The Discourse of Financial Crisis and Austerity

Critical analyses of business and economics across disciplines

Darren Kelsey, Frank Mueller, Andrea Whittle, Majid KhosraviNik

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351984997
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book demonstrates the importance of understanding how political rhetoric, financial reporting and media coverage of austerity in transnational contexts is significant to the communicative, social and economic environments in which we live. It considers how aspects of moral storytelling, language, representation and ideology operate through societies in financial crisis and through governments that impose austerity programmes on public spending. Whilst many of the debates covered here are concerned with UK economic policy and British social contexts, the contributions also consider examples from other countries that reflect similar concerns on the ideological operations of austerity and financial discourse. The multiple discursive contexts of austerity demonstrate the breadth of social concerns and conflicts that have developed in societies and institutions following the global economic crisis of 2008. Through its interdisciplinary focus on this topic, this book provides an important contribution across multiple subject areas, with shared interests in critical and analytical approaches to discourse, power and language in social contexts reflecting the healthy collaborative scope of critical discourse studies as a field of research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Discourse Studies.

Financial crisis and austerity: interdisciplinary concerns in critical discourse studies

Darren Kelsey^a, Frank Mueller^b, Andrea Whittle^b and Majid KhosraviNik^a

^aSchool of Arts & Cultures, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; ^bNewscastle University Business School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

ABSTRACT

We begin our introduction to this special issue by considering the interdisciplinary collaborations behind this project before reviewing previous research on political rhetoric, financial reporting and media coverage of austerity in transnational contexts. We consider aspects of moral storytelling that have arisen through the contextual complexities of societies in financial crisis and other moral tales of austerity in political rhetoric. Whilst much of the literature and debates covered here are concerned with UK economic policy and related British social contexts, we will expand to include examples from other countries that reflect similar concerns on the ideological operations of austerity and financial discourse. Finally, some critical theoretical approaches to ideology and political economy are discussed in relation to the socio-economic areas covered in this special issue. The multiple discursive contexts of austerity that are covered here demonstrate the breadth of social concerns and conflicts that have developed in societies and institutions following the recent global economic crisis.

Introduction

In early September 2013, Newcastle University hosted an international conference entitled: The discourse of austerity: Critical analyses of business and economics across disciplines. Our aim was to bring together scholars across a range of disciplines to analyse discursive constructions of financial crisis and austerity. The aim of the conference was not simply to debate the rights and wrongs of austerity policies or discuss the causes and consequences of the financial crisis. Rather, we were concerned with a more critical approach to this topic: we wanted to explore how financial crisis and austerity measures have been represented through ideological mechanisms of language and discourse. In doing so, the conference provided an opportunity to understand how political decisions, assertions and agendas in support of particular financial structures and strategies had become accepted as possible, desirable or inevitable in various socio-political arenas and institutions. It is this position that has informed our event and this special issue: regardless of one’s opinion on the legitimacy of austerity policy, it is crucial to understand how such a sensitive and highly politicised form of legislation – that has a major impact on peoples’ lives and contextualises the ideological preferences of governments transnationally – is communicated through the language and representations of media, financial and political institutions.

By demonstrating our interdisciplinary focus on this topic, this special issue provides an important contribution across multiple subject areas. The editorial team has collaborated from different academic backgrounds with shared interdisciplinary interests. Within Newcastle University, co-convenors of the Newcastle Critical Discourse Group found significant common ground with colleagues in the Strategy, Organisations & Society group. Shared interests in critical and analytical approaches to discourse, power and language in social contexts forged interdisciplinary partnerships that continue to reflect the healthy collaborative scope of critical discourse studies (CDS) as a field of research. CDS has consistently proved to provide an academic forum and intellectual space for innovative collaboration amongst academic disciplines, which makes projects like this possible. Therefore, we would like to thank the journal of CDS for providing us with the opportunity to compile this special issue.

This introduction will take the opportunity to recap previous literature on financial discourse and austerity whilst introducing the papers in this special issue. We will consider aspects of moral storytelling that have arisen through the contextual complexities of societies in financial crisis and other ‘moral tales’ of austerity that have occurred in political rhetoric. Whilst much of the literature and debates covered here are concerned with UK economic policy and relevant social contexts, we will expand to include examples from other countries that reflect similar concerns on the ideological operations of austerity and financial discourse. Finally, some critical theoretical approaches to ideology and political economy are discussed in relation to the socio-economic areas covered by this special issue. The multiple discursive contexts of austerity that are covered here demonstrate the breadth of social concerns and conflicts that have developed in societies and institutions following a global economic crisis.

Financial reporting, moral storytelling and the banking crisis

A number of scholars have critically analysed financial reporting and the banking crisis in transnational contexts (Berry, 2013; Kelsey, 2014; Manning, 2013; Olson & Nord, 2015; Philo, 2012; Vaara, 2014). Manning has examined the ‘failure of financial journalism, together with the global news agencies, to alert us to the signs of imminent catastrophe’ (2013, p. 173). Manning argues that other than a ‘handful of honourable exceptions, most financial journalists and most international news agencies simply failed to report much of the emerging evidence of the growing possibility of collapse’ (2013, p. 173). Within the UK specifically, Barber (2015, p. xxvi), the editor of the Financial Times, acknowledges that ‘the British press might be accused of not questioning more closely the foundation of prosperity in the City’. In a piece critical of financial journalists, Starkman (2015) attributes this failure to their ‘capture’ by Wall Street institutions, driven by journalists’ reliance on Wall Street for their stories: ‘Burning a bridge is hard. It is far easier for news bureaucracies to accept ever-narrowing frames of discourse, frames forcefully pushed by industry, even if those frames marginalize and eventually exclude the business press’s own great investigative traditions’ (p. 15).

Olson and Nord (2015) scrutinise the Swedish press for its role in legitimising the government’s response to the financial crisis in 2008. They argue that the typical styles and conventions of descriptive journalism were responsible for representations that portrayed ‘political actors as credible crisis managers rather than tactical politicians, with the result being that they appear more trustworthy and competent’. Furthermore, they claim that ‘due to unbalanced coverage, actors who are framed as competent crisis managers succeed in further strengthening their positions’. Similarly, Berry’s analysis of the UK press suggests that because City sources dominated BBC Radio 4 coverage of the banking crisis, ‘listeners were offered a prescribed range of debate on the UK government’s bank rescue plan and possible reforms to the financial sector’ (2013, p. 253). Studies like these are important since they address the construction and ideological implications of media coverage concerning the financial crisis. They demonstrate how journalists and the sources that appear in media coverage are engaged in a highly political process that impacts upon financial discourse – and the type of economic policies deemed legitimate as a result. However, concerns regarding media responses to the financial crisis stretch beyond the specific reporting of financial journalism. (See also Thomas’s contribution in this issue.)

The financial crisis became a widely reported issue that was often played out as a moral spectacle in mainstream news sources beyond the generic parameters of financial reporting (Kelsey, 2014). Since the financial crisis, we have seen a significant shift in UK press discourses about the City over a relatively short period of time. Kelsey’s (2012) analysis of (pre-crisis) media coverage in 2005 considered how British bankers featured as heroic figures: symbolising British national identity after the July 7th bombings when the economy recovered after an initial crash. Kelsey shows how wartime mythology prompted invocations of resilience and defiance against terrorism in discourses about the City (2012). However, just a few years later following the banking crisis, bankers were vilified and their greed was held responsible for causing mayhem (Hargie, Stapleton, & Tourish, 2010; Kelsey, 2015a; Whittle & Mueller, 2012). The press, public and politicians questioned their lack of moral values and lack of empathy for working people. But within these criticisms of the banking sector, Kelsey (2014) has shown how the mythological characteristics of these discourses actually functioned in more complex and paradoxical contexts than those of archetypical vilification: the spectacle of the City banker reflected archetypal conventions of trickster mythology.

In a case study of the Mail Online, Kelsey showed that whilst some stories featuring the banker as trickster suppressed discussions of systemic economic failings, other cases actually raised concerns about the global free market. But the latter did not reflect an ideological compromise or opposition to hegemonic systems of global capitalism. Rather, paradoxical mechanisms occurred in representations of bankers as immoral individuals, tricksters, who exploit the system:

… [W]hilst these criticisms call for some form of punishment or legislation to control the problem, there is reluctance to compromise free market values or legitimise state regulation of the banking sector. The complex characteristics of trickster figures in the stories analysed demonstrate current dilemmas and anxieties about the power and practices of financial institutions. Whether bankers are the genius providers of wealth or the reckless destroyers of economies, their ridicule highlights a sensitive balance of values and interests in journalistic storytelling. (Kelsey, 2014, p. 307)

Contradictions occur when bankers were held responsible for the financial crisis; yet, at the same time, the public were told it is bankers whom we need for our economic recovery. In other words, we are told that financial systems and models of banking do not need to be fundamentally redesigned, but some immoral individuals working within them need to behave more responsibly (see also Walsh’s contribution in this issue). In line with the paradoxical traits of destructive trickster mythology, Radin sums up this archetype: ‘If we laugh at [the trickster], he grins at us. What happens to him happens to us’ (1956, p. 169). Hence, Kelsey (2014) concludes: ‘If it is true that we need the expertise of bankers to recover in the global market then this provides [a] dilemma for publics, politicians and storytellers to consider’, as we continue to try and make sense of the challenges society faces following a global financial crisis.

But these mechanisms of moral storytelling have functioned beyond the discourse of journalism and the City. Whittle and Mueller (2012) analysed the moral stories told during a public hearing involving senior banking executives in the UK. Their analytical framework draws together insights from a range of discourse fields, including discursive psychology, ethnomethodology, dramatism, rhetoric, ante-narrative analysis and conversation analysis, to cast light on ‘discursive devices’ (micro-linguistic tools) employed in the stories about the recent financial crisis during a public hearing with senior UK banking executives. They identify two competing storylines that ‘were used by the bankers and their questioners to emplot the events preceding the financial crisis’ (Whittle & Mueller, 2012, p. 111). In doing so, they enhance previous understandings of storytelling by ‘highlighting the power of micro-linguistic tools in laying out the moral landscape of the story’ (Whittle & Mueller, 2012, p. 111).¹ As they point out, ‘stories surrounding the financial crisis are important because they shaped how the crisis was made sense of and acted upon’ (Whittle & Mueller, 2012, p. 111). In the stories, they show how ‘bankers, for instance, casting themselves as ‘victims’ enabled responsibility and blame to be (potentially) avoided. This is not simply about ‘saving face’, it is also about maintaining the legitimacy of the system that, to date, has also benefited them’ (Whittle & Mueller, 2012, p. 111). Metaphors such as ‘tsunami’ play an important role in framing the causes of the crisis, presenting it as akin to a natural disaster, as research into the metaphors of failure used by bankers to explain the banking cri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Financial crisis and austerity: interdisciplinary concerns in critical discourse studies
• 2. Accounting for the banking crisis: repertoires of agency and structure
• 3. Protesting Too Much: Alastair Darling’s constructions after the Financial Crash
• 4. Evaluating policy as argument: the public debate over the first UK austerity budget
• 5. How Malthusian ideology crept into the newsroom: British tabloids and the coverage of the ‘underclass’
• 6. ‘I think it’s absolutely exorbitant!’: how UK television news reported the shareholder vote on executive remuneration at Barclays in 2012
• 7. Organizing the (Sociomaterial) Economy: Ritual, agency, and economic models
• Index