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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:4 (2021) ► pp.585–606

Working Royals, Megxit and Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC interview

The online media’s representation of the British Monarchy between 2010 and 2020

ORCID logo | Asia University

This research incorporates Corpus Linguistic techniques with the socio-cognitive approach (SCA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to analyse the discursive representation of the British Monarchy (BM) through the categorisation of its individual members within the Now Corpus from 2010–2020. Analysis concentrated on their categorisation around key events over the ten-year period, most notably the accusations that Prince Andrew had sexual relations with a minor and Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s decision to relinquish their roles within the Monarchy. Significantly, the Royals were positively represented through the affixation of agency and active form to attach them to positive actions, for instance, performing work and charity related duties. Negativity was deemphasised via the removal of agency, passive use and a refocus onto less serious acts which distanced them, particularly the Queen and Prince Andrew, from scandal.

Keywords: the British Monarchy, corpus linguistics, online media, critical discourse studies, in-group protection, privilege, social hierarchy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Theory
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Data collection & analysis
    • 5.1Quantitative analysis
    • 5.2Qualitative analysis
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Quantitative analysis
      • 6.1.1Kindness and hard work
      • 6.1.2Kate Middleton
      • 6.1.3Meghan Markle
      • 6.1.4Prince Andrew
    • 6.2Qualitative analysis
      • 6.2.1Active and passive
      • 6.2.2Agency
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20020.chi
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