The Chantelles of Benefits Britain: Collective representations of the clients of the welfare state in conservative British press (2008-2012)
The Chantelles of Benefits Britain: Collective representations of the clients of the welfare state in conservative British press (2008-2012)

Summary/Abstract: This paper outlines the representation of Claimants, a key social actor relevant to the welfare state, as groups in two conservative British newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. With recourse to critical discourse analysis, in particular van Leeuwen’s 2008 work on the representation of social actors, as well as to corpus methods, the paper shows how the representation of this social actor in collective terms helps entrench the discourse of (mainly class-based) prejudice, thus working to delegitimise the welfare state.

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