos anti-​ género en América Latina’. In S. Chaher (ed.) Comunicación, Religión y Feminismo en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Comunicación para la Igualdad, pp. 22–​29. Rostagnol, S. (2010) ‘Disputas sobre el control de la sexualidad: activismo religioso conservador y dominación masculina’. In J.M. Vaggione (ed.) El ActivisimoRreligioso Conservador en Latinoamérica. Córdoba: Ferreyra, pp. 149–​170. van Dijk, T.A. (1992) ‘Discourse and the denial of racism’. Discourse & Society, 3(1): 87–​118. van Dijk, T.A. (2005) ‘Nuevo racismo y noticias. Un enfoque discursivo’. In M. Nash, R. Tello and N. Benach (eds.) Inmigración, Género y Espacios Urbanos. Los retos de la Diversidad. Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, pp. 33–​55. van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse as Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, P.R.R. (1998) Telling Media Tales: the News Story as Rhetoric. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Sydney. www.prrwh​ite.info/​prrwh​ite,%201​ 998,%20Tell​ing%20Me​dia%20Ta​les%20(unpu​blis​hed%20PhD).pdf White, P.R.R. (2003) ‘News as history: Your daily gossip’. In J.R. Martin & R. Wodak (eds.) Re/​reading the past. Critical and functional perspectives on time and value. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 61–​89. Wodak, R. (2001) ‘The discourse-​historical approach’. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, pp. 63–​94. Wodak, R. (2015) The Politics of Fear. What Right-​Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London and Los Angeles: Sage.

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Appendix: List of news texts T1: Marcha contra el “adoctrinamiento a la homosexualidad” de la Guía de Anep. (180.com) T2: “A mis hijos no los tocan”, marcha contra la guía de educación sexual (180.com) T3: El colectivo A mis hijos no los tocan planea juntar 30.000 firmas para que la “guía sexual” de Primaria salga de circulación (La Diaria) T4: Resistencias a la educación sexual en Uruguay (La Diaria) T5: Polémica entre Primaria, Sturla y oposición por Guía de educación sexual (Subarayado) T6: “A mis hijos no los tocan”: Grupo de padres afirma que guía sexual de Primaria los deja de lado y los cuestiona en su rol. (Teledoce) T7: Padres quieren cambios en la educación sexual (El País) T8: Enfoque de guía sexual escolar desata polémica (El País) T9: Cosquillas, besos y abrazos: las polémicas de la guía de educación sexual (El Observador) T10: Monseñor Sturla: Educación sexual es “típica de un estado totalitario” (La Red 21) T11: La sexualidad en el pupitre (El País) T12: Diputada Graciela Bianchi cita al Parlamento a autoridades de la enseñanza por Guía de Educación Sexual (La Red 21) T13: Las autoridades de Primaria explicaron el contenido de la polémica guía de Educación Sexual presentada en julio (Teledoce) T14: Guía de Educación Sexual. Bianchi cuestiona la actitud de la ANEP (El País)

Chapter 13

Disgusting politics Circuits of affects and the making of Bolsonaro 1 Rodrigo Borba

Introduction A foundational myth of contemporary Brazilianness is embodied by the figure of the ‘cordial man’ espoused by sociologist Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in his Roots of Brazil in 1936 (see Holanda 2012) as a heuristic to analyse aspects of social relations in the country.2 The flattering view of Brazilians as a cordial people has had a stronghold in the country’s image of itself. As is the fate of many academic concepts, however, Holanda’s notion took on a life of its own and has amassed contradictory interpretations which, notwithstanding their intricacies, have equally shaped individuals’ relation with the private and public spheres. On the one hand, Holanda’s view of cordiality underpins the commonsensical understanding of Brazil as a harmonious country whose people are wary of hierarchies and accepting of differences of all kinds. Such a perception is most notably epitomised by acritical views of carnival as the incarnation of the country’s free spirit (see, however, Borba and Milani 2019). On the other hand, in sync with Holanda’s keen analytical lens, the figure of the ‘cordial man’ [sic.] has been used by scholars to analyse the emotionally charged blurring of public and private spheres and its recalcitrance in political realms. The Latin root ‘cor’ means ‘heart’ and, thus, Holanda’s notion of cordiality can be geared to interpreting the core role of affect in the configuration of the public sphere. Otherwise stated, in Brazil (as, indeed, elsewhere), affect is the warp and weft of politics. This entanglement has been particularly salient in recent years. Since Dilma Rousseff, the first female president of the country, was re-​elected in 2014, the mainstream media, the judiciary, and Catholic and Evangelical congressmembers have worked to destroy the popularity of the Workers’ Party (PT), of which Ms. Rousseff is a member. The most frequent targets of these attacks have been progressive policies regarding gender and sexual orders. Sosa (2019) argues that misogyny, homophobia, and patriarchy have

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-13

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played a central role in the recent rightward turn of Brazilian politics, for which Ms. Rousseff’s removal from office in 2016 provided momentum.3 Her impeachment also threw the affective polarization of the country into sharper relief and made way, two years later, for the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an unabashedly homophobic far-​right populist. This chapter focuses on a hitherto understudied phenomenon, namely the socio-​semiotic dynamics that have crafted the affective niche within which Bolsonaro was able to thrive (see, however, Silva 2021). An obscure backbencher despite having been in Parliament for 30 years, he saw his popularity grow as a result of outlandish remarks he made about different constituencies throughout his career. His hatred of feminists, the LGTBIQ+​population, indigenous communities, and people of color has been blatantly expressed in a slew of public pronouncements (Brum 2018) and shaped his electoral campaign from the outset. In this scenario, it is no surprise that in his 2019 inauguration speech the far-​right politician ignored the material problems Brazil faces and, instead, picked the fight against ‘gender ideology’ as his main government platform. Space constraints prevent me from delving into the details of this concept (see Borba 2019). Suffice it to say that transnational anti-​gender campaigns in connection with the rise of the global right (Graff, Kapur, and Walters 2019) use the fear of an alleged ‘gender ideology’ in order to attach derogatory views onto progressive positions that are in favor of gender equity and sexual freedom. Thus, in contemporary Brazil (as elsewhere), anti-​gender and anti-​minority animus is at the centre of a political and discursive movement that has been (re)legitimating reactionary ideologies such as the nation, the traditional nuclear family, gender inequality, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. This ultraconservative turn became possible because Bolsonaro and his allies were successful in whipping up moral panics in which progressive ideas about sexuality and gender took center stage. For a moral panic to be effective it must trigger emotional reactions from the masses against its objects. This is often accomplished through a rhetoric of division which ends up fabricating existential threats (Milani 2020) and enemies the nation must eliminate (Borba 2019). The importance of affective states in contemporary political contexts testifies to the fact that politics is hardly about pure reasoning and argumentation (see Wodak 2021). In this sense, Brazilian philosopher Safatle (2018) explains that politicians mobilize affects, which, in turn, produce conflicting forms of belonging and become central to forging the support of different groups who come together not only because of their ideological allegiances but also, and perhaps most importantly, because of the affective attachments they build with the figure of their leader. In order to tackle these issues, I use Brazilian politics as my empirical material with a view to unraveling how the discourse used in different media has contributed to the making of Bolsonaro through the production of

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disgust and other ‘ugly feelings’ (Ngai 2005) towards sexual dissidents. To do so, I turn my analytical gaze to one of the most grotesque episodes in recent Brazilian politics, one which many analysts (see, for example, Pinheiro-​ Machado 2019; Avritzer 2019) suggest helped Bolsonaro achieve political momentum and notoriety, namely ex-​president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment hearing in the lower house of Parliament in April 2016. Aired live on TV, radio, and the Internet, the hearing served as the unofficial launching of the far-​right politician as a presidential candidate. During the voting session, Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo, then burlesque political figures, and Jean Wyllys, an award-​winning human rights activist and the only openly gay congressmember at the time, clashed because of their radically different political positions. I home in on the scene of Jean Wyllys spitting on Bolsonaro (and Eduardo spitting back on his father’s attacker). My main interest is in how Wyllys’ affective action circulated in different media and how its various recontextualizations helped forge indexicalities for his embodied response to Bolsonaro’s homophobia. Wyllys’ misdemeanor caused a commotion in the country and was recontextualized in several venues such as newspaper articles, memes, social media, op-​eds, and YouTube parodies, which are scrutinized here. The analyses investigate the intense circulation of Wyllys’ actions and how it responds to and takes issue with the larger affective scenario of the country, which is fraught with feelings of impotence towards the conservative backlash Bolsonaro’s election helped establish. I analyze the socio-​semiotic life of Wyllys’ spit by tracking its textual trajectories (Blommaert 2005) with a view to discussing the performativity of disgust (Ahmed 2014) and the forging of political (in)sensibilities with regards to gender and sexuality in contemporary Brazil.

Affective communicability As Leap (2018:2) explains, affect may be a crucial vector for understanding the relations between sexuality and discourse since “sexuality might be ‘named’ within a text but is just as likely to be indicated ‘between’ structures and feelings associated with textual practice or otherwise located ‘on the cusp’ of the textual display”. This position derives from queer theory’s well-​established focus on affect as constituted by and constitutive of sexual relations, identities, and meanings. Instead of focusing on allegedly noble or supposedly higher feelings as much of Western philosophy has done, several queer theorists have focused on what Ngai (2005) dubs ‘ugly feelings’, i.e., affects of disaffection that ensue from ambivalent situations of suspended agency such as those produced by social conflict and political antagonism but are, notwithstanding their pettiness, powerfully powerless. Ngai (2005:11–​12) states that ugly feelings can be described as:

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‘semantically’ negative, in the sense that they are saturated with socially stigmatizing meanings and values […]; and as ‘syntactically’ negative, in the sense that they are organized by trajectories of repulsion rather than attraction […] In the case of these explicitly agonistic emotions, […] the negativity [involves] processes of inversion, exclusion, and of course negation. It is these multiple levels of negativity that make […] ugly feelings so useful for conjoining predicaments from multiple registers –​showing how sociohistorical and ideological dilemmas, in particular, produce formal and representational ones. Supposedly negative feelings are theorized as framing the relationship of sexuality to agency (or lack thereof). As such, queer scholars have turned their attention to shame, paranoia, irritation, sadness, depression, failure, and disgust, among others (Ahmed 2014; Halperin and Traub 2010; Halberstam 2011). Nevertheless, although this strand of queer theorization has produced highly nuanced analysis of sexuality, it lacks a more solid empirical basis in order to problematize how individuals in their daily lives manage to engage affective (re)actions. To some extent, queer theory’s lack of empirical specificity derives from a definitional conundrum: affect seems to be one of those concepts that are difficult to contain within clear-​cut theoretical boundaries. This has opened two main avenues for queer analysis of affect. On the one hand, we find a performative approach advanced by Ahmed (2014) who focuses on how affect materializes denotationally as ‘pain’, ‘hate’, ‘disgust’, etc. Ahmed gives analytical precedence to how these feelings circulate through the social fabric. By following words such as ‘hate’, ‘fear’, ‘shame’, etc., as they get materialized in a host of texts, Ahmed concludes that the more these texts circulate, “the more affective they become” (Ahmed 2014:120). Although useful, this perspective is analytically limited when applied to my data in which a visceral reaction such as spitting is pivotal to describing the current state of democracy in Brazil. This constraint arises from the fact that Ahmed’s obsession with following words around in texts ends up disembodying affect (Wetherell 2012). On the other hand, another popular definition of affect in queer theory is that espoused by Massumi (2002) who understands it as an autonomous intensity that precedes linguistic rationalizations and is, thus, disconnected from semiotic orders. Massumi’s interest lies in how affect as intensity resonates and vibrates through and across individuals in non-​denotational ways. Although this perspective offers us a richly nuanced non-​representational analysis of the affective dimensions of sexuality, it poses a problem to sociolinguists and critical discourse analysists since affect, although utterly corporeal, is dragged out from the perimeter of discourse. The analyses I present below, however, seem to indicate that there are more similarities between these approaches than scholars of affect (and queer theorists for that matter) would like to admit (see also Glapka 2019, Milani

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2020). If it is to be of theoretical, political, and analytical value for critical discourse analysts, the differentiation between pre-​discursive and performative feelings should not be one of ‘either/​or’, as followers of distinct theoretical traditions struggle to maintain. Rather, it should be approached on a ‘more or less’ basis. From a critical discourse analytical standpoint, Glapka (2019: 603), for instance, proposes a synthetic framework for investigating the relations of affect, discourse, and power. According to her, the most productive path to “exploring affect discursively does not necessarily lead to theorizing detached from participants’ lived experience, neither does it defy the somatic aspects of feeling and subjectivity processes”. There is often some degree of articulation in even the most amorphous feelings and within the most cultivated emotions unnamed intensities will vibrate. I would like to propose the notion of affective communicability as a heuristic concept that may allow us to both track the circulation of denotational, sociolinguistically defined emotions and the resonation of affective intensities between bodies, subjectivities, and texts. Briggs (2005; 2011) discusses communicability as a phenomenon that allows us to describe how discourse moves around and, in its circulation, interpellates individuals through the ongoing production and reception of texts. In short, communicability is a textual process whereby “cultural forms enter into how we inhabit particular cultural [and affective] worlds” (2011:224). Central to the establishment of such discursive-​affective circuits are the dynamics of entextualization, decontextualization, and recontextualization through which texts (or bits and pieces of texts) are taken out of their original context of production and moved to others. Communicability is infectious, so to speak, due to the “ability of messages and ideologies in which they are embedded to find audiences and locate them socially and politically” (Briggs 2005:274) while at the same time projecting indexicalities onto the signs they help to get carried around. This view of discourse and meaning-​ making as constituted in and through the social circulation of messages and texts helps us see empirically that affect, however defined, does not simply vibrate/​resonate/​circulate, but is dependent on communicative processes and ideologies of communication that are structured by inequities of power and access to semiotic resources (see, in this, sense Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). Zoning in on the circulation of Wyllys’ spit in different media will allow me to track how a politics of disgust fueled by anti-​LGBTIQ+ and anti-​left animus became communicable in contemporary Brazil and, to a significant extent, forged the ideological grounds on which the election of a bigot as president became possible in the first place. In Brazil as elsewhere, Borba and Silva (2020) explain, such affective politics may have dangerous consequences for the scope and quality of democracy and the policies for the enfranchisement of certain vulnerable groups.

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Resentful straight men Between 2003 and 2016, during four governments of the Workers’ Party, the Brazilian LGBTIQ+​population and other vulnerable groups experienced unprecedented improvements regarding civil rights and access to places of power through public policies. Such policies include the creation of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality and Human Rights4, the criminalization of domestic violence and femicide, the implementation of “Brasil sem Homofobia” (Brazil without Homophobia) –​a nationwide programme to fight discrimination on grounds of sexual identification, the National Human Rights Plan, and the legalization of same sex marriage, among others. Corrêa (2018) expounds that the complex connections between the rightward leaning of Brazilian politics cannot be fully appreciated if these recent transformations in gender and sexual orders are not considered against the grain of entrenched layers of conservative discourses that had been dormant since the country’s re-​democratization in 1985 after 21 years of military dictatorship. These changes displeased part of the conservative middle classes. They also annoyed Catholic and Evangelical politicians and their constituencies, who dislike modifications in matters related to gender and sexuality. Bolsonaro spearheaded the conservative backlash. His inflammatory speeches against the empowerment of women and queer constituencies resounded vigorously to a faction of the society who felt they had lost certain privileges to people they abhorred. While in the United States, as Kimmel (2017) discusses, Trump’s victory was significantly helped by angry white men, Bolsonaro, to a significant extent, seems to have been elected by resentful straight men who disapprove of the social transformation Brazil had witnessed during the pink tide of Latin American politics in which progressive governments in the region strove to counter inequalities. For his electors, as Kalil’s (2018) survey suggests, Bolsonaro represents a lost ideal of ‘macho man’ masculinity they believed would put Brazil back on the moral track. This discourse of masculinity was repeatedly revived during the COVID-​19 pandemic and had deleterious effects for the country. For instance, Bolsonaro has described masks as ‘things for fairies’ (coisa de viado) and Brazil as a ‘country of faggots’ (país de maricas) who fear going into the streets because of nothing more than a little virus. Thus, the act of not wearing a mask in public is transformed into an index of masculinity. This kind of language mobilises what McIntosh (2020) calls semiotic callousing, a process in which not wearing a mask during the pandemic and then surviving it is seen as a masculine hardening of the nation. Not only does his election represent a change in ideology and government policies, but it also underlies a radical modification of what is politically doable and sayable in the public realm. Safatle (2018) explains that this is possible because radical political transformations do not simply change the order of discourse; they also refashion the circulation of affect which, in turn, produces political collectivities. A marked change in the circulation of

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political discourses and affects happened due to Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. In early 2016, charged for using money from national banks to cover budget shortfalls, Ms. Rousseff was the object of a parliamentary coup d’état, which was disguised as a legal impeachment process. As several analysts have noted (see, for example, Souza 2016; Miguel 2019), there was no legal basis for her removal since the budget maneuvers she made were common practice in office. In such a controversial scenario, according to Ortellado, Solano, and Moretto (2016:159), “one of the most dramatic consequences of the impeachment process […] is the social dichotomization [of the country] in two alleged opposing groups, not of adversaries, but of enemies”. Such dichotomization was highly visible on April 17, 2016, when the lower house of Parliament voted to start the impeachment proceedings. This voting session provided Bolsonaro with political momentum and acted as a harbinger of his election two years later. In the impeachment hearing, the political dichotomization of Brazilian society was embodied by the altercation between Jair Bolsonaro, his son Eduardo and Jean Wyllys. In an affectively charged congressional session5, every lawmaker in the lower house took the opportunity to make their allegiance to certain values explicit by prefacing their votes for or against Ms. Rousseff’s demotion with reasons to or not to impeach the first democratically elected female president of Brazil. As Table 13.1 demonstrates, the prefaces to Bolsonaro’s and Wyllys’ votes are representative of the political polarization the coup helped get sedimented6. Bolsonaro’s speech defies the lay interpretation of the figure of the cordial man advanced by Holanda (2012) that has shaped Brazil’s image of itself. Nonetheless, his words (and indeed the voting session as a whole) throws the interconnectedness of affect and politics into sharper relief. By prefacing his vote in favour of impeachment this way Bolsonaro harnessed the latent dissatisfaction of a faction of the population against precisely the groups Wyllys nominates. What is noteworthy here is how the far-​right politician skilfully frames his speech within neoconservative ideologies such as the patriarchal family, neoliberalism (referred to here as ‘freedom’), the ‘armed forces’ (represented by the homage to colonel Ustra, who tortured Dilma Rousseff while she was arrested for being part of a guerrilla group against the military dictatorship in Brazil), nationalism (‘Brazil above everything’), and religion (‘God above everyone’), which later became hallmarks of his electoral campaign. This voting session served as the unofficial launch of Bolsonaro as a presidential candidate. This is evidenced by the fact that it was the first time he publicly used the phrases that would later be fashioned as his campaign slogan, namely, “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” (see Silva, 2021). This is a particularly apt motto since it resounded not only locally (by whipping up nationalism and religion) but also transnationally (by associating Bolsonaro with the rise of the global right) due to its resemblance to Trump’s

220  Rodrigo Borba Table 13.1 Jair Bolsonaro and Jean Wyllys at the impeachment hearing Figure 13.1a

Figure 13.1b

For the family For the innocent kids in our classrooms

For the rights of the LGBT population For the black population annihilated in the peripheries Against communism For the artists For our freedom For the homeless people For the memory of colonel Carlos Brilhante For the landless people Ustra, Dilma Rousseff’s tormentor For our armed forces For Brazil above everything For God above everyone Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​TtLE​_​3ID​GPU&t=​151s

“Make America Great Again”, Orbán’s “Hungary first”, Kaczynski’s “There is only one Poland”, etc. As Graff, Kapur, and Walters (2019:551) highlight, “these calls for national revival and unity invariably include appeals to […] a sturdy masculinity, […] heterosexuality as the only acceptable norm […] and discipline”. Interestingly, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who stood just behind his father (wearing a light blue jacket), mouthed his parent’s words in unison, signalling to the rehearsed nature of their speeches as a strategy to mobilise latent conservative feelings which had been relatively supressed by the re-​ democratization of the country. As such, the Bolsonaros indirectly targeted Wyllys and his constituencies. In the boisterous plenary, fraught with resentful angry straight men, Wyllys was a dissonant voice. After casting his vote against the impeachment, he was directly harassed by Jair Bolsonaro who shouted various homophobic slurs (‘faggot’, ‘pansy’, ‘cocksucker’). Space constraints prevent me from dissecting the violent patriarchal discursive work performed by ‘tchau, querida’ during Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment (see, however, Sosa 2019). Suffice it to say that the grammatically feminine term ‘querida’ when addressed at Wyllys in this affectively charged context amasses homophobic overtones. At this juncture, the gay lawmaker was unable to hold his anger and spat on Bolsonaro (see, Figure 13.2). While Wyllys swiftly storms away from his nemesis, Eduardo spat on his back.

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Figure 13.2 Jean Wyllys spits at Jair Bolsonaro. Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​TtLE​_​3ID​GPU&t=​151s

The way the participants of this event account for their actions just after the voting session is noteworthy. Jean Wyllys says he spat on Bolsonaro as an instinctive reaction against his homophobic attacks (“of course I did it. He kept calling me queer, fag, fruit and things like that”). Bolsonaro, in turn, says he was a victim of ‘heterophobia’ and uses affective tropes to frame his account: first, he says there is a nasty smell on his car (even though this account was phone-​recorded a few hours after the episode); then, he explains Wyllys’ gut reaction as the outcome of mixed feelings the gay lawmaker supposedly has for him. According to Miller (1998), smell is central to triggering disgust reactions. Ahmed (2014:84), in turn, explains that disgust is “deeply ambivalent, involving desire for, and attraction towards, the very objects which are felt to be repellent”. This becomes clear in Bolsonaro’s lexical choices as he uses terms that revive the pathologization of homosexuality, suggesting that a psychiatrist may help his opponent overcome his unresolved feelings towards him. Jean Wyllys’ embodied affective response caused a commotion in the country and was recontextualized in several different venues such as news articles, memes, social media, blog posts, editorials, YouTube parodies, etc.7 Importantly, it was strategically used by the Bolsonaros and their supporters to stir hatred against Wyllys and, more broadly, the political left. In a way, the circulation of this event and its strategic use by the Brazilian far-​right served

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as a testing lab for the design of Bolsonaro’s successful 2018 election campaign. Capitalizing on the political use of fake news, which plagued the 2018 general election (Scarabelli 2019), Bolsonaro and his allies managed to establish disinformation orders (Bennett and Livinston 2018) in order to coopt vast numbers of voters from all walks of life (including LGBTIQ+​citizens). Analyzing these re-​ entextualizations may help us understand how Wyllys’ spit responds to and takes issue with the larger affective scenario of the country at the time. As we will see shortly, this event seems to have set in motion the forging of a more pervasive politics of disgust towards the figures Jean Wyllys represents (namely the LGBTIQ+​population, left-​wingers, people of colour, etc.) and which was pivotal for the rise of Bolsonaro and his reactionary worldviews. This was made possible by the way the circulation of this event in different media traced alternative circuits of discourse and affects, which, ultimately, have been reconfiguring the scope of what is politically doable and sayable in the Brazilian public sphere in recent years.

Circuits of disgust and the making of Bolsonaro In the days following the impeachment hearing, both Eduardo Bolsonaro and Jean Wyllys posted their conflicting interpretations of the spit. These posts helped forge two different but overlapping affective communicable trajectories, which I attempt to trace in this section. On the one hand, Wyllys is framed as a cold calculating heterophobic who premeditated his actions. On the other, the spit is explained in terms of a spontaneous act –​a gut reaction motivated by Bolsonaro’s homophobic attacks. Figure 13.3 illustrates Jean Wyllys’ account on his Facebook page. In this post, Wyllys takes responsibility for his act and frames his misdemeanor as an instinctive reaction motivated by Jair Bolsonaro’s parliamentary behaviour towards the ideologies, values, and constituencies the gay activist represents. Wyllys reiterated the same rationalization in an interview8 aired online a few days later in which he gives more details about the toxic ambience of the voting session and, particularly, about how the Bolsonaros had, for years, harassed him because of his sexuality and political affiliation. Wyllys concedes that this scenario led him to the brink of a breakdown which the spit epitomizes. In the interview, the lawmaker frames his spitting as a quasi-​automatic reaction against Bolsonaro’s homophobic and unrepublican offences. Although he does not denotationally name the affect that underlaid his behavior, the way he positions his body, hands, and face seems to suggest the spit resulted from his disgust towards Bolsonaro and what he stands for. Figure 13.4 illustrates the intensity that vibrated through Wyllys’ body at that moment, which is embodied by the movement of his hands briskly sliding upwards from his stomach to his mouth as if indicating the urgent need to thrust something out from within.

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Figure 13.3 Jean Wyllys’ account on Facebook. Source: Publicly available on http://​faceb​ook.com/​jean.wyl​lys/​pho​tos/​a.2013​4099​6580​582/​ 10735​9419​6021​920/​?type=​3&p=​750. Translated from Portuguese into English by the author.

Wyllys’ gestures metaphorically ‘work as a form of vomiting’ which, in hindsight, indexes his “attempt to expel something whose proximity [was] felt to be threatening” (Ahmed 2014:94). As such, spitting, Wyllys argues, was a ‘spontaneous reaction’ to Jair Bolsonaro’s homophobic provocations. In the post and the interview, the gay congressmember reiterates that Bolsonaro metaphorically spits on democracy and human rights, so his reaction was a way to literally challenge the evil he represents. Wyllys’ accounts provided tropes that were repeatedly used by his supporters who framed his action as the result of a history of contact in which human rights and homosexuality have been transformed as the main problems of Brazilian society. Although Wyllys’ behaviour at the voting session is not to be praised, the larger political context and his conflicting relations to Jair Bolsonaro cumulatively led to this episode. Like other ugly feelings such as hate and anger, disgust is, Ahmed (2014) argues, immediate and urgent. In the case of disgust, no premeditation is involved since the disgusting object tends to provoke gut reactions at the moment of contact. Eduardo Bolsonaro, however, did not take this explanation lightly and posted a video on his Facebook page that challenged Wyllys’ framing of his

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Figure 13.4 Jean Wyllys’ embodied reaction. Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​xeDV​rSJc​zYQ

spit as an impulsive reaction. This video illustrates how discourse has become a central aspect for the construction of Jair Bolsonaro’s political image through two main strategies that capitalize on affective dimensions in order to control people’s first impression of events: the repurposing of discourses and the invention of facts. In Eduardo’s video this is done by (1) creating a differentiation between LGBTIQ+​activism, which for him is dangerous, and the well-​behaved gay citizen who pays his taxes (but accepts oppressive sexual orders); (2) by framing Wyllys’ spit as premeditated through editing the video of the impeachment session to alter the order of the events; and (3) by manipulating Wyllys’ words by adding subtitles, as extract 1 and Figure 13.5 demonstrate. Boldface indicates particularly important parts for the discussion at hand. Extract 1 How are you guys? Today is 18th of April 2016, the day after the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives. Today the left-​wing is crying

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Figure 13.5 Fake subtitles. Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​xqdl​LtzD​cXU

and the workers are smiling. […] Guys, I`m here to talk about Jean Wyllys spitting on Jair Bolsonaro. I have to start off by expressing my concern about not mixing things up. I don`t want to generalize homosexuals. Here I`m going to talk about congressman Jean Wyllys. I know that the LGBT movement and gay activism is one thing. The homosexual who is normal and who pays their taxes has nothing to do with this activism. […] Yesterday I heard a lot of things I didn`t like […] However, I didn`t spit on anyone. That`s not how a congressmember should behave. Thankfully everything was recorded, not only by the press but also in the video that I`ll show right now [see Figure 13.5]. Did you see that, guys? Can we say that they represent the black people? Do they represent the homosexuals, the Northeastern population, the poor people? […] That`s just their hate speech. It`s Karl Marx’s speech about dividing to conquer […] (Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​xqdl​LtzD​cXU. Translated from Portuguese in English by the author) While Wyllys directly expresses his disgust towards the Bolsonaros through spitting, his far-​right opponents use his misdemeanor to strategically canvass the support of the population against Wyllys through similar affective tropes. Eduardo Bolsonaro’s post contributes to the affective communicable

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trajectory that constructs Wyllys as an immoral violent homosexual. This is accomplished by the fabrication of two facts through the discursive strategies I mentioned earlier: (1) Eduardo says that he also heard many things he did not like, but this did not give him reason to spit on anyone (however, he did spit on Wyllys) and (2) the use of future verb tenses in the subtitles inverts the order of events in time and implies that Wyllys had premeditated spitting on his father. The added subtitles suggest that Wyllys’ actions were planned (thus a product of rational thought and malice). This, of course, erases the history of animosity the homosexual lawmaker had been facing in Parliament and ignores Wyllys’ own explanation of the facts. As such, the Bolsonaros attempted to control possible entextualizations of the scene. By framing Wyllys’ action as planned and by erasing the fact that he also spat on his opponent, Eduardo managed to accomplish two things with this video. First, he poses himself and his father as victims of Wyllys’ vile actions (and by extension of LGBTIQ+​activists as a whole). Second, he frames his fellow congressmember as immoral due to the fact he had supposedly planned to spit on his father beforehand. As Miller (1998) explains, disgust can be strategically used against things and people who transgress the social order so as to keep it intact by expelling the disgusting objects. Although disgust is not named in these texts (only appearing as an unnamed intensity on the cusp of the textual display, as Leap 2018 would put it) it is indexically alluded to by the creation of dichotomies. As several analysts have recently noted, the Bolsonaros and their acolytes whip up a host of reactive feelings (such as anger, hate, resentment, fear, and disgust), which polarize society as a result of their affective attachment to or distance from the ideologies they espouse (Abranches 2019). Such affective polarization simplifies the social field by splitting it into good and bad, sacred and profane, family values and indecency, good citizens and bandits. This is done by reducing the complexity of the social field to stereotypes –​a discursive move that ends up activating ‘ugly feelings’ towards those who are constructed as ideologically different from them. However, the Bolsonaros’ polarization strategy is attributed to Wyllys and, more broadly, to the political left when Eduardo misquotes Karl Marx. As he affirms, “it is THEIR hate speech; it’s Karl Marx’s speech: dividing to conquer”. Despite the footage that contradicts Eduardo’s malicious re-​ contextualization of the events, the view that Wyllys had premeditated his spit had some traction. The gay activist was subjected to the Ethics Committee of the Lower House, which was asked to impose a sanction on Wyllys’ parliamentary duties. However, Eduardo, who also spat on his opponent, left the imbroglio unscathed: no punishment was perpetrated against him, since, according to his lawyers, he spat on Wyllys to protect his father’s honour. Several months later, the Bolsonaros’ strategic recontextualization of the scene was debunked by police lipreading experts who demonstrated the

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subtitles were misleading: the verbs used by Wyllys were in the simple past (not in the future as in Eduardo’s subtitles). The dialogue shown in the video was proved to have happened after Wyllys spat on his tormentor, debunking interpretations of his actions as premeditated. Although the Bolsonaros’ re-​contextualization of Wyllys’ misdemeanor was proved false, public opinion had already been shaped. Right-​wing journalists and bloggers framed Bolsonaro as the winner in a battle. This can be seen in several articles, memes, and YouTube parodies such as the one shown in Figure 13.6, which pictures Jair Bolsonaro and Jean Wyllys as characters in a videogame fight9. Resemiotizing the famous Mortal Combat franchise, in which human and humanoid avatars duel to death, this parody redesigns the character Reptile, whose power is to cast a poisonous spit towards its opponents, as Jean Wyllys. Immediately after spitting, Wyllys’ avatar turns into a deer, dances to the beat of Gloria Gaynor’s “I’ll Survive”, and prances away, as Figure 13.7 illustrates. This video is fraught with affectively polarizing indexes. First, Jean Wyllys’ avatar is named CUSPILIAN (i.e., a portmanteau of spit/​cuspir and villain) while Bolsonaro’s is called MITOSUNG –​the far-​right representative has been nicknamed as ‘mito’ (i.e., myth) by his followers, which

Figure 13.6 Jair Bolsonaro’s and Jean Wyllys’ videogame avatars. Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​I2gh​RGwH​dZA

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Figure 13.7 Jean Wyllys’ avatar turns into a deer. Source: Publicly available on www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​I2gh​RGwH​dZA

indicates that for them he represents a mythological hero who would free Brazil from ideologies and practices established in previous progressive governments. Second, Cuspilian wears green, a colour that is indexically linked to ugly feelings such as disgust or envy, which portrays Jean Wyllys not only as disgusted by Bolsonaro but also as a source of disgust or as a disgusting object in Ahmed’s (2014) jargon. Thirdly, after spitting, Wyllys’ avatar turns into a deer and runs away –​in Brazilian Portuguese ‘viado’ (deer) is a popular homophobic slur similar to faggot in English. Hence, this video intertextually contributes to the circulation of negative feelings by attaching them to Jean Wyllys and, as an extension, to the constituencies he represents. Self-​proclaimed philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, who is believed to be the intellectual guru of the Brazilian far-​right, also made his contribution to the communicable trajectory of disgust and disinformation into Brazilian politics. In a series of posts to his 700,000 Twitter followers he not only spreads scientifically wrong information about the transmission of HIV, but also revives discourses that were common in the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in Brazil, as shown in Figure 13.8.

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Figure 13.8 Olavo de Carvalho’s Twitter thread. Source: Publicly available on https://​twit​ter.com/​odec​arva​lho/​sta​tus/​722​4521​5915​4036​736

Translation 4) to check whether his saliva transmits the AIDS virus 3) @DepBolsonaro must file a request to force lawmaker @jeanwyllys to undergo medical examination 2) But, as a possible presidential candidate, he does not have the right to expose himself to grave illness 1) If @DepBolsonaro doesn`t want to sue the runaway spitter, he has this right Whereas fear and hate towards gay men were central in discourses about HIV/​AIDS in the early stages of the outbreak in the United States, Pelúcio and Miskolci (2009) explain that in Brazil disgust was (and to some extent still is) the affective reaction most commonly associated with the disease. The suggestion that Wyllys has AIDS and the misrepresentation of how the infection is transmitted thus reawaken this history in which gay men were constructed as disgusting objects due to their immoral sexuality. Once in office, Bolsonaro has repeatedly revived this disgusting trope towards seropositivity. For instance, in October 2021, he claimed that some citizens who

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had had two shots of the COVID-​19 vaccine had developed AIDS, spreading fake news to support his staunch anti-​vax stance. So far, my analysis has highlighted how the Brazilian far-​ right has appropriated disgust through its indexical construction ‘on the cusp of the textual display’ to perpetuate homophobia. This is in fact one of the dimensions of disgust in politics as described by Miller (1998) and Ngai (2005). These authors, however, also believe that such ugly feeling can be used by the political left who should not suppress its disgust especially toward unrepublican and undemocratic discourses and actions. Indeed, Wyllys’ spit might be seen as an embodied affective political reaction against the incendiary ideologies Bolsonaro stands for and which were becoming normalized in Brazilian society at the time of the impeachment hearing. Nonetheless, the use of disgust by the political left misfired and was turned against itself only to reinforce the affective polarization of society. A case in point is the way José de Abreu, a left-​wing activist and prominent actor in Brazil, appropriated Wyllys’ display of disgust. While having dinner at a restaurant in São Paulo, Abreu spat on a couple who had been calling him a communist troublemaker. Clearly drunk, he spat on the man and the woman. A restaurant-​goer phone-​recorded the scene, which quickly went viral. Quite unsurprisingly, Abreu’s spit was taken as an opportunity to further entrench Wyllys’ public image, and by extension LGTBIQ+ constituencies and the political left, as disgusting and dangerous. Online and print newspaper articles served as nodal points in this intertextual affectively loaded communicable trajectory by explicitly linking Abreu’s actions to Wyllys’ (“Little monkey sees. Little monkey does” highlights the headline in Figure 13.9) and framing both of them as disgusting (by the use of the interjection ‘Yuck!’ as shown by the headline in Figure 13.10). As I have tried to show, the clash between the Bolsonaros and Jean Wyllys followed two distinct affective communicable trajectories. On the one hand, the gay lawmaker is portrayed as the victim of homophobia against which he instinctively reacted by spitting on his tormentor. On the other, the Bolsonaros are framed as victims of Wyllys’ immoral character. While both communicable trajectories interpellated different constituencies, the one which frames the Bolsonaros as victims had some concrete effects. Right after the event under scrutiny here, Jean Wyllys started receiving death threats, which intensified during the 2018 general elections. As soon as Jair Bolsonaro took office, fearing for his life the gay lawmaker relinquished his congressional duties (he had been re-​elected for the second time in a row) and left the country in self-​ imposed exile.10

Final remarks More factors than I could possibly address have contributed to Jair Bolsonaro’s election and the rise of violent far-​right ideologies in Brazil. However, the

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Figure 13.9 “Little monkey sees, little monkey does.” Source: Publicly available on https://​senso​inco​mum.org/​2016/​04/​23/​jose-​de-​abreu-​cospe-​em-​ inoce​nte-​mac​aqui​nho-​ve-​mac​aqui​nho-​faz/​. Translated by the author

Figure 13.10 Yuck! Source: Publicly available on https://​veja.abril.com.br/​col​una/​fel​ipe-​moura-​bra​sil/​video-​ator-​ peti​sta-​jose-​de-​abreu-​cospe-​em-​casal-​apos-​discus​sao-​em-​rest​aura​nte-​eca/​. Translated by the author

strengthening of homophobia through the instantiation of a politics of disgust has certainly had its toll and will have enduring consequences. The affective communicable trajectory of Jean Wyllys’ spit was perhaps the beginning of a discursive process which has been widening the scope of what is acceptably doable and sayable in the political realm in Brazil and underpins the shameless normalization (Wodak 2021) of unrepublican and undemocratic discourses and actions. This normalization has become clearer since Bolsonaro launched his presidential campaign in 2018. As difficult as it might be to suggest causation in this instance, a survey by the investigative journalism company Agência Pública shows that there were 70 cases of symbolic and/​or physical assaults against women, queers, and left-​wingers in the first 10 days of the electoral campaign.11 In sixty-​four of these cases the perpetrators supported Bolsonaro. More recently, scholars and activists have shown concern about the increasing numbers of reported violent attacks against LGBTIQ+​individuals and the challenges they face under the far-​right politician (Quinalha

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2019). This testifies to the fact that several of his followers are motivated by anti-​LGTBIQ+​animus and disgust towards the enfranchisement of sexual minorities the Brazilian population witnessed in recent years. What my analysis suggests is that the rise of Bolsonaro from the margins of the political establishment to the presidency of the country has helped shape larger affective discourses which are tantamount to understanding the re-​entrenchment of homophobia in Brazil (and elsewhere). In this process, turning disgust into a communicable feeling in the public realm has been central in forging political insensibilities regarding sexual dissidence. One of the outcomes of this communicable intertextual web is mass affective production (Massumi 2010), which results in social polarization and the symbolic and material exclusion of sexual dissidents. Due to their global proportions (Graff, Kapur, and Walters 2019), these dynamics are tough to combat, but academics and activists must be tenacious in investigating their semiotic infrastructure so that we may help more republican, democratic, and cordial affects resume circulating.

Research task 1

At the outset of this chapter, the author argues that ‘affect is the warp ad weft of politics’. This stance is also central to the processes Ruth Wodak (2021) refers to as the ‘shameless normalization’ of far-​right discourses. Having this in mind, choose speeches by two politicians from different ideological positions and identify which affects are mobilized. Which words carry affective meanings? Which metaphors and other figures of speech are used to affect the audience?

Notes 1 This chapter is a slightly modified and updated version of a paper originally published in Social Semiotics (Borba 2021). I am grateful for Taylor & Francis for permitting its publication in this book. 2 I am grateful to the editors of this book, to my colleagues and students in the Núcleo de Estudos sobre Discursos e Sociedade (NUDES) at UFRJ, and to the audiences at the 26 Lavender Languages and Linguistics in Gothemburg and the VI Simpósio Internacional de Estudos Linguísticos e Literários in Uberaba for the insightful comments to previous versions of this chapter. Any remaining weaknesses are my responsibility. 3 Ms. Rousseff was impeached under allegations of misusing public money. Her involvement in such crimes has never been proved, which leads scholars and activists to interpret her demotion as a kind of soft coup d’etat (Pinheiro-​Machado 2019). 4 This was turned into the Ministry of the Family, Women and Human Rights and was led by an Evangelical preacher, Damares Alves. When Alves took office, she happily announced that “a new era has begun in which boys will wear blue and girls will wear pink”.

Disgusting politics  233 5 Available at www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​TtLE​_​3ID​GPU. 6 The data are originally in Brazilian Portuguese. Due to space constraints, however, in this chapter I only present their translation into English. The author has exhausted all attempts to reach out to the copyright holder but had no response. As all data use in this chapter are publicly available on the Internet; they are presented here under fair use. 7 Thanks are due to Douglas Knupp Sanque for helping me track these data. 8 Available ate www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​ynwB​rMgM​vWo. 9 Available at www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​aXJo​caje​bUw. 10 A few minutes after Wyllys announced he had left the country, Jair Bolsonaro celebrated his exile in a tweet. 11 Available at https://​apubl​ica.org/​2018/​11/​violen​cia-​eleito​ral-​recr​udes​ceu-​no-​segu​ ndo-​turno/​.

References Abranches, S. (2019) ‘Polarização radicalizada e ruptura eleitoral’. In S. Abranches, R. de Almeida e A. Alonso (eds.) Democracia em Risco? 22 Ensaios sobre o Brasil Hoje, 11–​34. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Ahmed, S. (2014) The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Avritzer, L. (2019) O Pêndulo da Democracia. São Paulo: Todavia. Bennet, W. L. and S. Livinston (2018) ‘The disinformation order: disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions’. European Journal of Communication 33(2):122–​139. Blommaert, J. (2005) Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borba, R. (2019) ‘Gendered politics of enmity: language ideologies and social polarisation in Brazil’. Gender and Language 13(4):423–​448. Borba, R. (2021) ‘Disgusting politics: circuits of affect and the making of Bolsonaro’. Social Semiotics 31(5): 677–​694. Borba, R. and Milani, T. M. (2019) ‘Colonial intertexts: discourses, bodies, and stranger fetishism in the Brazilian media’. Discourse, Context and Media 30:100290. Borba, R. and Silva, D. (2020) ‘Swings and scales of democracy: the ‘transgender epidemic’ and resistance to antigenderism. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 59(3): 1916–​1945. Briggs, C. (2005) ‘Communicability, racial discourse, and disease’. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:269–​291. Briggs, C. (2011) ‘On virtual epidemics and the mediatization of public health’. Language and Communication 31:217–​228. Brum, E. (2018) ‘How a homophobic, misogynist, racist ‘thing’ could be Brazil’s next President’. The Guardian, October 6. At: https://​tiny​url.com/​ycog2​wy4 Buarque de Holanda, S. (2012) Roots of Brazil. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Chouliaraki, L. and Fairclough, N. (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

234  Rodrigo Borba Corrêa, S. (2018) ‘Brazilian presidential election: a perfect catastrophe?’. London School of Economics and Political Science. At: https://​tiny​url.com/​vv4a​8ke Glapka, E. (2019) Critical affect studies: on applying Discourse Analysis in research on affect, body and power’. Discourse and Society 30(6):600–​621. Graff, A, Kapur, R. and Walters, S. D. (2019) ‘Introduction: gender and the rise of the global right’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44(3):541–​560. Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press. Halperin, D. and Traub, V. (eds) (2010) Gay Shame. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Kalil, I. (2018) ‘Who are Jair Bolsonaro’s voters and what do they believe’. São Paulo: Editorial Office. At: https://​tiny​url.com/​rb37​xeo Kimmel, M. (2017) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Bold Type Books. Leap, W. (2018) ‘Language/​sexuality/​affect’. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7(1):1–​4. Massumi, B. (2002) Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press. Massumi, B. (2010) ‘The future birth of the affective fact: the political ontology of threat’. In M. Gregg and G. J. Seigworth (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 52–​70. McIntosh, J. (2020) ‘Crybabies and snowflakes’. In J. McIntosh and N. Mendoza-​ Denton (eds.) Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 74–​87 Miguel, L. F. (2019) Democracia e Resistência. São Paulo: Boitempo. Milani, T. M. (2020) ‘No-​go zones in Sweden: the infectious communicability of evil’. Language, Culture and Society 2(2): 7–​39. Miller, W. (1998) The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ngai, S. (2005) Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ortellado, P., Solano, E. and Moretto, M. (2016) ‘Uma sociedade polarizada?’In I. Jinkings, K. Doria and M. Cleto (eds.) Por que Gritamos Golpe. São Paulo: Boitempo, pp.159–​164. Pelúcio, L. and Miskolci, R. (2009) ‘A prevenção do desvio: o dispositivo da Aids e a repatologização das sexualidades dissidentes’. Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad 1(1):125–​157. Pinheiro-​Machado, R. (2019) Amanhã Vai Ser Maior: O que aconteceu com o Brasil e Possíveis Rotas de Fuga para a Crise Atual. São Paulo: Planeta. Quinalha, R. (2019) ‘Desafios para a comunidade e o movimento LGBT no governo Bolsonaro’. In S. Abranches, R. Almeida, A. Alonso, C. Barros, M. Domingues, C. Dunker and B. Fausto Democracia em Risco?. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, pp. 256–​273. Safatle, V. (2018) Circuito dos Afetos. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica. Scarabelli, A. C. (2019) ‘How did fakenews run voters’ opinions in the Brazilian elections?’ Diggit Magazine, February 2nd. AT: https://​tiny​url.com/​wxve​ww9 Silva, D. (2021) ‘Enregistering the nation: Bolsonaro’s populist branding of Brazil’. In Theodoropoulou, I. and Woydack, J. (eds.) Research Companion to Language and Country Branding. London: Routledge, pp. 21–​49. Sosa, J. (2019) ‘Subversive, mother, killjoy: sexism against Dilma Rousseff and the social imaginary of Brazil’s rightward turn’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44(3):717–​741.

Disgusting politics  235 Souza, J. (2016) Radiografia do Golpe. Rio de Janeiro: Leya. Wetherell, M. (2012) Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. London: SAGE. Wodak, R. (2021) The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-​Right Discourses. London: Sage.

Chapter 14

Ageism, sexism, and semiotic representation Carmen Rosa Caldas-​C oulthard

Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’1

Introduction When we edited the first edition of Texts and Practices in the mid-​90s, our critical concerns pointed to discrimination, exclusion, and injustice in many different social practices and institutions. We viewed language as a form of social practice, and we were concerned with systematically investigating hidden power relations and ideologies embedded in discourse and its material consequences. Sexism was certainly on our agenda. Feminist linguistics, already in its second wave, showed through linguistic research how women were excluded from texts and were talked about in stereotypical ways. At that time, however, none of our linguistic investigations addressed the question of ageism. As I became older, and started to feel the effects of ageing, I realized that ageism is an ideology and practice much more resistant to change and has a profound effect on how people are valued in societies. However, this important topic continues to be rarely addressed within critical discourse analysis and gender studies, a surprising omission since ageing in general has been much discussed in other areas, including sociology and psychology (e.g., Garner and Mercer 2001; Coupland, Coupland and Giles 1991; Coupland and Coupland 1993), cultural studies (e.g., Greer 1991; Featherstone and Wernick 1995; Woodward 1995; Gullette 1997; Twigg 2013), as well as in gerontology (e.g., Twigg and Martin 2015) and ageing studies (e.g., Journal of Aging Studies and the journal Women and Aging). It is therefore sadly predictable through the continuing neglect of the topic that in Chapter 41 of the recent Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis (2018), there is not a single chapter that explores the intersection between discourse and age. DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-14

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In order to understand and identify age-related stereotyping and the associated issues of gender/​age, sexism/​ageism against women, I will examine, in this chapter, public multimodal representations of age in media reports and institutional texts through the lenses of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. This approach to data postulates that different semiotic resources can be used in the recontextualization of social practices for ideological purposes. Multimodal analysis can be best aligned with the core aims of critical discourse studies: to make representations of reality and discrimination visible through the analysis of semiotic modes. I will also use the tools of Corpus Linguistics and Appraisal Theory to investigate written texts. I understand that ‘discourse’ is the process and that the material product is the situated creation of meaning through the use of many semiotic resources (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2021). My hypothesis is that lifestyle procedural and descriptive discourses legitimate the contemporary bias against older women, and the immediate consequence of this is to give undue prominence to the values of youth. These are naturalised and deeply embedded in practices of exclusion and discrimination. I will discuss how texts and images can produce classificatory and therefore evaluative effects that influence attitudes in relation to the female body and ageing. I will be drawing on images from the internet (Google search), corpus data, media texts, and interviews to discuss visual representations, lexical/​ textual labelling, and their intermodal relations. My analysis tries to integrate the many forms of meaning-making, but without assuming the superiority of one over other semiotic resources. The semiotic choices discussed here in representations of older women in images and text (re)produce intersectional stereotypes of gender and age, which ultimately contribute to invisibility, marginalisation, trivialization, and ridicule. The conclusions point to how the ageing female body is represented in ambivalent discourses (negative and positive evaluations). In postfeminist times, ageist and sexist ideologies are powerfully yet covertly present and normalised in public discourses.

Ageism Ageism is stereotyping and discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. It is a combination of connected elements: • •

discriminatory practices against older people; institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people.

Ageism, as a semiotic regime or the ways in which semiotic practices are regulated in specific contexts, is expressed in conflicting discourses: in formal and informal interactions, in urban spaces, in the media, (TV/​magazine ads),

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in beauty brand communication and in personal narratives (where people express their different views on getting old). Ageism frequently intersects and interacts with other forms of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination, including sexism, racism, and ableism (prejudice against the disabled). Like gender, sexism, ethnicity, and racism, ageing is politicized, but unlike gender/​ sexism, ethnicity/​racism ageism is also institutionalized. According to the World Health Organization’s Global Report on Ageism (2021: xv) “institutional ageism refers to the laws, rules, social norms, policies and practices of institutions that unfairly restrict opportunities and systematically disadvantage individuals because of their age. Multiple intersecting forms of bias compound disadvantage and make the effects of ageism on individuals’ health and well-​being even worse”. The term ageism was coined in 1969 by Robert Butler, an American gerontologist. While the concept of ageism is relatively new, its practices have existed for centuries, so much so that not all languages have a specific word for it. In Portuguese, for instance, newly coined words ‘idadismo’ and ‘etarismo’ (both meaning ‘ageism) are now used to refer to this social phenomenon. Therefore, it is a challenge to raise consciousness about it. As the Global Report on Ageism notes, this ideology is present in many institutions and sectors of society, including social care, the workplace, the media, and legal systems; globally, one person in two is ageist against older people. Ageism also has serious consequences for people’s well-​being and health. It reduces older people’s quality of life and produces isolation and loneliness. It restricts their ability to express their sexuality and can result in abuse and even violence against older people.

Ageing When we interact with people, we immediately categorize them in terms of their age. Such categorization is handled by the concept of membership categorization device proposed by Sacks (1972) –​you can be a child, an adolescent, an adult, or an old person. Like other membership categories (gender and race), age is used to divide and disadvantage people, causing injustice and division. Fundamentally, everyone can be affected by ageism and discourses of ageism intersect with other forms of discrimination, as discussed below. The master narrative of human ageing in western culture (Caldas-​ Coulthard, 2010) is biomedical and the biomedical modes of ageing are essentially a reductionist model of decline, according to Mike Hepworth (2003) in his article ‘Ageing Bodies: Aged by Culture’. Woody Allen, in an interview in Cannes, France2 gave his opinion: I find it a lousy deal. There’s no advantage in getting older. I’m 74 now. You don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t get kindlier. Nothing good happens. Your back hurts more. You get

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more indigestion. Your eyesight isn’t as good. You need a hearing aid. It’s a bad business getting older, and I would advise you not to do it. But my relationship with death remains the same. I am very strongly against it. Hepworth (2003:89) nevertheless suggests that arguments for the essentially natural or biomedical association of ageing with inevitable decline are widely contested by sociologists of ageing and the body. In proposing an alternative conceptualisation of decline, they do not deny that ageing is a process of biological change, rather they want “to draw attention to the social and personal implications of the ways in which the meanings of biological change as decline are culturally constructed and interpreted through discourse” (ibid). The consciousness of growing older in a society that associates ageing with decline generates anxiety. Ageing is at once a universal, diverse, and yet vague human condition. The problem of defining ageing and old age can be expressed in terms of the question of how one defines stages of life which are deeply embedded in western culture and in spatial metaphors –​one exits middle age and enters into old age. This discursive practice suggests that old age or indeed babyhood and adolescence are conceptualised as a physical condition that has an exit (from babyhood, for example) and an entrance –​a finite state of physical being, embodied in both time and space. Entrance (into old age) is a structural and spatial metaphor which generates a specific psychological orientation to ageing that includes a negative set of emotions like regret, a sense of loss, of time passing and of life coming to an end (Hepworth, 2003: 94). Some radical critiques of the decline model, especially the work of Margaret Gullette (1997) presented by Hepworth, argue for the “cyclical evolutionary principle within each species –​a biologically determined process of continual regeneration and renewal” (ibid: 93). She claims that ageing as decline is socially and culturally constructed. She asks the important question about the nature of the boundaries between the ages and of how age is represented in discourses. Urban visual representations of old people, for example, demonstrate very well the widely spread discourse of ‘ageing as decline’: In Figure 14.1, we see the profile of uncontextualized curved bodies placed in painted and unmodulated black (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 166). As the authors point out, in the lives of all human beings, light and dark are fundamental experiences and the colours black and white as they are situated at the opposite ends of the spectrum, as ‘maximally light’ and ‘maximally dark’, respectively, have specific meanings in every culture. The black chosen here to represent human bodies, as in the majority of road signs found in the streets, suggests simplicity, purity, and lack of artifice or a life without excitement as opposed to colourful and fancy dressing, which would signal happy lives. The representation of the bodies in the road signs is abstract and schematic –​the heads are circles and the bodies, a combination of lines (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001 –​low modality representation) in other words, not

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(a)

(b)

Figure 14.1a, b Road signs for elderly people. www.seton.co.uk/traffic-signs-elderly-people-crossing.html#TRF00106UP

real bodies of people but an abstraction of what bodies look like. The de-​ contextualisation of space, where characters are depicted without any real-​ life settings, works to separate some forms of signs and discourses from the outside, material, and social conditions (Scollon & Scollon 2003: 147). Since the articulation of contextual details are diminished in the examples above, the “removal of time and space discourages the viewer from placing such events in actual socio-​economic-​political contexts” (Machin and Mayr 2012: 204). Gender differentiation is through schematic dressing –​women have dresses, (Figure 14.1a) while men are undistinguishable. In an ageist and sexist discourse, old women are most of the time domestic and should always be behind and led by men. It is in the choice of props and the position of the female bodies that there is an ‘intersection’ with sexism. The decline theory, in the urban representations, is clearly a manifestation of the ideology of ‘ageism’, which is, according to Copper, the negative social response to different stages in the process of aging and it is a political issue. The ageism that old women experience is firmly embedded in sexism –​an extension of the male power to define, control values, erase, disempower and divide. (Copper 1986:47) The discursive representations of old people in road signs visually remind us that every item in a static or moving picture or representation is chosen carefully to go along with the underlining ideology of frailty and decline. The colouring and setup of the scene and all the animate or inanimate items

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in that scene are chosen for a particular reason. In the above examples, they reproduce ingrained ideas of what it is to be an old declining person –​curved and fragile. And these signs exist in most cities of the world. With age comes social invisibility. Another consequence of ageism is stereotyping. Older people in general are represented in various disparaging ways. Not only is decline an issue in the references to old people in public discourses, but also their lack of representation. The dialogue below, replied by Diane Hill3 to the question posed, illustrates this point: – – –

Ever wondered why there’s lack of representation of older people in the emoji world? You will find emojis on a large array of topics but very few that relate to elderly people. Yup, I am talking about the unenviable task of cleaning false teeth and occasional bouts of back pain, things that older people have to deal with every day. But unfortunately, if a 70-​year-​old person decides to share his (sic) ordeal of back pain in a WhatsApp group of fellow septuagenarians, he (sic) won’t find the appropriate emoji, cuz there isn’t one.

Emojis (picture characters) are paralinguistic devices currently overused in digital media communication. The lack of representation of older/​ old people in the world of emojis is just one of the many examples of the devaluation and invisibility of the ageing. The few images found in a Google search are in the main unflattering and therefore disparaging (Figures 14.2a and b). According to emogis.wiki,4 an old woman emoji is a representation of an elderly female character. Their claim is that the old woman emoji in Figure 14.2a “looks like a typical grandmother with a kind facial expression, wrinkles, eyeglasses, with gray hair dressed in a hair bun. It may also symbolize all older women in general and the process of getting old in the case of a woman”. In these emojis, the different semiotic resources do connotate meanings linked to old age through ‘symbolisation’ and ‘metaphorical association’ (see Machin, this volume): the face lines, the old-​fashioned female hair style. The hair colour reflects a more restrained colour palette of grey, to which all hair colours eventually decline. Although the social actors, as in most emoji cartoonish creations, are depicted as looking directly at the viewer establishing a symbolic interaction through their gaze and creating a ‘symbolic demand’ (van Leeuwen, 2008), the uncontextualized faces present overdetermined characteristics (big eyes, big ears) producing a caricatural effect. The ‘props’ used, the hair bun, the glasses, the walking sticks reaffirm again the decline view of ageing. The

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Figure 14.2a Emojis – old women.

Figure 14.2b Emojis – old men.

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‘funny faces’ and the general composition of the images carry therefore negative evaluative meanings. This meaning potential is absorbed into ‘the cult of ‘twee’, which is a distinctive style in post-​modernity drawing on childhood and silliness. A very recent example of the ‘cult of twee’ and its link to old age were moments from the Queen Elizabeth Platinum Celebrations when she performed with Paddington Bear. It is hard to imagine the 40-​year-​old queen having acted out this fantasy. The night sky during the event was also lit with ‘props’ suggesting twee images (the handbag, the cup and teapot as well as the corgi found in urban spaces) (Figure 14.3). Postcards were available everywhere representing the queen dressed in mauve colours (pink, blue, green, and purple) all adding meanings to the association between old age and childhood.

Figure 14.3 The Corgi, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite dog (own photograph).

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In our chapter on Grannies, ‘The transgressive, the traditional: sexist discourses of grandmothering and ageing’ (Caldas-​Coulthard and Moon, 2020, pp. 334-​ 59), we showed that ‘grannies’, in our visual data, are contextualised and resemiotised (Iedema 2003) in two ways: in domestic contexts and sharing the semiotic resources of childhood (especially in relation to colours and typography). In many representations, they are ‘desexed’, like children, by being shown as physically beyond the age of sexual interest and rarely addressed or recontextualised as sexual beings. They are only gendered in the context of family, home and traditional ‘female’ pursuits. These ageist and sexist representations are naturalised, and deeply embedded, we argue, in practices of exclusion and discrimination. (Caldas-​Coulthard and Moon, 2020: 35).

Ageism in discourse –​ words and images This section is part of a larger multi-​stranded investigation into discourses of ageing, developed with Rosamund Moon. We investigated how ageing people are talked about, represented, and classified in public discourses following the common assumption that people, especially women, are only as good as their perceived age. We started by investigating linguistic stereotypes of age/​ageing by inspecting collocates of the words ‘ageing’, ‘old age’, ‘getting old’ and ‘a certain age’, in a large reference corpus, the 450-​million-​ word Bank of English (BoE), and especially the newspaper sub corpus as well as The British National Corpus. We focused on adjective usage and labelling and applied van Leeuwen’s schema for identifying social actors (Caldas-​Coulthard and Moon, 2010). Examples from the corpus clearly showed a negative semantic prosody in relation to ‘ageing’, ‘old age’, ‘getting old’, and ‘a certain age’: Concordances of AGEING • • • •

the feeling of being invisible and diminished, that is our worst fear about ageing possess the freshness of youth or whether you are reflecting fatigue or the signs of ageing this fear and anxiety about ageing and our future elderly selves is probably common to us all the external signs of ageing as at different points eyesight blurred, menstruation ceased, hair and teeth fell

Concordances of OLD AGE •

Even genius disappeared in old age

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• • •

more than anything else, loneliness in old age must be the hardest thing to bear it is the loss of strength associated with old age that has permitted experiencing vulnerability in old age

Concordances of GETTING OLD • • • • •

he is terribly concerned about getting old he is getting old and Isis noticed that he was slobbering it is terrible to be getting old and forgetful when asked what caused his melancholy, he would refer to his dread of getting old Sixteen, I’ll be sixteen this year, oh god, I am getting old

Concordances of A CERTAIN AGE • • • •

after a certain age, the outlook is bleak She was of a certain age, so maybe her painting days were over. That’s something you find –​after a certain age, people stop photographing you. That may appeal to an audience of a certain age, but it is a pretty foggy vision

Moon (2014) in her corpus-​led study of adjectives discusses how people of different ages are classified and the implications of the different classifications. She concludes that once adults are labelled as old, they are, or are considered, to be near the end of life. Old collocates with adjectives that evaluate negatively, institutionalising an association between age, decline, and valuelessness. When generic old people is pre-​modified, collocates include frail, lonely, vulnerable, poor/​poorer/​poorest, disabled, dependent, ill, that is, adjectives that reflect medical and domestic needs”. (p.21) Collocates of ‘old wome/​an’ are mostly negative. Lonely indicates isolation, abandonment, and widowhood and even wealth is ambivalent in context (as in, for example, BoE’s ‘a rich, vindictive, festering old woman’ or ‘wealthy old woman … [who] turns out to be an incontinent nightmare who whines, rants, sobs…’). Among physical collocates, items such as bent, wizened, toothless, ugly, and malevolent-​looking suggest the prototypical witch-​figure of childhood stories: cf. old witch, hag as abusive terms. Behaviourals such as garrulous, fretful, and fussy represent a social stereotype of old women, who are also described as silly, crazy, and eccentric; gossipy, too, though several of the BoE examples of gossipy old woman/​women actually refer to men. (p.23) From the evidence of the concordance lines, which very clearly points to negative linguistic representations of ageing, and to a certain extent confirms

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Shakespeare’s view of old age, I extended my search to other forms of discourse (media texts) concentrating on the question of evaluation. Martin and White (2005), in their detailed description of the linguistic systems of appraisal and attitude, label the ways we access the world around us as ‘evaluative disposition or stance’. One of the main functions of evaluative language, according to the authors, is attitudinal; in other words, “we use language to assign values of ‘praising’ and ‘blaming’, with meanings by which writers/​ speakers indicate either a positive or negative assessment of people, places, things, happenings and states of affairs” (White 2001). For the authors, (2005), there are three types of attitude: affect, which is the evaluation which indicates emotional states of affairs (likes and dislikes, for e­ xample –​I love women of a certain age); judgment, which is the assessment of human behaviour with reference to rules, social acceptability, systems of ethics, legality, etiquette, and social norms (women of a certain age are very noisy); and finally appreciation, which is the evaluation of human artefacts as well as human individuals (women of a certain age look terrific). And it is through these systems of evaluation, especially through judgements and aesthetic appreciations, that ageing is represented, I want to argue, most of the time, negatively in media discourses. Social Judgements and Aesthetic Appreciations are found in many types of texts and D-​words found throughout the data are revealing markers of loss, collapse and descent, materializing the themes of frailty and decline, vulnerability, disempowerment: • • • • •

de-​, dis-​: markers of loss & collapse/​descent decline, decay, debility, dementia, decrepitude, deficiency; … desiccation, depression, demise, degendering disability, disempowerment, disengagement, dispossession; disease discomfiture, disgust, disavowing, dismissing disappearing

Other very common and general assertions about ageing women found in the media are the following examples (taken from various media texts): • • • •

This dress looks fabulous for a 50-​year-​old skin You are 40? You don’t look it. Your legs are those of a 21-​year-​old She does not look like a granny Madonna looks amazing for 60

When writers say ‘she does not look like a granny’ or ‘Madonna looks amazing for 60’ the implicit meaning is: ‘she does look old’ and ‘Madonna is old’. In all these examples, the conventional appreciation is invoked (not explicit evaluation as it would be if somebody has said ‘you are an old person’, according to White, 2001). Whatever age a person is, she would look better

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younger. Being 40 or 50 or 60 is always bad. In a television sitcom, where two young men are talking to each other, one insults the other by saying: You are like a 60-​year-​old bitch!! The insult is triple in the sense that the speaker accuses the other man first of all of being old, second, of being a woman, and third, of being a nasty woman. The insult would not work if ‘man’ replaced ‘bitch’ (a female derogatory classification). Again, these attitudinal judgments and appreciations are pervasive and uncontested by editors of television programmes or newspapers. Another interesting word is the adverb ‘still’, very much used in both conversation and in the media. ‘Still’ marks the contrastive representation which signals triumph despite age, contrary to established norms. Beneath the superficially admiring tone, older and famous women are negatively appraised: “Still strutting their stuff at 64!” “50 Actresses over 50 who still rule Hollywood” Another example of negative attitude towards age was a discussion in the British Media of the film ‘Sex in the City’, launched in London in May, 2008. (Caldas-​Coulthard, 2010). The real topic for discussion according to the British quality paper The Guardian (29.05.08) was not about the film’s merits, but about how repulsive Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress, looked. The Daily Telegraph’s film critic observed that Parker ‘looks like a skeletal transvestite’ (Daily Telegraph, 27.05.2008) while Piers Morgan, another media critic, called her ‘ghastly’ and said ‘I’ve seen better looking winos underneath the arches at Charing Cross’. The underlying negative appreciation was that ‘the women are getting on a bit’ (Daily Telegraph, ibid.). The actress was only 47 years old at the time. The tabloid Daily Mail also presented highly negative linguistic appreciations mixed with social sanctions about her: “wrinkled and bunioned 47-​year-​old feet and wearing a miniskirt at such a decrepit age ‘oozes desperation’ ”. Fourteen years on, in the launching of the follow-​up to ‘Sex and the City’, called ‘And just like that…’, the same ageist ideology is articulated in a news article5, this time through the visual mode. From a multi-​ modal perspective, images have the potential to convey evaluative stance and attitudinal meanings and add evaluation to a semiotic representation in the same way that adjectives evaluate nouns. By using the multimodal resource of photographs, reporters in the popular media construct, through their choices of how to present people, a particular version of the person, creating scenarios, spaces, and attributes. Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) point out that in some domains certain visuals are in fact ‘truer’ than others. The authors call this the coding orientation, and this has to do with modality. Images can represent a person, a thing, or a space according to a scale of ‘it might look like this’ to ‘it looks like this’. This is done through choices of colour, hue, distance, focus and vectors. However, a photograph tends to make us believe that what we see is the reality and therefore more credible.

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Visual resources also tend to be more ‘realis’ orientated than texts, which are more easily ‘irrealis’ orientated, as Scollon and Scollon suggest (2003: www. gutenb​erg.net). Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/​2021) extend Halliday’s (1978) theory of ‘speech function’ to images. Like linguistic representations, images can either ‘offer’ or ‘demand’. Where in the English language system this is realized through words, in images, it is by the system of gaze. If a person represented in an image looks at the viewer, the image realizes a demand –​the gaze demands something from the viewer; if such a look is not present, the image is an offer –​it then offers the represented participants to the viewer as items of information, objects of contemplation, impersonally, as though they were specimens in a display case (Kress and van Leeuwen ibid. 124). Parker’s photograph is an example of an ‘offer’ since the actor does not interact with the reader –​the semiotic representation signifies distance. The decontextualised scenario points, however, to an ‘irrealis coding orientation’ –​ the colour is blurred and faint and only half of her body is shown (head to waist), and in this sense it is fragmented. The iconography of this photograph (in other words, the elements found in its design) suggest and connote an ageist discourse. Sarah Jessica Parker is represented visually as part of the text about women over 50 in a very negative way –​the photograph shows her looking down, distressed, her face is contorted as if in pain, wrinkled, bones showing, hair in a bun, and consequently ‘old’, although there is a consensus that she is a very beautiful woman. In this recontextualization, therefore, Parker’s image confirms the linguistic negative appraisal –​she is an ‘ageing’ and ‘distant’ person, because she is presented both visually and linguistically as such. The end of this ‘news story’6 proclaims, “being in your 50s means death, hip surgery and a sexless marriage. And maybe it’s time to erase those last 15 years with a few plastic surgery procedures.” The few but pervasive examples discussed above show that through semiotic evaluation in the choice of language and images, the media tends to evaluate ‘older women’s age in a very negative if not derogatory way. But this has to change.

Coda –​ Resisting voices The counter argument for ‘youth discourses’ is that “…mid-​life is not the point of entry to decline but an opportunity for positive change experienced as renewal” (Hepworth 2003: 102). Because decline is constructed as narrative, the route of escape cannot be into the body modified for example through cosmetic surgery, or the body of the cyborg, but into an alternative liberated narrative of the self. Gullette (2004) points out we can resist ageism effectively by changing age culture. She continues: activists can frame better arguments by building on a wiser progressive form of “age consciousness”. Only through such imaginative solidarity

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can we maintain our precious sense of self-​continuity and possibility within the dangerous age ideology we confront in the twenty-​first century. (p. 20) And new voices begin to be heard: “I don’t want to be called an old woman. I am a 60-​year-​old adult. I am not a ‘mature’ woman, of ‘the third age’ nor ‘of the best age’. NO.” says Isabel Dias, a Brazilian writer, claiming that we need to talk about the sexuality of older people. (Brazil has more than 30 million adults more than 60 years old.) In fact, there are some advantages of being institutionally categorized as old in Brazil –​above 60, people have preference in queues, in banks, in supermarkets, and at airports. Governments, however, are redefining and trying to delay the age of which people can access these privileges and their retirement benefits. Ernestine Shepherd entered the Guinness Book of World Record as the oldest body builder in the world at 74, in 2010. She now teaches women of all ages who want to do physical exercise. I interviewed 30 women of a certain age for this research and they claim that their moment in life (in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s) is a positive one. Here are some replies to the question “In what ways have you felt the transition from 50s to 60s or 60s to 70s?” I felt it (the passing from 50 to 60) in the ways I see the world, in my ways of thinking and acting –​I feel more secure, objectively and subjectively, it seems that I have now reached full maturity (Rosa, 63). My body has changed visibly, not only in appearance. But I don’t feel rejected or frustrated. (Ivana, 64) I think my age gives me freedom to think, act and feel more independent from other people’s judgments. Looking back, one feels that time has passed and that you have to enjoy what is left positively. (Lilian, 56) I am now a very grounded grandmother and a lot wiser. (Vera, 59) During the 50s to 60s decade, I can say that there were profound transformations (for the better) from a bio-​psychological point of view –​I got divorced and I freed my sexuality, my eroticism and effectiveness that have been repressed for 28 years of marriage. I feel so much happier now at 70 (Lucia, 70). Contrary to the media representations, the women interviewed value their brains and feelings and their evaluative stance is very positive. Their voices should be more accessed not only in private interactions, but also in public discourses like the media. In urban contexts, small changes are beginning to appear. In the latest representations of signs for old people (Figure 14.4) although the walking stick is still present, the body is represented upright, and in others signs,

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Figure 14.4 New old age (own photo).

people are dancing or even skating, with contextual clues like blue skies and running clouds connoting movement and joy. (See Google “road signs for old people images” https://www.google.com/search?q=road+signs+for+old+peo ple+images+seton) Unfortunately, the view of ageing, as a continuous biologically determined process of continual regeneration and renewal, as expressed by Margaret Gullette’s interviewees and my own, is not welcomed in the public medicalised, lifestyle-​oriented, consumerist society in which we live. And much work remains to be done to deconstruct the biases and prejudices against ageing people. As semioticians and linguists, it is our job to make people aware of the injustices of ageism and sexism and resist through our research. This chapter is an attempt to reject the Shakespearean notion of ‘second childhood’. Concluding, I quote the Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, the Italian Dr. Rita Levi Montalcine7, who became the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100. She said, shortly before: “My brain will be 100 years of age and it does not suffer from senility. The body wrinkles, I can not avoid it, but not my brain”. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is a second coming, pure renewal, New teeth, new breasts, new knees, new life. (with apologies to W. Shakespeare)

Research tasks 1

Collect a few images of older social actors from magazines or newspapers and investigate how the semiotic resources chosen by the authors of the image connote ideas of ageism and sexism. How are the actors visually

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2 3

represented in terms of evaluative stance, or how they are described linguistically? From your own experience of ageing, describe linguistic instances where people are classified in negative ways. Interview five old people, preferably at least one relative, and collect narratives of their process of ageing, concentrating on questions of ageist and sexist instances of their experience; in other words, how they felt they were categorised and treated differently because they were perceived to be old.

Further readings Caldas-​ Coulthard, C.R (ed.) (2020) Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics: Women, Language and Sexism. London: Routledge. Chap.3 Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996/​2021) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2018) Doing Visual Analysis. London: Sage. Ledin, P. and Machin, D. (2020) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. London: Bloomsbury.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Shakespeare, William, ‘All the world’s a stage’. www.huf​fing​tonp​ost.com/​2010/​05/​15/​woody-​all​ens-​can​nes-​pre​mi_​n​_​577​632.html Himanshu Roy, indianwomen.blog.org https://​emo​jis.wiki/​?s=​old+​women&sente​nce=​1 (canvas) www.thew​rap.com/​actres​ses-​over-​50-​who-​rule-​hollyw​ood/​ www.thew​rap.com/​and-​just-​like-​critic​ism-​cha​ract​ers-​old/​ www.nob​elpr​ize.org/​sea​rch/​?s=​Dr.+​Rita+​Levi+​Mon​talc​ine

References Caldas-​Coulthard, C.R. (2010) ‘Women of a certain age –​life styles, the female body and ageism’. In J. Holmes and M. Marra, Feminist and Gendered Discourse. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 21–​40. Caldas-​Coulthard, C.R. (ed.) (2020) Innovations and Challenges: Women, Language and Sexism. London: Routledge. Caldas-​Coulthard, C.R. and Moon, R. (2010) ‘Curvy, hunky, kinky: using corpora as tools in critical analysis’, Discourse and Society, 21(2), pp. 1–​35. Caldas-​ Coulthard, C.R. and Moon, R. (2020) ‘The transgressive, the traditional: sexist discourses of grandmothering and ageing’. In C.R Caldas-​Coulthard (ed.) Innovations and Challenges: Women, Language and Sexism. London: Routledge, pp.334–​59. Copper, B. (1986) ‘Voices: on becoming old women’, in Alexander, J., Berrow, D., Domitrovich, L., Donnelly, M., and McLean, C. (eds) Women and Aging: an Anthology by Women. Corvallis, OR.: Calyx Books, pp. 47-​57.

252  Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard Coupland, N. and Coupland, J. (1993) ‘Discourses of ageism and anti-​ageism’, Journal of Aging Studies, 7(3), pp. 279–​301. Coupland, N., Coupland, J., and Giles, H. (1991) Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Oxford: Blackwell. Featherstone, M. and Wernick, A. (eds.) (1995) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life. London: Routledge. Flowerdew, J and Richardson, J.E. (eds.) (2020) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Garner, J.D. and Mercer, S.O. (eds) (2001) Women as They Age. London: Routledge. Gullette, M.M. (1997) Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Gullette, M.M. (2004) Aged by Culture. www.resea​rchg​ate.net/​publ​icat​ion/​37688​ 888_​Aged​_​by_​Cult​ure [accessed Jul 09 2022]. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Hepworth, M. (2003) ‘Ageing bodies: aged by culture’. In J. Coupland and R. Gwyn (eds.) Discourse, the Body, and Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Iedema, R. (2003) ‘Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-​semiotic practice’, Visual Communication, 2(1), pp. 29–​57. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996/​2021) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold. Machin, D. and Mayer, A. (2012) How to do Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. Machin, D. and van Leeuwen, T. (2007) Global Media Discourse. London: Routledge. Martin, J.R. and White, P.R.R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, W. (2015) ‘Visual methods in ageing research’. In J. Twigg and W. Martin, (eds.) The Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Routledge: Abingdon, pp.93–​104. Moon, R. (2014) ‘From gorgeous to grumpy: adjectives, age and gender’, Gender and Language, 8(1), pp. 5–​42. Sacks, H. (1972) ‘An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing sociology’. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction. New York, Free Press, pp. 31–​74. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003) Globalization: The Multimodal Shaping of Public Discourse. www.gutenb​ergd​ump.net (Not accessible). Shakespeare, W. As You Like It. Act II, Scene VII, lines 163–​166 (2009) The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: OUP. Twigg, J. (2013) Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life. London: Bloomsbury. Twigg, J. and Martin, W. (ed.) 2015 The Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge. van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: OUP. White, P.R.R. (2001) Appraisal: an Overview. Retrieved on 2 June 2009 from www.gra​ mmat​ics.com/​apprai​sal/​index.html Woodward, K. (1995) ‘Psychoanalysis, feminism, and ageism’, in M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds.) Images of aging: cultural representations of later life. London: Routledge, pp. 79–​96.

Chapter 15

Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist Mary Talbot

The multimodal narrative format of comics is highly accessible, if well used, with the potential to engage a large general audience with complex material. Alongside the visual narrative sequencing and accompanying written text, it can communicate with gesture, facial expression, font, colour and more. That makes it possible to produce a form of ideational/​relational/​expressive delivery in storytelling that I like to call ‘education by stealth’. Of course, this multimodal narrative approach differs greatly from the other contributions to this volume; it is intended for a non-​specialist audience and offers neither theoretical statement nor method of analysis. It is also a considerable divergence from my own academic work, including my contribution to the first edition of Texts and Practices. In Gough and Talbot (1996), Val Gough and I presented a lens for scholarly analysis. We used it to examine a problem-​page letter and Marje Proops (the ‘Agony Aunt’)s response. That analysis concentrated on the construction of the problem-​page letter writer and reader as unambiguously heterosexual and on the range of ideological assumptions needed to make sense of Marje’s response. Some of my other work in CDA also had the practical aim of locating points of focus for taking up a critical reading position in feminist analysis of media texts. This formed the PhD research I did at Lancaster University with Norman Fairclough, subsequently appearing in various publications (especially Talbot 1992, 1995). The following is a highly condensed retelling of my third graphic novel, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia (Talbot and Talbot 2016). It was produced for a U.S. fundraising comic for the Comic Creators’ Legal Defence Fund. The original narrative runs to 118 pages, with an additional 15 pages of notes and references. The book’s initial function (apart from to entertain with an emotionally engaging graphic biography) was to introduce an inspirational revolutionary feminist, Louise Michel, to a wide Anglophone audience. It has since been widely translated. It recounts her life of tireless struggle for social justice in the nineteenth century: for workers’ rights, for women’s emancipation, for the rights of indigenous people. She spent her life fighting for the rights and dignity of working-​class people and fighting against social inequalities wherever she saw them, both in her native France and in the French DOI: 10.4324/9781003272847-15

254  Mary Talbot

colonies of New Caledonia and Algeria. The graphic biography targets a general readership, highlighting the capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism of the old social order and placing the possibility of social change and justice on the agenda.

Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist  255

256  Mary Talbot

Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist  257

258  Mary Talbot

Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist  259

260  Mary Talbot

Multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist  261

262  Mary Talbot

References Gough, V. and Talbot, M. (1996) ‘Guilt over games boys play: coherence as a focus for examining the constitution of heterosexual subjectivity on a problem page’. In C.R. Caldas-​Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 214–​30. Talbot, M. (1992) ‘The construction of gender in a teenage magazine’. In N. Fairclough (ed.) Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman, pp.174–​99. Talbot, M. (1995) ‘A synthetic sisterhood: false friends in a teenage magazine’. In K. Hall and M. Bucholtz (eds.) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. London: Routledge, pp.143–​65.

Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables, and those in italics refer to figures. References to notes are indicated by the page number followed by “n” and the note number e.g., 111n5 refers to note 111 on page 5. Abascal, Santiago 142 ableism 238 abolitionist discourses 157, 158–​9 Abreu, J. de 230 abstraction: legitimation by 87 accommodations: to change 33, 35, 36 activities/​actions: social movements 113, 114, 116, 119, 120, 123, 125, 130 actors see social actors adjectives 16, 24–​5, 87, 245, 247 adverbs 21–​2, 247 aesthetic appreciation 246 aesthetic critiques 62 affect 213, 215, 216, 246 affective communicability 215–​17, 222, 225–​6, 230, 231, 232 affective polarization 9, 214, 226, 230 age-​differentiated markets 50 ageing 238–​44; concordances 244 Ageing Bodies: Aged by Culture 238 ageism 10, 236, 237–​8; discourse(s) 238, 240, 244–​8; resistance 248–​51 Agência Pública 231 agency 18, 24, 57, 142, 200, 203, 215, 216 agent-​action structure 16–​18 Aguirre, B.E. 175 Ahmed, S. 216, 221, 223, 228 aims/​goals: social movement manifestos 120, 121, 122, 124, 126, 129, 131 Ainsworth, J. 105, 107 Allen, Woody 238–​9 ambiguity: in policy documents 175; in transcription of evidence 109 amorality 166

analogy: legitimation by 87, 93 anime 45, 49 anonymization 166, 167, 201 anti-​establishment discourses: of the radical right, Spain 7, 134–​50 anti-​gender animus 214 anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse, Uruguay 9, 195, 196–​7; corpus and contextualization 197–​8; critical discourse analysis 198–​206; educational media and the DPSE 197 anti-​LGBT 231–​2 anti-​minority animus 214 anti-​Muslim racism 85–​6 anti-​political correctness 137, 139, 140, 141, 149 anti-​racism 119–​23, 124 anti-​semitism 85, 95 appearance (performers) 60 appraisal: of performance 63; of texts and ageism 237; of university staff 29, 31; see also evaluation appreciation 246, 247 argumentation, legitimation by 86–​8, 91, 92–​4 Argyle, M. 28, 29 artificial intelligence (AI) 153, 164 ascribing: in representations of performance 65 Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics 99, 106–​7 atomisation of enterprise 32 attitudes: evaluative language and 246; marketing of 162–​3; as political

264 Index currency 162; racist 116; rhetorical style and conveyance of 140–​41; social movement manifestos 123, 126; texts, images and influence on 237 attitudinal meaning: links between negative meaning and 158–​9; multimodal images and 247 audio-​interpretation: police interviews 106 audio-​recording: police interviews 102, 104–​5 Austin, J.L. 99 Australia: requirement for interpreters, police interviews 106; target marketing 161; utopia and negative admonition 156–​7, 158–​9 Austria: racist rhetoric 85–​6; topoi used by media during refugee crisis 88, 89; wall-​building debates during refugee crisis (2015/​16) 88–​90, 95 authenticity: performance and 61, 72 authoritor-​authoritee relationships: technologization of discourse and 35 authorization: legitimation by 86–​7, 88 authors: of manifestos 117–​18, 128 auxiliaries: modal 21 Bakhtin, M.M. 52, 53 behavioural clauses: in representations of performance 66 beliefs: BLM manifesto 119 belonging 214 beneficiaries: social movement manifestos 120, 121–​2 Bentley, Derek 99, 100 Berlin Wall 81 Bianchi, Graciela 199, 200, 201 bio-​power 28 biomedical narrative: of ageing 238, 239 black ghettoes 86 Black Lives Matter (BLM) 119–​24, 167 black/​white: culture and meaning 239 Blaine, L. 72–​3, 76 Blair, Tony 61, 72 Blommaert, J. 37 bodily performance: and creation of identity 61 body language experts: representations of performance 67, 69, 71 body politics 3, 5, 6, 84 Bolsonaro, Eduardo 215, 219, 220, 222, 223–​6

Bolsonaro, Jair, making of 9, 213–​33; circuits of disgust and 222–​30; conservative backlash against public policies 218–​22 Borba, R. 2, 9, 217 border regimes 83 borders 6; emotional/​cognitive internalization 86; inclusion and exclusion 81, 83–​4; normalization of 90; as social constructions 82; wall-​building and control of 81 Borzeix, A. 32 boundaries: inclusion and exclusion 83–​4; narratives as central to understanding of 82; normalization of 90; as social constructions 82; walls as 81 Bourdieu, P. 49 Brazil 144; advantages of being categorized as old 249; advising suspects on the right to remain silent 105; media discourse and the making of Bolsonaro 213–​33; scribing verbal evidence in 101–​2 Brazilianness 213 Briese, O. 81 Briggs, C. 217 British Parliament: scribes 107–​8 Brown, W. 138 Brueske, M. 115 Buarque de Holanda, S. 213, 219 Budge, I. 115 bullet lists 180 Burke, K. 155, 158 business: amorality 166 Butler, Robert 238 Caggiani, Pablo 199 Caiani, M. 115 Caldas-​Coulthard, C.R. 1, 10 Canale, G. 2, 9 Candlin, C. 36 capitalism 4, 37, 38, 49, 95, 137, 176, 186, 254 Carvalho, O. de 228 caste-​interest pressures 51 categorization: ageing and 238 Catholic Church/​Catholicism 148, 198 causality: in infographics 173–​4, 182–​3 cause: social movement manifestos 121 cautionary tales: legitimation by 87 CDA see Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Index 265 CDS see Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) center-​margin compositions 180–​82, 191 a certain age: concordances of 245 change: technologization of discourse and 4–​5, 30–​31 characterising: linguistic representations of performance 65–​6, 70, 71–​2; visual representations of performance 73–​5 characters: performer-​oriented representation 64 charisma 62 children, and anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse: silencing the voice of 205–​6; as victims 203–​4 Chile: evidence recording in 102 Christensen, George 158, 159 chronotopes 56 circuits of disgust: and the making of Bolsonaro 222–​30 citadels 86 city walls 82 class: walls, borders and boundaries 82, 86 class-​differentiated markets 50 classical music: representation of 63–​4 classification: in infographics 24–​5, 173, 178 coalitions: formation and fall of issue-​based 153 coarse civility 6 codes (speech styles) 13–​14 coding orientation 247, 248 coerced confessions 107 cognitive aspects: of social movements 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 125, 126 coherence (linguistic) 25 collective threat 6 collective victimization strategy 200–​204 collectives 117, 118 colloquialisms: in texts 108 colonialism 148, 254 colour: culture and meaning of 239; in infographics 173, 178, 180, 182; visual representations of old age 239, 241 comics 253; see also multimodal biography of a revolutionary feminist commander: visual representation of Scott Morrison as a 74–​5 commercial opportunism 46, 48 common good 143, 144 common sense discourses 87, 147, 195

communication: CDA and MCDA 172; context of manifestos 117, 118, 127–​8; quotidian global 154; technologies, in marketing 166–​7; see also affective communicability; internet; media comparison: legitimation by 88, 93 composition, in infographics 174, 176–​9; center-​margin 180–​82, 191; cyclical 182–​3; left-​right 183–​4; networks 190–​92; pathway 184–​6; segmentation 186–​90 compromise: change and 33, 35, 36 compulsory recording: of police interviews 102 concepts 14 conclusion rules see topoi conformity: legitimation by authority of 87 conservative backlash: public policies, Brazil 218–​22 Consolidating the Blair identity 61 conspiracy theories 142, 149 consumer culture: globalization of 47, 49–​50 context models 117, 123, 128 context-​free discourse techniques 30, 36 contextual analysis: of manifestos 117 contrived speech 160 conversationalisation 30, 32 The Conversation 69–​70 Copper, B. 240 cordial man 213, 219 corporate we (pronoun) 19 corpus linguistics 237, 244–​8 Corrêa, S. 218 corruption: of evidence, performance and 110 Coulthard, M. 1, 6 counterhegemonic reframing 141–​3 court stenographers 108 COVID-​19 pandemic: abolitionist discourses 158–​9; and anti-​ establishment discourse, Spain 134–​5, 141–​2; profit/​people dilemma 144; revival of macho man masculinity, Brazil 218 Craig, Chris 99–​100 crises: and legitimation of exclusion 93–​4 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 1–​2, 172; depoliticization of education (Uruguay) 9, 195–​208; development of the area 2–​4; infographics 8,

266 Index 171–​93; performance and politics 60–​79; role 99; transmedia identities 5, 43–​58 Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) 3, 83, 158, 237 critical linguistics 4, 12–​26; classification 24–​5; coherence, order and unity 25; critical analysis 15–​16; grammar of transitivity 16–​22; transformations 22–​4 cross-​contextualization 54 cross-​modal subversion: of consistent meaning effects 54–​5 cultural change 30, 33, 248 cultural Marxism 138, 140 cultural transition 165 cultural values 30, 31, 40, 46, 60, 165 culturalization 83 culture: decline model of ageing 239; heteroglossic 50; intergenerational transmission 160; and meaning of colour 239; social movement studies 6–​7, 114; see also consumer culture; global culture; popular culture; post-​literate cultures; workplace culture custom: legitimation by 87 cycle compositions 182–​3 cyclical evolutionary principle 239 cynicism: systemic 166 Cyprus rape case: absence of lawyers 106; coerced confession 107; interpreters 106; non-​recording of interview 102–​4; right to remain silent 105 D-​words: associated with older people 247 Daily Mail 247 Dandy, Paul 100 danger: and legitimation of exclusion 93–​4 Dardot, P. 138 De Barbieri, Alejandro 204 declaratives 21 decline narrative: of ageing 10, 238, 239, 240, 248 decontextualization 154, 217, 240, 248 dehumanization: racist rhetoric and 86 Della Porta, D. 115 demand: images and 241, 248 Demata, M. 90

democratisation: of institutional discourse 30, 32 demographic panic 95 demonstrative pronouns 22 deontic powers 39, 40 deservingness: narrative of 84 desexualization 244 deviant performances 62 Dias, Isabel 249 Díaz-​Ayuso, Isabel 134, 135, 137, 140–​41, 143, 144–​5, 146, 148 A Didactic proposal for addressing Sexuality Education in Pre-​and Primary School Education (DPSE) 197–​8, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207 differentiation 47–​8, 50; gender and ageism 240; walls and 82 Dijk, T. van 1, 6–​7, 86 directness: in linguistics 20, 21 disciplinary regime 141–​2, 143 discoursal techniques: design and redesign 29–​30 discourse(s): abolitionist 157, 158–​9; ageist and sexist 238, 240, 244–​8; communicability 217; defined 27; defining of life stages 239; fashionable diversity 4; and meanings 83; performances and normative 62; purist 157–​8; racialization 5–​6; racist 116; radical right 137; and social reality 83; as strategies of legitimation 86; studies 137; target markets and 161; and understanding of boundaries 82; see also anti-​establishment discourse; anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse; political discourse; social movement discourse; technologization of discourse discourse analysis: conclusion rules in 88; social movements 114–​15; see also Critical Discourse Analysis; negative discourse analysis discourse-​industrial sector 162 discourse-​knowledge-​power 135–​6, 148 discourse-​semantic framework 63 discrimination: rhetorical reversal of 200–​202; see also ageism; racism; sexism discursive antagonism 136, 140, 146 discursive-​affective circuits 217 disgust: politics of, and the making of Bolsonaro 213–​33

Index 267 disinformation 222, 228 distance: linguistics and 20, 21, 22 Distinction 49 document analysis 100 Dr Shipman case 110 dramaturgical action 61, 62 dramaturgical validity 5, 76 dystopia: legitimation of exclusion 93–​4 Eastern Europe 94–​5 economics: and sustainability 175 education: and anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse, Uruguay 9, 195–​208 embodied affective political reaction 230 emojis: visual representations of older people 241 emotive meanings 63 enclaves 86 entertainment factor: cultural mnemonics 160–​61; populist performances 61–​2 entextualization 217 entrance (into old age) 239 ethics: narrative and changing 7–​8 ethnic power abuse 115–​16 ethnicity: ageism and 238; and segregation 85, 86 European Union (EU) 83, 84, 88, 175, 176 evaluation: and attitude 237, 246; legitimation by 87; in news reports 198, 199, 207; of performance 63, 66, 67; see also appraisal events: linguistic presentation of 16–​17 evidence see verbal evidence exclusion: ageism, sexism and 237, 244; legitimation of 86–​94; racism and 116; of sexual dissidents 232; walls, borders, boundaries and 82, 83–​4, 85, 86 exclusionary discourse 157 exclusionary rhetoric 6, 85–​6, 90, 95 exclusive we (pronoun) 19 exemplary performances 62 expert authority: legitimation by 87 expert discourse technologists 29 expertise: interpretation/​evaluation of performance 67, 69 explanation: social movement manifestos 121 explicit evaluation: avoidance, in news media 199

explicit representations of performance 66–​7, 71 expression: media technology and new modes of 154; social movement manifestos 124, 127–​8 extra-​textualization 198 extremism 157–​8 Fairclough, N. 1, 4–​5, 37, 61, 63, 72 family man: visual representation of Scott Morrison as a 74 fan fiction 46, 47 fan-​franchise worlds 45–​6 far right see right-​wing parties fear: and exclusion 95 feminist linguistics 236 feminist theory 10 Fighting Words 115 Final Fantasy 49 First Continental Summit of Indigenous Women Puno, Peru (2009) 126–​30 floating signifiers 136, 143–​4 folk political philosophies 165 forensic linguistics 99, 110 fortifications 83, 94 Fortress Europe 83 Foucault, M. 27, 28, 135, 136, 141, 172 Fowler, R. 1–​2, 4 frames/​framing: in infographics 173, 178, 180; in news reports 204; social movement studies 114, 116, 131; wall-​building debate, Austria 90 franchises: transmedia see transmedia identities Fraser, N. 138 freedom: generation of new neoliberal hegemonies under banner of 136, 139–​47, 149 Freedom Party (FPÖ) 85 French, P. 109 fronting device: in thematization 23–​4 functions of language 13, 15, 16, 53 Furedi, F. 38, 39 G4tv 45 Gaines, P. 107 games see videogames gameworlds 57 gaming consoles 48 gated communities 82 gaze: and demand 241, 248 Gee, J.P. 47

268 Index gender: -​differentiated markets 50; differentiation and ageism 240; ideology 136, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 214; inequality 214; see also anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse; transgender generalization 19, 20, 201 genre knowledge: about manifestos 118–​19, 122, 123 getting old: concordances 245 ghettos 85, 86 Gibbons, J. 102 Glapka, E. 217 global culture: transmedia franchises and 48, 49–​51 Global Report on Ageism (WHO) 238 global semantics: manifestos 122, 124, 125, 128, 131 globalization: games and 49–​51 Goffman, E. 5, 60, 61 Gough, V. 253 Gould, Philip 61, 62 government: technologies of 28 Graff, A. 220 Graham, P. 2, 3, 7–​8 grammar: of a language 13; of linguistic propriety 159–​60; of modality 18–​22; of transitivity 16–​18 grannies 244 Grattan, Michelle 69, 71 group identity 90 group ideology 204, 205 The Guardian 69, 70–​71, 247 Gullette, M.M. 239, 248, 250 Habermas, J. 5, 61, 62, 76 habitualization: in representations of performance 64, 71 habitus 49 Hale, S. 106 Halliday, M.A.K. 13, 52–​3, 62, 248 Halliday-​Zadeh, Sophie and Lee 69 Hansard records 107, 108 Harm Benson, M. 175 Harry Potter franchise 45 Has rebellion become rightwing? How anti-​progressive and anti-​correction politics are building a new common sense 137 Havelock, E.A. 159, 160 Haworth, K. 110, 111n5 Hayek, F.A. 135, 146

Hayley (2008) 85 headlines: social movement manifestos 119, 125 hegemonic discourse 201 hegemonic intervention 136, 143–​7 hegemonic struggles 147 hegemonies: generation of new neoliberal 7, 134, 139–​47 Hepworth, M. 238, 239 heterogeneity: as ingroup self-​ representation 204–​5; of texts 33, 35 heteroglossia 50, 52–​3 heteronormativity 195, 196, 200, 202, 206, 207, 214 heterophobia 221, 222 heterosexuals as victims 200–​202 hierarchization 47–​8, 50 Higgins, Brittany 77 Hill, D. 241 historical revisionism 148 history: legitimation by topoi of 88; social movement manifestos 119–​20, 121, 123, 125, 129, 130 HIV/​AIDS 229 Hodge, B. 63 Hoey, M. 2 homophobia 51, 202, 206, 213, 215, 220, 223, 228, 230, 231, 232 homosexuality 221, 223 hope: and legitimation of exclusion 95 Hymes, D. 5, 60, 76 iconography: and ageist discourse 248; in infographics 174, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186–​8, 192 ideational function: of language 13, 15; multimedia 53; of performance 62 identification: fan franchises and 45, 46; with idealized cultural models 47 identity: performance and creation of political 61; social movement manifestos 119, 120, 121, 125, 126, 129; see also group identity; professional identities; social identities; transmedia identities identity models 47, 48, 57 identity politics 3, 38 ideology(ies): of ageism 238, 240, 241; discursive practices 83; education and 195; linguistics and 4, 12; new global cultural order 50, 51; preconceptions, grammatical analysis and revelation

Index 269 of 63; racist 116; reinforcement of dominant heteronormative and homophobic 202; right-​wing 6, 219, 230; social movement discourse 113, 116, 122, 123, 125, 126; transmedia products 46, 52, 53, 55; walls and tension between visions and 95; see also gender ideology; group ideology illocutionary acts 99 images: ageism in 244–​8 immersive worlds (videogames) 46 impeachment: of Dilma Rousseff 9, 214, 215, 219, 220 impersonal authority: legitimation by 87 impersonal style: syntactic transformation 22 implicit representations of performance 66, 71 inauthenticity of performance 76 inclusion: walls, borders, boundaries and 83–​4 inclusive we (pronoun) 19 incommensurability 54–​5 incorporating: in representations of performance 64 indigenous identity: social movement manifesto, Peru 129 indirectness: in linguistics 20, 21 indoctrination 202, 205 industry: upheavals in 31 inequality(ies): critical discourse analysis and 1; gender 214; grammatical analysis and revelation of 63; of power 14 infantilisation of universities 37, 39 infographics 171 infographics, analysing 8; CDA, multimodality and 172; representation of sustainability 176–​92; toolkit for 173–​4 informing 35–​6 institutional ageism 238 institutional discourse 30, 32 institutional reality 39 instrumental rationalization: legitimation by 87 intensity: affect as 216 interdisciplinarity 3 interdiscursivity 52–​3 internet 154

interpersonal function: of language 13, 15; multimedia 53 interpretation: linguistics and 12, 15; of performances 66–​8; in police interviews 106–​7 interrogatives 21 interviews see personnel interviews; police interviews invisibility: ageism and 237, 241 invisible walls and boundaries 82 invoked evaluation 66 issue stories/​reports 199–​200 issue-​based coalitions 153 Japan 45, 49 Jessop, B. 176 Jewish ghettos 85 Johnston, H. 114 Jorge, S. 105 judgement: attitudinal 246, 247 justice, linguistic problems and delivery of 6, 99–​111; example of a problematic case 99–​100; see also police interviews; verbal evidence Kalil, I. 218 Kapur, R. 220 Kelly, Craig 156–​7, 158 Kimmel, M. 218 knowledge: pre-​literate cultures 154; social movement manifestos 113, 116, 117, 123, 126; see also discourse-​ knowledge-​power; genre knowledge; official knowledge Krastev, I. 94–​5 Kress, G. 1–​2, 4, 63, 167, 173, 247 Kundis Craig, R. 175 Kurz, S. 72 labelling: in representations of performance 65–​6, 71 Laclau, E. 136, 147 language: and ageism 238; CDA and MCDA 172; evaluative 247; functions of 13, 15, 16, 53; scientist aspects 158; see also linguistic stereotypes late capitalism 95 Latin America 91, 196, 203; see also Brazil; Chile; Mexico; Peru; Uruguay Laval, C. 138 lawyers: provision of 105 leader-​centric discourses 62, 63, 76

270 Index leadership debates: representations of performance 71 Leap, W. 215, 226 Ledin, P. 173 Leeuwen, T. van 1, 5, 53, 62, 86, 167, 173, 244, 247 left-​right compositions 183–​4 left-​wing parties 137–​8, 150n5; demonization/​attacks/​criticism of 140, 141, 201; progressive gender and sexuality policies 196–​7 legitimation: of bias against older women 237; of exclusion 83–​4, 86–​94; of socio-​economic order 38; of wall-​building 81 Lehner, S. 88 Lemke, J. 2, 5 lexicalization 23 libertarian neoliberalism 138 libertarianism 134, 136, 159 life stages: spatial metaphors 239 lifeworld of players: research into 57 light/​dark: culture and meaning of 239 Lind, D. 92 linguistic stereotypes 244–​8 linguistics see corpus linguistics; critical linguistics; forensic linguistics; sociolinguistics Linhart, D. 32 listening: while transcribing evidence 109 lists: in infographics 179–​80 literacy/​literate cultures 153–​4, 155, 167 location see place lockdowns, Spain 134–​5, 142 locutionary records 99 Lord of the Rings (LOTR) franchise 45, 47, 49 Low, S.M. 82 Lowrey-​Kinberg, B. 107 Lucas, J.L. 36 Machin, D. 2, 8, 167, 173 macho man masculinity 218 McIntosh, J. 139, 140, 218 McKerrell, S. 167 McLuhan, H.M. 165, 166 manga 45, 49 manifestos (social movement): Black Lives Matter (BLM) 119–​24; contextual analysis 117; discourse structures and strategies 118–​23; First Continental Summit of

Indigenous Women in Puno (Peru) 126–​30; participants 117–​18; roles and functions 113; socio-​political context 117, 118, 123; Stop Mare Mortum manifesto, Spain 124–​6; studies 115, 116, 131 manner: of performers 60; in representations of performance 62–​3, 65 Marcuse, P. 86 marketing: amorality 166; function 152, 153, 155; global cultural 49–​51; militant biases 155; of political utopias 156–​7; pre-​literate narrative syntax 161; see also target marketing marketisation 37, 40 Martín, J.R. 63, 66, 246 Martin-​Rojo, L. 2, 7, 86 masculinity 51, 218, 220 Massumi, B. 216 material reality: borders, boundaries and 82 The Matrix franchise 45 meaning(s): cross-​modal subversion of 54–​5; emotive 63; linguistics and 12, 13, 14, 21; links between negative and attitudinal 158–​9; performance of transcribed evidence and alteration of 110; of walls, boundaries and borders 83; see also social meanings; symbolic meaning meaning potential: multimedia 54; semiotic 55, 56; texts/​artifacts 52; visual representations of older people 243 meaning-​making: affective communicability 217; invoked evaluation 66; time, space and 56 media: assertions about ageing women 246; classic genres 44; educational, Uruguay 197; and the making of Bolsonaro 213–​33; performance and politics 62, 69; photographs and representations of people 247; regulatory effect of discourse 198; see also news media; social media mediatization 84 membership categorization device 238 mental models: racist personal 116; social movement manifestos 113, 116, 123

Index 271 meta-​functional principles: textual analysis 52–​4 meta-​media object 45 metaphorical association 173, 174, 188, 241 Mexico 144; see also US-​Mexican border Meyer, M. 3 Michel, Louis: multimodal biography of 10, 253, 254–​61 migration: borders and 83, 84, 86, 90, 95 Milbank, D. 91 militarized borders 83 Miller, R. 28 Miller, W. 221, 226, 230 Miranda Warning 104, 105, 106 miscarriages of justice 106 Miskolci, R. 229 misogyny 213 mnemonics: pre-​literate cultures 154, 159, 160 mobile gaming 48 modality: grammar of 18–​22, 23; in university prospectuses 35–​6 modalizers/​modalization 21, 199 modification (mods) of games 46 modifiers: positioning of 24–​5 Monasterio, Rocio 139 Montalcine, Rita Levi 250 Moon, R. 244, 245 moral panic 200, 207, 214 moral values 87, 202–​3 morality 165–​6 moralization: legitimation by 83–​4, 87, 90, 91 Moretto, M. 219 Morgan, Piers 247 Morrison, Scott: performing populism 68–​77, 79n4 motivation: social movement manifestos 120, 121, 125 Mouffe, C. 136, 147 movement: borders and control of 83 Mozambique 106 multimedia: CDA analysis 54–​5 multimodal biography: of a revolutionary feminist 10, 253, 254–​61 multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) 171, 172, 237 multimodal images: evaluative stance and attitudinal meaning 247 multiplayer game genres 57

multiplicative model: multimedia meanings 54 Murphy, Katharine 70–​71 mutual minorityhood 140–​41 mythopoeias: legitimation by 87, 90 naming conventions 18 narrative(s): as central to understanding of boundaries 82; function in new emerging ethical formations 7–​8; legitimation by 84, 86, 87, 90; and meaning 83; power of public 163–​4; pre-​literate 159–​60; progressive 4; in social movement manifestos 119–​20; syntax 160–​61; see also multimodal biography; news media National Program of Sexuality Education (Uruguay) 197 nationalism 6, 148, 219 nativism 5, 6, 85, 90 negative discourse analysis/​negative admonitions 7–​8, 155–​7, 158 negative discourses: political marketing 162 negative evaluation: in news reports 198, 199, 207 negative meaning: links between attitudinal meaning and 158–​9 neoliberal discourse 142 neoliberal hegemonies: generation of new 139–​47 neoliberal universities 39, 40 neoliberalism 3, 219; and anti-​ establishment discourse 134, 135, 136, 137, 147–​8; colonization of sustainability 176; in infographics 181; left-​wing parties and adoption of 138; legitimation of 38; libertarian 138; and moral vacuum 166; organization of cities, wealth and poverty 86; progressive 138 neologism 24 network compositions 190–​92 Network of Responsible Parents (Uruguay) 198 neutrality: news reports and construction of 199 New Labour, New Language 61 Newman, D. 82 News Corp 163–​4 news media: affective communicability 230; anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse

272 Index 197–​8, 198–​206, 207; infographics in 171; and social fragmentation 163–​5; use of we (pronoun) 19, 20 Ngai, S. 215–​16, 230 Nini, Dr Andrea 103 Nintendo 49 nodal points 143–​4, 230 nominalizations 17, 22–​3 normalization: of discourse practices 30; of far-​right ideology(ies) 6; of lockdowns, Spain 142; of unrepublican and undemocratic discourses, Brazil 231; of walls, boundaries and borders 90 normative discourses: of performances 62 norms: and ageism 238, 247; in legal and moral domains 61; media representations of performance 66; social movements 113, 116, 120, 126, 130, 131 noun phrases 25 nouns 16, 17, 64, 180 objectification: nominalization and 23 objectivity: news reports and construction of 199 The Observer 18, 19, 20, 23 offer: images and 248 official knowledge: in education 195, 197 Ogden, C.K. 63 old age: concordances 244–​5 older women: semiotic representation 9, 10, 236–​53 Omer, Saad 157 online communities: transmedia franchises and 43, 45, 46–​7 opponent/​enemies: social movement manifestos 120, 121–​2, 125, 129 order (linguistic) 25 orders of discourse 27 ordinary bloke: visual representation of Scott Morrison as an 73–​4 organisational structure: BLM movement 119, 120; in infographics 191 orientation: in infographics 174 orientational and organizational meaning 54 Ortellado, P. 219 Orwell, George 102, 143 Other 6, 82, 86; see also us vs. them

Our Common Future (WCED, 1987) 174–​5 overlexicalization 24 ownership: fan franchises and 45 Paasi, A. 82 pace: media, and meaning-​making 56 paleolibertarianism 136, 147–​8 paradigms 173, 178–​9, 180 parents as victims 202–​3 Parker, Sarah Jessica 247, 248 participants: in nominalization 22–​3; in social movement manifestos 117–​18, 128 Partido Popular (People’s Party) 134 Pasch, K. 91 passivisations 23–​4 pathway compositions 184–​6 patriarchy 213, 214, 219, 220, 254 Pélucio, L. 229 people: and populist politics 62 performance 5, 60–​79; critical discourse analysis 61, 62; of populism 61–​2, 68–​75; representations of 62–​8; setting 60; social life 60–​61, 76; of transcriptions of recorded evidence 110 performer-​ vs. performance-​oriented representations 63–​5; Scott Morrison 68–​75 performers: appearance and manner 60; pre-​literate stories 160 perlocutionary sequels 99 personal authority: legitimation by 87 personal participants: in nominalization 22–​3 personal pronouns 18–​21, 119 personal/​group cognition: social movement discourse 113, 116, 123 personality: performance and 60, 63, 64 personnel interviews; social skills training in 28 persuading 35–​6 Peru: manifesto of indigenous women 126–​30 philosophy of suspicion 138 photography: as a persuasive modality 35; representations of ageing women 248; visual representations of performance 73–​5 place: as a linguistic device 22; in social movement manifestos 120, 128

Index 273 polarization: as a discursive strategy 139–​41; manifestos and ideological 122, 126; of political sentiments in news stories 165; social media and political 154–​5; social and political, Brazil 9, 214, 218, 219, 226, 230; see also us vs. them Police Caution (UK) 104 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) 102 police interviews 6; audio-​recording 102, 104–​5; best practice in 104; communicating the right to silence before questioning 105–​7; denial of availability of lawyers 105; hand written records 101–​2; improving collection of verbal evidence 104; non-​native subjects and interpretation 107; non-​recording of, Cyprus rape case 102–​4; verballing of records 100, 101 policing: of discourse practices 29, 30 political correctness 136, 139, 140, 148 political discourse: inclusion/​exclusion, Austria 88; negative discourse analysis 155–​7, 158; regeneration of, to win power 134–​7 political interests: transmedia and 46 political negativity: post-​literate 165 political power 119, 162; CDA and 3; regeneration of political discourse to win 134–​7 politics: of collective threat 6; conservative neoliberal rationality 147–​8; disenchantment with 137; marketing and 153; performance and 5, 60–​79; policy, gender and sexuality (Uruguay) 196–​7; short-​term nature of 155; social media 154–​5; in targeted societies 161–​3; see also body politics; identity politics The Politics of Fear 61–​2 popular culture: presumed amorality 166 populism 6, 134; demographic decline and rise of 94; performing 61–​2, 68–​75; politics of disgust and the making of Bolsonaro 213–​33; racist rhetoric, Austria 85–​6 possessive nouns 64 post-​Fordist industry 31 post-​literate cultures 7–​8, 152, 153–​5, 159–​60, 165

post-​modernity 48, 138, 243 post-​truth 138 Postman, N. 154 power: affect, discourse and 217; attitudinal 163; behind discourse 39; CDA and 3; disciplinary regime 141–​2; discourse and 83; and hierarchical differentiation 50; and linguistics 12–​13, 14, 20, 21; policing of discourse practices 29; of public narratives 163–​4; racism as an abuse of 115–​16; and school curriculum 195; social movement manifestos 118, 120; walls, borders and boundaries 82, 84; see also bio-​power; deontic powers; hegemonies; political power; student power pragmatic context: manifestos 117, 125, 126, 128, 131 pre-​literacy/​pre-​literate cultures 154, 159–​61 predicates 16–​17 predicative adjectives 24 prenominal adjectives 24–​5 prescriptive evaluation: of performances 67 prescriptive performances 62 presence (gameworld) 57 present tense 22 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 60 presentational meaning 53–​4 print fictions 45 prison walls 82 problematization 135, 136, 148 producer-​consumer relationships: technologization of discourse and 33, 35 professional identities: technologization of discourse and 32–​3, 35 professional/​institutional voices: in anti-​ gender/​sexuality discourse 203–​4 profit: over people, COVID pandemic and 144; transmedia franchises and 45, 48, 50 progressive neoliberalism 138 progressivism 140, 148 pronouns 14, 18–​21, 22, 64, 119, 121, 123 props: stage/​performance 60, 73; visual representations of older people 240, 241, 243

274 Index protective function: of walls 81, 82 proximity: in linguistics 20, 21 purist discourses 157–​8 Putin, Vladimir 152 QAnon movement 153 queer theory 215, 216 quotes: in news media reports 198, 199 racialization 5–​6, 83, 85 racism 115–​16, 238 racist rhetoric 85–​6, 95 radical right see right-​wing parties radical tribalism 153 rational capacities: loss of 166 rationalization: legitimation by 87, 91 reactionary discourse 159, 214 Reagan, R. 61 reality: institutional 39; visual resources and 248; see also material reality; social reality(ies) recontextualization 174, 217, 244, 248; of Fortress Europe 83; politics of disgust and the making of Bolsonaro 9, 215, 221–​2, 226–​7; politics of performance 5; of racist rhetoric, slogans and 85; of social practices 63, 237 The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia 253, 254–​61 refugees: walls, boundaries and borders 83, 84, 88, 89, 94 regulatory effect: media discourse 198 relational clauses: interpretation of performances 66–​7 relationships: technologization of discourse and changes in 32, 33, 35 relexicalization 24 religion 219; and anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse 196, 202, 203; organization of cities and wealth and poverty 86; and segregation 85, 86 reported speech: in collection of verbal evidence 101 reporting verbs: and neutral structuring 199 representations of performance 62–​8; of Scott Morrison 68–​75 resentful straight men 218–​22 resistance: to ageism 248–​50 resources: social movements 120 reverse discrimination 200–​202

revolutionary feminist: multimodal biography of 10, 253, 254–​61 Rheindorf, M. 88 rhetoric: and conveyance of attitudes 140–​41; exclusionary 6, 85–​6, 90, 95; fabrication of existential threats 214; ideological polarization 126; reversal of discrimination 200–​202; social movement manifestos 124 rhythm 160–​61 Richards, I.A. 63 Richardson, J.E. 167 right-​wing parties: building of anti-​ establishment discourse 7, 134–​50; racist rhetoric 85–​6; rise of 6, 7, 137; see also populism road signs: representation of bodies in 239–​41 role identities (social): transmedia products and 47 role model authority: legitimation by 87 role-​playing games (RPGs) 48 Rose, N. 28, 32 Rothbard, M. 147 Rousseff, Dilma 9, 213, 214, 215, 219, 220 Sacks, H. 238 Safatle, V. 214, 218 Sanchéz, Pedro 143, 150n5 Sarthou, Hoenir 198, 204 scapegoating/​scapegoats 94, 95 schematic structure: social movement manifestos 119–​23, 125–​6, 131 scientistic aspects of language 158 Sclafani, J. 140 Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. 248 scribes: in British Parliament 107–​8; transcribing verbal evidence, Brazil 101–​2 Searle, J.R. 39 securitization 83, 84, 94 SEGA 49 segmentation compositions 186–​90 segregated spaces 82, 85–​6 self-​control: neoliberal discourse of 142 self-​representation in anti-​gender/​ sexuality discourse 203, 204–​5 semantics: social movement manifestos 117, 119–​21, 125–​6, 128–​30, 131 semiotic callousing 218

Index 275 semiotics: ageism and sexism 10, 236–​53; CDA and MCDA 172; characteristics of ghettoes 86; identity politics 3; visual-​graphical representations 44; see also social semiotics Sennett, R. 85 sentence adverbs 22 Sex in the City 247 sexism 10, 236, 238, 240 sexuality 51, 215, 216; see also anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse; desexualization; heteronormativity; homosexuality shared knowledge: social movement discourse 113, 116, 117, 123, 126 Shepherd, Ernestine 249 Shorten, Bill 68, 69, 71, 72, 78n2 Sicurella, F.G. 81 silence, the right to: advising suspects on 104–​5; communicating before questioning 105–​7 silencing: as a discursive strategy 205–​6 Silva, D. 217 The Sims 51 simulation in discourse 30 sincerity: in performance 61, 76–​7; technologization of discourse and crisis of 33 slang 108 slash fan fiction 47 Slembrouck, S. 107, 108 slogans: in anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse 203; exclusionary, Austria 85; political, Spain 141, 143, 146, 147–​8; social movements 114, 126 Smith, Adam 186 social actors 90, 115, 198; children as 206; elite 204; social movement manifestos 121–​2; see also participants; performers social cognition: social movements 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123 social constructionism 62, 82, 239 social democracy 136, 140 social discipline 142 social fragmentation 161, 163–​5, 166 social identities: media artifacts and 53; technologization of discourse 30, 32, 33 social judgements 246 social life: discourse as key component of 115; performance in 5, 60–​61, 76; values in 61

social meanings: borders and 84; linguistics and 12, 15, 16 social media 3, 154–​5; anti-​gender/​ sexuality discourse (Uruguay) 197–​8; politics of disgust and the making of Bolsonaro 215, 223–​6, 228; and social change 167; TikTok war and the fight for public opinion 152–​3; use of artificial intelligence 164 social models 47, 48 social movement discourse 113–​31; cognitive aspects 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 126; discourse analysis 114–​15; discourse structures 123–​4; manifestos 115, 117–​30, 131; studies 6–​7, 114, 117; theoretical framework for analysis of 115–​17 social organization 14, 15, 37 social practices: hegemonic discourses and 146; legitimation by rationalization 87; and meanings 83; semiotic resources and recontextualization of 237 social reality(ies): discourses and 83; and linguistic form 14; transmedia franchises and 46; voice and 205 social sciences 28, 114, 115, 131 social semiotics 9, 10, 172, 173, 214, 215 social structure(s) 4, 12, 14, 15, 113, 115 social theories 3 social voices 52–​3 society: and language 14 socio-​cultural context: social movement manifesto (Peru) 128, 129 socio-​cultural memory 154, 155 socio-​cultural practices: performance as part of 76 socio-​political context: manifestos 117, 118, 123 sociolinguistics 60, 217 Solano, E. 219 solidarity 5, 19, 89, 113, 130, 143, 144, 207, 248–​9 SONY 49 Sosa, J. 213–​14 space: media, and meaning-​making 56; racialization of 6, 85; road signs for elderly people and decontextualization of 240; see also segregated spaces Spain: civil rights framework 146; the radical right and anti-​establishment

276 Index discourse 7, 134–​50; Stop Mare Mortum manifesto 124–​6 spatial characteristics: of ghettoes 86 spatial metaphors: of ageing 239 speech: and performance 60 speech acts 15, 19, 21, 36, 39, 53, 105, 106, 126 speech functions 25, 248 spitting: and the politics of disgust, Brazil 9, 215, 216, 217, 221, 223–​4, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231 standardization: of discourse practices 30, 36; of education 153–​4 Startopia 51 statement-​taking: audio-​recording 104–​5 status: linguistics and 12–​13 status functions 39, 40 Stefanoni, P. 137 Steinberg, M.W. 115 Steinzeit. Mauern in Berlin 81 stereotypes 226; see also ageism; sexism still (adverb) 247 Stop Mare Mortum manifesto 124–​6 stories see narrative(s) Strangio, P. 71 student power 40 Sturla, Daniel 199, 202–​3 stylistic appropriateness/​expression: social movement manifestos 124, 126 stylistic effect: of nominalization 22 subject position 23–​4 superiority-​inferiority: and use of we pronoun 19–​20 surveillance 142 sustainability: as a buzzword 174–​6; representation in infographics 176–​92 sustainable development 174–​5, 176–​8 symbolic meaning 82, 83, 173 symbolization: in infographics 173, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 186–​8, 191, 192; visual representations of older people 241 syntactic transformations 22–​4 syntax 12, 15, 16, 18, 160–​61 system network: for representation of performance 67–​8 systematic selection: linguistic 15–​16 tables: in infographics 179–​80 Talbot, M. 2, 10, 253 target marketing 152, 155, 161–​3

technologization of discourse 4–​5, 27–​41; characteristics 27, 28–​30; defined 27, 28; impact on discoursal practices 33–​6; pathological consequences 33; universities 31, 33–​40; wider process of change 30–​31; workplace culture 31–​3 telephone: interpretation by 106 tense(s) 22, 23, 64, 123 territorial borders 84 terrorism 3; and exclusionary rhetoric 90; securitization and 84, 94; and wall-​building 81 texts 14–​16 textual function: of language 13, 15; multimedia 53 thematization: in anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse (Uruguay) 197–​8, 198–​200; in nominalization 23–​4 theoretical rationalization: legitimation by 87 therapeutic critique: dramaturgical action 62 they (pronoun) 19 threat(s): legitimation of exclusion 90, 93; politics of collective 6; rhetoric and fabrication of 214; and securitization 84 TikTok 152–​3, 154 time/​temporality: in infographics 173–​4, 182, 183; as a linguistic device 22; road signs for elderly people and decontextualization of 240; in social movement manifestos 121, 123, 128; in transmedia immersion 48–​9 Tolkien franchises 45 topoi 88; and legitimation of exclusion 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94 tradition: legitimation by 87, 88 traditionalism 148 training: technologization of discourse and 28, 30, 33 transcription: of recorded evidence 107–​110, 111n5 transformations (syntactic) 22–​4 transgender 38–​9 transitivity: grammar of 16–​18 transmedia identities 5, 43–​58; challenges to critical discourse analysis 51–​2; critical discourse analysis 43–​7; games and globalization 49–​51; immersion

Index 277 48–​9; models, identifications and identity 47–​8; research methodology 56–​7; theoretical resources for critical discourse analysis 52–​6 transversal analysis 54–​5 Trump, Donald 134, 140, 157, 218; legitimation of exclusion 84, 88, 90–​94 truth claims 138 truth/​truthfulness 61, 76, 158, 165, 167 twee: cult of 243 Twilight in Europe 94 Twitch.tv 45 Twitter 154, 157, 167, 197, 228 ugly feelings 215–​16, 223, 226, 228, 230 Ukraine-​Russia war 152 ultra-​conservatism 138, 140 Unidas Podemos (Socialist Party) 135, 141 unification of enterprise 32 United Kingdom (UK) 49, 138; advising suspects on the right to remain silent 104; scribes, British Parliament 107–​8 United Nations (UN): sustainability goals 176–​8; sustainability strategies 175 United States (US) 49, 176; left-​wing politics 138; linguistics and the delivery of justice 104, 106, 107; walls, borders and boundaries 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92 unity (linguistic) 25 universities, technologization of discourse: and change 36–​40; emergence of expert discourse technologists 29; policing of discourse practices 29; prospectuses 33–​6; upheavals in 31 urban contexts: resistance to ageism 249–​50 urban representations: of older people 239–​41 urgency: legitimation by 93 Uruguay: education and CDA in 9, 195–​208 us (pronoun) 121 us vs. them 116, 121, 126, 131, 139, 142, 204; see also Other US-​Mexican border 84, 90, 91, 92 utopias: NDA and political 156–​7

value systems: advertising and sale of 49; transmedia world 46 value-​free recording 108 values: change and 38; cultural transition and reordering of 165; gender and sexuality in education represented as an attack on 200; news stories and threatening of civilized 163; performance and conveyance of 60; in representations of performance 66, 70, 71–​2; in social life 61; social movement discourse 113, 121, 126, 130; see also cultural values; moral values Ven diagrams 190 verbal evidence: collecting 6, 101–​2; improving collection of 104; summaries of 101–​2; transcribing 107–​110 verballing: of interview records 100, 101, 142 verbs 16, 18, 22, 70, 160–​61, 180, 199, 227 victim-​perpetrator reversal 91, 93 victimization: anti-​gender/​sexuality discourse (Uruguay) 200–​204 video link: interpretation by 106 videogames 46; Bolsonaro and Wyllys 227–​8; and globalization 49–​51; immersion 24/​7 48–​9; modifications 46; multiplayer 57; see also gameworlds; gaming consoles Villar, Sebastián 198–​9, 201, 202 violence 3, 92, 119, 120, 121, 123, 130, 136, 153, 155, 230, 231, 238 vision: and exclusion 90, 95; see also aims/​goals visual representations: of older people 239–​41; of performance 73–​5; semiotic resources 44; see also comics; infographics; photography voice(s): detachment 199; management 198–​9; resistance to ageism 248–​50; silencing 205–​6 Vollmer, B.A. 83 VOX 7, 134, 139, 142 wall-​building 81, 88–​94 walls 5–​6, 81–​96; exclusion and inclusion 83–​4; functions of 81–​3; and segregated spaces 85–​6 Walter, J. 71

278 Index Walters, S.D. 220 Ward, Russell 76 Way, L.C.S. 167 we (pronoun) 19–​20, 119, 139 wedge issues 162 Weiss, P.A. 115 The West Australian (30/​4/​2019) 69 White, P.R.R. 63, 66, 246 Wodak, R. 1, 3, 5–​6, 61–​2, 72, 86, 88 wokeness 38, 39, 40 words: ageism in 244–​8 Workers’ Party (PT) 213, 218 working class males 51

workplace culture: technologization of discourse and 4, 31–​3 World Health Organization (WHO) 238 worldviews 12, 46, 49, 195, 206, 222 Wyllys, Jean 9, 215, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223–​4, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231 xenophobia 95 you (pronoun) 20 Zelensky, Vlodomir 152–​3