Publication details
The Role of Nationality Contrasts in the Discursive Construction of an Ingroup Member: the Woodward Case in the Telegraph
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2007 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Brno Studies in English |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | Digitální knihovna FF MU |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | ingroup; ideological square; social categorisation; referential strategy; predicative strategy; Louise Woodward; discourse analysis; media discourse; bias |
| Description | Social categorisation, as a process in which individuals are assigned certain values and qualities, is a context-dependent activity in which discourse (as a means of purposeful and goal-oriented communication through language) draws on various referential and predicational strategies. This process often involves the discursive construction of two mutually opposed groups - the ingroup and the outgroup, which are subject to affective treatment: typically positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. This article documents the gradual positive presentation of an ingroup member charged with a criminal act in a foreign country, as identified in continued reporting of the case in the Electronic Telegraph. From a potentially deviant individual, and thus a possible representative of an outgroup comprising negatively perceived 'criminals' (be they convicted or suspected), the English au-pair Louise Woodward was re-constructed into a non-deviant member of the ingroup and assigned positive values. This was a gradual process, in which a heavy use was made of nationality contrasts underlying the polarisation into the contrasting groups of 'us' vs 'them'. As regards the utilization of the nationality contrasts, they provided the initial impetus for covering the story thanks to its newsworthiness. Then they were exploited in order to point out the alleged mistreatment of an ingroup member by the outgroup and, eventually were combined with several positive stereotypes about the ingroup. In their aggregate, these strategies resulted in a redefinition of the issue: the seeming reversal of blame and the tendency to present the main news actor as a multiple victim of numerous other agents and circumstances. |
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