Keywords in the Press: The New Labour Years

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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.

Reviews

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 Blairs New Labour discourse. * Matt Davies, Senior Lecturer in English Language and Programme Leader, University of Chester, UK *

Author Bio

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.