Chapter 3
Expressions of blame for the Global Financial Crisis in US, UK and Australian opinion texts
The Global Financial Crisis has had a devastating effect on many economies, with reverberations still being felt today. While the media has focused on the Crisis in affected regions, there is a surprising lack of research on the actual discourse used by key players to express blame and responsibility for the Crisis. This chapter provides an in-depth comparative analysis between the expressions of blame in American, British and Australian newspaper opinion texts, written by authors from differing political backgrounds. It finds that communication strategies of blame are directly and indirectly attributed, rather than resisted or avoided. The chapter is developed from a larger discourse study by Cope (2016), and looks specifically at the relationship between political authors and positioning.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Blame and relevant concepts
- Methodology and preliminary analysis
- Procedure of data analysis
- The findings
- Finger-pointing of Blame
: Direct Blame
- The US texts
- The UK texts
- The Australian texts
- Summary of Direct Blame examples
- Finger-pointing of Blame
: Indirect Blame
- The US texts
- The UK texts
- The Australian texts
- Summary of Indirect Blame examples
- Summary of the main findings
- Concluding discussion
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Notes
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References
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