Building on Raymond Williams’ iconic "Keywords" released in 1975, Jeffries and Walker show how some pivotal words significantly increased in use and evolved in meaning during the years of the ‘New Labour’ project. Focussing on print news media, this book establishes a set of socio-political keywords for the ‘Blair Years’, and demonstrates how their evolving meanings are indicative of the ideological landscape in Britain at that time, and the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the New Labour project influenced the language of the commentariat. Combining corpus linguistic approaches with critical stylistics the authors conduct an analysis of two newspaper corpora using computational tools. Looking closely at textually-constructed meanings within the data, their investigation of the keywords has a qualitative focus, and sets out a clear methodology for combining corpus approaches with systematic co-textual analysis.
Building on Raymond Williams’ iconic "Keywords" released in 1975, Jeffries and Walker show how some pivotal words significantly increased in use and evolved in meaning during the years of the ‘New Labour’ project. Focussing on print news media, this book establishes a set of socio-political keywords for the ‘Blair Years’, and demonstrates how their evolving meanings are indicative of the ideological landscape in Britain at that time, and the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the New Labour project influenced the language of the commentariat. Combining corpus linguistic approaches with critical stylistics the authors conduct an analysis of two newspaper corpora using computational tools. Looking closely at textually-constructed meanings within the data, their investigation of the keywords has a qualitative focus, and sets out a clear methodology for combining corpus approaches with systematic co-textual analysis.
List of figures List of tables 1. Background to keywords in the press 2. Methods and data 3. Sultans of Spin 4. Choice is the word of the hour 5. The immense possiblities of the word reform 6. The impact of living in a global world 7. A breeding ground for terror 8. A sugary coating of respect 9. Conclusions References Index
Analysis of the ideological shift in Britain during the "New Labour era" through corpus-based study of keywords.
Brian Walker is a Postgraduate Researcher at Lancaster University, UK and a Research Associate at the University of Huddersfield, UK. Lesley Jeffries is Chair Professor of English Language and Director of the Stylistics Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She was also Chair of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) from 2007-10.
An enormously interesting work, both as a corpus-driven
discourse-analytical study that demonstrates the complexities of
studying lexis and as a snapshot of a defining period in British
politics.
*The Year's Work in English Studies*
Offers a very insightful study of the language of politicians and
commentators during the Blair years ... The style is accessible and
the presentation of results and discussion is complemented with
many examples and contextual references to the socio-political
situation of Britain during those years, which greatly facilitate
the reading of the book. Keywords in the Press is a thorough and
comprehensive piece of research which will undoubtedly be of
interest to critical stylistics and critical discourse analysis
scholars.
*Language and Literature*
Jeffries and Walker's Keywords in the Press successfully merges the
fields of critical stylistics and corpus linguistics.
*Journal of Language and Politics*
Keywords in the Press examines a crucial time in British political
history through the lens of the keywords used in that era. It
demonstrates how a focus on language can inform political critique,
by questioning and unravelling what other commentators overlook.
The authors have performed an important service by making the
research process itself crystal clear and so available for other
researchers to apply.
*Susan Hunston, Professor of English Language, University of
Birmingham, UK*
This book is an example par excellence of what critical
applications of linguistics can and should do for social science
research. Perfectly mixing quantitative and qualitative methods,
the book combines keyword analysis with critical stylistics, an
approach developed by the authors, to illuminate the core values
characterising New Labour. Clear, engaging and rigorous, the book
offers a valuable, language-based framework for investigating
political ideologies. As such, it will appeal to those working in
critical language studies but equally students and researchers in
political science with a concern for the linguistic reflexes of
politics in action.
*Christopher Hart, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Lancaster
University, UK*
Keywords in the Press is a significant spin-free contribution to
studies of neo-liberal influenced political buzzwords. This
analysis of semantically empty but ominously dominant keywords such
as ‘choice’, ‘terror’ and ‘reform’ updates Raymond Williams classic
study. Supported by an impressive 30 million word news corpus and
combined with a critical stylistic framework this is a welcome and
overdue empirical study of the enduring legacy of Blair’s New
Labour discourse.
*Matt Davies, Senior Lecturer in English Language and Programme
Leader, University of Chester, UK*
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