ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines an approach to analysing discourse which involves computer-aided analysis of large amounts of electronic data, collected to be representative of a particular text or register. The case study that forms the backbone of this chapter involves an analysis of the concept of the term council estate in newspaper articles in the British national press. Using concordance and collocational analyses I show how council estates are generally constructed with a negative discourse prosody (e.g. co-occurring with adjectives like bleak, tired, rough, and derelict), while a concordance analysis indicates that social actors who live on council estates are described as tough and the articles often refer to a past-tense narrative of people who have grown up on council estates and now have successful lives away from them. This suggests that newspapers frequently embed such stories in a meritocratic discourse with hard work and talent being constructed as the keys to a better life. However, by focusing on individual and exceptional cases, the articles background the lives of other types of people who live on council estates, perhaps painting an over-optimistic view of the average working-class person’s chances for advancement in British society.
