What skills do journalists exhibit in sensationalising, exaggerating and otherwise ‘tabloiding’ the truth, while usually stopping short of stating unambiguous falsehoods? Why has the tabloid news not collapsed as predicted, but thrived as a medium in an age of interaction and online commentary? This book is a comprehensive and accessible exploration of the British tabloid newspapers from the 1960s to the present day. Examining topics such as sex and the representation of women, national stereotypes and Britain’s relationship with Europe, war coverage, celebrities, investigative journalism and instances where the tabloids have misread the public mood, the author draws on Critical Discourse Analysis and Stylistics to take a language-led approach to the UK tabloids. With its interdisciplinary approach and readable prose style, this book will be of interest to a wide range of readers across language and linguistics, media and communication, journalism, political science and British cultural studies.

This collection of case studies is special for several reasons. Firstly, because of the geographical and institutional diversity of the authors, bringing together experiences of teaching under COVID-19 restrictions in the university language classroom from 18 countries and five continents. Secondly, the publication is interesting because of the variety of case studies that testify to different strategies and emphases in dealing with pandemic-related challenges. Finally, the case studies collected strikingly demonstrate the creative responses of language teachers in a variety of contexts to meet the challenges of the pandemic crisis (Dr Sabina Schaffner).

Has a global queer popular culture emerged at the expense of local queer artists? In this book, Helton Levy argues that global queer culture is indebted to specific, local references that artists carry from their early experiences in life, which then become homogenized by contemporary media markets. The assumption that queer publics live and consume only through a global set of references, including gay parades and rainbow flags, for example, erases many personal complexities. Levy revisits media characters that have caught the attention of the broader public – such as Calamity Jane (1953), the Daffyd Thomas character from the BBC comedy Little Britain (2003-2007), Brazilian drag queen Pabblo Vittar, French singer Christine and the Queens, and the Italian-Egyptian rapper Mahmood – and argues that they have gradually blended in the public's perception. This has often obscured the individual struggles faced by these characters, such as immigration, homophobia, poverty and societal exclusion. Levy also questions what happens when global media flows take queer culture to regions wherein the notion of LGBTQ+ rights are not entirely acceptable. Utilizing insights from media reports published across the world's ten biggest media markets, Levy argues that there are a series of conditions which artists and cultural actors negotiate once they achieve any kind of success in mainstream media, while local queer references remain unseen in the wider media world. For that reason, he argues for stronger incentives for communities to accept and acknowledge the work of queer people before and after commoditization.

This book presents a critical analysis of ways in which schizophrenia and people with schizophrenia are represented in the press. Interrogating a 15-million-word corpus of news articles published by nine UK national newspapers over a 15-year period, the author draws on techniques from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to identify the most frequent and salient linguistic features used by journalists to influence and reflect broader public attitudes towards people with schizophrenia. In doing so this book: Evaluates the extent to which media representations are accurate and the extent to which they are potentially helpful or harmful towards people living with schizophrenia; Employs a bottom-up approach guided by linguistic patterns, such as collocates and keywords, identified by corpus software; Contributes to the de-stigmatisation of schizophrenic disorder by unveiling some of the widespread misconceptions surrounding it; Applies a mixed-methods approach in order to expose attitudes and beliefs found ‘between the lines’ – values and assumptions which are often implicit in the way language is used and therefore not visible to the naked eye. The findings of this monograph will be relevant to advanced students and researchers of health communication, corpus linguistics and applied linguistics and will also carry importance for journalists and mental health practitioners.

The Tabloid Culture Reader provides an accessible and useful introduction to the field.

Investigating the 2016 EU Referendum in the UK, The Language of Brexit explores the ways in which 'Brexit' campaigners utilised language more persuasively than their 'Remain' counterparts. Drawing parallels with effective political discourse used worldwide, this book highlights the linguistic features of an increasingly popular style of political campaigning. Concentrating on the highly successful and emotive linguistic strategies employed by the Brexit campaigners against the comparatively lacklustre Remain camp, Buckledee makes a case for the contribution of language towards the narrow 52-48% Brexit victory. Using primary examples, what emerges is how urging people to have the courage to make a bid for freedom naturally invokes more grandiloquent language, powerful metaphors and rousing partisan tone than a campaign which, on balance, argues that it's best to simply stick with the status quo. Examining the huge amount of discourse generated before, during and since the June 2016 EU Referendum, The Language of Brexit looks into the role language played in the democratic process and the influence and impact it had on electors, leading to an unexpected result and uncertain future.

Every campaign season, more trash talk and attack ads dominate the airwaves and more voters subsequently turn off to politics. Why do so many races degenerate into name-calling and negativism? What is the effect on our democracy - our ability to make the right political and policy choices? Poison Politics: Are Negative Campaigns Destroying Democracy? tackles these vital questions.