The hegemony of inclusion: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of deixis in education policy

Abstract

This article presents findings from a critical historical analysis of UK education policy discourse from 1972 onwards. It argues that the pronoun we was introduced as an important rhetorical tool by which New Labour was able to legitimate its policy decisions through the idea of a neoliberal 'consensus' on the context of education, while at the same time articulating a 'politics of inclusion'. The study combined a corpus-aided approach to critical discourse analysis with political economic theory in order to interpret the data in relation to its historical context of a profound rethink of the relationship between education, the state and the economy. The analysis reveals how the flexible semantics of person deixis are exploited in a highly systematic way so as to claim consensus over politically contestable claims.

Deixis and its role in defining rhetorical space

“…Mainly, their focus is on the role of first-person plural deictic pronouns (Petersoo, 2007). It has been argued that they may play a powerful persuasive role "since they have the potential to encode group memberships and identifications" (Zupnik, 1994: 340) by indexing different groups as included or excluded in the pronoun we (Mulderrig, 2012). As a result, Zupnik (1994) points out the crucial role in the analysis of vague deixis using the example of one interlocutor's responses in a televised political speech event.…”

“…Finally, the last group of personal deictic references, the 1 st plural pronominal reference nosotros (we) and its possessive forms found in the corpus, referred as 'important rhetorical tools' (Mulderrig, 2012) are also ambiguous in assigning their potential participant roles. The close reading of the concordance lines and larger units (sentences) has revealed two main groups, or semantic properties, of these indexicals based on the implied exclusiveness / inclusiveness of the audience.…”

“…In other words, by 'sharing' this 'we' with the public, the government makes this public a responsible part of its decisions and constructs a certain 'inclusion' and 'assumed consensus' in policy making (Mulderrig, 2012).…”

“…The previous research in this area, and specifically, in the domain of political discourse, focuses mainly on the study of personal references and their role to define author's position towards the public (Zupnik, 1994;Arroyo, 2000;Mulderrig, 2012; among others), leaving aside the spatial and temporal dimensions. However, the central problem of this study claims that by including all three dimensions, we may obtain a broader and richer perspective on the (self)position of the politician towards the public.…”

Pronominalization of Social Actors on Universities’ Websites: Effectiveness and Constitutiveness from a Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

“…In fact, there is a wealth of literature on the study of pronouns in discourse. ISSN 1948-5425 2016 www.macrothink.org/ijl 189 Among these is Mulderrig's (2012) study of the inclusive 'we' used by the New Labour Government in the UK. Her findings indicate that the pronoun 'we' was used differently in three ways to fulfil certain ideological work.…”