EMC CPD Online: Politics, Critical Discourses and Narrative: Approaches for A Level English – Teacher Conference

Speakers: 

• Dr Charlotte Taylor - University of Sussex
• Dr Philip Seargeant - The Open University
• Dr Frazer Heritage - Manchester Metropolitan University

Hosted by Dan Clayton with a Q&A. 

The talks

Philip Seargeant: A slogan is not a philosophy: how political catchphrases shape public discourse

2024 will see more people around the world going to the polls than in almost any other year in history. Yet at the same time, there's a real fear in many quarters that democracy - and in particular liberal democracy - is under threat in a way that it hasn't been for half a century. One of the threats to democracy as a political system is from populists and demagogues who offer simple solutions to difficult problems, and make claims and promises which have little if any grounding in truth. In this presentation I will look at a particular form of political rhetoric much beloved by both populists and others alike: the political slogan. The talk will address the questions of: what role do political slogans play in political rhetoric more broadly? what makes a good slogan? what sort of effect slogans can have on public discourse? and what can the use of slogans tell us about the ties between political persuasion and commercial marketing in the modern world? In discussing these questions, the talk will analyse how slogans work as concise narratives, and how they're circulated and spread through society.

Frazer Heritage: Media discourses and pronouns: How small grammatical units go a long way

This talk considers the role of grammar in analysing media discourse. Grammar is often a feature of language that many A-level (and first-year Undergraduate) students somewhat shy away from, in favour of lexical analyses. This talk highlights the importance of considering grammatical features within media texts, with a particular focus on the importance of analysing pronouns. I demonstrate that pronouns have a range of ideological functions. Pronouns can be used to affirm someone’s gender identity within media discourse, but they can also be used to delegitimise someone’s gender identity or even dehumanise someone based on their gender identity. Pronouns can also construct conceptual 'in' and 'out' groups – whereby, the use of pronouns such as 'us' or 'we' and 'them' encourage readers to feel opposed to members of groups different to their own. I explore some of the contexts in which pronouns have previously been studied and draw particular attention to grammatical and semantic agency attached to pronouns. In other words, how different pronouns are used in different verb constructions to highlight the actions of different group members. Throughout this session, I provide multiple examples of pronominal analysis and some practical advice for A-level students around how to tackle discursive analysis.

Charlotte Taylor: Framing migration in political and press discourses

In recent years, migration to the UK has become a highly politicised topic. It intersects with discourses around race, xenophobia, the UK’s relationship to the EU, national identity and more. In this talk, I draw on my research to think about a) what language analysis tools we might use to identify patterns in discourse (from metaphor to corpus analysis) and b) what kinds of questions we can ask about migration discourses (from investigating common tropes such as the ‘proud history’ of welcoming immigrants in the past, to shifting the perspective to consider migration from the UK).