(Neo)liberalizing the state – Privatization of core government competencies
A CDA approach
For a few decades now and most prominently promoted by the US, neoliberal economics have been on the rise,
epitomized in recent austerity policies with regard to countries that have met financial trouble. In particular the drive for
privatization of core public services relating to basic human needs, such as water, social services or pensions, has been
increasingly criticized because of a perceived incompatibility between the profit motive and social solidarity. This article uses
a corpus-based analysis of the discourse on privatization in the US of proponents supporting, respectively opposing it, with an overall
corpus size of about 230,000 tokens. It examines how the two groups conceptualize privatization differently and which strategies
are applied to fore- or background particular aspects of it.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The privatization debate
- 3.Research approach and methods
- 3.1Approach
- 3.2Corpora
- 3.3Semantic profiling
- 3.4Semantic profiles of select lexemes
- 4.Results
- 4.1Semantic profiling
- 4.2Semantic profiles of select lexemes
- 4.2.1Conceptualization of money
- 4.2.1.1Profit
- 4.2.1.2
Cost (pro: 379, anti: 313 tokens)
- 4.2.2Conceptualization of solidarity
- 4.2.2.1
Help (pro: 74, anti: 73 tokens)
- 4.2.2.2
Support (pro: 85, anti: 136 tokens)
- 5.Discussion
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
-
References