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Critical Discourse Studies
ISSN: 1740-5904 (Print) 1740-5912 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcds
Discourse and democracy: critical analysis of the
language of government
Maria Fotiadou
To cite this article: Maria Fotiadou (2016) Discourse and democracy: critical analysis of the language of government, Critical Discourse Studies, 13:3, 356-358, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2016.
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2016.
Published online: 15 Apr 2016.
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BOOK REVIEW
Discourse and democracy: critical analysis of the language of government, by Michael
Farrelly, New York and Abingdon, Routledge, 2015, 138 pp., £85.00 (hardcover), ISBN
Discourse and Democracy is a critical examination of the notion of ‘democracy’ and its continu- ous use, or rather misuse, mainly by politicians and officials in the English-speaking world. Building on his earlier work, Farrelly employs methods of Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the representations of democracy in contemporary advanced liberal nations. Specifi- cally, the author focuses on the different ways ‘democracy’ is being represented by powerful groups; those dominant groups that have the means – though, in most cases, not the will – to make a real difference in the community. Farrelly explains, in foreword, how he became interested in the discourses of democracy and its different representations by seeing an extensive and illogical use of the word and a general hypothesis that social life in Britain is under a regime of ‘democratic control’. The idea for the book’s case study is from a revelation regarding the author’s home city in the UK, namely Preston, where officials ‘had been in secret negotiations with the “development” company belonging to one of the richest people in Britain’ in order to demolish and rebuild part of the city (the ‘Tithebarn’ project). The scenario gets even more interesting as the author explains that the same company would also be in charge of the feasibility study that would determine whether such a project was necessary in the first place. As Farrelly correctly notes, ‘no demo- cratic decision had been made by the people of Preston for this project, nor had any councilor been elected in the context of the electorate knowing that this exercise was afoot’ (forefront). Such revealing citizen observation and realization of power exploitation by some officials, has led to a major academic study resulting in the book which is a critique of a problematic social situation within a wider hegemonic discourse of democracy in the country. The book consists of six chapters. The first chapter: ‘The Paradox of Contemporary Society’, provides examples from State leaders and their influential role in the promotion of the dis- course of democracy. The author starts building his argument using extracts from speeches by George W. Bush (USA) and John Howard (Australia) and the Labour Party manifesto (UK) from the year 2005 to show that their claims of spreading democracy place their respective governments as the ‘champions of democracy’ (p. 2). Furthermore, Farrelly notes an important link between the concept of democracy, as used by the leaders of liberal states, and the uneven distribution of wealth. He then emphasizes on the connection between democracy, prosperity, and wealth and shows that the language used to make such connections is quite antithetic to the evidence provided by the United Nations report released in 2006 which examines the uneven distribution of wealth. Using statistical data from the aforementioned Anglophone countries, Farrelly concludes that for leaders of liberal states, ‘democracy’ ‘is in reality con- nected to prosperity for a few’ (p. 4). The chapter continues with more examples from state leaders’ speeches (Ronald Reagan; Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair). Farrelly highlights the importance of these messages as they came from people who were in positions of great power. But most importantly, he stresses the fact that these leaders have justified wealth inequality, anti-union action and war (p. 7) amongst many others, by using the concept – or we may say their version of the concept – of ‘democracy’. The book continues with the author’s three-stage argument to provide a critical analysis of the representations of democracy: (i) democracy is always partial, (ii) government members use
CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES, 2016 VOL. 13, NO. 3, 356– 358
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and using Critical Discourse Analysis in order to stress its importance is one of the book’s strong points.
Maria Fotiadou University of Sunderland, UK [email protected] © 2016 Maria Fotiadou http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2016.
358 BOOK REVIEW
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