'This is England, speak English!': a corpus-assisted critical study of language ideologies in the right-leaning British press

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Wright, D. ORCID: 0000-0003-2300-5915 and Brookes, G., 2019. 'This is England, speak English!': a corpus-assisted critical study of language ideologies in the right-leaning British press. Critical Discourse Studies, 16 (1), pp. 56-83. ISSN 1740-5904

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2018.1511439

Abstract

This article examines right-leaning press representations of people living in the UK who can't speak English following the 2011 Census, which was the first to ask questions about respondents' linguistic background and competence in English. The analysis takes a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse analysis and is based on a 2 million-word corpus of right-leaning newspaper articles about 'speak(ing) English', published between 2011 and 2016. The analysis shows the tendency for the press to focus on immigrants – particularly in education and health contexts – who are represented and discussed with recourse to a series of argumentation strategies, or 'topoi'. These topoi are problematic as they present paradoxes, obscure the role of the Government in ensuring integration, overlook the difficulties of language learning and cultural assimilation, and generally contribute to a broader UK anti-immigrant media narrative which serves to legitimise exclusionary and discriminatory practices against people from minority linguistic and ethnic backgrounds.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Critical Discourse Studies

Creators:

Wright, D. and Brookes, G.

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis

Date:

2019

Volume:

Number: