Language and neo-liberalism
NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH
UNIVERSITY 0F LANCASTER
(Guest editorial, Discourse and Society, 11 (2), pp. 147-8)

This is a call for coordinated action against neoliberalism on the part of critical language researchers.

What's happening in the contemporary world is that a restructured ('global') form of capitalism is gaining ascendancy. There are winners and there are losers. Amongst the losses: an increasing gap between rich and poor, less security for most people, less democracy, major environmental damage. If markets are not constrained, the results will be disastrous. The political priority is to challenge this new order (which frames other issues, e.g. racism and sexism), and especially the claim that it is inevitable. Language is an important part of the new order. First, because imposing the new order centrally involves the reflexive process of imposing new representations of the world, new discourses: second. because new ways
of using language, new genres are an important part of the new order. So the project of the new order is partly a language project. Correspondingly, the struggle against the new order is partly a struggle over language.

What is neoliberalism? According to Bourdieu, neoliberalism is a political project for the reconstruction of society in accord with the demands of an unrestrained global capitalism (Bourdieu, 1998). Neoliberalism has been adopted in fact if not in theory by social democratic as well as conservative political parties, so that one effect of the current scenario
is the absence of really distinct political policies, a weakening of democracy.

Governments of different political complexions take it as a mere fact of life (a 'fact' produced by intergovernmental agreements) that all must bow to the logic of the global economy. This means that states enter an intense
competition to succeed on terms dictated by the market. This has led to radical attacks on social welfare and the reduction of those protections which welfare states provided against the negative effects of markets, and the other negative effects listed above. It has also produced a new
imperialism, where international financial agencies indiscriminately impose restructuring on less fortunate countries, sometimes with disastrous consequences, e.g. Russia (see Bauman, 1998; Martin and Schumann, 1997).

Language in the neoliberal order

Language (and more broadly, semiosis) figures in two broad ways in material social processes: as an element of
these processes dialectically connected to other elements, and in the reflexive constructions of these processes which social actors produce as an inherent part of these processes (Chouliaraki and Fairclough,1999). The neoliberal order is a distinctive network of practices part of whose distinctiveness is the way semiosis figures as an element of its material
processes and in the reflexive construction of these processes. The new order is not a homogenization, it is a specific structuring of difference (including resistance). The task is not only to specify the threat, but also to specify emergent practices of resistance, and to discern possibilities for change.

Discourses of neoliberalism

The neoliberal global order is an incomplete project rather than a fait accompli. Various resources are deployed in the struggle by the winners (the banks, etc.) to pursue the project and extend the new order, including the symbolic
resources of neoliberal discourse. This discourse includes a narrative of progress: the 'globalized' world offers unprecedented opportunities for 'growth' through intensified 'competition', but requiring unfettered 'free trade' and the dismantling of 'state bureaucracy' and 'unaffordable' welfare programmes, 'flexibility' of labour, 'transparency', 'modernization' and so forth. This discourse projects and contributes to actualizing new forms of productive activity, new social relations, new forms of identity, new values, etc. It appears in specific forms and transformations in different spheres of life. For instance, the concept of 'flexibility' variously enters economic discourse, political discourse
(Fairclough, 2000), educational discourse, and the representations of everyday life in advertising and popular culture. Part of the analytical task is to describe this field of dispersal. But as the example of 'flexibility' shows, the discourses of neoliberalism are not just neoliberal discourses. There is a new structuring of diversity, not a homogenization. So for instance the 'other' of 'flexibility' is what we might call a discourse of 'insecurity' which represents social life in terms of insecurity, risk, anxiety, etc. Both however construct social problems as problems for individuals ('flexibility' as an individual virtue, 'welfare dependence' as an individual flaw, 'insecurity' as an individual problem).

The genres of neoliberal globalization

The changing network of practices which constitutes the new order includes a changing network of genres. For instance, changes in working practices (e.g. towards team work), in
practices of governance (e.g. towards 'partnership' and 'networking'), in education (e.g. towards forms of family learning) all include new genres. What is at issue is the structuring and restructuring of relationships within this network, as well as the structuring of diversity (e.g. the
dominance of media public spheres over social movement public spheres), and the contestations of and struggles over these. And how this network contributes to shifting social relations, shifting relations of power, shifting identities and so forth.

CDA as a resource for struggle

CDA [Critical Discourse Analysis] can constitute a resource for struggle in so far as it does not isolate language but addresses the shifting network of practices in a way which
produces both clearer understanding of how language figures in hegemonic struggles around neoliberalism, and how struggles against neoliberalism can be partly pursued in
language. It asks: what are the problems facing people, what are they doing in response, how can these resistances be strengthened and coordinated into a plausible alternative,
and how specifically does language figure in all this (recognizing the irreducible language factor without exaggerating it),

Proposed network

We need an international network to link the diverse work
that is already going on and encourage more. If you are interested, email me at:

n.fairclough@lancaster.ac.uk

REFERENCES

Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization  the Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1998) 'L'essence du neoliberalisme'. Le Monde Diplornatique, March.

Chouliaraki, L. and Fairclough, N. (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Fairclough, N. (2000) New Labour, New Language. London: Routledge. Martin, RR and Schumann, H. (1997) The Global Trap. London: Zed Books.