Democracy and Radicalisation

Keywords for our times?

Raymond Williams 1976

Keywords:

Zeitgeist

Meanings reflecting the times The Last Enemy (BBC2 Sundays):

“I’ve been away four years and everything has changed.”

Background to my research

The borders between langue and parole (or system and use).

Is this a real distinction? How can we operate without a system? How can a system both be stable and change

over time? Do we need the system to understand new

forms and structures?

‘Emergent meaning’

Previous studies:

1. The meaning of ‘water’ during the 1995 Yorkshire water shortage.

2. The nature of the apology according to news coverage of Tony’s Blair’s ‘apology’ for the Iraq war.

3. The creation of opposites in context.

This project – keywords

Words which seem to acquire positive or negative connotation in particular political climates and become absolute and assumed ‘good’ or bad’.

e.g. choice

radicalisation

democracy

extremism

Theoretical assumptions

That texts can ‘have’ meaning to some extent; That such meaning may be ideological, either

reflecting the dominant ideologies of society or reflecting a minority view that is being fostered;

That readers are to a greater or lesser extent potentially influenced by this ideology.

Pilot Study

Newspaper articles from ten year period 1998 – 2007

All articles from 5 newspapers: Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Times.

Focussing on choice, democracy, radicalisation and extremism

Quantitative: do they increase in frequency?

Raw data

Year democra* democracy radicalis* radicalisation extremis* extremism

choice

1998 11008 3670 286 14 1141 150 14703

1999 12719 4276 307 15 1282 218 17850

2000 14495 4302 306 7 1205 249 19580

2001 12516 3890 353 19 2267 344 19852

2002 12335 4061 326 16 1999 443 21591

2003 13406 4848 336 13 1653 292 21716

2004 15398 5186 348 21 2301 438 22245

2005 14310 5059 487 63 2640 729 22827

2006 13419 4704 624 146 2831 859 23842

2007 13634 4419 615 144 2475 803 24425

Normalised by number of articles

0

0.01

0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Year

N o

rmalised

valu

e democra

democracy

radicalis

radicalisation

extremis

extremism

choice

Qualitative study

Methodology: Extract all occurrences of words with context

(concordances) Examine all occurrences for their semantic

prosody (regular collocation) Examine all occurrences for their grammatical

properties Examine all occurrences for their semantic

properties

Semantic prosody (Louw)

Not part of the denotation of a word, but like other connotations, associated with the word by frequency of co-occurrence.

E.g. radicalisation of Muslim youth

Grammatical properties

Many possibilities here, including:

Determiners and adjectives

e.g. social democracy, a democracy

Grammatical role (Actor, Goal etc)

e.g. democracy is …

the US will bring democracy to…

Semantic properties

e.g. is the verbal origin of radicalisation evident in the context ?

Is democracy presented as a single, unified concept?

Are they measurable? What metaphors are used? Are opposites (or synonyms) being constructed?

Democracy and radicalisation - results Based on a comparison of only part of the

available data – from June of 1998 and June of 2007.

To see whether there is any discernible difference between the two years

To assess the contextual meaning of these words at these two times

Radicalisation

NominalisationProcess presented as noun

e.g. transform (v) → transformation

No Actor/Goal

e.g. She transformed the room

It was a transformation

Radicalisation 2

NominalisationProcess presented as noun

e.g. radicalise (v) → radicalisation

No Actor/Goal

e.g. Poverty radicalised the young Muslim

Muslim radicalisation (is increasing)

Radicalisation 2007

Goals: mainly young, mainly Muslim Actors: mainly absent Determiners: mainly definite articles (the)

Radicalisation 2007 contd.

the radicalisation of Arab youth the radicalisation of young men and women in more extremism, radicalisation of Muslim students the radicalisation of Palestinian society. to the radicalisation of the anti-G8 scene. the radicalisation of parts of the Muslim community. the radicalisation of the British people the radicalisation of Russia's Muslims

The radicalisation of students by Islamist groups on campus

Radicalisation 2007 - possessives, self-evident meaning and equivalence

His radicalisation his brother's long process of radicalisation. modern Islam's radicalisation a sign of radicalisation in danger of radicalisation. the "fight against radicalisation and

extremism".

Apposition

The failure to engage and address the needs of modern Islam could result in more extremism, radicalisation of Muslim students, as well as a growing mistrust between Muslims and secular society, the director of the Markfield Institute of Higher Education claims

Radicalisation (1998)

Some indefinite articles (a/an) More Actors evident (i.e. the causes of

radicalisation) No possessives Emphasis on process rather than product Not unequivocally negative connotation

Radicalisation (1998)

Over the past two weeks, thanks to the Decane offensive and the refugee crisis, there has been a radicalisation of Kosovo society at almost all levels.

The strongest stimulus to the radicalisation of the Macedonian Albanians will be a constant pressure-cooker of revolt and suppression in Kosovo.

The deep aftershocks resulted in a new radicalisation of the nationalist community, which in turn led to a record Sinn Fein vote in the 1997 general election

The three victims were buried yesterday in their home village, Dura, in a sea of green flags, showing allegiance to the radical Islamic movement Hamas - a vivid gauge of the steady radicalisation of the West Bank in the year since the collapse of the peace process.

Radicalisation (1998 contd.)

The politicisation of the cartoon? The radicalisation of American mainstream movies? A lovely idea if it were true, but it isn't.

The VW Lupo: a radicalisation of the SEAT Arosa which comes with the customary Volkswagen trimmings

"The English have always considered themselves as subjects, subordinate to the Establishment, rather than citizens. What happened this decade changed all that. It is still continuing, with the re-radicalisation of students, a formerly active body which had been dormant for 30 years."

Types of democracy 1998

the Tories' conversion to 'Scottish democracy'. in most enlightened democracies. a modern democracy with a market economy. a property owning democracy in a liberal democracy popular democracy

Types of democracy 2007

We have transformed ourselves (…) into an inventive and fairly rich social democracy.

the Polish gay community learned to hide under communist rule and is continuing to hide in the new democracy.

Gordon Brown wants to encourage a "home-owning democracy".

Our leaders might be keen to impose Western democracy on oil-rich nations in the Middle East,

to create a "world-class democracy” Finding out what goes on in open democracies?

Metaphors – democracy as organism Local democracy is dying on its feet (1998) Other cancers in our democracy threaten more

obviously (1998) There can be few issues more central to the health of a

democracy. (1998) Equally, we believe our democracy would be healthier if

churchmen spoke out more often on issues of principle and morality. (2007)

one of the world's youngest democracies is being ravaged by widespread gang violence (2007)

Collocates of ‘democracy’

peace and democracy and that violence is genuinely being given up for good.“ (1998)

principles of non-violence and democracy (1998)

human rights and democracy. (1998)

the principles of freedom, democracy and justice around the globe. (2007)

The quality of democracy…(1998)

leaving our democracy less stable and a weak government inevitable

a need for more democracy, Pakistan's democracy is a corrupt

shamblesCompare: India is a democracy.

Democracy as a unified concept

He said: "Whoever voted to get rid of democracy?

we still have the nerve to sell ourselves as a democracy to the world.

Mr Blair challenged African leaders to embrace democracy in return for increased investment.

On the contrary, democracy demands that minorities must receive protection,

The opposites of democracy 1998

De-regulation applies to money, but not to you. As business and capital shrug off the remaining constraints of the post-war years, so the individual is confined to an ever-narrowing corridor of acceptable behaviour, at work, home, even in bed. In contrast to previous conformist social systems - like Scandinavian social democracy - there is no trade-off between shrinking personal liberty and economic security. The constraints on the person exist beside a financial system which believes that it is neither possible nor desirable to offer economic security and that those who fail to be competitive must be downsized

The opposites of democracy 2007

When did democracy end and racism start?

proof that democracy and Islam can co-exist and a future member of the European Union

References

Jeffries, L. (2003) 'Not a drop to drink: emerging meanings in local newspaper reporting of the 1995 water crisis in Yorkshire ', Text 23(4): 513-38.

Jeffries, L. (2007a) Textual Construction of the Female Body: A Critical Discourse Approach . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jeffries, L. (2007b) ‘Journalistic constructions of Blair’s ‘apology’ for the intelligence leading to the Iraq war’ in Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin (eds) Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies London: Continuum.

Louw, B. 1993 ‘Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies’, in M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair, John Benjamins, Amsterdam

Williams, R. (1976) Keywords Harmondsworth: Penguin.