ABSTRACT

This volume serves as a critical examination of the discourses at play in the higher education system and the ways in which these discourses underpin the transmission of neoliberal values in 21st century universities. Situated within a Critical Discourse Analysis-based framework, the book also draws upon other linguistic approaches, including corpus linguistics and appraisal analysis, to unpack the construction and development of the management style known as managerialism, emergent in the 1990s US and UK higher education systems, and the social dynamics and power relations embedded within the discourses at the heart of managerialism in today’s universities. Each chapter introduces a particular aspect of neoliberal discourse in higher education and uses these multiple linguistic approaches to analyze linguistic data in two case studies and demonstrate these principles at work. This multi-layered systematic linguistic framework allows for a nuanced exploration of neoliberal institutional discourse and its implications for academic labor, offering a critique of the managerial system in higher education but also a larger voice for alternative discursive narratives within the academic community. This important work is a key resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, sociology, business and management studies, education, and cultural studies.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|24 pages

Critical university studies

Defining a field

chapter 2|46 pages

The student as consumer and commodity

chapter 3|27 pages

Marketing the goods

chapter 4|37 pages

Language and audit culture 1

Research and performance management

chapter 5|29 pages

Language and audit culture 2

The case of the Teaching Excellence Framework

chapter 6|38 pages

Colonising the corporate academic

chapter 7|13 pages

Conclusions

Possibilities for contesting the discourse