Ideologies in British Soap Operas a Critical Discourse and Semiotic Analysis of Coronation Street
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Ideologies in British Soap Operas A Critical Discourse and Semiotic Analysis of Coronation Street Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Silvia Macek am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: Ao.Univ.-Prof.Mag.Dr. Bernhard Kettemann Graz, im Dezember 2008 Für meine Eltern, meine Großeltern und meine kleine Schwester: DANKE für eure Liebe und Unterstützung! Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Soap as a Medium 3 2.1. A General Introduction to Soap Opera 3 2.1.1. Why is it called ‘Soap Opera’? 3 2.1.2. What are Soap Operas? 4 2.1.3. What are Soap Operas about? 7 2.2. The British Soap Phenomenon Coronation Street 9 2.2.1. British Soap Culture 9 2.2.2. Coronation Street 11 3. The Concept of Ideology 14 3.1. What is ‘Ideology’? 14 3.2. Ideology, Media and Soaps 16 4. Socio-Political and Historical Background 18 4.1. Great Britain in the 1980s: The Concept of ‘Thatcherism’ 18 4.1.1. Reforms and Interventions under Thatcher 19 4.1.2. The ‘Vigorous Virtues’ 20 5. Empirical Analysis 22 5.1. Critical Discourse Analysis 22 5.1.1. What is Critical Discourse Analysis? 23 5.1.2. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis 24 5.1.2.1. Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model 25 5.2. Semiotics 27 5.2.1. What is Semiotics? 27 5.2.2. The Sign 28 5.2.2.1. De Saussure’s and Peirce’s Concepts of the Sign 28 5.2.2.2. Icon, Index and Symbol 29 5.2.2.3. Denotation and Connotation 30 5.2.2.4. Codes 30 5.3. Research Question 31 5.4. Analysis 31 5.4.1. Work Ethics 32 5.4.1.1. Scene 1 33 5.4.1.2. Scene 2 36 5.4.1.3. Scene 3 38 5.4.1.4. Scene 4 42 5.4.1.5. Scene 5 44 5.4.1.6. Evaluation of the Socio-Cultural Significance 46 5.4.2. Position of Women 47 5.4.2.1. Scene 1 48 5.4.2.2. Scene 2 50 5.4.2.3. Scene 3 52 5.4.2.4. Scene 4 53 5.4.2.5. Scene 5 55 5.4.2.6. Scene 6 57 5.4.2.7. Evaluation of the Socio-Cultural Significance 59 5.4.3. Social Differences 61 5.4.3.1. Scene 1 62 5.4.3.2. Scene 2 64 5.4.3.3. Scene 3 66 5.4.3.4. Scene 4 69 5.4.3.5. Scene 5 70 5.4.3.6. Scene 6 72 5.4.3.7. Scene 7 74 5.4.3.8. Evaluation of the Socio-Cultural Significance 76 6. Summary and Conclusion 78 7. Deutsche Zusammenfassung 81 Bibliography 84 1. Introduction For a long time since it first started to become established in the media, soap opera has hardly been noticed as an object of serious research, by people working in the field of media theory as well as in sociology, cultural studies or linguistics. Only from the mid-1980s on, when diverse soap opera formats all over the world began to gain more and more popularity, researchers have started to acknowledge the soap opera as a special form of popular culture and an important economic commodity that is worth being investigated. Language is the most powerful and influencing means of communication, in non-fictional as well as in fictional texts. It feeds us with knowledge and is able to influence the way we perceive and judge what is happening around us. In short, it shapes our ideologies about the world. Soap operas are seen as being major carriers of ideologically-laden messages. In a television format like that of soap opera it is the language used by the characters and the accompanying signs such as props, setting, body language or the camera work that are able to convey such messages. In the following thesis I want to explore how and what kinds of ideologies are conveyed linguistically as well as semiotically in the longest-running and one of the most popular soap operas in Great Britain, namely Coronation Street. For this purpose I will analyse several extracts of dialogues from various episodes of the 1980s, which was a very interesting and influential period considering the political and socio-cultural background. Chapter two starts with a general introduction to soap opera, beginning with an outline of the historical development followed by the most important key concepts. Finally, some information about British soap culture in general and Coronation Street in particular is given. Chapter three provides a general overview of what ideology is and tries to find an accurate and apt definition, and describes how it is used in the field of the media and especially of soap operas. In chapter four, a short overview of the socio-political and historical background is given in order to be able to locate the chosen episodes in British history and culture. Special focus is 1 put on the concept of Thatcherism, since this is what has mostly influenced the period of the 1980s. Chapter five then contains the empirical analysis. Before starting with the actual analysis, I will provide an outline of the approach I will be taking and the methods that will be applied, which are Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Semiotic Analysis. Thus, I will focus on Norman Fairclough’s model of CDA and on de Saussure’s and Peirce’s concepts of the sign, which I deem most appropriate for the purpose of this paper. I will then investigate several text extracts with regard to three different major issues that are prevalent in and mainly constitute the majority of the soap’s storylines. Every dialogue will be transcribed and then analysed from a linguistic as well as a semiotic point of view. Taking these analyses as a basis, an evaluation of the socio-cultural significance which consequently reveals the ideological function of the discourse practice will be carried out. 2 2. Soap as a Medium This chapter aims at introducing the term ‘soap opera’. It starts with answering the questions of why it was named this way, what a soap opera is, and what it is about. Furthermore, an introduction to British soap culture in general and to Coronation Street, the serial that serves as the basis for the analysis, is provided. Special emphasis is put on the 1980s here, since this is the time period which is taken into consideration in the analysis. 2.1. A General Introduction to Soap Opera 2.1.1. Why is it called ‘Soap Opera’? Already in the 1930s, the term ‘soap opera’ appeared in the American newspaper Newsweek for the first time. It denoted the genre of daily running radio serials, which were also called ‘washboard weepers’ then (cf. Weiß 2004: 15). But what has a radio serial actually to do with washing and soaps? When the Great Depression hit the United States at the beginning of the 1930s, diverse companies throughout the whole country aimed at continuing to sell their products despite the severe economic crisis. Large companies such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive or Pepsodent (cf. Weiß 2004: 27) saw a great potential of advertising their products in the upcoming genre of domestic drama via the new medium radio, which had become a significant part of public as well as – and even more important to the corporate companies – private life in America (cf. Borchers et al. 1994: 23). In 1930, about 40% of all American households were in possession of a radio; in 1940 the number had already risen up to 98%. Even then, broadcasting time was divided up into ‘primetime’, which lasted from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., and ‘daytime’, lasting from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (cf. Weiß 2004: 26). One of the first daytime radio serials, Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins, first broadcast in 1933, which centred on the widowed housewife Ma Perkins and her fateful life and whose heroines offered a high potential of identification for the target group, namely housewives, was 3 produced and sponsored by the company Procter and Gamble. The company’s aim was to advertise its product via directly addressing the target group. The product name ‘Oxydol’, was not only mentioned in the title but also several times in the serial itself, and this increased the sale of the product enormously; in the 27 years of the serial’s transmission, Procter and Gamble sold ‘Oxydol’ over three Billion times (cf. Weiß 2004: 27f). The product that is being talked about here was a kind of soap, and therefore this special type of serial was called ‘soap opera’. Why people call it an ‘opera’ is a more controversial question. According to Süß and Kosack, certain similarities between a soap opera and a ‘real’ opera can be recognised. Both must be highly dramatic and emotional. In both forms of dramatic presentation, the protagonists are – in most cases – unhappily in love, have to clear several hurdles and get together only in the very end of the story. Moving the audience to tears is what both soap opera and real opera are supposed to achieve (cf. Süß and Kosack 2000: 49). Robert C. Allen offers another possible explanation for the unusual naming of the genre. According to him, the term ‘soap opera’ suggests something like an ironic aloofness to the real opera: “’Opera’ acquires meaning only through its ironic, double inappropriateness.