A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Reporting on Corporate Fraud by UK Newspapers 2004 - 2014
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A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Reporting on Corporate Fraud by UK Newspapers 2004 - 2014 Ilse Astrid Ras Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English April, 2017 i The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2017 The University of Leeds and Ilse Astrid Ras ii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have seen the light of day without the help of so many facilitators, collaborators and partners-in-crime. Therefore, I would like to thank the following people: Thanks to my supervisors, Dr Christiana Gregoriou and Professor Tony Crowley. Thank you, Christiana, for everything. Thank you, Tony, in particular for guiding me through my second year crisis. Thanks to my examiners, Prof Dan McIntyre and Dr Alison Johnson, for their valuable feedback and support. Thanks to Christopher Norton for his IT skills – in particular, for the Output Organiser, which has saved me many months of work. Thanks to Cliff Chapman, for being my Thief and for introducing me to a wonderful new universe. I am so very sorry that you have had to put up with so much. Thanks to my Dad, Cor Ras. Bedankt paps, voor al je steun. Ik beloof dat ik vanaf nu vaker zal bellen! Thanks to Danou Duifhuizen, Samantha Schaefer, Kristy Evers, Lisa Koelle, and Ma-ike van Amen. ‘“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here.”’ Thanks to the people of the Leeds postgrad community: Dr Ragini Mohite and Dr Ed Powell, for their support and banter; to Carla Douglas, for offering me a place to sleep and just generally being amazing; to Sara Brio, for never failing to cheer me up; to Neveen El Saeed, for all our lovely chats; to Dr Georgina Binnie, for being a fantastic office mate; to Charlotte Thomason, Mick Wood, Frances Hemsley, Dr Emmanuel Sarfo, Nurshafawati Ahmad and Samuel Perks. Thanks to my friends at Devonshire Hall: David Booth, Jess Bourke, Amanda Davison and Dr Darron Dixon-Hardy. Thanks to my friends at Hever Castle and Kent Life: Heath, Hannah, Emily, Tom, Lyra, Andy, Elliott, Stephen, Louise, Hayden, Will, Corinne, Rachel, Kitty. Many thanks to my past teachers, lecturers and professors: Miss Edith and Miss Janie; Mrs Hoff, Mrs De Looij, Mrs Van de Gaag and Mr Heemskerk; Professor Pieter Ippel, Dr Ernestine Lahey and Dr Alexei Karas, and Dr Lisa Smith and Professor Yvonne Jewkes. Thanks, in particular, to Professor Michael Burke, whose support (and insistence) led to me doing this PhD. Thanks to my students and colleagues at Leeds Beckett University and Kingston University. It has been and is, a privilege working with you. Particular thanks go to Bill and Tom, and to Marina, Kate, Kay and Hannah. Thanks to the members of the PostgRAD Facebook group for offering a space to express a multitude of anxieties and for numerous pomodoros. Thanks to the friends and colleagues that I met through PALA. Your support and kindness have been invaluable. Thanks finally to the University of Leeds School of English, for offering me the Douglas Jefferson scholarship in my second and third year. I could not have afforded to do this PhD without it. iii Abstract This thesis examines how British newspapers reported corporate fraud between 2004 and 2014. A corpus of approximately 85,000 news articles was collected from seven major daily and three major Sunday British newspapers and examined using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. This analysis follows principles set out by Fairclough (2015). The costs of corporate fraud are financial and intangible (Punch, 1996), including the corporate tax gap (HMRC, 2015), the undermining of democratic processes (Punch, 1996), and global wealth inequality (Slater and Kramers, 2016; Kramers, 2017). This thesis draws on Sykes and Matza’s (1957) ‘techniques of neutralisation’, which asserts that those accused of having committed deviant acts employ a specific set of arguments to negate them. Newspapers’ use of these techniques creates a narrative in which corporations are generally relieved of their alleged responsibility for acts of fraud. Corporations are presented as being forced to perform acts that are not always in line with (the spirit of) the law. Responsibility is transferred to regulators and investigators, who are represented as simultaneously too harsh, potentially stifling business growth, and too lenient, allowing corporations to get away with fraud. My original contribution is primarily methodological and analytical. I linguistically analyse a corpus of corporate fraud news, covering a decade of reporting, using a combination of CDA and corpus methods. Previous work on newspaper representations of corporate crime employs little linguistic analysis and covers at most a year of reporting (see Evans and Lundman, 2009 [1983]; Wright et al, 1995; McMullan and McClung, 2006; Williams, 2008; Cavender and Mulcahy, 1998). A further point of originality is theoretical, as I elaborate on the various ways in which techniques of neutralisation (see Sykes and Matza, 1957; Fooks et al, 2012) are expressed. iv Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ II ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... III TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................. IV LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... VII LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. VIII TYPOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................ X CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 2. CORPORATE FRAUD AND NEWSPAPERS ................................................................ 18 2.1. Corporate Fraud ............................................................................................. 18 2.2. Techniques of Neutralisation .......................................................................... 25 2.3. Newspapers .................................................................................................... 33 2.4. Newspapers on Corporate Fraud .................................................................... 37 2.5. Chapter Summary ........................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER 3. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CORPUS LINGUISTICS ....................................... 43 3.1. Critical Discourse Analysis .............................................................................. 44 3.2. Context and Composition ............................................................................... 61 3.3. Analysis ........................................................................................................... 62 3.4. Chapter Summary ........................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER 4. METHODS ...................................................................................................... 76 4.1. Data Collection ............................................................................................... 76 4.2. Composition and Context ............................................................................... 81 4.3. Labelling ......................................................................................................... 84 4.4. Metaphor and Metonymy .............................................................................. 87 4.5. Agency ............................................................................................................ 92 4.6. Modality ......................................................................................................... 95 4.7. Chapter Summary .........................................................................................100 CHAPTER 5. COMPOSITION AND CONTEXT...........................................................................101 5.1. Corporate Fraud Reporting ...........................................................................102 5.2. Composition ..................................................................................................103 5.3. Election Manifestos ......................................................................................111 5.4. Reported Fraud and Fraud Victimisation Rates ............................................112 5.5. Chapter Summary .........................................................................................115 CHAPTER 6. LABELLING....................................................................................................117 6.1. Cases .............................................................................................................119 6.2. The Accused ..................................................................................................124 6.3. Investigators and Regulators ........................................................................131