The In-group and Out-groups of the British National Party and UK Independence Party A corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Robin Engström Centre for Language and Literature Master’s Thesis, 30 hp (SPVR01) English Language and Linguistics April, 2013 Supervision by Carita Paradis Abstract The purpose of this paper is to determine to what degree there are textual and conceptual similarities between the British National Party’s (BNP) and UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) construction of in-groups and out-groups. The focus is on the two discursive strategies nomination (attribution of word form) and predication (attribution of quality). For the present study I adopt the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, which offers a broad sociologic understanding of linguistic phenomena through historical contextualization. The data consist of a corpus containing news articles and policy documents from official BNP and UKIP outputs. The in-group analysis shows that both parties have gained in confidence between the 2005 and 2010 general elections, which is mirrored in their choice of party name as preferred form of self-representation. When claiming uniqueness, both parties mix ideological themes with concrete policies, but UKIP claims ownership of more banal policies. While the BNP and UKIP criticize each other, the main recipients of their criticism are the establishment parties. Both parties feel the need to distance themselves from accusations of racism; the BNP in particular. The out-group analysis shows that both parties frequently discuss immigration and refer to immigrants using the same word forms, although UKIP’s use is more consistent with internationally agreed definitions. Both parties construct immigration as unstoppable forces, e.g. by using water metaphors. References to country of origin are also frequent; UKIP emphasizes Eastern European immigration while the BNP highlights immigration from the Third World. Overall, the analysis shows that both parties use language extensively to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, but that UKIP’s parameters are more fine-tuned. Keywords: British National Party, UKIP, Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse- Historical Approach, far-right, immigration Words: 26826 Table of contents List of figures ............................................................................................................. i List of tables ............................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... iii 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 The political and ideological contexts of the BNP and UKIP ............................ 3 1.2 Review of academic responses to the far-right .................................................. 5 1.3 Aim and research questions ................................................................................ 8 2 Discourse theory and corpus methodology ......................................................... 10 2.1 Discourse theory ............................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Cognitive approaches to discourse .......................................................... 10 2.1.2 The Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis ....... 13 2.2 Analytical perspectives .................................................................................... 19 2.2.1 The in-group perspective .......................................................................... 22 2.2.2 The out-group perspective ........................................................................ 23 2.3 Analytical tools ................................................................................................ 24 2.3.1 Frequency and dispersion analysis .......................................................... 25 2.3.2 Collocational analysis .............................................................................. 26 2.3.3 Concordance analysis .............................................................................. 27 3 Material .................................................................................................................. 29 3.1 The BNP-UKIP corpus ..................................................................................... 29 3.2 Reference corpus .............................................................................................. 33 4 The in-group analysis: the parties ....................................................................... 34 4.1 Self-reference ................................................................................................... 34 4.2 Party image ....................................................................................................... 39 4.2.1 Unique competence .................................................................................. 39 4.2.2 Negation ................................................................................................... 41 4.2.3 Mutual perceptions ................................................................................... 43 5 The out-group analysis: immigration ................................................................. 46 5.1 Reconstructing the immigration discourses ..................................................... 46 5.2 “Who are ‘they’?” ............................................................................................ 48 5.3 “How many are there?” .................................................................................... 52 5.4 “Where do ‘they’ come from?” ........................................................................ 56 6 Conclusions and future studies ............................................................................ 61 7 References .............................................................................................................. 65 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. BNP distortions of the BBC logo. ..................................................... 8 Figure 2. Levels of theories and context, abstraction of methodology and reality levels. ........................................................................................... 15 Figure 3. Dispersion plots of the words halal and violence in the BNP subcorpus. ............................................................................................... 26 Figure 4. A screenshot of the concordance function in AntConc. .................. 27 Figure 5. Ratio of the pronoun we to party name in the 2010 general election manifestos of the ten parties represented in the House of Commons, plus the BNP and UKIP........................................................ 36 Figure 6. Ideological themes and policies with which the BNP and UKIP want to be associated. ................................................................... 39 Figure 7. Dispersion plots of the parties’ references to each other. ................ 43 Figure 8. Dispersion plots of the BNP’s and UKIP’s references to the Conservatives and Labour. ..................................................................... 43 Figure 9. Dispersion plots of immigration and immigrant(-s) in the BNP and UKIP subcorpora. ............................................................................. 46 Figure 10. A picture used by UKIP to argue that David Cameron cannot renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU. ...................................... 55 Figure 11. References to country of origin and nationality in the BNP and UKIP subcorpora. ............................................................................. 56 Figure 12. Distribution of nationality words in the BNP and UKIP subcorpora. .............................................................................................. 59 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Size of the BNP and UKIP subcorpora and sections. ....................... 29 Table 2. Number of texts and words per text. ................................................. 30 Table 3. Types of genres and policy documents. ............................................ 31 Table 4. Percentages of we and party name in the 2005 and 2010 general election manifestos of the ten Westminster parties and the BNP and UKIP. ...................................................................................................... 37 Table 5. Forms of self-reference in the articles and policy sections of the BNP and UKIP subcorpora. .................................................................... 38 Table 6. Concordance showing what the BNP claims not to be. .................... 41 Table 7. Concordance showing what UKIP claims not to be. ........................ 42 Table 8. Collocates of immigration in the BNP and UKIP subcorpora using ranked frequency. .......................................................................... 47 Table 9. Frequency of asylum seeker(-s), immigrant(-s) and refugee(-s). ..... 48 Table 10. Pre-modifying collocates of immigrant(-s) in the BNP and UKIP subcorpora. ................................................................................... 50 Table 11. Concordance of refugee(-s) in the BNP subcorpus. ....................... 50 i Table 12. Concordance of refugee(-s) in the UKIP subcorpus. ...................... 51 Table 13. Instances of asylum seeker(-s), immigrant(-s) and refugee(-s) accompanied by numerical