TY - JOUR

T1 - Negotiating stance within discourses of class

T2 - reactions to Benefits Street

AU - Paterson, Laura Louise

PY - 2016/3

Y1 - 2016/3

N2 - In this article, we examine the way that audiences respond to particular representations of poverty.Using clips from the Channel 4 television programme Benefits Street we conducted focus groupsin four locations across the United Kingdom, working with people from different socioeconomicbackgrounds who had different experiences with the benefits system. Benefits Street (2014) is anexample of reality television where members of the public are followed by film crews as theyperform everyday tasks and routines. Our choice to focus on this particular programme wasprompted by the huge media response that it received when it was broadcast; Benefits Streetgenerated 950 complaints to regulatory watchdog Ofcom and was referred to as ‘poverty porn’.We focus on the way that viewers of this programme produce assessments of those on benefits,analysing the discursive strategies used by our participants when evaluating representations of thoseon benefits. Specifically, we consider how the participants in our study construct their own stanceand attribute stance to others through naming and agency practices, the negotiation of opinionand stake inoculation. We invited our participants to judge the people they saw on screen, butthey went beyond this. They used clips of the programme as stimuli to collaboratively construct anoverarchingly negative stereotype of those on benefits. We conclude that Benefits Street is not justan entertainment programme, but is rather a site for ideological construction and the perpetuationof existing stereotypes about benefit claimants. The programme (and others like it) invites negativeevaluations of those on benefits and is thus a worthy site for critical linguistic analysis.

AB - In this article, we examine the way that audiences respond to particular representations of poverty.Using clips from the Channel 4 television programme Benefits Street we conducted focus groupsin four locations across the United Kingdom, working with people from different socioeconomicbackgrounds who had different experiences with the benefits system. Benefits Street (2014) is anexample of reality television where members of the public are followed by film crews as theyperform everyday tasks and routines. Our choice to focus on this particular programme wasprompted by the huge media response that it received when it was broadcast; Benefits Streetgenerated 950 complaints to regulatory watchdog Ofcom and was referred to as ‘poverty porn’.We focus on the way that viewers of this programme produce assessments of those on benefits,analysing the discursive strategies used by our participants when evaluating representations of thoseon benefits. Specifically, we consider how the participants in our study construct their own stanceand attribute stance to others through naming and agency practices, the negotiation of opinionand stake inoculation. We invited our participants to judge the people they saw on screen, butthey went beyond this. They used clips of the programme as stimuli to collaboratively construct anoverarchingly negative stereotype of those on benefits. We conclude that Benefits Street is not justan entertainment programme, but is rather a site for ideological construction and the perpetuationof existing stereotypes about benefit claimants. The programme (and others like it) invites negativeevaluations of those on benefits and is thus a worthy site for critical linguistic analysis.

KW - Benefits Street

KW - class

KW - critical discourse analysis

KW - focus groups

KW - group identity

KW - naming

KW - negotiation

KW - poverty porn

KW - stake inoculation

KW - stance

U2 - 10.1177/0957926515611558

DO - 10.1177/0957926515611558

M3 - Journal article

VL - 27

SP - 195

EP - 214

JO - Discourse and Society

JF - Discourse and Society

SN - 0957-9265

IS - 2

ER -