{"title":"Buzzwords, blends and branding: marketing meets education policyspeak","authors":"Kerry McKeon","doi":"10.1080/01596306.2023.2211522","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through discourse analysis, this article explores strategies used in the speeches and public statements of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (2017–2020), as she employed marketing tactics in service of a neoliberal educational agenda. I identify DeVos’s framing and lexical choices deployed to increase memory and attention salience, thereby highlighting the role words play in shaping political and cultural outcomes. Although the paper provides only a snapshot of DeVos’s framing, the discussion is situated within a broader neoliberal discourse designed to manipulate public sense-making and trigger emotions through emotionally charged rhetoric. Through careful lexical choices, DeVos crafts a worldview for primary and secondary audiences that likewise informs macro-level educational narratives, policies, and practices.","PeriodicalId":47908,"journal":{"name":"Discourse-Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse-Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2023.2211522","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Through discourse analysis, this article explores strategies used in the speeches and public statements of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (2017–2020), as she employed marketing tactics in service of a neoliberal educational agenda. I identify DeVos’s framing and lexical choices deployed to increase memory and attention salience, thereby highlighting the role words play in shaping political and cultural outcomes. Although the paper provides only a snapshot of DeVos’s framing, the discussion is situated within a broader neoliberal discourse designed to manipulate public sense-making and trigger emotions through emotionally charged rhetoric. Through careful lexical choices, DeVos crafts a worldview for primary and secondary audiences that likewise informs macro-level educational narratives, policies, and practices.
期刊介绍:
Discourse is an international, fully peer-reviewed journal publishing contemporary research and theorising in the cultural politics of education. The journal publishes academic articles from throughout the world which contribute to contemporary debates on the new social, cultural and political configurations that now mark education as a highly contested but important cultural site. Discourse adopts a broadly critical orientation, but is not tied to any particular ideological, disciplinary or methodological position. It encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of educational theory, policy and practice. It welcomes papers which explore speculative ideas in education, are written in innovative ways, or are presented in experimental ways.