The erasure of linguistic difference in media representations of encounters with others on British television

Abstract

This paper explores how ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speaker identities are created in the discourse of television lifestyle, travel, and documentary genres where an English ‘native speaker’ audience is assumed. It presents a coding system for analysing the representation of actors in television programmes and examines to what extent ‘non-native’ speakers are allowed to ‘speak’ and to what extent their contributions are mediated in the editorial process. Critical language awareness and critical discourse analysis are drawn upon to uncover constructions of Otherness in the examples of broadcast talk and to examine how power relations are manifest. Short descriptions of relevant scenes and brief transcripts from the programmes in our small corpus are discussed. It is argued that the way ‘foreigners’ are represented on British television does ideological work, potentially reinforcing the notion that it is not important to learn foreign languages because everyone speaks English these days.

Keywords:

• media representation of identity
• constructions of Otherness
• critical language awareness

The support of the University of Leicester is gratefully acknowledged for granting study leave to allow the completion of the paper.

Notes

1. We acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to us.

2. The IRA was a paramilitary organisation which sought to remove Northern Ireland from the UK. Its armed campaign formally ended in 2005.

3. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to us.

4. We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

5. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.