The book thus seeks to trace the construction and contestation of the central axes around which its political frontiers were organized.

This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of the new theories of discourse developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, while in particular drawing on central insights provided by Slavoj Zizek. The book accounts for intellectual development of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe from a Gramsci-inspired critique of structural Marxism over a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse to a new type of postmodern theorizing of great relevance for social, cultural and political theory. The central concepts of discourse, hegemony (...) and social antagonism are carefully explained and discussed and the theoretical framework is applied both on a variety of theoretical problems and in a sample of empirical studies. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of discourse theory for our political understanding of democracy, citizenship and ethics. New Theories of Discourse is written out of the basic conviction that postmodernity provides a great challenge to social, cultural and political theory and makes thinkable a whole range of new political projects of which the development of a radical plural democracy is one of the most promising and exciting. (shrink)

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

ABSTRACTThis paper uses methods from corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to analyse discourses produced by a populist far-right movement, the English Defence League, an organisation which the group elite claim is opposed to the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in the UK. Two corpora are analysed using the online Corpus Query System, Sketch Engine [Kilgarriff, A., Rychly, P., Smrz, P., & Tugwell, D.. The sketch engine. Proceedings of Euralex. Lorient, France]; one corpus is compiled of texts published (...) by the group leaders on their official website and the second of texts written by group supporters on the organisation’s Facebook page. Furthermore, a thread from the group’s Facebook page is studied. While the group’s mission statement declares that their aim is to oppose radical Islam, an investigation of the data demonstrates that they are an organisation opposed to all forms of Islam and immigration of Muslims to the UK. The study of group members’ texts reveals a discrimination against Muslims based on cultural otherness, intolerance and xenophobia. In addition, EDL supporters construct themselves as victims at the hands of the UK political establishment, police authorities and ethnic minorities. By investigating the discourses of racist, populist movements such as the EDL, contemporary racist ideologies, hate speech and forms of mobilisation may be more fully understood and countered. (shrink)