Tension and Conflict in the Labour Discourse Community: A Critical Genre Analysis of Labour Prime Ministers' Speeches to the TUC (1969-2008)

Autori

  • Claudia Ortu University of Cagliari University of Johannesburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1285/i22390359v12p161

Parole chiave:

Great Britain, genre analysis, discourse analysis, trade unions, labour party

Abstract

Abstract - Trade Unions have been the most important constituency of the British Labour Party since 1900. The relationship between the party and workers' organizations has undergone deep changes, resulting in the open confrontation that characterised the years of the latest Labour governments (1997-2010). Labour Prime Ministers' speeches to the annual conference of the Trade Union Congress form a genre on their own as they are addressed to a distinctive discourse community and respond to specific purposes (Swales 1990). They are institutionalised ways of acting semiotically (Fairclough 2003, 2006), thus aspects of the social practice of governing. This article provides a critical genre analysis of speeches by Labour Prime Ministers to the TUC from 1969 to 2007 to reveal the frictions inside the Labour discourse community.

Biografia autore

Claudia Ortu, University of Cagliari University of Johannesburg

Claudia Ortu is a researcher at the university of Cagliari, department of philology, literatures and linguistics and Senior research fellow at the University of Johannesburg, South African Research Chair in Social Change.

Riferimenti bibliografici

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Ortu, Claudia 2008. Construing Trade Unions: The anti-trade union discourse of the British Governments. Unpublished Phd thesis, University of Naples, Federico II, http://www.fedoa.unina.it/2851/

Ortu, Claudia 2009. Draining Off Trade Unions' Role: Gordon Brown's Speech to the TUC Conference 2007, in Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, Vol.3, Issue 2, pp 162-175.

Swales, John M. 1990. Genre analysis: English in Academic and Research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Pubblicato

28-12-2014

Fascicolo

Volume 12 (2014)

Sezione

STUDI - Articles

Licenza

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/it/legalcode