Democracy and
Radicalisation
Keywords for our times?
Raymond Williams 1976
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Keywords:
Zeitgeist
Meanings reflecting the times
 The Last Enemy (BBC2 Sundays):
“I’ve been away four years and everything
has changed.”
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Background to my research
The borders between langue and parole
(or system and use).
 Is this a real distinction?
 How can we operate without a system?
 How can a system both be stable and
change over time?
 Do we need the system to understand new
forms and structures?
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‘Emergent meaning’
Previous studies:
1. The meaning of ‘water’ during the 1995
Yorkshire water shortage.
2. The nature of the apology according to
news coverage of Tony’s Blair’s ‘apology’
for the Iraq war.
3. The creation of opposites in context.
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This project – keywords
Words which seem to acquire positive or
negative connotation in particular political
climates and become absolute and assumed
‘good’ or bad’.
e.g. choice
radicalisation
democracy
extremism
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Theoretical assumptions
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That texts can ‘have’ meaning to some extent;
That such meaning may be ideological, either
reflecting the dominant ideologies of society or
reflecting a minority view that is being fostered;
That readers are to a greater or lesser extent
potentially influenced by this ideology.
Pilot Study
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Newspaper articles from ten year period 1998 –
2007
All articles from 5 newspapers: Daily Mail, The
Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The
Times.
Focussing on choice, democracy, radicalisation
and extremism
Quantitative: do they increase in frequency?
Raw data
Year
democra*
democracy
radicalis*
radicalisation
extremis*
extremis
m
choice
1998
11008
3670
286
14
1141
150
14703
1999
12719
4276
307
15
1282
218
17850
2000
14495
4302
306
7
1205
249
19580
2001
12516
3890
353
19
2267
344
19852
2002
12335
4061
326
16
1999
443
21591
2003
13406
4848
336
13
1653
292
21716
2004
15398
5186
348
21
2301
438
22245
2005
14310
5059
487
63
2640
729
22827
2006
13419
4704
624
146
2831
859
23842
2007
13634
4419
615
144
2475
803
24425
Normalised by number of articles
0.06
N ormalised value
0.05
democra
0.04
democracy
radicalis
0.03
radicalisation
extremis
extremism
choice
0.02
0.01
0
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year
2004
2005
2006
2007
Qualitative study
Methodology:
 Extract all occurrences of words with context
(concordances)
 Examine all occurrences for their semantic
prosody (regular collocation)
 Examine all occurrences for their grammatical
properties
 Examine all occurrences for their semantic
properties
Semantic prosody (Louw)
Not part of the denotation of a word, but
like other connotations, associated with
the word by frequency of co-occurrence.
 E.g. radicalisation of Muslim youth
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Grammatical properties
Many possibilities here, including:
Determiners and adjectives
e.g. social democracy, a democracy
Grammatical role (Actor, Goal etc)
e.g. democracy is …
the US will bring democracy to…
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Semantic properties
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e.g. is the verbal origin of radicalisation evident
in the context ?
Is democracy presented as a single, unified
concept?
Are they measurable?
What metaphors are used?
Are opposites (or synonyms) being constructed?
Democracy and radicalisation results
Based on a comparison of only part of the
available data – from June of 1998 and
June of 2007.
 To see whether there is any discernible
difference between the two years
 To assess the contextual meaning of these
words at these two times
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Radicalisation
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Nominalisation
 Process
presented as noun
e.g. transform (v) → transformation
 No Actor/Goal
e.g.
She transformed the room
It was a transformation
Radicalisation 2
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Nominalisation
 Process
presented as noun
e.g. radicalise (v) → radicalisation
 No Actor/Goal
e.g.
Poverty radicalised the young Muslim
Muslim radicalisation (is increasing)
Radicalisation 2007
Goals: mainly young, mainly Muslim
 Actors: mainly absent
 Determiners: mainly definite articles (the)
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Radicalisation 2007 contd.
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the radicalisation of Arab youth
the radicalisation of young men and women
in more extremism, radicalisation of Muslim students
the radicalisation of Palestinian society.
to the radicalisation of the anti-G8 scene.
the radicalisation of parts of the Muslim community.
the radicalisation of the British people
the radicalisation of Russia's Muslims
The radicalisation of students by Islamist groups on
campus
Radicalisation 2007 - possessives, self-evident
meaning and equivalence
His radicalisation
 his brother's long process of radicalisation.
 modern Islam's radicalisation
 a sign of radicalisation
 in danger of radicalisation.
 the "fight against radicalisation and
extremism".
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Apposition
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The failure to engage and address the
needs of modern Islam could result in
more extremism, radicalisation of Muslim
students, as well as a growing mistrust
between Muslims and secular society, the
director of the Markfield Institute of Higher
Education claims
Radicalisation (1998)
Some indefinite articles (a/an)
 More Actors evident (i.e. the causes of
radicalisation)
 No possessives
 Emphasis on process rather than product
 Not unequivocally negative connotation
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Radicalisation (1998)
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Over the past two weeks, thanks to the Decane offensive and the
refugee crisis, there has been a radicalisation of Kosovo society at
almost all levels.
The strongest stimulus to the radicalisation of the Macedonian
Albanians will be a constant pressure-cooker of revolt and
suppression in Kosovo.
The deep aftershocks resulted in a new radicalisation of the
nationalist community, which in turn led to a record Sinn Fein vote in
the 1997 general election
The three victims were buried yesterday in their home village, Dura,
in a sea of green flags, showing allegiance to the radical Islamic
movement Hamas - a vivid gauge of the steady radicalisation of
the West Bank in the year since the collapse of the peace process.
Radicalisation (1998 contd.)
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The politicisation of the cartoon? The radicalisation of
American mainstream movies? A lovely idea if it were
true, but it isn't.
The VW Lupo: a radicalisation of the SEAT Arosa which
comes with the customary Volkswagen trimmings
"The English have always considered themselves as
subjects, subordinate to the Establishment, rather than
citizens. What happened this decade changed all that. It
is still continuing, with the re-radicalisation of students,
a formerly active body which had been dormant for 30
years."
Types of democracy 1998
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the Tories' conversion to 'Scottish democracy'.
in most enlightened democracies.
a modern democracy with a market economy.
a property owning democracy
in a liberal democracy
popular democracy
Types of democracy 2007
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We have transformed ourselves (…) into an inventive
and fairly rich social democracy.
the Polish gay community learned to hide under
communist rule and is continuing to hide in the new
democracy.
Gordon Brown wants to encourage a "home-owning
democracy".
Our leaders might be keen to impose Western
democracy on oil-rich nations in the Middle East,
to create a "world-class democracy”
Finding out what goes on in open democracies?
Metaphors – democracy as
organism
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Local democracy is dying on its feet (1998)
Other cancers in our democracy threaten more
obviously (1998)
There can be few issues more central to the health of a
democracy. (1998)
Equally, we believe our democracy would be healthier if
churchmen spoke out more often on issues of principle
and morality. (2007)
one of the world's youngest democracies is being
ravaged by widespread gang violence (2007)
Collocates of ‘democracy’
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peace and democracy and that violence is
genuinely being given up for good.“ (1998)
principles of non-violence and democracy
(1998)
human rights and democracy. (1998)
the principles of freedom, democracy and
justice around the globe. (2007)
The quality of democracy…(1998)
leaving our democracy less stable and a
weak government inevitable
 a need for more democracy,
 Pakistan's democracy is a corrupt
shambles
Compare:
 India is a democracy.
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Democracy as a unified concept
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He said: "Whoever voted to get rid of
democracy?
we still have the nerve to sell ourselves as a
democracy to the world.
Mr Blair challenged African leaders to embrace
democracy in return for increased investment.
On the contrary, democracy demands that
minorities must receive protection,
The opposites of democracy 1998
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De-regulation applies to money, but not to you. As
business and capital shrug off the remaining constraints
of the post-war years, so the individual is confined to an
ever-narrowing corridor of acceptable behaviour, at work,
home, even in bed. In contrast to previous conformist
social systems - like Scandinavian social democracy there is no trade-off between shrinking personal liberty
and economic security. The constraints on the person
exist beside a financial system which believes that it is
neither possible nor desirable to offer economic security
and that those who fail to be competitive must be
downsized
The opposites of democracy 2007
When did democracy end and racism
start?
 proof that democracy and Islam can coexist and a future member of the
European Union
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References
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Jeffries, L. (2003) 'Not a drop to drink: emerging meanings in local
newspaper reporting of the 1995 water crisis in Yorkshire ', Text
23(4): 513-38.
Jeffries, L. (2007a) Textual Construction of the Female Body: A
Critical Discourse Approach . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jeffries, L. (2007b) ‘Journalistic constructions of Blair’s ‘apology’ for
the intelligence leading to the Iraq war’ in Sally Johnson and Astrid
Ensslin (eds) Language in the Media: Representations, Identities,
Ideologies London: Continuum.
Louw, B. 1993 ‘Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The
Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies’, in M. Baker, G. Francis
and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology. In Honour of John
Sinclair, John Benjamins, Amsterdam
Williams, R. (1976) Keywords Harmondsworth: Penguin.