ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to make the case for a more class-centred Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), or in any case for class to be brought to the fore in CDA research which is concerned with materially based inequalities in society. CDA is useful as a way of understanding how working class interests and sensibilities intersect with the rise of right-wing populist parties in most European countries in some years, from the Front National in France to Chrysi Avgi in Greece. In January 2011 the BBC launched the great British Class Survey, which was based on ongoing empirical research and scholarship by Savage and several co-researchers. The survey captured the attention of a part of the British population and the media, and over 160,000 people eventually responded. Class warfare may be pursued materially, as in the dispossession by accumulation examples just cited as Eriksson makes clear, and it is a reality in the domain of political speeches and other communications.
