Neoliberal Ideology Only “Partially” to Blame in the Global Financial Crisis? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Alan Greenspan’s Public Discourses on the 2007/8 GFC

Author(s):  
Coral Campbell
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Neda Salahshour

<p>Representation of Immigrants in New Zealand Print Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis  New Zealand is often perceived as one of the most diverse countries in terms of its population, with “more ethnicities in New Zealand than there are countries in the world” (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). According to the 2013 census, 39% of people who live in Auckland, New Zealand’s most immigrant-populated city, were born overseas. In such a setting, the issue of social harmony becomes important. Media institutions hold power and therefore their representations play a significant role in how immigrants are perceived and whether they are embraced and welcomed or resisted. It is for this reason that media discourse deserves attention.  Research in this area in the context of New Zealand has been limited and furthermore has leaned towards content analysis or a purely qualitative analysis of a specific diaspora. Addressing these issues, my research aims to gain a better understanding of how immigrants are discursively constructed in the New Zealand Herald newspaper during the years 2007 and 2008. Given that the Global Financial Crisis began to make its presence felt in 2008, this study also sought to investigate expected discrepancies in the representation of immigrants during economically challenging times.  Grounded within a critical approach, this study adopts methodic triangulation; that is, the data is analysed using two complementary analytical frameworks, namely that of corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Baker, KhosraviNik, Krzyzanowski, McEnery, & Wodak, 2008) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). Using these two frameworks, I use statistical information as entry points into the data and explore significant collocations which contribute to the construction of dominant representations. This analysis is followed by an in-depth analysis of systematically sampled news articles with the aim of identifying the ii various discursive and argumentation strategies commonly employed in print media.  The findings from both analyses point to a rather ambivalent representation of immigrants. On the one hand, immigrants are constructed as being qualified and playing an important role in filling skill shortages in New Zealand. This positive construction depicts immigrants as an economic resource which ought to be capitalized. In addition, liquid metaphors, previously argued to dehumanize immigrants and construct them as uncontrollable (KhosraviNik, 2009) are surprisingly used in my data to construct the immigration of large numbers of immigrants to New Zealand as essential. On the other hand, immigrants are also constructed as threateningly Other or passive victims. Therefore, immigrants are not only constructed as beneficial to New Zealand society but are also represented as being problematic.  This study identifies a unique representation of immigrants in the New Zealand Herald which could perhaps be explained by the unique socio-political and geographical context of the country. The triangulation and methodic rigour of this study also ensure that the findings are generalizable to the whole dataset and contribute to current understandings of immigrant representation and approaches to the study of discourse and representation.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hayes

The ‘academic orthodoxy’ (Brookfield 1986) of student engagement is questioned by Zepke, who suggests that it supports ‘a neoliberal ideology’ (2014: 698). In reply, Trowler argues that Zepke fails to explain the mechanisms linking neoliberalism to the concepts and practices of student engagement (2015: 336). In this article, I respond to the Zepke-Trowler debate with an analysis of student engagement policies that illuminates the role of discourse as one mechanism linking neoliberal values with practices of student engagement. Through a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, I demonstrate a persistent and alarming omission of human labour from university policy texts. Instead, the engagements of students and staff are attributed to technology, documents and frameworks. Student engagement is discussed as a commodity to be embedded and marketed back to students in a way that yields an ‘exchange value’ (Marx 1867) for universities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 814-836

This article takes a critical approach to the language used by Australian politicians during the global financial crisis of 2007–8. Critical periods in history provide a rich substrate for the appearance of new expressions with the potential to frame the debate, influencing the ways events are interpreted and blame attributed. Passing unnoticed into usage, such memes have the potential to become part of unexamined background knowledge and covertly co-opt hearers and users into shared systems of value and belief. The study focusses on one specific neologism deployed by opposition politicians, firstly in an attempt to create the erroneous impression that a recession was occurring and secondly that it was the fault of the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Patterns of occurrence were tracked against local and international events, indicating a life cycle with several distinct phases: chance emergence, a strategic deployment, cross-genre diffusion, resistance and eventual rejection. Keywords: Alliteration; critical discourse analysis; economic crisis; blame; political discourse; slogans; social media; memes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110275
Author(s):  
Gavin Brookes

In response to the heightened risk that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses to the health and lives of people with obesity, in 2020 the U.K. government launched a new package of policies intended to stimulate weight loss among the country’s population. In this article, I present a critical discourse analysis of the policy paper which announced these new measures. I identify the discourses that are used to represent things, people, and processes in this policy text. These discourses are interpreted in terms of broadly neoliberal ideologies of public health management. Taken together, the discourses identified contribute to a broadly neoliberal ideology of public health management. It is argued that the policy paper represents an instance of “lifestyle drift,” as it initially appears to engage with social and economic determinants of health but ultimately neglects these in favor of focusing on individual lifestyle factors, particularly in the shape of individuals’ “choices.”


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Mikler ◽  
Sundran Rajendra ◽  
Ainsley Dianne Elbra

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is seen as arising from a new social structure of accumulation that institutionalised a neoliberal form of capitalism post the 1980s. This gave rise to “financialization,” which has increased both the power of financial markets over other economic sectors, and of financial market actors over national governments. However, while the neoliberal ideology underpinning financialization had a global impact, it sprang from the leading free market economies of the US and UK and was most readily embraced by states sharing their institutional support for it, such as Australia and Canada. But to what extent has it been questioned in these states since the crisis? In this article we examine perceptions of the legitimacy of finance via a 6 year comparative study of editorials in the mainstream press over 2007–2012. We do so because shifts in perceptions of the legitimacy suggest the extent to which the GFC produced the potential for more fundamental institutional change. We find that rather than this legitimacy having been undermined, or transformed, existing viewpoints instead hardened over the period considered. This indicates that, despite regulatory reform, the power of finance remains relatively unchanged.


Author(s):  
Ernesto Abalo

This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Neda Salahshour

<p>Representation of Immigrants in New Zealand Print Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis  New Zealand is often perceived as one of the most diverse countries in terms of its population, with “more ethnicities in New Zealand than there are countries in the world” (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). According to the 2013 census, 39% of people who live in Auckland, New Zealand’s most immigrant-populated city, were born overseas. In such a setting, the issue of social harmony becomes important. Media institutions hold power and therefore their representations play a significant role in how immigrants are perceived and whether they are embraced and welcomed or resisted. It is for this reason that media discourse deserves attention.  Research in this area in the context of New Zealand has been limited and furthermore has leaned towards content analysis or a purely qualitative analysis of a specific diaspora. Addressing these issues, my research aims to gain a better understanding of how immigrants are discursively constructed in the New Zealand Herald newspaper during the years 2007 and 2008. Given that the Global Financial Crisis began to make its presence felt in 2008, this study also sought to investigate expected discrepancies in the representation of immigrants during economically challenging times.  Grounded within a critical approach, this study adopts methodic triangulation; that is, the data is analysed using two complementary analytical frameworks, namely that of corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Baker, KhosraviNik, Krzyzanowski, McEnery, & Wodak, 2008) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). Using these two frameworks, I use statistical information as entry points into the data and explore significant collocations which contribute to the construction of dominant representations. This analysis is followed by an in-depth analysis of systematically sampled news articles with the aim of identifying the ii various discursive and argumentation strategies commonly employed in print media.  The findings from both analyses point to a rather ambivalent representation of immigrants. On the one hand, immigrants are constructed as being qualified and playing an important role in filling skill shortages in New Zealand. This positive construction depicts immigrants as an economic resource which ought to be capitalized. In addition, liquid metaphors, previously argued to dehumanize immigrants and construct them as uncontrollable (KhosraviNik, 2009) are surprisingly used in my data to construct the immigration of large numbers of immigrants to New Zealand as essential. On the other hand, immigrants are also constructed as threateningly Other or passive victims. Therefore, immigrants are not only constructed as beneficial to New Zealand society but are also represented as being problematic.  This study identifies a unique representation of immigrants in the New Zealand Herald which could perhaps be explained by the unique socio-political and geographical context of the country. The triangulation and methodic rigour of this study also ensure that the findings are generalizable to the whole dataset and contribute to current understandings of immigrant representation and approaches to the study of discourse and representation.</p>


2013 ◽  
pp. 152-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Senchagov

Due to Russia’s exit from the global financial crisis, the fiscal policy of withdrawing windfall spending has exhausted its potential. It is important to refocus public finance to the real economy and the expansion of domestic demand. For this goal there is sufficient, but not realized financial potential. The increase in fiscal spending in these areas is unlikely to lead to higher inflation, given its actual trend in the past decade relative to M2 monetary aggregate, but will directly affect the investment component of many underdeveloped sectors, as well as the volume of domestic production and consumer demand.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document