Discourse Society-2013-Lamb-334-60 PDF

Discourse
& Society
http://das.sagepub.com/
Power and resistance: New methods for analysis across genres in critical
discourse analysis
Eleanor C Lamb
Discourse Society 2013 24: 334
DOI: 10.1177/0957926512472041
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://das.sagepub.com/content/24/3/334
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Discourse & Society can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://das.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://das.sagepub.com/content/24/3/334.refs.html
>> Version of Record - May 3, 2013

What is This?
Downloaded from das.sagepub.com at Jazan University on July 24, 2014
472041
13
DAS24310.1177/0957926512472041Discourse & SocietyLamb
Article
Power and resistance: New

methods for analysis across
genres in critical discourse
analysis
Discourse & Society

24(3) 334360
The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0957926512472041
das.sagepub.com
Eleanor C Lamb
Lancaster University, UK
Abstract
In this article, I set out new methods of analysis in critical discourse analysis. I develop ways
to examine multiple genres over time, based in the discourse-historical approach, and ways to
analyse the representation of social actors, based in social actor analysis. These methods provide
a detailed way of using critical discourse analysis diachronically for multiple texts, analysing
the textual, intertextual and contextual. I argue that because there is not a binary relationship
between power at an elite level and resistance at a grassroots level, power and resistance rather
being present everywhere, critical discourse analysis can and should examine simultaneously
multiple societal levels. My methods help show to what extent more marginal speakers can
make themselves heard. I explain how these methods were usefully applied to a study of the role
that immigrant organisations have played in discussions about immigration control in the UK since
the 1960s.
Keywords
Critical discourse analysis, genre, immigrant organisations, methods, migrants, refugees,
representation, social actors
Introduction
In this article, I set out new methods for analysis in critical discourse analysis. In particular, I develop ways to examine multiple genres over time, based in the discourse-historical
approach, and ways to analyse the representation of social actors, building on social actor
analysis. I also suggest how critical discourse analysts might, and indeed, should, examine simultaneously multiple societal levels in order to gain a fuller picture.1 An analysis
Corresponding author:
Eleanor C Lamb, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK.
Email: Eleanor.C.Lamb@gmail.com
335
Lamb
of multiple levels reminds us that there does not exist a binary relationship between positive discourse on one (grassroots) level and negative discourse on another (elite) level. I
follow Foucaults (1979: 94) view that where there is power, there is resistance, but this
resistance is not exterior to power. The existence of power relationships depends on a
multiplicity of points of resistance . . . present everywhere in the power network
(Foucault, 1979: 95). As such, marginalising and resistant discourses can be found at all
levels, across texts, genres and fields of action.
Studies using the critical discourse analysis of multiple texts have tended to use quantitative methods, particularly from corpus linguistics (e.g. Baker and McEnery, 2005).
More detailed analyses of language using qualitative methods have often examined only
a small number of texts due to the intensive nature of the work (but for analyses encompassing multiple genres, see Muntigl et al., 2000; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001). Increasingly,
studies combine detailed text analysis with (sometimes diachronic) analysis of multiple
texts (e.g. Baker et al., 2008; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008); this article seeks to add to
this combination of detail and diachronic, multi-text analysis.
Social actor analysis is a way of looking at how social actors are represented in texts,
developed by Van Leeuwen (2008; see Text-level analysis later for a detailed description of his schematisation). Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) combined social actor analysis with the discourse-historical approach (see Text-level analysis) in a study of letters
rejecting immigrant workers family reunion applications. Their study looked at a small
number of texts in detail; this article seeks to examine a greater number of texts. Koller
(2008) draws on social actor analysis in her study of representation in lesbian text and
discourse. Mulderrig (2003), though not drawing specifically on social actor analysis,
also looks at social actor representation in terms of how government, teachers and pupils
are represented in policy texts.
Studies of immigration using critical discourse analysis also often examine how
actors are represented, in addition to other focuses such as what arguments are made
about them or what topics they are connected with. Wodak and Van Dijk (2000) examine
parliamentary discourse on immigration in six countries, looking at, among other things,
what kinds of topics and arguments occur in debates. Reisigl and Wodak (2001) examined racism and anti-Semitism in Austria in detail across a range of texts. In terms of
representations of the nation in my study, Reisigl and Wodak (2009) also look at how
national identity is constructed discursively, again across a range of texts. KhosraviNik
(2010) looks at how migrants and refugees are represented in newspapers, giving detailed
analysis of a small number of texts chosen from a much larger corpus. Gabrielatos and
Baker (2008), as part of the same study, use corpus linguistics analysis to examine the
way in which migrants and refugees were referred to in British newspapers and what
they were associated with. They found migrants and refugees being associated with
flooding and natural disasters, and large numbers (see also Baker and McEnery, 2005).
In this article, I add to this field by putting forward a way to analyse social actor representation diachronically and across multiple genres, with a focus on migration and national identity. These methods were developed as a means of analysing a relatively large and
heterogeneous data set over time, during a study of the role immigrant organisations have
played in discussions about immigration control in the UK since the 1960s. The study looked
at three time periods when immigration legislation was passed, and traced representations of
336
Discourse & Society 24(3)
and arguments about migrants, refugees and the nation which both contributed, and offered
resistance, to the harsh treatment of migrants and refugees. Through so doing, it sought to
shed light on the question: How far were immigrant organisations able to challenge marginalising representations of migrants and refugees? Unlike previous studies of discussions
around immigration legislation in the UK, the study simultaneously examined four different
levels of text and talk for comparison: political elites (parliamentary debates); the media
(national newspaper editorials); the extreme right (mainly election flyers); and immigrant
organisations (leaflets and also, in 2009, short films).
Tables 1 to 3 show the variation in the data set. As can be seen, whilst for each time
period I was able to consistently select the two main speakers from a parliamentary
debate, the quantity and relevance of newspaper editorials on the legislation were quite
different for each time period, whilst availability of data meant that no extreme right
texts were available directly about the legislation and that I had instead to select from
election flyers or other leaflets in archives. Available texts produced by immigrant
Table 1. List of data 1968.
Immigrant organizations
Text A: Oppose Racialism flyer about mass lobby of Parliament on 28.2.68, IWA (GB)
Text B: Press statement on Kenyan Immigrants IWA (GB) (1968)
Text C: Emergency Legislation to Curb Immigration Marxist Leninist Party of Great Britain
Text D:The White Paper: A Spur to Racialism Campaign Against Racial Discrimination 1965
Newspaper editorials
Text G:The Daily Telegraph, 23/02/68 Checking the flow
Text J:The Guardian, 23/02/68 Beyond the Immigration Bill
Text O: Daily Mail, 24/02/68 Better late than never
Text R: Daily Express, 24/02/68 No tampering!
Text K:The Guardian, 26/02/68 The door too nearly closed (Picture 6)
Text P: Daily Mail, 27/02/68 Reluctant but right
Text L:The Guardian, 28/02/68 The quota must be raised
Text H:The Daily Telegraph, 29/02/68 In black and white
Text S: Daily Express, 29/02/68 A Bill with no point (Picture 5)
Text M:The Guardian, 29/02/68 Consciences in the Commonwealth
Text N:The Guardian, 01/03/68 Mr Callaghan and the 1,500
Text Q: Daily Mail, 1/03/68 The end of Lucky Jim
Text T: Daily Express, 01/03/68 Showing common sense
Text U: Daily Express, 02/03/68 Mr Wilson has gone to earth
Text I: Daily Telegraph, 02/03/68 More haste, more mess
The extreme right
Text V: Lets bother about BRITAIN instead! flyer from British Movement, 1968
Text W: Manifesto of the National Democratic Party (1968)
Parliamentary debate
Debate in the House of Commons on 27 February 1968:
Speeches by Home Secretary James Callaghan (Text E) and Shadow Home Secretary
Quintin Hogg (Text F)
IWA (GB): Indian Workers Association (Great Britain).
337
Lamb
Text X: Press statement (untitled) about demonstration on 21.2.92, Migrant Support Unit
Text Y: CRE response to Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill press statement, 3.11.92,
Commission for Racial Equality
Text Z: RALLY Against Racism, Facism & Asylum Bill flyer for rally on 29.11.92, IWA (GB)
Text AA: Stop the racist Asylum Bill flyer for demonstration on 21.11.92, Birmingham Ad-Hoc
Mobilising Committee Against the Asylum Bill
Text AB: Postcard to MPs (untitled, undated), Anti Racist Alliance 1992
Text AC:The Daily Mail, 25.6.92 Show these bogus victims the door
Text AD:The Guardian, 23.10.92 The door still closes
Text AE:The Independent, 23.10.92 Charity versus realism
Text AF:The Guardian, 28.01.93 Caught in the act
The extreme right
Text AG: Introduction and section on race and immigration from British National Party election
manifesto 1992
Debate in the House of Commons on 2 November 1992:
Speeches by Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke (Text AH) and Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair (Text AI)
Text AJ:You Tube video (untitled) about demonstration on 21.3.09, No Borders Manchester
Text AK: Flyer about demonstration on 4.5.09, Strangers into Citizens
Text AL: Let Them Work leaflet, Let Them Work
Text AM:Stop the deportations flyer distributed at demonstration on 2.5.09, No Borders South Wales
Text AN: Still Human Still Here video for Still Human Still Here campaign, 2009
Text AO:The Guardian, 03.02.09 Employment law: Winter discontent
Text AP:The Sun, 9.02.09 Asylum lunacy
Text AQ: Daily Mail, 13.02.09 Face the truth, dont shoot the messenger
Text AR:The Independent, 14.02.09 Let asylum-seekers work
Text AS: Daily Mail, 13.03.09 The sheer folly of mass migration
Text AT:The Independent, 17.03.09 Immigrant workers must not be scapegoated
Text AV: Daily Mail, 17.03.09 Lessons from Oz?
Text AU:The Sun, 19.03.09 Well spoken
Text AW: Daily Mail, 10.04.09 Students of terror
Text AX:The Independent, 11.04.09 Britains security hinges on curbing terrorism in Pakistan
Text AY:The Sun, 25.04.09 Gurkha shame
Text AZ:The Sun, 27.04.09 Fight for right
The extreme right
Text BA: British National Party European election leaflet
Debate in the House of Commons on 2 June 2009:
Speeches by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (Text BB) and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling (Text BC)
338

Civil society
State
Private
Field of acon
Field of acon
Field of acon
Field of acon
Field of acon
Field of acon
Law-making
procedure
Polical
execuve/
administraon
Polical control
(media)
Party-internal
development of
an informed
opinion
Formaon of
working
relaonships,
common goals
Formaon of
personal
relaonships
Genres
Genres
Genres
Genres
Genres
Genres
Genres
Laws, bills,
amendments,
MPs
speeches,
debates,
regulaons,
lobbying, etc.
Decisions
(approval/
rejecon:
asylum, stay,
work), inaugural
speeches,
governmental
answers to
parliamentary
quesons, etc.
Declaraons of
opposion
pares,
parliamentary
quesons, MPs
speeches,
peons for a
referendum,
etc.
Press releases,
press
conferences,
interviews,
speeches,
conferences,
books,
newspaper
arcles,
photographs,
protest
marches,
leaflets/flyers
Party
programmes,
declaraons/
statements,
speeches,
conferences
Meengs with
policians
(open/closed),
meengs with
other
organisaons,
leers to/from
policians/
organisaons,
phone calls with
MPs/
organisaons
Phone calls,
private
meengs
(lunches,
weekends),
leers
Field of
acon
formaon of
public opinion
Discourse
topics
Figure 1. Genre, field and discourse.

Source: Adapted from Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 38, who elaborated it from the model proposed by Girnth,
1996: 69.
organisations also changed fairly dramatically over time, becoming far more multimodal
and also moving from flyers distributed in the street to a greater emphasis on texts on the
internet, such as short films. Furthermore, the study compared data between genres and time
periods. The multi-genre, diachronic nature of the study and the constraints of the data raised
the question of how to analyse such a set systematically using critical discourse analysis.
Genre and field of action

Immigrant organisations are involved in a wide range of communication. Figure 1 shows
some of the genres and fields of action in which immigrant organisations might attempt
339
Lamb
to get their voices heard (see also Fairclough, 1995; Reisigl and Wodak, 2009, on
approaches to genre and field of action in critical discourse analysis).
An immigrant organisation might lobby politicians or have members who are politicians; might belong to or lobby a political party; will release press statements and write
letters to the media as well as produce its own media such as flyers, pamphlets, journals
or websites; will network with other immigrant and antiracist organisations; and might
be part of broader coalition antiracist organisations, among other activities.
The studys research problem how far immigrant organisations were able to challenge marginalising representations of migrants and refugees called for both analysis
of how many and which genres immigrant organisations were able to access with their
text and talk (who listened to them?) as well as analysis of what they actually said
(whether their text and talk marginalised migrants and refugees less than did mainstream
speakers). In addition, it was necessary to look at how the socio-political context might
relate to the text and talk produced in each time period. The interrelationship between the
micro and the macro in the study, and in critical discourse analysis more widely, necessitated methods that could examine broader and more specific factors and that could
accommodate varied genres.
In order to account for the above, the methods used take a three-tier approach:
1. Investigation into the socio-political context of each time period, with a particular focus on factors which appear salient to the legislation, including changing
approaches to migrants and refugees, race and immigration control, and events
leading up to the passage of the legislation.
2. Mapping (a) the different kinds of organisations in civil society which were
active on race and immigration in each time period, and (b) the genres which one
case-study organisation was able to access in each time period.
3. Text-level analysis: using text annotation to identify references to different
groups of represented social actors, setting out these references in tables, and
using the tables to lay out speakers representations in categories of analysis
developed from my research questions.
These tiers correspond to the discourse historical approachs analysis of four levels:
the textual (3), the intertextual (2), the immediate context (1) and the broader sociopolitical and historical contexts (the studys comparison between time periods) (Wodak,
2008: xiii). Each of the complementary tiers is equally important, but in this article I
focus on (2) and (3) as containing novel ways to approach analysis: the maps of different
genres and the categories of analysis developed from the research questions. I argue that
these approaches could be adapted for use in other critical discourse analyses.
Mapping genres
To build a picture of how far immigrant organisations were able to make their voices
heard, I first mapped out different organisations active in civil society on race and
immigration in each time period. This enabled me to build a picture of the variation of
organisations: some large and well-established, some government-funded, some more
340
grassroots based, some active only on single issues, some founded around a shared (imagined) ethnicity or nationality. A sample of these organisations was set out in a diagram, giving a general overview of the situation of immigrant organisations in that time period.
Second, I provided a more in-depth case study of one organisation, the Indian Workers
Association (Great Britain) (IWA (GB)), showing the different actors and genres it was able
to access in each time period. Because a very large amount of data exists in the Birmingham
City Archives (BCA) documenting the IWA (GB)s activities over the past 50 years, I was
able to build a detailed picture of its interactions with those at all levels of society.
Figure 2 shows some of the groups active on race and immigration in 1968. The
organisations have been grouped into four different types: extreme right groups; the
statutory or government-sponsored; the voluntary and independent; and the groups
formed by coloured and immigrant communities themselves (of which only a selection
is shown; there are no studies from this time period outlining all such groups and their
grassroots nature means that some will not have been archived) (The Observer, 1968a).
The investigation revealed that in 1968, although these groups communicated with each
other, they operated in fairly separate spheres, and there was some animosity towards the
government-sponsored organisations from the grassroots organisations. Two of these,
the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigration (NCCI) and the Campaign
Against Racial Discrimination (CARD), collapsed; the former due to its opposition to the
1968 Bill, the latter due to infighting between more radical and more centrist members.
The collapse of CARD, according to Rex (1979: 90), led to the dissociation of white
Voluntary and research bodies

Government-sponsored
Campaign Against Racial Discriminaon
Naonal Commiee for Commonwealth

Immigraon
Instute of Race Relaons

Joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants
Race Relaons Board

Advisory Councils for Immigraon
Equal Rights
Naonal Council for Civil Liberes
Extreme right
Grassroots immigrant organisaons
Naonal Front
West Indian Standing Conference

Indian Workers Associaons
Naonal Democrac Party
Co-ordinang Commiee Against Racial

Discriminaon
Pakistani Welfare Associaons
United Coloured Peoples Associaon
Racial Adjustment Acon Society
Figure 2. Civil society organisations on race and immigration in 1968.
Brish Movement
341
Lamb
liberals and highly placed intellectual blacks from the black political groups and a
transfer of their activities into the Labour Party. This may have laid the roots for a later
division between grassroots organisations and more populist antiracism.
The mapping of the sector was combined with a case study of one grassroots
immigrant organisation: the IWA (GB). Figure 3 summarises bodies and individuals in
different fields of action with whom the IWA (GB) was in contact in 1968.
The investigation shows that in 1968, the IWA (GB) was able to access a wide variety
of genres and fields of action, including the Minister for the Home Office (who visited it
in 1967; see Birmingham City Archives (BCA), 2007: 11), a range of MPs, and assorted
national newspapers, who quoted it as being a voice of immigrant communities in 1968
(The Guardian, 1968; The Observer, 1968b) as well as quoting its 1965 pamphlet The
Victims Speak (BCA, 2007: 228). It also supported Trade Unions (BCA, 2007: 7172),
corresponded with government-sponsored and voluntary organisations, and campaigned
with a range of other grassroots immigrant organisations. The IWA (GB) remained on the
edge of the race relations sector, because it refused to affiliate with more mainstream
groups with whose principles it did not agree. This allowed it to be strongly critical of the
government and to criticise its race relations legislation, which more mainstream groups
supported. However, this hard line stance does not appear, in 1968, to have prevented it
from making its voice heard at most levels of society. When looked at in conjunction
with the exposition of civil society organisations, it is possible to conclude that in 1968,
organisations with a more radical, oppositional message, further from the government,
like the IWA (GB), may have actually been more effective than organisations which were
larger or closer to the government like CARD or the NCCI, which collapsed.
Figure 4 gives an overview of some of the groups active on race and immigration
issues in 2009.
Local newspapers
and television
Trade unions
Government-sponsored bodies
Voluntary and research
organisaons
Naonal newspapers
and television
Socialist/communist
organisaons
Socialist countries embassies/

Indian High Commission
Internaonal campaigns
and organisaons
Local policians
Other grassroots
immigrant organisaons
MPs
Home Office
IWA (GB)
Figure 3.Those with whom the IWA (GB) was in contact in the 1960s.
342
Government-sponsored
Immigrant-led or grassroots groups/coalions
Equality and Human Rights

Commission
Migrants Rights Network

Naonal Coalion of An-Deportaon
Campaigns
Naonal Assembly Against Racism
No Borders
Federaon of Iraqi Refugees
Indian Workers Associaon (Great Britain)
Larger voluntary
Refugee Council
Refugee Acon
Unite Against Fascism
An-Nazi League
Brighter Futures
Student Acon for Refugees
Sll Human Sll Here
Let Them Work
Extreme right
Brish Naonal Party
English Defence League
Naonal Front
Cizens Organising Foundaon

Bail for Immigraon Detainees
Figure 4. Civil society groups active on race and immigration in 2009.
Several changes in the sector since 1968 can be noted. First, it had grown, with a
proliferation of groups active on race and immigration issues (Figure 4 only gives a
selection of these as they were too numerous to list, but see Zetter et al., 2004 for estimates on the numbers of refugee community organisations in the UK). Second, the issues
campaigned upon had diversified: by 2009 there were several large organisations working specifically on issues affecting refugees (such as the Refugee Council); there were
also immigrant organisations established along ethnic or national lines, antiracist or antifascist organisations, and civil liberties organisations; in addition, there were single-issue
campaigns on matters like deportation, destitution, detention, citizenship and the right to
work. Some of these campaigns were extremely high-profile: the Strangers into Citizens
(SiC) campaign was supported by the Mayor of London (Mulholland, 2009), and there
were Early Day Motions in parliament calling for support in granting citizenship to longterm migrants (EDM 7142) and the right of asylum seekers to work (EDM 9603). Third,
there were more instances of groups campaigning together on different issues than in the
1960s; furthermore, key actors from one type of organisation might also be involved
with another type, as for example with Avtar Jouhl of the IWA (GB), who was one of
those who re-established the Anti-Nazi League (Hain et al., 1992: 22).
Despite the growth of the sector, the 2009 case study shows that, in contrast with
1968, the IWA (GB)s influence appeared to decline somewhat over time, although it was
still active. Figure 5 shows different groups of people it was in contact with that year.4
343
Lamb
Trade unions
Liberty
Naonal media
Joint Council for the

Welfare of Immigrants
Polical pares
Naonal Assembly
Against Racism
MPs
An-Nazi League
An-deportaon
campaigns
Home Office
Indian Workers Associaon

(GB)
Figure 5.The IWA (GB)s access to different genres and fields of action in 2009.
The IWA (GB) continued to contact MPs and the Home Office, and to work with
trade unions, carry out welfare work, lobby on employment issues, and campaign
against racism and on immigration and nationality issues (Jouhl, personal communication). Further showing its impact on the political sphere, its General Secretary,
Avtar Jouhl, was awarded an OBE in 2000 for services to the community and to trade
unions (The Independent, 1999). However, it was not mentioned in any national
newspaper.5
The IWA (GB)s membership remained stable between 1992 and 2009 it had about
25,000 members and 18 branches across the UK (Avtar Jouhl, 2010, personal communication). The above exploration has shown that it was still able to access a range of different genres and fields of action, including in the political sphere. However, unlike in 1968,
it was no longer an expert quoted in the national press. This does not mean, however,
that immigrant organisations were less able to make their voices heard in 2009 than in
1968; Figure 4 shows that by 2009 there were a great many more organisations and campaigns, some of which resulted in motions in parliament. Furthermore, other immigrant
organisations were able to access the national media in 2009; for example, a Nexis search
of Refugee Council in 2009 UK national newspapers returned 67 hits.6 Looking at the
two maps together points to the possibility that the IWA (GB)s single voice was drowned
out somewhat in the plethora of other organisations, but that when it acted in partnership
with other campaigns or organisations, their joint voice might still be very strongly
articulated.
By mapping these groups over time, I was able to show the way in which this sector
developed, becoming more complex and interrelated and with a proliferation of organisations by 2009. This dual mapping is particularly useful when looking at the access and
influence of more marginal speakers in society, as opposed to studying elite discourse,
where speakers influence and access tend to be fairly obvious.
344
Text-level analysis
I now turn to the methods developed for analysing social actor representation at the textual level across multiple texts. First, all references to social actors are annotated and
then put into tables of different groups of actors. Second, categories of analysis are
developed for investigating the representation of, and arguments about, the different
groups of actors. In this study, categories were developed to answer the following
questions in the different texts, fields of action and time periods:
(RQ Ai) What are the different subgroups into which groups of social actors are
divided?
(RQ Aii) How positively, negatively or neutrally are these subgroups portrayed?
(RQ Bi) How much prominence is given to immigrants?
(RQ Bii) How much importance is placed upon the nation?
(RQ C) How human are groups of actors made to seem?
(RQ Ci) How far are groups thoughts and feelings articulated?
(RQ Cii) How far do groups speak for themselves through direct or indirect
quotation?
(RQ Ciii) What level of activity is ascribed to them (are they more frequently
Agent or Patient in the main clauses)?
(RQ Civ) Are groups situated historically or decontextualised?
(RQ D) What arguments are used about the different groups?
(RQ E) Who are the insiders and who are the outsiders?
The division of actors into subgroups (RQ Ai) is of particular relevance in investigating representations of migrants, as there has been a growing tendency in discussions of
immigration in Europe for migrants to be split into welcome good and unwelcome
bad groups (Hollifield, 2004; Schuster, 2003; Squire, 2005; Zetter, 2007). The other
research questions should be fruitful to most studies of social actors: positive, negative
or neutral portrayls of actors (RQ Aii), prominence given to different actors (RQ B), how
human actors are portrayed as being (RQ C), what arguments are made about different
groups (RQ D), and who are the insiders and outsiders (RQ E). The category of how
human actors are made to seem is a new way of investigating actor representation in
critical discourse analysis and is elaborated below in the section on categories of analysis.
In this section, I explain how texts are annotated and put into tables.
The two strands of critical discourse analysis which focus the most on social actors
are the discourse-historical approach (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2009) and social actor
analysis (Van Leeuwen, 2008).7 I drew on both of these strands when developing my
methods. In looking at how actors are represented by different speakers, I examine how
they are named, described and used in argumentation strategies (see also Reisigl and
Wodak, 2009: 93 in showing how the DHA examines references, attributes, arguments,
perspectives and mitigations about actors). In order to analyse this, I divide all clauses
with a social actor into the noun phrase (nomination) and the rest of the clause (e.g. verb
phrase, prepositional phrase) as roughly correspondent to the characteristics, qualities
and features attributed to them (predication). This is a broad definition of predication
345
Lamb
and roughly corresponds to the distinction of Subject/Predicate, apart from the fact that
the actor/group of actors/noun phrase might be the object of a clause rather than the subject. The division into nomination and predication is somewhat arbitrary, but chunking
the clause into two parts makes it easier to see characteristics and actions ascribed to
social actors. Where the clause is divided is not important to the analysis; it is simply a
useful aid to observing patterns.
Van Leeuwen (2008: Ch. 2) gives different ways in which actors can be named or
referred to (nomination; see Van Leeuwen, 2008 for his entire schematization). For
example, actors may be referred to in terms of what they do (functionalisation), e.g.
immigrant (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 42). They can be referred to in terms of abstraction
(e.g. referring to the problem rather than to a specific actor), spatialisation (referring to
people in terms of a place, as in Britain), utterance autonomisation (referring to people
in terms of what they say, as in the Immigration Bill) and instrumentalisation (referring
to people in terms of a mechanism they apply or which is applied to them, as in immigration controls) (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 46). Some of these are substitutions; the person
or people mentioned have been substituted by an object or a process. To describe an actor
in terms of its actions, for example to refer to the government in terms of legislation it
produces, is obviously different from referring directly to the actor. I analyse together
both direct and indirect references to the same actors to enable comparison between
them. An example of an indirect reference to British politicians can be found in the following sentence:
Then as now the threat of such legislation had the effect of artificially increasing the flow of
immigrants into Britain. (Text A, lines 1315)
The phrase the threat of such legislation can be pragmatically identified as referring
to politicians in 1962 and 1968, whose speeches about legislation were followed by
increases in immigration. The politicians have been substituted by the phrase.
A final possibility is agent deletion, where the actor is removed from the sentence
(Van Leeuwen, 2008: 29). An example would be But the basic intention is right (Daily
Mail, Text P, line 29) we are not told whose intention this sentence is about. If the person can be clearly inferred from the rest of the text or from the context (in this case, it is
James Callaghan; the Daily Mail article from which the sentence is taken is about him),
deleting the agent is called backgrounding (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 29). I use pragmatic
rather than syntactic criteria, identifying actors from the context. Sometimes the person
cannot be inferred, as in
Mr. Callaghan is right to argue that no kind of racial prejudice is involved in the view that a
country cannot be suddenly deluged with immigrants (Text H, lines 89)
In this sentence, it is not clear who holds this view, if anyone. This form of deletion is called suppression (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 29). I look at suppressed actors separately; they are worth investigating because unattributed views or actions may form
part of a straw man argument or other fallacies, or show a hidden ideological
standpoint.
346
Annotation and grouping actors into tables

I use text annotation to pull out all references to actors in my selected texts. Text annotation
is fairly systematic, but decisions on how to categorise are made by the researcher, so ideally
it would be useful to check my annotation for bias by asking another researcher to annotate
a sample of text and look for differences to my own annotation. Unfortunately, due to time
constraints this was not practically possible. I sort actors into different social groups which
I consider to be salient to the research questions; this process is recursive, being revised both
during and after annotation as different patterns emerge. Deciding into which groups to sort
social actors is both subjective to the researcher and informed by my research focus.8 For
example, I look at racism as a group because I am interested in how speakers and society
view being racist. Because I am investigating conceptions of the nation, I look at British
people as a group. This can help highlight where there are not conceptions of the nation as
nation; for example, in the immigrant organisation data for 1968 the writers discuss British
workers and coloured Britons, but not Britain as a whole.
As well as naming and attribution, whether social actors are active or passive in
clauses tells us about the different roles they are ascribed in the immigration debate.
Social actor analysis (Van Leeuwen) builds on systemic functional linguistics (see
Halliday and Matthiessen, 20049) to look at whether actors (Halliday calls them participants) are agent or patient in a clause.10 There are different ways to annotate clauses;
in my analysis, I have chosen to focus on the main verb, and look at any other verbs
occurring in the object of the main verb only as relating to that verb. Rather than tagging
them twice, I only annotate for the main verb: the people of Asian descent are Agent
(see Note 10). The fact that they are Patient in the sub-clause clearly makes them more
passive than if they were always Agent, and in this sense agentiveness is a continuum
rather than an either/or choice. However, annotating for the main clause alone still allows
comparison between actors, and because all clauses with actors in are laid out in tables
(see below), it is still possible to look at agentiveness in sub-clauses.
From annotation to tables

The results of the annotation are set out in tables for different groups of actors. These
tables show nomination referring to actors, predication referring to actors, and how frequently the actors are Agent or Patient. Below is an example of how one sentence is put
into tables:
The Indian Workers Association, Great Britain protests against this most recent extention [sic]
of immigration restrictions which can only be interpreted as racialist. (Text B, lines 34)
This sentence is put into two different tables because it refers to two groups of social
actors: the writers (the IWA (GB)) and the government (indirectly, in terms of its actions).
Table 4 shows the layout as part of the IWA (GB) table for Text B. It contains an extract
from the IWA (GB) table which shows the (self) representation of the groups who wrote
the texts; in this case, the Indian Workers Association, Great Britain. The left-hand column gives the group of actors and whether they are Agent or Patient. The middle column
347
Lamb
Table 4. Extract from IWA (GB) table from Press statement on Kenyan immigrants IWA,
Great Britain (1968).
The IWA (GB)
Nomination
Predication
Agent
The Indian Workers Association, Protests against this most recent extention
Great Britain
[sic] of immigration restrictions which can
only be interpreted as racialist
Table 5. Extract from Labour Government table from Press statement on Kenyan immigrants
IWA, Great Britain (1968).
The Labour Government
Nomination
Predication
Patient
this most recent extention [sic] The Indian Workers Association,

of immigration restrictions which Great Britain protests against x11
can only be described as racialist
gives the nomination (the noun or the noun phrase). The right-hand column gives the
predication, a broad definition that includes the verb and its complements, showing what
the group does or what is done to the group; in this case, the subject is the nomination,
and the predicate is the predication.
Table 5 is an extract from the Labour Government table for Text B, which shows the
representation of the Labour Government as a group of actors. They are backgrounded in
the noun phrase and referred to only obliquely in terms of their actions; pragmatically we
can identify them as those who extended the legislation. In this case they are Patient,
being protested against. The extention is described as racialist, but the government is
only indirectly associated with racialism, rather than being directly accused.
The tables allow the researcher to look at who is doing what to whom and thus to
look at different aspects of how actors are represented. In this study, they were used to
look at, inter alia, how prominently actors were represented (the tables were used to find
the frequency of references, which was combined with whether actors were set as a main
topic), how actively or passively actors were represented (the Agent/Patient distinction),
how much actors spoke for themselves, how far actors thoughts and feelings were articulated, and, over the assorted references to actors, whether they were constructed positively, negatively or neutrally (see below). The tables also allow the researcher, if they
wish, to look at Reisigl and Wodaks other strategies: perspectivisation (the sentence
from Text B is from the writers perspective), mitigation (the utterances are direct) and
arguments (in the Text B sentence, the argument is the legislation is racialist; part of an
argument that the legislation is bad, with the missing premises being racialism is bad
and the legislation should not be passed).
Categories of analysis
I now outline how I move from the tables to the analysis. I developed my categories
of analysis from the studys sub-research questions, examining whether immigrant
348
organisations representations of social actors were less marginalising than those by

mainstream speakers or the extreme right. The sub-research questions were in turn
generated from a theoretical overview of how particular ways of representing migrants,
refugees and national identity contribute to migrants and refugees marginalisation in
the UK (see Lamb, in press).
I looked at different groupings of immigrants. Because an overview of the theoretical
background of migrants and refugees marginalisation suggested that articulations of
national identity were an important factor, I looked at three subgroups associated with
the nation: the British elites (mainly the government and major political parties); people in Britain; and Britain as an entity, constructed either as a geographical space or as
functions of the state such as schooling or housing. The reification of Britain as a social
actor with functions like borders, schools and housing was expected to take place in all
genres to greater or lesser degrees. Looking at these three subgroups of the nation
allowed me to look at different forms of us constructed against a supplementary Other
(see Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991; Krzyanowski and Wodak, 2008; Squire, 2005;
Vukov, 2003). In parliamentary debates, elites are more likely to be the us than other
people in Britain, whilst immigrant organisations might refer to protesters in Britain as
us (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Van Dijk, 2000a, on us and them in migration
discourse). Possible supplementary others were expected to be immigrants, the extreme
right or the British government, depending on whether the speakers were from the political elites, protest groups and so on. As well as looking at who (or what) were constructed
as insiders and who as outsiders, I also looked at how racism and antiracism are
portrayed and deployed in texts.
The categories for each sub-research question are below. It is important to note that
focusing on these categories does not imply that they are clear-cut, fixed and clearly
quantifiable tokens; rather, they are heuristic devices which illustrate salient representations of actors that occur in the data. For example, when looking at situating a group of
actors historically (see later), counting the number of references to migrants histories in
a text does not necessarily show how strongly they are situated historically. This is also
a matter of what is said, and where in the text: it might be framed as highly important by
being mentioned in the first few sentences or the title; references might be more or less
detailed, etc. I therefore look at the way the actor is situated historically in the tables and
in the whole text, set out in a diagram which texts do this to a greater or lesser degree,
and give the reasons for these choices with reference to the texts below the diagram. The
same applies to how prominent actors seem, how positively they are represented, and so
forth. I present such representations on a scalar diagram to highlight different choices by
different speakers; however, these diagrams are not quantitative. The one category which
is quantifiable is that of how active or passive actors are in clauses; diagrams for this
particular category only are to scale according to the frequency of actors being made
Agent or Patient in the main clause. Nonetheless, the results are derived from systematic annotation and grouping in tables. I explain the categories with reference to the
representation of migrants in two texts from the wider study: a speech by Shadow Home
Secretary Tony Blair in the parliamentary debate on the Asylum and Immigration Appeals
Bill 1992, and a press statement from the Migrant Support Unit (MSU) on a demonstration against this Bill by the Refugees Ad-Hoc Committee for Asylum Rights (RAHCAR).
349
Lamb
For reasons of space, I focus on how these texts represent migrants and refugees, but I
also explain the category of prominence in terms of its application to the nation, as I
look at this in a slightly different way for the nation and for migrants.
Positive and negative construals of different subgroups

For both migrants and Britain, its people and the elites, I use the tables to look at
whether and how texts divide them into subgroups. For example, texts might focus
mainly on asylum seekers rather than all migrants, or they might look at activists rather
than all British people. I place these subgroups on a diagram to show how positively,
negatively or neutrally they are portrayed. This allows me to make overall comparisons
of constructions of different groups.
Figure 6 shows how two speakers group migrants and whether they assign them positive or negative qualities. The arrow represents the positioning of the portrayals as more
or less positive. By looking at the different references to the actors in the texts (using the
tables shown earlier), it can be seen that the two speakers focus differently on the attributes of different actors. Text X, a press statement from the Migrant Support Unit about a
demonstration on 20 November 1992, refers only to refugees and asylum seekers, and
does not attribute either positive or negative characteristics to them. In Tony Blairs 1992
speech in parliament as Shadow Home Secretary (Text AI), at least four different groups
of immigrants can be identified: genuine asylum seekers, false asylum seekers,
immigrants generally and asylum seekers generally. Where Blair speaks of asylum
Blair (Text AI)
Posive
Genuine asylum seekers
MSU (Text X)
Refugees, asylum seekers
Immigrants, asylum seekers
False asylum seekers
Negave
Figure 6. How positively or negatively different subgroups of migrants and refugees are
construed by speakers in 1992.
350
seekers generally, or of immigrants, his portrayal is reasonably neutral and he talks of the
need to treat them fairly. His portrayal of these groups has been placed in the middle of
the scale to show he is not concerned with presenting them either positively or negatively. But where he speaks of genuine or false asylum seekers, he gives the former
positive attributes (being genuine or deserving) and the latter negative attributes
(including 15 uses of the word bogus; arguing they harm the genuine). Here is an
example of his description of false asylum seekers:
No one on the Opposition Benches condones bogus applications for asylum: everyone
condemns them. However, weeding out false claims should not be at the expense of prejudicing
genuine claims, and that is our fear about the Bill. (Text AH, lines 2426, my emphasis)
Blair here condemns unsuccessful applications using a weed metaphor to add emphasis to his disapproval. By so doing, Blair is able to appear tough on immigration (and
thus appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment in the electorate) whilst also appearing welcoming to the genuine (appealing to liberal sentiment and the antiracist connections of the
Labour Party in 1992).
Prominence and importance of the nation

For migrants, I look at how prominent this group of social actors (or its subgroups) is
in texts. Groups may be of central importance or marginalised, for a variety of reasons.
For example, a text may choose to construct migrants as a serious threat, or as seriously
threatened, and therefore give them high prominence; equally it may construct them as
being small or irrelevant. I use two factors to measure prominence: frequency of references, and whether the group is set as the main topic of a text. The latter may be done
through headings, headlines, images or other multimodal features (see also Van Dijk,
1984: 56). I thus combine quantitative methods with qualitative. Frequency alone is not
necessarily a good measure of salience when analysing language because there are many
additional strategies used by speakers to make a topic or group prominent. However, the
repeated mention of a word or group is likely to signal the speakers preoccupation with
it. I therefore combine frequency with another method of measuring prominence: topics.
Taking account of these two factors, I place texts on a scale between giving migrants
high or low prominence. Figure 7 shows how prominently migrants and refugees are
portrayed in the two texts.
The MSU press release references refugees more than any other actor (in 20 of the 49
tagged references). However, its first sentence (it is not possible to examine the title as it
does not have one) foregrounds activists:
Thousands of people from all over the country will be demonstrating in London on Saturday 21
November in protest against the Governments Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill, which if
passed, will deny refugees and asylum seekers basic rights. (Text X, lines 68)
Refugees and asylum seekers are only mentioned at the end of the sentence; the most
important point is that many oppose the Bill. Because of this I have positioned it as
351
Lamb
Prominent
Blair
MSU
Marginalised
Figure 7. How prominent migrants and refugees are in texts from 1992.
giving a reasonably high level of prominence to migrants and refugees, but not as high
as that of Blair.
Blair places slightly less emphasis on migrants and refugees than on criticising the
Conservatives and promoting the Labour Party. Migrants and refugees feature in 111 out
of 266 of his references; this is less than to elites, which constitute 133 out of 266 references. He begins by saying that the Bill will harm race relations in Britain, and ends by
saying that not the bogus but the genuine will be harmed by the Bill, thus setting the
Bill or political elites as equally important to migrants and refugees. Because of his
mention of migrants at the beginning and end of his speech, and because he mentions
them proportionately slightly more than the MSU, I have positioned him as giving them
slightly more prominence.
For Britain, its people and its elites, I look at the importance placed on the nation,
through examining how prominent it is in texts. When developing my theoretical categories, constructions of the nation were found to be important to how speakers represent
arguments about immigration (see Lamb, in press). I use three factors to measure the
nations prominence: frequency of reference to Britain, its mechanisms and its people;
whether Britain and its people are set as a main topic in the texts headings and layouts;
and how frequently words are used which reference or flag the nation (I refer to these
as national signifiers). For this last factor, I follow Billigs (1995: 38) argument that
national identity in established nations is embedded in routines of life, which constantly remind, or flag, nationhood. Billig contends that a huge number of words and
practices daily flag national identity, amongst them the little words like we, our,
you, here and this. To identify flagging of nationhood in texts, I search the texts
(automatically) for use of the following words: Britain, Briton/s, British, country (where
it refers to Britain, i.e. this country), we (where it refers to people in Britain), our, us,
nation, United Kingdom, UK, England, English. There may be other ways in which texts
flag nationhood, but this selection should be enough to be able to make comparisons.
352

Naon important
MSU
Blair
Naon unimportant
Figure 8. Importance placed upon the nation by speakers in 1992.
Figure 8 is an example of how important the nation is made to seem by two speakers,
with the arrow showing the movement between more or less importance.
The nation is not important for Blair, who only mentions Britain or its people in six
of his 268 references, uses national signifiers in only 0.6 per 100 words (comparatively
very low), and does not mention Britain or its people at the beginning or end of his
speech. His main focus is on criticising the Conservatives and their Bill, and portraying
the Labour Party positively; he has no focus on the nation at all. The MSU refers to
Britain or its people fairly little, in 4 of 49 references, and uses national signifiers in
1.23 per 100 words. However, it does foreground certain people in the UK through its
opening sentence, which begins thousands of people from all over the country will be
demonstrating (Text X, line 6). I have therefore positioned it as placing slightly more
importance on the nation than Blair.
Humanity
For both groups of actors, I look at how far they are made to seem like humans and how
far like things. I derived the criteria for this category largely from Rajaram (2002), who
found that a fund-raising campaign represented migrants as silent, passive, without opinions and decontextualised. I argue that these factors combine to make them seem less
human and so make it harder for readers to identify with them. I use four factors to
examine this (a text does not need to score highly in every category to be considered to
make a group or person seem human). I look first at whether groups thoughts and feelings are articulated in the texts or not, and place them between high articulation and low
articulation for each text. Figure 9 shows this for Blair and the MSU.
Tony Blair does not mention migrants and refugees thoughts or feelings at all and is
placed at the bottom of the arrow: thoughts and feelings not articulated. In contrast, the
MSU press statements main purpose is to give the Refugees Ad-Hoc Committee for
Asylum Rights (RAHCAR)s views on the governments Bill. This organisation is led by
refugees. The text therefore articulates migrants and refugees thoughts to quite a large
extent and has been placed quite far towards the top of the arrow: thoughts and feelings
articulated.
353
Lamb
Thoughts/feelings arculated
MSU
Blair
Thoughts/feelings not arculated
Figure 9. How far migrants and refugees thoughts and feelings are articulated by speakers
from 1992.
Speaking
MSU
Blair
Spoken about
Figure 10. How far migrants and refugees speak for themselves in texts from 1992.
Second, I look at whether groups largely speak for themselves (through direct or indirect quotation) or whether they are mostly spoken about or for in the texts, and place texts
between portraying them as mostly speaking or as mostly spoken for/about (Figure 10).
In Tony Blairs speech, he only speaks about migrants and refugees, never quoting
them directly or indirectly; his text is therefore at the bottom of the diagram. In contrast,
the MSUs press release directly quotes RAHCAR, an organisation led by refugees, and
most of the text gives their opinions. It is therefore placed almost at the top of the
diagram for migrants and refugees speaking for themselves.
Next, I look at how actively or passively groups are portrayed, through how often they
are Agent and how often Patient in a text (transitivity). Figure 11 places the texts on a
scale between making groups highly active or mostly passive. To be at the top of the
scale would mean that in 100% of references to migrants and refugees they are Agent; at
the bottom, that in 100% of references they are Patient.
354

Acng
Blair
MSU
Acted on
Figure 11. How actively migrants and refugees are portrayed by speakers from 1992.
In the MSU text, migrants and refugees are Agent in 3 of 17 (17.6%) references; they
are largely acted upon. This is because although the text articulates refugees views, the
majority of its references are to asylum seekers being mistreated. In Blairs speech,
migrants and refugees are Agent in 24 of 111 (21.6%) references. He activates them just
slightly more than the MSU, although they are still largely portrayed as acted upon.
Finally, I look at how far groups are situated historically or decontextualised; assigning histories and experiences to actors makes them seem more human. Figure 12 places
texts between highly historically situating migrants and refugees, and highly decontextualising them. Both texts are placed at the bottom of the diagram: neither text discusses
the personal experiences of migrants and refugees, such as their journeys to the UK or
their reasons for leaving their countries of origin. This is in contrast to some backbench
speakers in the parliamentary debate, such as Jeremy Corbyn, who describes the terrible
experiences of asylum seekers before they reach the UK (as also described by Van Dijk,
2000b: 64); the texts could, therefore, have done otherwise.
Doing
The above aspects looked at being; naming and characteristics attributed to immigrants,
Britain, its people and its elites. I also use the tables to look at arguments around
doing; what they do or should do, and what is done to them or should be done to them.
In looking at these arguments, I identify frequently repeated topics for each time period.
Threat, suffering and public services were relevant for each time period; work
355
Lamb
Historically situated
Blair MSU
Decontextualised
Figure 12. How far migrants and refugees are situated historically or decontextualised by
speakers from 1992.
and contribution were more relevant in 2009; whilst exploitation and deceit were more
relevant in 1992. I here show how migrants and refugees were construed as exploiting or
deceiving in the House of Commons debate about the 1992 Bill, through tracing use of
the word bogus in Table 6.
Only three MPs challenge the use of the word bogus and they are all non-Conservatives.
Almost half of the Conservatives who spoke used the term unproblematically. Only three
of the 19 non-Conservative MPs who spoke used it unproblematically in relation to
asylum seekers, and one of these is Tony Blair, who uses it 15 times five times as much
as anyone else.
Blair insists that everyone condemns bogus applications, but claims the true problem with the Bill is that it will harm the genuine rather than dealing with the false. He
uses the metaphor weeding out in relation to false asylum seekers, as though they are a
small, unwanted pest, choking the genuine. In contrast to Blairs speech in the Commons,
the MSU text challenges the view of migrants and refugees as deceiving, arguing that the
governments claim about bogus refugees is hypocrisy, because genuine refugees
are often not likely to have proper documents.
Findings
I here outline findings from the two texts analysed earlier, and add some comments situating this analysis in that of other texts in the study, to show how the methods used in this
study allowed me to build up a detailed picture of diverse representations of and arguments about migrants and refugees by speakers at different societal levels.
Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair divides migrants into different groups and portrays
some as deceitful and threatening, whilst portraying others as truthful and non-threatening.
He is thus able to portray the Labour Party positively as both tough on immigration and
356
Table 6. Use of the word bogus in the House of Commons debate, 2 November 1992.
Kenneth Clarke, Home Secretary

(Conservative)
Tony Blair, Shadow Home Secretary
(Labour)
John Ward (Conservative)
Roy Hattersley (Labour)
Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative)

Robert MacLennan (Liberal Democrat)
Harry Greenway (Conservative)
Ivan Lawrence (Conservative)
Mike Watson (Labour)
Neil Gerrard (Labour)
Graham Allen (Labour)
Total Labour/Liberal Democrat
MPs
Total Conservative MPs
Overall total of MPs
Unproblematic use Problematise

of bogus in relation others use of
to asylum seekers
bogus in relation
to asylum seekers
Say that in
fact it is the
government
that is bogus
15
1
3 (but claims twice
that fewer are bogus
than government
claims)
3
1
2
2
1
1
3
6 out of 19 who
spoke
5 out of 11 who
spoke
11 out of 30 who
spoke
fair or generous. At the same time, Blair does not have a focus on Britain as a nation or
on portraying himself as belonging to this nation; this marks a difference from his later
discourse on migration where he attempts to construct an inclusive view of the nation, as
Squire (2005) shows. Blair construes false asylum seekers negatively, with repeated
use of the word bogus; false asylum seekers become an out-group against which he
constructs Labour, as the in-group who condemn them. At the same time, he does not
articulate the views, history or experience of any migrants, and they are silent and passive. He gives migrants and refugees quite high prominence in his speech in order to
make his arguments about the difference between the false and the genuine.
The MSU does not divide migrants into positively and negatively construed subgroups, referring only to refugees and asylum seekers and not focusing on their positive
or negative attributes; it thus avoids linking right to entry with moral desert. Though
migrants and refugees are more frequently construed as acted upon, they are construed
as vocal and expressing their views: they are described as leading a demonstration. They
are portrayed as insiders in Britains refugee communities. The MSU also challenges
the use of the word bogus in relation to migrants. Like Tony Blair, it does not place
much importance on the nation. Overall, I argue that the MSUs portrayal of migrants
357
Lamb
and refugees is far less marginalising than that of Blair (see Lamb, in press, for an elaboration of my application of marginalising).
For reasons of space, it has not been possible in this article to show the analysis of
all the other texts looked at for this and other time periods. However, a main contribution of these methods is that, when applied to larger numbers of texts in different
time periods (such as those in Tables 1 to 3), they are sensitive to the complex variations in portrayals of groups of actors amongst different speakers. For example, the
MSU had a far more human portrayal of migrants and refugees than that of the text
from the Commission for Racial Equality, which also opposed the 1992 Bill. The
question can then be asked, which of these portrayals is more likely to be successful
in opposing the Bill? Blairs portrayal of migrants as consisting of good groups who
belong and bad groups who should be excluded, was also found in the Home
Secretarys speech in 1992, both parliamentary speakers in 2009 and The Sun newspaper in 2009, suggesting it could be part of a wider trend in discussions of immigration. This raises the question of what effect it might have upon attitudes and legislation
towards migrants and refugees.
Both of these questions can begin to be addressed by a diachronic study as it can look
not only at trends in representations of and arguments about migrants, refugees and the
nation, but at changes in immigration restrictions at the time of different kinds of discourse. For example, an increased focus over time by speakers from parliament, newspapers and immigrant organisations on both the negative and positive attributes of migrants
coincided with increasingly restrictive and numerous policies towards bad migrants,
but not with a decrease in public anxiety over immigration.12 This suggests that politicians attempts to portray themselves as taking tough and successful action on immigration did not work.
Limitations
One drawback to annotation as a method of analysis is that it is time-consuming.
However, any deep analysis of text and talk can be expected to take time. Another
potential problem with annotation is the possibility for researcher error. It would therefore be useful for a second person to tag a selection of the text and compare it with the
researchers tagging to look for differences. Finally, these methods are a useful way of
analysing the large number of texts presented above in detail. Nonetheless, because they
use detailed annotation, there is an upper limit on the body of texts to which they could
be applied. For a group of texts with a very large word count, a combination of corpus
methods with more detailed analysis might be necessary.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Avtar Jouhl, who kindly provided me with information about the Indian
Workers Association (Great Britain)s activities in 2009.
Funding
This research received a funding grant from the Economic and Social Research Council as part of
my PhD.
358
Notes
1. To do so also combats arguments that proponents of the research programme tend to select
texts that fit their particular ideological standpoint (Meyer, 2001: 17, cites Widdowson as
arguing this), or only to analyse elite, negative discourse (e.g. Martin, 2004).
2. See http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=37768&SESSION=899
3. See http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=38042
4. My thanks to Avtar Singh Jouhl for his help with the information for this section.
5. A Nexis search of national newspapers for Indian Workers Association in 2009 returned no
results.
6. Before sorting or discounting for low relevancy.
7. These two approaches have been fruitfully used together before; see, for example, Van
Leeuwen and Wodak (1999).
8. The subjective role of the researcher is acknowledged in critical discourse analysis, as it is
more generally in qualitative methodologies (Meyer, 2001: 17).
9. Those using Hallidays work on transitivity tend to look at processes (e.g. Burton, 1996;
Koller, 2008). Processes involve looking at who is doing what to whom. I am also looking at
processes, but I do not divide processes into material, representational, mental, etc., as
Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Burton (1996) and many others do. To do this would not be
the most fruitful way of answering the main research question of how the immigration debate
evolved, which requires drawing out how actors are grouped together and delineated from
each other, what degree of importance is placed upon them, what is attributed to them and
how these distinctions are legitimised and justified.
10. Van Leeuwen (2008: 24) argues that in the following example, the grammatical Agent is
sociologically Patient:
People of Asian descent say they received a sudden cold-shoulder from neighbours and
co-workers.
In fact, the people of Asian descent are not only sociologically Patient (receiving a coldshoulder) in this sentence. They are also Agent, the Sayer; they speak about their experiences. Grammatically and sociologically speaking, they are the Agent of the main verb, but
Patient of another verb in the part of the sentence that is the object of the main verb. I do not
therefore distinguish between grammatical and sociological categories.
11. Note that x shows where the removed words or phrase should be.
12. Despite a large amount of legislation and rhetoric by the Labour government, immigration
had become the most important area of concern to 40% of the UK in 2008 (Spencer, 2007:
348). A study in June 2009 found the public grossly overestimating the numbers of asylum
seekers (British Red Cross, 2009). Spencer (2007: 349) cites senior advisers who in retrospect
agree that government rhetoric only made public concerns worse.
References
Baker P and McEnery A (2005) A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum
seekers in UN and newspaper texts. Journal of Language and Politics 4(2): 197226.
Baker P, Gabrielatos C, Khosravinik M, et al. (2008) A useful methodological synergy? Combining
critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum
seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society 19(3): 273306.
Balibar E and Wallerstein I (1991) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London/New York:
Verso.
Billig M (1995) Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE.
359
Lamb
Birmingham City Archives (BCA) (2007) MS 2141 papers of the Indian Workers Association,
19591998 catalogue. Available at: http://www.connectinghistories.org.uk/Downloads%20
%28pdfs%20etc%29/MS2141.pdf (accessed 29 August 2010).
British Red Cross (2009) Public massively overestimate numbers seeking refuge in UK, British Red
Cross survey reveals, 8 June. Available at: http://www.redcross.org.uk/news.asp?id=95074
(accessed 28 May 2010).
Burton D (1996) Through glass darkly: Through dark glasses. In: Weber JJ (ed.) The Stylistics
Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. London/New York: Arnold, pp. 224240.
Fairclough N (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley.
Foucault M (1979) The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. London: Penguin.
Gabrielatos C and Baker P (2008) Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive
constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press 19962005. Journal of English
Linguistics 36(1): 538.
Girnth H (1996) Texte im politischen Diskurs: Ein Vorschlag zur diskursorientierten Beschreibung
von Textsorten. Muttersprache 1: 6680.
Hain P, Roberts E, Grant B. Indian Workers Association, GB (1992) Letter: Unity and the hard
fight against racism. The Guardian, 16 January, p. 22.
Halliday MAK and Matthiessen C (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edn.
London: Arnold.
Hollifield JF (2004) The emerging migration state. International Migration Review 38(3): 885912.
KhosraviNik M (2010) The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British
newspapers: A critical discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1): 128.
Koller V (2008) Lesbian Discourses: Images of a Community. New York/London: Routledge.
Krzyanowski M and Wodak R (2008) The Politics of Exclusion: Debating Migration in Austria.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.
Lamb E (in press) Resisting marginalisation: Changing representations of migrants and refugees in
UK text and talk since the 1960s. Journal of Language and Politics.
Martin JR (2004) Positive discourse analysis: Solidarity and change. Revista Canaria de Estudios
Ingleses 49: 179200.
Meyer M (2001) Between theory, method, and politics: Positioning of the approaches to CDA.
In: Wodak R and Meyer M (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE,
pp. 1531.
Mulderrig J (2003) Consuming education: A critical discourse analysis of social actors in new
labours education policy. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 1(1) [online].
Mulholland H (2009) Boris Johnsons backing boosts illegal immigrant amnesty campaign. The
Guardian, 15 April. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/15/boris-johnsonillegal-immigrant-amnesty (accessed 29 August 2010).
Muntigl P, Weiss G and Wodak R (2000) European Union Discourses on Un/employment: An
Interdisciplinary Approach to Employment Policy-making and Organizational Change.
Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Rajaram PK (2002) Humanitarianism and representations of the refugee. Journal of Refugee
Studies 15: 247264.
Reisigl M and Wodak R (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and
Antisemitism. London: Routledge.
Reisigl M and Wodak R (2009) The discourse-historical approach. In: Wodak R and Meyer M
(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2nd edn. London: SAGE, pp. 87121.
Rex J (1979) Black militancy and class conflict. In: Miles R and Phizacklea A (eds) Racism and
Political Action in Britain. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
360
Schuster L (2003) Common sense or racism? The treatment of asylum seekers in Europe. Patterns
of Prejudice 37(3): 233256.
Spencer S (2007) Immigration. In: Seldon A (ed.) Blairs Britain 19972007. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Squire V (2005) Integration with diversity in modern Britain: New labour on nationality,
immigration and asylum. Journal of Political Ideologies 10(1): 5174.
The Guardian (1968) Asians to march on Downing Street, 24 February.
The Independent (1999) New year honours, 31 December.
The Observer (1968a) Whos who in race, 3 March.
The Observer (1968b) Girl in mini skirt, 18 February.
Van Dijk TA (1984) Prejudice in Discourse: An Analysis of Ethnic Prejudice in Cognition and
Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Van Dijk TA (2000a) On the analysis of parliamentary debates on immigration. In: Wodak R and
Reisigl M (eds) The Semiotics of Racism. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, pp. 85105.
Van Dijk TA (2000b) Parliamentary debates. In: Wodak R and Van Dijk TA (eds) Racism at the
Top: Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava,
pp. 4578.
Van Leeuwen T (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Van Leeuwen T and Wodak R (1999) Legitimizing immigration control: A discourse-historical
analysis. Discourse Studies 1(1): 83118.
Vukov T (2003) Imagining communities through immigration policies: Governmental regulation, media spectacles and the affective politics of national borders. International Journal of
Cultural Studies 6: 335353.
Wodak R (2008) Introduction: Discourse studies Important concepts and terms. In: Wodak R and
Krzyanowski M (eds) Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. xiixvi.
Wodak R and Van Dijk T (2000) Racism at the Top: Parliamentary Discourse on Ethnic Issues in
Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava.
Zetter RW (2007) More labels, fewer refugees: Remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies 20(2): 172192.
Zetter R, Griffiths DJ and Sigona N (2004) Refugee Community Based Organisations in the UK:
A Social Capital Analysis. ESRC Research Grant R000239583. Available at: www.brookes.
ac.uk/schools/planning/dfm/rco.htm
Author biography
Eleanor C Lamb has recently completed a PhD at Lancaster University, supervised by Professor
Ruth Wodak. Her thesis developed new methods for critical discourse analysis through an investigation of the role immigrant organisations have played in discussions about immigration control in
the UK since the 1960s.

Discourse Society-2013-Lamb-334-60 PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originalbeschreibung:

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Discourse Society-2013-Lamb-334-60 PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Discourse

>> Version of Record - May 3, 2013

Downloaded from das.sagepub.com at Jazan University on July 24, 2014

DAS24310.1177/0957926512472041Discourse & SocietyLamb

Power and resistance: New