Review of Jeffries, L., & Walker, B. (2018). Keywords in the Press: The New Labour Years. London: Bloomsbury; 224 pages; 9781441162229; £95 (hbk).

Citation

Wiegand V (2018) Review of Jeffries, L., & Walker, B. (2018). Keywords in the Press: The New Labour Years. London: Bloomsbury; 224 pages; 9781441162229; £95 (hbk).. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 10 (2), p. 92–95. https://pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/161041805/05_bookreview102.pdf

Abstract
First paragraph: The book under review builds on Raymond Williams’s (1983) concept of capturing the zeitgeist of a particular period with ‘keywords’. Jeffries and Walker use corpus linguistic methods coupled with their framework of ‘critical stylistics’ to identify and analyse a set of ‘sociopolitical keywords’ for the “New Labour Years” under British prime minister Tony Blair. The authors have chosen this period because it marked important changes in British politics when the two major parties increasingly assimilated and “the language of certain aspects of post-Thatcherite Britain produced a new and inescapable set of ideological absolutes” (Jeffries & Walker 2018: 2). Unlike previous critical discourse studies on New Labour discourse that have concentrated on texts produced by the Labour Party in comparison to other sources (e.g. Fairclough 2000; L’Hôte 2010), Jeffries and Walker’s study focuses on the coverage of New Labour politics in broadsheet newspapers. Their rationale is to investigate the linguistic effects of the New Labour politics on the media (and therefore the wider public). The authors’ approach also pays particular attention to any potential ‘emergent meaning’ that a keyword may develop as it is used more widely by journalists (Jeffries & Walker 2018: 12).

Journal
Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines: Volume 10, Issue 2

People

Dr Viola Wiegand

Lecturer in Education (TESOL), Education