British racial discourse: a study of political discourse about race and race-related matters at parliamentary and borough council levels

'British Racial Discourse' is a study of political discourse about race and race-related matters. The explanatory theory is adapted from current sociological studies of ideology with a heavy emphasis on the tradition developed from Marx and Engels's Feuerbach. The empirical data is drawn from the parliamentary debates on immigration and the Race Relations Bills, Conservative and Labour Party Conference Reports, and a set of interviews with Wolverhampton Borough councillors. Although the thesis has broader significance for British political discourse about race, it is particularly concerned with the responses of members of the two main political parties, rather than with the more overt and sensational racism of certain extreme Right-wing groups. Indeed, as the study progresses, it focuses more and more narrowly on the phenomenon of 'deracialised' discourse, and the details of the predominantly class-based justificatory systems of the Conservative and Labour Parties. Of particular interest are the argument forms (used in the debates on immigration and race relations) which manage to obscure the white electorate's responsibility for prejudice and discrimination. Such discoursive forms are of major significance for understanding British race relations, and their detailed examination provides an insight into the way in which 'ideological facades' are created and maintained.

Arlette Laguiller:does the mainstay of the French political far-left enjoy linguistic parity with her male counterparts?

While language use has been argued to reflect gender asymmetry, increasing parity has been evidenced in official settings (Holmes, 2000; Dister and Moreau, 2006). Our hypothesis is that the French national press has developed a norm of equal linguistic treatment of men and women. In a corpus of articles from Libération, Le Monde, and Le Figaro, we examine the treatment of Arlette Laguiller, the female leader of the French extreme-left 'Worker's Struggle' Party (Lutte Ouvrière), during the run-up to the 2007 presidential elections. How Laguiller is referred to and described in comparison with her male counterparts evidences no asymmetry. Breaches to parity are only found in the right-wing Figaro newspaper. The ideological distance between the newspaper and the candidate suggests that power struggles are a primary source of asymmetrical treatments. The discursive functions of such treatments can be understood through an investigation based on a portable corpus linguistics methodology for the measure of discrimination. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.