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

This book uses a range of different real text samples to explore how wealth inequality has been portrayed in the British media in the decades between the Second World War and the present day. Using a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies framework, chapters present an historical overview to reveal how mass media discourse has helped make increased wealth inequality look perfectly normal. Print, radio and online media sources are interrogated by a combined methodology drawing from critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and corpus linguistics in order to examine the influence of media on economic policies and its role in making Britain a less egalitarian society. Covering topics such as Second World War propaganda, the ‘Change4Life’ anti-obesity campaign, the Football Lads Alliance (FLA) Twitter movement and UK General Elections, The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality will be of value to any linguist interested in economic inequality and mass media