UNIVERSIDAD DE GUADALAJARA COORDINACIÓN GENERAL ACADÉMICA Coordinación de Bibliotecas Biblioteca Digital La presente tesis es publicada a texto completo en virtud de que el autor ha dado su autorización por escrito para la incorporación del documento a la Biblioteca Digital y al Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Guadalajara, esto sin sufrir menoscabo sobre sus derechos como autor de la obra y los usos que posteriormente quiera darle a la misma. Av. Hidalgo 935, Colonia Centro, C.P. 44100, Guadalajara, Jalisco, México [email protected] - Tel. 31 34 22 77 ext. 11959 UNIVERSIDAD DE GUADALAJARA CENTRO UNIVERSITARIO DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES Y HUMANIDADES DIVISIÓN DE ESTUDIOS HISTÓRICOS Y HUMANOS DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS MODERNAS MAESTRIA EN LENGUAS Y CULTURAS INGLESAS ARGUMENTATIVE DISCOURSE OF FEAR AS A PERSUASIVE STRATEGY: THE CASE OF THE SUN BRITISH TABLOID SUPPORTING BREXIT Tesis para obtener el grado de Maestro en Estudios de Lenguas y Culturas Inglesas presenta: Nazareth Ambar Suhel Luna Salazar Director de tesis: Dr. Gerrard Mugford Lectores de tesis: Dr. Gerardo Gutiérrez Cham y Dra. Josefina del Carmen Santana Villegas Guadalajara, Jalisco. Julio 2019 THE ARGUMENTATIVE DISCOURSE OF FEAR AS A PERSUASIVE STRATEGY: THE CASE OF THE SUN BRITISH TABLOID SUPPORTING BREXIT Abstract The United Kingdom electorate chose to vote in favour of leaving the European Union in the so-called Brexit referendum held on 23rd June 2016. This referendum had an exhaustive campaign covered by the media, where most of the national press was divided between either Remain or Leave positions. Amongst the Leave campaign, its major supporters were the Tabloids, which are the newspapers with the major circulation in this country for several decades. This thesis analyses critically the multimodal discourse in 22 news and editorial articles of the British national tabloid The Sun, published online before the Brexit referendum took place. The finality is to find out to what extent the rhetorical discourse of the Sun depicting Brexit in both, news articles and editorial articles, have threatening elements ingrained, as a normalized representation of reality. The results suggest that, The Sun´s argumentative structures vary in the news and editorial articles of the corpus. However, both present similarities at the ideological level, reinforcing through rhetorical discourse threatening and polarised ideas of self-perception, the perception of the ‘other’; Euroscepticism; anti- immigration; nationalism; and sovereignty. Thus, as a rhetorical strategy to persuade readers to support Leave in the EU Referendum. Key words: Tabloids, Discourse analysis, argumentation, persuasion, fear. List of abbreviations CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CL Critical Linguistics DO Discursive Object DS Discourse Studies EU European Union MCDA Multimodal Critical discourse analysis NHS National Health Service PM Prime Minister UK United Kingdom UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Thesis overview……………………………………………………………… 1 1.2 Research questions……………………………………………………….…. 6 1.3 Body of the thesis overview………………………………………………… 6 Chapter two: Brexit and British Press 2.1 Brexit contextualization…………………………………………………… 9 2.2 British Tabloids 2.2.1 Communication of news before the newspaper era……………… 12 2.2.2 British Press…………………………………………………………… 14 2.2.3 The Sun leadership among tabloids and its leader, Murdoch……. 19 2.2.4 The Sun and Brexit………………………………………………….. 24 Chapter three: Literature Review 3.1 Common notions: Text, Discourse, media discourse and ideology... 27 3.2 The analysis of discourse: An interdisciplinary field…………………. 29 3.2.1 Critical Linguistics (CL)……………………………………………… 31 3.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)…………………………………. 31 3.2.3 Discourse Studies (DS)………………………………… …………… 32 3.2.4 Multimodality or Multimodal CDA (MCDA)………………………… 34 3.2.5 Semiotics…………………………………………………………….. 35 3.2.6 Rhetoric………………………………………………………………… 36 Chapter four: News discourse 4.1 Production of news discourse and its ideology………………………. 39 4.2 Construction of reality and normalisation through argumentative discourse……………………………………………………………………. 42 4.3 Rhetoric in news: Argumentation, persuasion and representation involved in fear discourses……………………………………………… 46 4.4 Legitimation and de-legitimation discourses through semiotic…… 49 Chapter five: Methodology 5.1 Framework of Analysis on Rhetorical Arguments……………………… 53 5.2 Corpus………………………………………………………………………….. 58 Chapter six: Analysis 6.1 EU Referendum articles……………………………………………………… 60 6.1.1 Analysis of news articles………………………………….…………….. 61 6.1.2 Analysis of editorial articles…………………………………………….. 74 6.2 Headlines and sub-headlines……………………………………………….. 79 6.2.1 Headlines and sub-headlines in news articles………………………. 81 6.2.2 Headlines and sub-headlines in editorial articles……………………. 84 6.3 Main topics in the corpus…………………………………………………… 86 6.3.1 Nationalism and Sovereignty………………………………………….. 87 6.3.1.1 Proximity and Identity…………………………………………. 89 6.3.2 Delegitimation of the other (Anti EU and Remainers)……………….. 90 6.3.3 Immigration hostility……………………………………………………… 93 6.3.4 Economics……………………………………………………………….. 95 Chapter seven: Discussion and Conclusions 7.1 Brexit coverage by the editorial and the rest of ‘writers’……………… 97 7.2 The Sun’s rhetorical discourse findings regarding Brexit……………. 99 References…………………………………………………………………………….. 105 Appendix I: Main British Newspapers circulation and quick facts………… 112 Appendix II: Leading UK Newspaper monthly reach by platform .………… 113 Appendix III: UK Daily Newspaper circulation from 1950-2015……………… 114 Appendix IV: Corpus articles’ web sites links…………………………………... 115 Appendix V: Pictures from ART12…………………………………………………. 117 1 Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Thesis overview On June 23rd, 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union triggering what the Guardian’s assistant editor Michael White described as the ‘greatest political crisis’ in the UK1 since the Second World War. At the time of writing, most economists are predicting a severe economic downturn that could be worse than that which followed the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 (Berry, 14: 2016). Brexit has been ‘the’ subject of political discussion in the UK since the date of its announcement as a Referendum until this date, just after Theresa May announced her resignation due mainly to unsuccessful Brexit negotiations, leaving the UK at the edge of uncertainty. The Brexit referendum coincided with a rise of popularity of political parties and politicians in Europe that promote discourses of immigration hostility, anti-Islamic rhetoric and Euroscepticism. British Euroscepticism seems closely tied to its perceived role as an independent actor on the world tied to the impression of not forming part of the Continent of Europe (Sorensen, 2004 in Baker & Schnapper, 2015: 87). The role of the use of language to promote and normalise ideologies related to Euroscepticism and anti- immigration are crucial. For instance, the Brexit Leave campaign has been recognised as discursively stronger that its counterpart – the Remain campaign, due to the fact that they were more capable to connect to certain voters, by using phrases that were simple but at the same time, open to multiple meanings. Overall, they were ‘catchy’2 and repeated constantly in different media. Some of the phrases used were: ‘Britain should be ruled by Britain’, ‘Take Back Control’3, ‘We are better off’, ‘See EU later’ and ‘We want our country back’. These phrases are not a product of causality; -they were created with a rhetoric purpose-, that refers to nationalism, nostalgia for an imperialistic identity, Euro-scepticism and anti-immigration 1 The United Kingdom (UK) The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great Britain—which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the northern portion of the island of Ireland. The name Britain is sometimes used to refer to the United Kingdom as a whole. Its capital is London (Britannica, 2018). 2 Refers a tune, phrase which is instantly appealing and memorable (Oxford dictionary, 2019). 3 This is phrase was established as the slogan of the Leave Brexit campaign. Most probably inspired in the Eurosceptic discourse of some of the British tabloids. 2 ideas. In fact, it is said that the Leave campaign borrowed a tabloid discourse to get mass support since their discourse is known for promoting populist ideologies to connect massively with their readers, especially those related to nationalism and anti- immigration. The number of newspapers in Britain is very wide-ranging, as it varies from ‘high minded approach’ newspapers to middle and low-quality tabloids. However, the British newspaper market has been dominated for years by entertainment-based news journalism in relation to the ‘serious’ press (Williams, 2005:29-30 in Langer, 2007:22). Currently, more than 75% of the UK newspaper circulation belongs to tabloids (including free items, see appendix I). The role of tabloids in the socio-political British context is crucial. This is not only because of their mass audience scope, but also due to the way they cover the national political news, regularly through an argumentative discourse which appeals to the emotions of fear and prejudice of the unknown – ‘the other’, rather than engaging in rational thinking. Therefore, the tabloids power in persuading public opinion about leaving the EU and under which terms was and still is fundamental. According to Banducci and Stevens, tabloids influenced