Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 18:3 (2019) ► pp.346–370

Missing the (Turning) point

The erosion of democracy at an American University

| University of Nebraska-Lincoln
| University of Nebraska-Lincoln

On August 25, 2017, student members of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing conservative organization who advocates for smaller government and free market enterprise, recruited on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus. Members of the UNL community protested nearby. Part of the protest was recorded on video and released to social media leading to harsh public criticism that accused the university of restricting free speech and being an unsafe environment for conservative students. Drawing on cognitive linguistics (e.g. metonymy, framing) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), this paper explores how the TPUSA incident at UNL was recontextualized in local and national media discourse, the ways in which the social actors and events were framed, and its consequences. The authors show how these representations reinforce dominant neoliberal discourses (which correlate with right-wing discourses) that negatively impact public education, providing a necessary counter to a populist political climate in which anti-intellectualism reigns.

Keywords: free speech, Turning Point USA, anti-intellectualism, multimodal critical discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Getting to the (turning) point and other necessary context
  • 3.Freedom of speech
  • 4.Theoretical framework
  • 5.Method
  • 6.Findings
    • 6.1Additions
    • 6.2Deletion
    • 6.3Substitution
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.18055.fuc
References
Barthes, Roland
1977 Elements of Semiology. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Basil
2003 Class, Codes, and Control: Volume VI the Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Catalano, Theresa
2016 Talking about Global Migration: Implications for Language Teaching. Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Catalano, Theresa, and Linda R. Waugh
. Forthcoming 2019 Critical Discourse Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: Springer.Google Scholar
Chandler, Daniel
2007 Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2014 Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric: Discourse and Metaphor. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Claussen, D. S.
2011 A brief history of anti-intellectualism in American media. Academe, 97(3), 8–13.Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk, and Hubert Cuyckens
eds. 2007 The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York: OUP USA.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1974 Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Harvey, David
2007 A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto
1994 Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kolowich, Steve
. April 27 2018 “State of Conflict: How a Tiny Protest at the U. of Nebraska Turned into a Proxy War for the Future of Campus Politics,” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved June 1, 2018 from: [URL]
Krzyżanowski, Michal, and Joshua A. Tucker
2018 “Re-/Constructing Politics through Social and Online Media: Ideologies, Discourses and Mediated Political Practices.” Journal of Language and Politics 17 (2): 141–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George
2004 Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar
Ledin, Per, and David Machin
2018 Doing Visual Analysis: From Theory to Practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Liptak, Adam
. June 30 2018 “How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment,” The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2018 from: [URL]
Littlemore, Jeannette
2015 Metonymy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Machin, David, and Andrea Mayr
2012 How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
McCausland, Phil, and Emmanuelle Saliba, E.
August 12 2017 “Charlottesville Rally Turns Deadly: One Killed After Car Strikes Crowd,” NBC News. Retrieved June 1, 2018 from: [URL]
Messer-Davidow, Ellen
1993 “Manufacturing the Attack on Liberalized Higher Education.” Social Text 361: 40–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mindock, Clark
. May 24 2018 “Taking a Knee: Why are NFL Players Protesting and When Did They Start to Kneel?” The Independent. Retrieved June 1, 2018 from: [URL]
Ötsch, Walter O., and Stephan Pühringer
2017 “Right-Wing Populism and Market- Fundamentalism.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (4): 497–509. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saunders, Daniel B.
2010 “Neoliberal Ideology and Public Higher Education in the United States.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 8 (1): 41–77.Google Scholar
Tiede, Hans Joerg
2017 “Exhuming McCarthy (Meet Me at the Book Burning)” Academe, 103 (5): 15–19.Google Scholar
U.S. Const. Amend. I
Retrieved June 1, 2018 from: [URL]
van Dijk, Teun A.
1991 Racism and the Press. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
1995 “Discourse Semantics and Ideology.” Discourse and Society, 6 (2): 243–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo
2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo, and Ruth Wodak
2016 “Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Discourse- Historical Analysis.” Discourse Studies 1(1): 83–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waugh, Linda R., Theresa Catalano, Khaled Al Masaeed, Tom Hong Do, and Paul G. Renigar
2016 “Critical Discourse Analysis: Definition, Approaches, Relation to Pragmatics, Critique, and Trends.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society ed. by Alessandro Capone and Jacob L. Mey, 71–135. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michal Krzyżanowski
2017 “Right-Wing Populism in Europe & USA: Contesting Politics & Discourse Beyond ‘Orbanism’ and ‘Trumpism’.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (4): 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
. “The “Establishment”, the “Élites”, and the “People”.” Journal of Language and Politics 16, no. 41 (2017): 551–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Funk, Marcus & Burton Speakman
2022. Centrist Language, Camouflaged Ideology: Assembled Text-Based Content on Mainstream and Ideological News Podcasts. Journalism Studies 23:11 ► pp. 1415 ff. DOI logo
Özbilgin, Mustafa F. & Cihat Erbil
2024. How (Not) to Manage Intersectional Inclusion. In Encyclopedia of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Spirituality, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 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.