Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:4 (2021) ► pp.585–606

Working Royals, Megxit and Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC interview

The online media’s representation of the British Monarchy between 2010 and 2020

ORCID logo | Asia University
This research incorporates Corpus Linguistic techniques with the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to analyse the discursive representation of the British Monarchy (BM) through the categorisation of its individual members within the Now Corpus from 2010–2020. Analysis concentrated on their categorisation around key events over the ten-year period, most notably the accusations that Prince Andrew had sexual relations with a minor and Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s decision to relinquish their roles within the Monarchy. Significantly, the Royals were positively represented through the affixation of agency and active form to attach them to positive actions, for instance, performing work and charity related duties. Negativity was deemphasised via the removal of agency, passive use and a refocus onto less serious acts which distanced them, particularly the Queen and Prince Andrew, from scandal.
Keywords: the British Monarchy, corpus linguistics, online media, critical discourse studies, in-group protection, privilege, social hierarchy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Theory
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Data collection & analysis
    • 5.1Quantitative analysis
    • 5.2Qualitative analysis
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Quantitative analysis
      • 6.1.1Kindness and hard work
      • 6.1.2Kate Middleton
      • 6.1.3Meghan Markle
      • 6.1.4Prince Andrew
    • 6.2Qualitative analysis
      • 6.2.1Active and passive
      • 6.2.2Agency
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20020.chi
References (39)
References
Abell, Jackie, and Clifford Stevenson. 2011. “Defending the faith (s)? Democracy and hereditary right in England”. Political Psychology 32 (1): 485–504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Augoustinos, Martha, Iain Walker and Ngaire Donaghue. 2014. Social cognition: An integrated introduction. Sage.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michal Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press”. Discourse & society 19 (3): 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1996. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Education.Google Scholar
Boshoff, Alison. 2020. “The curse of Beatrice’s wedding.” The Daily Mail, March 20, 2020. [URL]
Fairclough, Norman. 2013. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In the Routledge handbook of discourse analysis, edited by James P. Gee, and Michael Handford, 9–20. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fullfact. 2018. “How does the royal family make money?” Accessed January 6, 2020. [URL]
Gabrielatos, Costas. 2007. “Selecting query terms to build a specialised corpus from a restricted- access database.” ICAME journal 311: 5–44.Google Scholar
Hall, Matthew. 2011. Political traditions and UK politics. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David. 2007. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, USA.Google Scholar
Harvey, Laura, Kim Allen, and Heather Mendick. 2015. “Extraordinary acts and ordinary pleasures: Rhetorics of inequality in young people’s talk about celebrity.” Discourse & society 26 (4): 428–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher. 2010. Critical discourse analysis and cognitive science: New perspectives on immigration discourse. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Moving beyond metaphor in the cognitive linguistic approach to CDA.” Critical discourse studies in context and cognition 431: 171–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heimbrod, Camille. 2019. “Why Prince Andrew’s ‘Unprecedented’ Interview Could ‘Come Back to Haunt Him’.” International Business Times, November 17, 2019. [URL]
Hodge, Margaret. 2014. “Queen not served well by Royal Household and Treasury.” Accessed April 20, 2020. [URL]
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2014. Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso Trade.Google Scholar
Littler, Jo. 2017. Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and myths of mobility. Taylor & Francis. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maclaran, Pauline, Cele Otnes, and Eileen Fischer. 2008. “Maintaining the myth of the monarchy: how producers shape consumers’ experiences of the British royal family”. ACR North American Advances.Google Scholar
Moscovici, Serge. 1961. La psychanalyse, son image et son public [Psychoanalysis, its image and its public]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
. 1984. “The phenomenon of social representations.” Social representations: 3–69.Google Scholar
ONS. 2019. “Persistent poverty in the UK and EU.” Accessed June 26, 2020. [URL]
Oxfam. 2013. “The True cost of austerity and inequality.” Accessed June 22, 2020. [URL]
Palmer, Catherine. 2007. “‘Just Like Our Family’: Royalty, national Identity and Tourism.” In Royal Tourism: Excursions Around Monarchy, edited by Philip Long and Nicola J. Palmer, 194–213. Clevedon: Channel View Publications Ltd. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. 2009. “The discourse historical approach.” Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis: 87–121. London, Sage.Google Scholar
Repo, Jemima, and Riina Yrjölä. 2015. “‘We’re all princesses now’: Sex, class, and neoliberal governmentality in the rise of middle-class monarchy”. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (6): 741–760. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richardson, John. 2006. Analysing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis. Palgrave.Google Scholar
Scott, Jennifer. 2019. “Election debate: five things from Johnson v Corbyn head to head.” The BBC, November 19, 2019. [URL]
Sovereign report. 2018–2019. “The Sovereign Grant and Sovereign Grant Reserve.” Accessed May 15, 2020. [URL]
Van Dijk, Teun A. 1997. “Political discourse and racism: Describing others in Western parliaments.” The language and politics of exclusion: Others in discourse 21: 31–64.Google Scholar
2003. “The discourse-knowledge interface.” In Critical discourse analysis, 85–109. Palgrave Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
2009. “Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach.” Methods of critical discourse analysis 2 (1): 62–86.Google Scholar
2013. News as discourse. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014. “Discourse, Knowledge and social cognition.” In Discourse and knowledge: A sociocognitive approach: 94–114. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Wolfgang, and Nicky Hayes. 2005. Everyday discourse and common sense: The theory of social representations. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Widholm, Andreas, and Karin Becker. 2015. “Celebrating with the celebrities: television in public space during two royal weddings.” Celebrity Studies 6 (1): 6–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
YouGov. 2019. “Do you support or oppose these changes (no fault divorce)?” Accessed June 1, 2020. [URL]
. 2020. “Do you think that Britain should continue to have a monarchy, or not?” Accessed May 25, 2020. [URL]
You gov. 2020. “Do you support or oppose the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s (Harry & Meghan’s) decision to “step back” from their roles in the Royal Family?” Accessed May 25, 2020. [URL]
YouGov. 2020. “What Great Britain thinks of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.” Accessed May 25, 2020. [URL]
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Abbiss, Will Stanford
2023. British History from a Distance: Transnational and Intergenerational Framings of The Crown. In TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.