“Brexit" as a Social & Political Crisis: Discourses in Media & Politics (Critical Discourse Studies 16:4) (original) (raw)
Critical Discourse Studies, 2019
This paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that conducted the official ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ campaigns in the Brexit referendum. The analysis, which adopts the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in CDS, is aimed at illuminating the main discursive strategies, argumentative schemes and key representations of Britain in/and Europe that sustained the ideological (de)legitimation of Brexit on either side. Based on this analysis, this paper argues that the specific ideological articulation of two key discursive elements – namely trade and immigration – and the argumentative schemes deployed in the campaign engendered and legitimised a new toxic (inter)national logic of Brexit: by leaving the EU, Britain ‘takes back control’ to pursue mercantile policies whose benefits ‘outsiders’ should be excluded from.
Critical Discourse Studies, 2019
While the exact nature of Britain’s exit from the EU – or ‘Brexit’ as it has been popularised – is still as unclear as whether it will take place at all, the complex ontology, unfolding and impact of such an unprecedented event have been investigated widely in several aca- demic fields and especially in the sizeable body of work at the intersection of sociological, political and communicative dimensions (see for example, Clarke & Newman, 2017; Evans & Menon, 2017; Koller, Kopf, & Miglbauer, 2019; Ridge-Newman, Leon-Solis, & O’Donnell, 2018; Outhwaite, 2017; Wincott, Peterson, & Convery, 2017). While our special issue joins the existent studies, it also differs from such work by specifically taking a critical discursive perspective. In doing so, we rely on an interpretation of Brexit as a ‘critical juncture’ (see below) in which different historical and contingent discursive nexuses and trajectories have been at play. Hence, we focus on the interplay between socio-political contexts as well as, therein, on various patterns of discursive work of both mediatisation and politicisation of Brexit, both before and after the UK 2016 EU Referendum. Through our focus, we explore a variety of context-dependent, ideologically-driven social, political and econ- omic imaginaries that were attached to the idea/concept of Brexit and related notions in the process of their discursive articulation and legitimation in the UK and internationally. Our contribution has thus three interrelated aims. First, the articles in this special issue provide evidence of how the Brexit referendum debate and its immediate reactions were discursively framed and made sense of by a variety of social and political actors and through different media. Second, we show how such discourses reflect the wider path-dependent historical and political processes which have been instrumental in defining the discursive and mediatic contexts within which Brexit has been articulated. Third, we identify discursive trajectories at play in the ongoing process of Brexit putting forward an agenda for further analysis of such trajectories.
2019
I would like to express my appreciation to those who helped me to successfully complete this master thesis. First, I would like to express the deepest appreciation to Mr. David Chan, my promotor, for the efficient email communication and for meeting me on a regular basis. Without his help and feedback I would never have been able to elaborate on the theme of the study and to finish the paper. Advice given by Mr. Chan was very useful and he was always willing to help me whenever I needed his guidance. Second, my special thanks are extended to the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy for helping me acquire the right language competences and academic writing skills. Finally, I would like to offer my special thanks to my parents, brothers, boyfriend, grandparents and friends for helping me through difficult times and for always believing in me. I wish to acknowledge the help provided by Alec and Emile Buyse for helping me create the figures in Excel and I am very grateful for the assistance given by Jeroen Candries and my father for proofreading parts of this thesis. I would also like to offer my special thanks to my mom, Cheyenne Kersmaekers and Laura Gosseye for never giving up on me and for the encouraging talks.
The Brexit Crisis: A Verso Report
Making Sense of the Brexit Referendum: writers on the crisis ‘Let’s Take Back Control’ was the slogan that won the UK’s EU Referendum. But what did those words mean to campaigners and voters? Control of what was being wrested from whom and why? And in whose interest was this done? The Brexit Crisis gathers together some of the most insightful and provocative reactions to this moment, from the UK and abroad, examining what happened on the 23 June and what this might mean for the UK and the EU as a whole. It looks at the ruptures, false promises and ingrained racism revealed during the campaign and afterwards. As the UK heads towards the exit, what is to be done? Authors include: Étienne Balibar, William Davies, Akwugo Emejulu, John R. Gillingham, Peter Hallward, Laleh Khalili, Stathis Kouvelakis, Sam Kriss, Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi, Lara Pawson, Wail Qasim, Salvage Editors, Wolfgang Streeck, Antonis Vradis
Hitit Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi / Journal of Divinity Faculty of Hitit University , 2020
United Kingdom’s relation with the European Union has been always distant. Nevertheless, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, socalled the Brexit decision, has been one of the shocking developments happening in 2016. Prima facia the referendum result shows the electorate’s historic decision to break away from the EU, however it is actually a product of a populist political discourse, which has been shaped by increasing antiimmigrant sentiments in the UK. In this paper, we argue that anti-immigrant discourses behind the Brexit campaign actually are a part of larger historical relations with the European Union. Following on from the literature, we argue that the role of the UK in the EU throughout the history of European integration has always been one of ‘British exceptionalism’. The immigration question, on the other hand, provided an important opportunity for following this exceptionalist policy and leave the EU membership, but it resulted in racist and xenophobic attacks towards all “others” within society. In this process, discourses on the leave side contributed to anti-immigrant feelings and racism within society, although we cannot say this was the main aim. In this paper, we conduct the political discourse analysis developed by Teun van Dijk to examine the campaign of the United Kingdom Independence Party during the referendum process. Taken together, these aspects of the article show how the anti-immigration discourse has contributed to the racist and xenophobic actions, while the main aim has been to finalise the UK’s longstanding distance from the EU.
Reflections on the Rhetoric of (De)Colonization in Brexit Discourse
Open arts journal, 2020
This essay begins with an acknowledgment that attempts to understand Brexit are, at this stage, condemned to partial understanding, at best, because as an event it is incomplete and moving in contradictory directions. Just a brief inventory of the many ways in which Brexit can be, and has been, approached gives one a sense of this centrifugalism-sovereignty; globalization; free trade; immigration; racism; disenfranchisement; nostalgia; affect; generational schism; post-imperial decline; neoliberalism; populism; poverty; austerity; class; multiculturalism; cosmopolitanism; far-right and Islamist extremism; Islam and Muslims; refugees; and so on and so on. One particular line of thought emerging among more scholarly treatments from within the arts and humanities (for example, as found in several essays in the volume Brexit and Literature) concerns itself with Brexit as an affective phenomenon, one that speaks to the structures of feeling that bind 'Britishness' into a cultural assemblage that goes beyond the artefactual sense of 'culture' to that nebulous and barely perceptible 'way of life' which constitutes the affective economy of most people living in the British Isles. This, however, is articulated-in the sense used by Stuart Hall-in very different ways depending on class, gender, region, educational background, nationality and, of course, race and ethnicity. This essay will probe the ways in which the affective economy of Brexit is mobilized by picking out one particular thread from within the tangled knot of multiple determinations that have brought the United Kingdom to where it now is: this thread follows the trope of (de)colonization across Brexit rhetorics and places it within a long durée that illuminates the extent to which the affective economy underlying Brexit is deeply embedded in a racialized sense of nationhood that reaches back to the beginnings of Britain's colonial and thence post-colonial history.
Lay discourses about Brexit and prejudice: 'ideological creativity' and its limits in Brexit debates
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2019
Much research on Brexit has studied whether the vote to leave the EU is a marker of growing prejudice. In this paper, we study instead how the relationship between support for Brexit and prejudice is constructed, negotiated and contested in lay discourse. Our analysis of focus groups (N=12) conducted prior to and following the EU referendum shows that support for Brexit was predominantly constructed as based on nationalism and anti-immigration prejudice, especially in Remain-supporting accounts. This prompted identity management strategies and counter-arguments by Leave supporters, such as providing alternative constructions of prejudice and racism; relating Brexit with 'progressive' values; and presenting it as rational and economically sound. In our discussion, we draw attention to the 'ideological creativity' that underpins these accounts and also reflect on the possibilities and constraints of developing alternative political narratives under conditions of politi...
BREXIT FRAMING IN BRITISH MEDIA
International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference On The Dialogue Between Sciences & Arts, Religion & Education, 2019
2019 brings about fiery debates and endless questions about the United Kingdom's current and future relation to the European Union. An important aspect is whether the United Kingdom should or should not organise another national referendum regarding membership in the European Union. It is, nevertheless, equally important to identify the causes and reasons that led to the vote in favour of Leave in the 2016 referendum, widely known as Brexit. It is contended here that the British media played an important role in shaping the citizens' options, imposing themselves as actors in the construction of a sociological phenomenon with serious effects and consequences. Combining the linguistic and cultural perspectives, with scientific tools from the domain of Discourse Analysis, this paper will look into several relevant pro-and anti-Brexit views, as presented by important British newspapers to the wide public, tracing their arguments and the way in which manipulation was achieved on both Leave and Remain sides..
Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2021
This is an interesting and coherent book which offers a specific interpretation of Brexit by examining the political discourse and investigating its linguistic and rhetoric context. The author applies the method of critical discourse analysis, which links the micro analysis of speech acts (speeches, public statements, political adverts, and interviews) with a macro approach that critically assesses the relationship between speech acts and the historical and socio-economic profile of Britain. The Brexit debate is used as a case study to demonstrate that power is embodied in discourse and knowledge, and that sophisticated verbal constructs are capable of manipulating a range of dispositions, emotions, and identities to the extreme.
Brexit Britain Ethnography of a Rupture (2017)
2021 edit: An updated and abridged version of this research can be found at https://www.academia.edu/49236053/Whats\_the\_problem\_with\_Brexit\_notes\_from\_the\_middle\_of\_Britains\_crisis This thesis is the outcome of three months of ethnographic fieldwork in London, the year after the Brexit referendum. By conceptualising the referendum as a moment of rupture, as the beginning of an in-between period in British society, the central aim of this thesis is to trace some of the ways in which individuals and collectives have started to come together and shape strategic narratives about contemporary British society, articulating different scale-making projects within technological and political assemblages. The fieldwork upon which this thesis is based is defined as a multi-speed approach to ethnographic research: on the one hand, it consists of embedded and embodied knowledge drawn from participant-observation and from interviews with politically active individuals; on the other hand, it consists of mediated knowledge drawn from research in and of cyberspace. A secondary aim of this thesis is to account for the role of digital technologies in political discourse and practice. In terms of theory, this thesis aims for a relational understanding of Brexit, both as a process caught up in multiple flows and relations, and as a force that actively produces relations among different groups in British society. In other words, Brexit is here understood as a problem that catalyses the emergence of different (and divergent) publics, which in turn frame Brexit within specific scale-making projects. In the final instance, these scale-making projects can be understood as horizons of public intervention, that is, as alignments of temporalities, spatial scales, and technologies that enact meaningful and intentional public interventions at specific junctures of society. By paying attention to these horizons, this thesis aims to bring into focus some of the potential social formations and cultural becomings that are currently emerging in Brexit Britain, trying as far as possible not to speculate on what will actually happen after Britain leaves the European Union.
Britain, Brexit and Euroscepticism
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 2021
When history books about Brexit are written a key question asked will be ‘how did it happen?’ How did a country renowned for stable governments, pragmatism and diplomacy produce a chaotic outcome so harmful to its economic interests and international standing? This article examines the factors that produced Brexit by analysing its political and historical context, the main campaign groups and their communication strategies. Drawing on the work of Verdery (1999), Maskovsky and Bjork-James (2020) and other anthropologists, I suggest we need to look beyond conventional political science concepts and consider Brexit in terms of ‘enchantment’, ‘angry politics’ and ‘technopopulism’. I conclude that while Brexit provides a window for analysing fault lines in contemporary Britain, it also highlights problems in the EU, its austerity politics and democratic deficit.
Critical Discourse Studies, 2025
as well as Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK. His research focuses on the textual/discursive analysis of different forms of political and organisational communication including the mediatization of Brexit on which he has published internationally in peer-reviewed journals. His publications include also a monograph on 'European Identities in Discourse' (Bloomsbury, 2019); a volume on 'Brexit as a social and political crisis' coedited with Professor Michał Krzyżanowski, (Routledge 2021) and the monograph 'Brexit: A Critical Discursive Analysis' (Palgrave forthcoming).
Discursive Representation of the EU in Brexit-related British Media
GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies
Coverage of the Brexit referendum dominated UK media in the summer of 2016. Previous research has focused on the Leave-leaning press and the representations of politicians within that debate. Analysing the British media representation of the EU is paramount in understanding dominant, conflicting discourses regarding the decision of British voters in the period preceding the referendum. This study compares language use in conflicting discourses of Brexit in British media by adopting a corpus-based discourse analysis using the Brexit corpus in Sketch Engine. Drawing on two corpus methods, namely concordance analysis and collocation analysis of the lexis under study (i.e., the term 'EU'), results of the analysis show that in the Leave campaign, the EU is represented in a negative sense in that continuing to be a member of the EU is viewed as bringing certain economic danger to the future of the UK and as increasing the prospect of terrorist attacks. However, the EU is represented in the Remain campaign both positively and negatively. It is represented positively in that the British public is reminded that the UK shares similar values to those held by the EU and negatively in that the media are critical of the EU in its current form. The Remain campaign also dismantles narratives made by the Leave campaign detailing the benefits of exit to British sovereignty and economy. This article concludes with a discussion of the dominant discourses about the EU found in the British media.