Manifestations of neoliberal discourses within a local job‐training program

Abstract

The purpose of conducting this study was to understand how neoliberal discourses manifest within the local context of a short‐term, job‐training program offered at a two‐year college in the USA. Ethnographic data were collected at the local site through interviews, observations and document analysis. We then situated these data within a global context represented by a corpus of purposively selected national and international policy texts. Focusing on three components of discourse as social action—genres, representations and identities—the data analysis illuminated three interrelated themes relating to how institutional actors translated neoliberal discourses available at the global scale into practice. The ideological consequences for learners as well as examples of counter‐hegemonic resistance are discussed.

Notes

1. Fairclough uses the term ‘discourses’, in this case a count noun, which we avoid in order to prevent confusion with the term ‘discourse’ which is used as an abstract noun.

2. Fairclough uses the term ‘styles’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Franklin Ayers

David Franklin Ayers is assistant professor of higher education at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. His research focuses on postsecondary education as a site of ideological struggle.

David Carlone

David Carlone is assistant professor of communication studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. His scholarly interests include organizational studies, management discourse, identity and subjectivity, communication theory, social and cultural theory.