This book employs a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology to analyse the language used by university careers services in the UK. Drawing on a corpus which includes the public-facing websites of careers services from 24 Russell Group and 34 Post-92 universities, the author highlights some of the potentially problematic 'common-sense' views and ideas that are currently promoted to students using these services. She argues that the language used by university websites promotes neoliberal ideology and encourages the denaturalisation of such language. This book will be of interest to linguists, sociologists, education scholars, and scholars who are otherwise interested in the notion of employability.
Chapter
1. Introduction: The marketisation of Higher Education in the UK
and the language of employability.- Chapter
2. Higher Education policy since
the 1980s.- Chapter
3. Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis.- Chapter
4.
Data and methods: University websites and corpus-based CDA.- Chapter
5. The
representation of the job-seeking reality and the notion of
employability.- Chapter
6. Understanding careers services and their
roles.- Chapter
7. Similarities and differences in the language used by
post-1992 and Russell Group universities.- Chapter
8. Conclusions:
Denaturalising the language of employability.
Maria Fotiadou completed her PhD at the University of Sunderland, UK. She is now an independent researcher, and her research interests are in corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, the discourse of employability, gender studies, language and power, ideology, and resistance.
