November 4, 2022 • 26 mins
In this episode Laura interviews Tamsin Parnell, a linguistics researcher whose doctoral work focuses on identities, discourses, and division around Brexit. She is a research associate at the University of Warwick, visiting lecturer at Birmingham City University, and is interested in media and political discourses. In this episode, Tamsin (and her cat Willow!) join Laura to talk about Brexit, covid-19, immigration, and how to reduce inflammatory speech and division.
Tamsin's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamsinparnell/ Tamsin's twitter: @tamsinparnell
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Episode Transcript
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Laura (00:12):
Hello and welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast for mediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Tamsin Parnell research
associate at the University ofWarwick in the uk visiting lecturer
at Birmingham City University.
And she recently finished her PhDon how identities of Britishness
(00:34):
and more were constructed in BRrelated migration discussions.
She's interested in homelessness,media, and political dis discourses.
Welcome to Tamson and potentiallyher cat Willow, who may be making
an appearance at some point today.
Tamsin (00:49):
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm looking forward to this
Laura (00:52):
Absolutely.
You know, I'm, I'm delighted to haveyou here cuz I've been really impressed
by your work . So I'm very glad I couldsmuggle you onto the podcast for the day.
So look, I wanna start out just by askinga question about what discourse is because
I understand that this has differentmeanings depending on what your field is.
So in your research where thisidea pops up a lot, what does
(01:14):
discourse actually refer to?
Tamsin (01:17):
That's a good question.
So actually one of the things arounddiscourse that you said is that it has
multiple meanings, and it's not justmultiple meanings in different fields, but
also multiple meanings within linguistics.
Which means that it's a really fuzzy term.
It can be hard to know what it means.
So I kind of follow a researchercalled Bur Vivian Bur, who you might
(01:38):
have heard of before, um, , who has areally amazing definition of discourse.
Um, basically a way, a kind of useof language or a set of meanings
or representations that producea particular version of the world.
And each discourse is a kind ofparticular version of the world.
that can depict mental and social worldsfrom a particular ideological perspective.
(02:02):
Um, so a kind of set ofmeanings that frame the world
in a particular social way.
Laura (02:08):
So if I understand you correctly, then it's sort of like
we're all walking around in our ownlittle discourse bubbles and in our
discourse bubble, we see the world thisway and we understand words this way.
We understand ideas this way,but then other people might be
in their own little bubbles.
Is that fair to say?
Tamsin (02:25):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, I guess one way of thinkingabout it is thinking about Brexit.
So different people have differentviews of Brexit and what Brexit
constitutes and what it means.
And so people will kind of perform, ortalk about Brexit in a different way.
And that shows a different kind ofdiscourse of Brexit, so to speak.
Laura (02:44):
Great.
Okay.
And so since we're already onthe topic, . And you can tell
we boasted research on Brexit.
Cause they're like, allright, let's dive in Um, okay.
So in your research, Iunderstand that you talked about.
Identities of Britishness and Europeanand maybe non-European as well.
(03:04):
So how does that relate todiscourse then and how these
identities were constructed?
Tamsin (03:09):
That's a good question.
So I'm looking at the waythat, particular identities
are represented in language.
So thinking about different kindof perceptions of what it means to
be British or what it means to beEuropean, and the language that is used
to describe that, by journalists, by.
Politicians and byindividual citizens as well.
(03:30):
So I'm looking at the languagesurrounding how people talk about what
it means to be British or European.
Laura (03:37):
And can you give some examples, Like, what kinds of things are they
saying or what does it mean to beBritish or European or, or other?
Tamsin (03:43):
So in media and in politicians, there's a really common frame of
what Ben calls the Decent Britain.
So discourse is around politenessand British people liking to
queue, liking to be really polite.
Um, kind of,
Laura (03:57):
Calm and carry on
Tamsin (03:58):
exactly,
Laura (03:59):
my goodness.
Yep.
Tamsin (04:00):
What's really interesting is that, although that's kind of how journalists
and politicians talk about Britishness,when I spoke to individuals, they were
kind of talking about how Leave votersor Remain voters were not polite at
all, but actually really discriminatory.
So there's this contradictory tensionbetween talking about Britons as
being really polite in institutionaldiscourses, but not when you actually
(04:23):
talk to individuals about it.
Laura (04:26):
That's really interesting.
And I'm sure audiences indifferent countries can also imagine
this happening locally, right?
So you've got this idea of the media andpoliticians and institutions talking about
the people in one way, but then it's notthe same way as their neighbors act.
To me, the US always comes to mindcuz obviously it's always very
visible in the English language press,but also other countries as well.
(04:50):
But I'm wondering, what do youthink are the implications of this
tension in how different groups areactually talked about and perceived?
Tamsin (04:59):
I think it has implications for feelings of belonging.
So one thing that I've kind of talkedabout in my thesis work is if there's
a kind of contradiction between.
The way that politicians talk about whatit means to be British and the way that
individuals do, are individuals going tohave that sense of belonging that they
kind of need or that politicians need,to create that sense of the public.
(05:20):
Um, so I think that there's aproblem there around creating a sense
of belonging to the nation, and.
Without getting too much into my thesisand kind of giving away all the, all the
answers, um, my concern around that isthat at this point in time, the UK kind
of needs a really strong sense of nationalidentity in order to get it through
the tensions that it's experiencingwith the EU and other countries.
(05:43):
Um, but there's a sense that actuallythis national identity maybe is in
crisis, with this sense of nobodyreally agreeing on what it means to
be British at this point in time.
And lots of divisions being talkedabout in terms of Britain as well.
Um, so I think that it has reallystrong democratic implications
for, for the country in terms ofthe sense of feeling of belonging.
Laura (06:04):
That's really interesting, this idea of sort of belongingness
and perhaps some kind ofsolidarity in the face of crises.
And it's just making me wonder aswell, there's that famous idea of
imagined communities and the nationas an imagined community, so that even
though we will never, I'm gonna gostraight out and say we will never meet
every single person of a given country.
(06:25):
That will take a lot of time, maybe ina micro state, we still imagine that
they're like us or they belong with us.
And there's that sense of solidarity.
What I'm hearing from your research isthat not only can we no longer imagine
there's really that community, but there'sactually multiple communities who, who
are maybe drawn to fight one anotheror to try and take over one another.
Tamsin (06:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that that's reallyprevalent in the UK post Brexit with
this kind of cleavage of levers andremainers, that there still is a kind
of strong identity related division inthe UK between levers and remainers.
I mean, in the interviews that I did with.
Levers and remainerson an individual level.
We had people saying they just completelydidn't understand the other perspective
(07:09):
and they didn't understand why peoplewere voting in the way they did.
They felt that the certain groupwas either, kind of racist
or xenophobic on the one hand,or elitist on the other hand.
And so it feels like there are lotsof conflicts within that to do with
kind of levels of education to do withsocial views towards ethnicity and race,
that are really coming to the fore.
(07:29):
Broader division, with the labelsthat we add of lever and remainer
Laura (07:34):
It's, it's really interesting and I found similar
themes in, in my interviewswith, with levers, for example.
But one of the things that sort of gaveme a little hope in these interviews,
and now I'm just talking about myown research, um, is that I found
this consistent story of compassion.
And so that, a month's leave.
It wasn't about, oh, for example,oh, we hate all these immigrants.
(07:56):
So that, that would be a very strongway of putting it, but that's sort
of the way it's portrayed, right?
Or late leaves are spoken about.
But instead, I heard on quite a numberof occasions, this idea of, well, it
doesn't affect me, but I feel sorryfor my person locally, or it doesn't
affect me, but I feel sorry formigrants, um, in crisis in Greece for.
(08:17):
So there was this idea of actuallythis, this compassion driving about to
leave, which is perhaps compelling asfar as drawing people together, right?
So that like, there's no sideshere that are monsters, which
I think can be quite important.
Tamsin (08:29):
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
And actually I think there's atendency, for remain voters to sort
of see themselves as in intellectuallysuperior or kind of morally superior.
And yeah, I found that actually myremain voters that I was interviewing
tended to be more discriminatory towardsleave voters than the other way around.
So I think there's stereotypes surroundingwhat it means to be a leader and a
(08:52):
remainer that absolutely aren't the case.
Laura (08:54):
No, that's really interesting because I mean, one of the things that,
that I found as well is that, whenI spoke with Lis, even earlier on
when they weren't quite so resolutein their vote, they said that one of
the things that really entrenched themin their decision to vote leave and
later their identity as a Libra waseffectively being abused by remain.
(09:16):
And this was consistent.
Every single leader I spoke to said, No,it's because they said that I was stupid
or that I was racist, or whatever else.
I can never be with you if you'rebeing mean to me, basically.
It's really interesting how that, um,converges with, with your work on Yeah.
Well actually remainers mightbe a little discriminatory.
(09:37):
And so when you've got these differenttensions, it's very hard to imagine
these discourse bubbles comingtogether to create a community.
Tamsin (09:43):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Laura (09:45):
And so what actually led you down that path as far
as your doctoral research?
I mean, what drew you to it?
Tamsin (09:51):
So I was actually kind of drawn towards this research
area for a personal reason.
I had family in Scotland.
I also have family who votedto leave in their referendum.
And my Scottish side of the familyfelt after the vote that they wanted
Scottish independence, which is somethingthey hadn't kind of wanted before.
And I just remember thinking to.
(10:11):
I want to understand A, whypeople voted leave and B, why my
Scottish members of the familywanted to have independence now.
And I guess that this was a way ofexploring that, that level of the
family, but at a higher discourselevel because I felt like more people
would be in similar situations to me,having their families kind of affected,
(10:33):
if not torn apart by this vote.
Which at the time wasa very kind of strong.
There are lots of emotionsand strong feelings around it.
So it was kind of personal, I wantto understand the other perspective
and how can I go about doing thatin a way that chimes with my
research interests of the linguist.
So that's how I ended up down that path.
Laura (10:52):
I think that's really relatable and this idea of, well, wanting to look
at how this division is caused in ourfamily by broader societal divisions is I
think really important to a lot of peoplebecause there have been, and I guess will
continue to be some tense Christmas or NewYear or what celebration of choice family
dinners and get togethers going forward.
Tamsin (11:13):
Absolutely.
Laura (11:13):
so one of your papers, which I understand is related to your
thesis was called Humiliating andDividing the Nation in Pro Press.
And so what is this idea ofhumiliation and division and how
does it actually appear in the press?
Like why would they do that to us?
Tamsin (11:31):
Okay, so the discourse of humiliation was
actually really interesting.
So what I did, I looked at newspaper kindof representations from 2016 to 2019 in
my actual thesis, but not in the paper.
And I found this shift from a senseof unity being constructed around
the time of the referendum tojournalists basically saying that
Theresa May's government was inept.
(11:54):
And.
I guess encouraging a shift towardsa different Prime Minister with
a different Brexit on the agenda.
But also that the fact that therewas division in the Parliament
as well was leading the UK tobe a national laughing stock.
Basically, other countries werelaughing at the UK because the UK
couldn't get itself together enoughto achieve Brexit or deliver Brexit.
(12:18):
And so this discourse of humiliationwas very much this idea of.
The political elites are humiliatingus as the ordinary people.
The ordinary people want to voteleave, and they're delaying Brexit.
They are doing everything theycan to stop a no deal Brexit.
And so this was the kind of maindiscourse that was coming through there?
Laura (12:37):
So there was a frustration over this idea of not getting Brexit done?
Yes.
Okay.
Interesting.
And so before I ask about some of yourother research, I'm wondering what
can we take away from all of this?
I mean, if you're gonna fix society,you've got a magic wand, no, you don't
have a magic wand, you've got a PhD.
What kind of things would it youactually do to bring these different
(12:57):
discourse bubbles together?
Tamsin (13:00):
Mm.
I think my biggest kind of concern ischanging the language used surrounding
national identity and changing thelanguage around identity on the
political level, because I thinkthere's a lot of emotional discourse.
There's a lot of discourse aroundconflict and division, and I think
in some ways that's only reinforcingthe senses of division that people
are experiencing themselves.
(13:21):
And I think like thelanguage that you look.
Words like derived scorn,humiliate are very, very emotional.
And I feel like that's encouragingemotional responses to this kind
of political situation as well.
And if we think about what's happened withlike the deaths of Joe Clarks and David
Armes, this kind of highly emotive, Iguess belligerent language, Excuse my
Laura (13:46):
that is a good word.
That's a great word.
Belligerent.
Tamsin (13:49):
This kind of very, highly emotive language is only reinforcing
the sense of division as well.
And I think there needs to be a sort ofstep down from this type of language.
And there's already campaignsgoing on with compassion in
politics, for instance, in the.
Are trying to change the waythat language is being used.
And after the deaths of JoePox and David Arm, this was
(14:09):
kind of discussed in politics.
We need to kind of lower thetone, so to speak, in terms of,
of, this violent language, butit doesn't seem to have happened.
Because still looking at the discoursein 2019, it's still prevalent and Joe
Cox passed away obviously in in 2016.
So they're talking about changingthe language, but they're not
actually changing their language.
(14:29):
And so that's what needs toto change, in my opinion.
Laura (14:33):
And so just for the non UK listeners, the two politicians
that Tanza is mentioning were bothessentially murdered, assassinated,
variously stabbed, as a result of theirpolitical advocacy and or beliefs.
So Joe Cox was, for example, a Romana.
And she was murdered by a constituent.
It was, it was a horror,an absolute horror.
And also has some parallels withwhat's happened in the US in
(14:57):
recent times with Nancy Pelosi'shusband obviously being attacked.
And I mean, perhaps we can see thesame kinds of dis discourses about
division and conflict and victory intrying to win in that kind of situation.
And so what I'm hearing from you thenis this idea of that when we have these
like really strong discusses of emotionand conflict in politics and coming from
(15:18):
our media, coming from our institutions,then things are gonna keep basically
boiling higher and higher and higher.
And violence becomes almost,can I say inevitable?
Tamsin (15:29):
Yeah, naturalized, I think is a kind of natural response to, to
this kind of anguish that people areexperiencing in, in political discourse.
Uh, I think you see kind of with, soRaman talking about the invasion of
migrants as well, the kind of immediately,as soon as she kind of comes into to
talk about why there are problems atthe migrant centers at the moment, this
(15:51):
language is invasion, is encouragingus to, to see or to think that, that
we are being deprived of somethingor that we are kind of threatened.
And the natural response tothat, to, to feeling threatened
is to try and defend yourself.
And then obviously we see what'shappened with petrol bonds being thrown
at a migrant center in the UK as well.
There's, I believe, a directrelation between this kind of
(16:13):
language that's being used andthe actions that are taking place.
Laura (16:16):
Absolutely.
And, and can we take a moment totalk about the dis discourses of
good migrants and bad migrants?
Because as you were saying this about howmigrants are being spoken about in the uk.
It really struck me how migrantshave spoken about locally in Brussels
in the English language media,because my French is terrible.
So, so for example, this past couple ofweeks there's been a lot of articles about
(16:40):
migrant centers in Brussels not providing.
For migrants, essentially, and,and refugees and specifically
mostly Ukrainian refugees.
Right?
Because they're like, All right,well, there's not enough beds.
You've got hundreds of, of familieswith children sleeping outside
or sleeping rough because theasylum centers aren't stepping up.
And there's obviously a huge differencebetween this idea of sort of the good
(17:02):
migrant who is deserving and the um, thestrong inverted comers, the bad migrants
of the, the so-called migration crisis.
Tamsin (17:11):
Mm-hmm.
Laura (17:11):
though like, I mean, I don't know whether there's actually any differences
in terms of who is actually usingthese asylum and migration centers.
And so do you see similarthings playing out in the uk?
Tamsin (17:23):
Yes, Although I actually am just about to publish a paper
on this the government in talkingabout migration, so I was analyzing
policy documents around migration.
And I found that there isdefinitely a distinction.
So when the UK government istalking about non EU migrants,
that is often framed as a threat.
(17:44):
So something that
Laura (17:45):
these Australians, we we're everywhere.
You know, , get theAustralians outta the uk.
Yeah.
Tamsin (17:50):
Exactly.
Yeah, so that definitely framedas a kind of threat that requires
a naval or military response.
And this is very much part ofwhat I've like termed, I suppose
a political intimacy discourse.
So it's actually part of the uk,saying to the eu, Actually, we really
want to work with you on defense.
And so migrants are kind of madethis secondary area, Sort of
(18:13):
reduced to statistics, so to speak.
But then actually when you look atdiscourse around the good migrants
as well, I did this really closelinguistic analysis of Teresa May.
Talking about welcoming French andItalian migrants to the uk and.
There's a real sense that thesemigrants are framed as kind of
(18:33):
economic contributors to the uk.
So they are paying money.
They're paying money, and that's agood thing, but they're still kind of
through language positioned as separatefrom the the national community.
So you have us.
And then you have them, even thoughthey are good migrants and they're
contributing and that's what they shouldbe doing, they're still separated through
(18:54):
language from the national community.
So I think sometimes even when you havethese discourse of the good migrant, if
you look really closely at the languagethat's being used in the grammar, you see
that actually they're still being excluded
Laura (19:06):
It, it makes sense.
Um, so I'm, I'm just gonnatalk about Australians.
Cause I feel like as an Australianit's gonna be less inflammatory
than so the other categories of none migrants, which, which pop up.
Right.
Um, and so you can have this idea of,well, you know, you might have been
in the UK for 20 years, 30 years,but you're still an Australian.
You're still not one of theseBritains that you were talking about.
(19:28):
And so I'm wondering as well, is thatwhy we sort of see this reaction in
terms of being an expat, right, Asopposed to a migrant as a reaction to,
Well, I might to be one of you, butI'm an expat, which makes me a good
migrant, so I'm allowed to be here.
And so almost a reactionarydiscourse about the self.
Tamsin (19:46):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think there's a real tendencyin the UK to refer to UK migrants as
expats as though they're a differenttype of, or different group of migrants
from migrants that are coming to the uk.
I think that language that that wordexpat is definitely a way of softening
the force of the idea of being a migrant.
Yeah, and again, I guess it's, it'sabout naturalizing the idea that
(20:09):
the UK can send people out, but it,it doesn't want people coming in.
Laura (20:13):
Which is quite the interesting take Yeah.
No, I, I suddenly referto myself as a migrant.
Nowadays I'm like, Right, I'm gonna havesome solidarity with the bad migrants.
All right, but let's migrate awayfrom migration then uh, because I
know you've also done a, a little workon health messages during Covid 19,
(20:34):
so something a little bit different.
So what does it actually entail?
Tamsin (20:39):
So it was part of a broader project called Coronavirus Dis
Discourses led by veer adultsat the University of Nottingham.
And it's looking at the way that thepublic responds to messages around or
public health messages around Covid 19.
So we were looking at how.
Members of the public through a surveyresponded to messages from public health
(21:02):
bodies around, Sorry, that's my cat.
Laura (21:05):
Well, I did say that Willow might be joining
Tamsin (21:07):
Yeah,
Laura (21:08):
we have a, we have a special guest,
Tamsin (21:10):
did.
Um, yeah, so basically we were looking athow they responded to adverts or posters
that, and contain public health messages.
So one example was in the uk the,I believe it was the nhs, but it
might have been public health bodyhad adverts saying, Look them in
the eyes and tell them that youare not breaking the rules and
Laura (21:32):
so intense.
Tamsin (21:33):
very intense and very.
The, the way that we had responses,the kind of public responses to
that was, this is scare mongering.
This is trying to make us feel guilty.
And so what we tried to do with thatresearch was advise public health
bodies in the UK about the effectivemessages and the messages that weren't
landing with the public, basically.
(21:54):
And we found that this particular kind ofguilt, guilt laden response was a message
that was just not landing with the public.
They were not happy.
With this type of response.
And so we went, we made a toolkitof kind of ways to respond to public
health messages or ways to producepublic health messages so that the
public health bodies could use that incase of another kind of health thread,
Laura (22:16):
Mm.
So as opposed to justpublicly shaming people,
Tamsin (22:20):
Yes.
Laura (22:21):
cause a well known, helpful strategy for making everyone feel good and
Tamsin (22:25):
I know right?
Laura (22:27):
A funny.
Okay, so look, I just wanna bring thisback again then, because I mean, earlier
when we were talking about Brexit,you said that part of the driver for
your research was wanting to help.
Understand what was happeningwith divisions in your own
family and taking that up.
And so we talked a bit about howthis is ideas of compassion and
(22:47):
toning down discourse at the mediaand institutional level to help
resolve things on a societal level.
Can you make any suggestionsfor we can do as individuals
to actually tone things down?
With either, you know, our familiesand friends or perhaps, for mediators,
people that they're working with,and then trying to bring different
groups of people together.
Tamsin (23:09):
I think it's about being reflective of the language
that you are using as well.
And that's something that I've triedto encourage with my participants in my
interviews that I did for my thesis - toreflect on the language surrounding
the way that you define yourself andthe way that you define other people.
And I think that sometimes, we find that.
We're using language or we've got biasesthat we're not necessarily acknowledging.
(23:32):
And so by encouraging people to thinkcritically about the language that they're
using, sometimes that kind of pointsthem to actually, I have this bias and
I've been using language in this way.
And so one thing that I've beentrying to do is kind of talk to people
and say, Have you thought about.
How you define yourself.
Have you thought about how youthink or talk about other people?
Just as a kind of open question.
(23:54):
And I've found that that encouragespeople to think about actually,
how am I fitting into this problem?
How am I part of this problem?
And how might I change that or not?
So I think it's, I guess it'sabout being more self reflective,
thinking about how we might beusing language that contributes to
this particular sense of division.
And I think we all do it.
I mean, when I started out in myresearch, I had a strong idea of
(24:16):
what I thought a leave voter was.
And through the interviews thatI've done with leave voters, I've
completely challenged those biases.
So I think another thing is encounteringpeople that have got different, And
actually talking to them about thoseviews rather than making assumptions about
why they're voting in a particular way.
And I'm sure you found the same thing inyour research doing interviews that you
(24:36):
might have had preconceptions about what.
A lead voter is interested in, ora main voter is interested in, and
perhaps they've had different opinionsto that when you've interviewed them.
And I think actually as a linguist,that's something that we need to do
more because there's a tendency forlinguists to rally against bad language.
Like bad dis not bad language.
(24:58):
Uh,
Laura (24:59):
Why not
Tamsin (25:00):
Okay.
And but then not talk to people.
And so you don't get thenuance of why people might be
using exclusionary discourse.
It doesn't mean that they're acceptable,but you don't get the nuances of what
is kind of underpinning those thatuse like fear and things like that.
Um, so I think it's important totalk to real people and find out why,
(25:23):
why they're using language in that.
Laura (25:26):
So moving then from, Don't talk like that to Why
are you talking like that?
Tamsin (25:30):
Yes, exactly.
Laura (25:32):
Okay, great.
All right, well I think there's somefantastic recommendations . You know,
you have the self reflection, how doI define myself and how do I talk to
other people or how do I define them?
And then, yeah, moving away to whydo other people talk in this way?
So that's a nice little packet you'vegiven us of some recommendations.
So thank you very much.
So look, Tansen and Willow the Cat,thank you so much for joining me
(25:54):
today and for those interested inlearning more about your work, Tamson.
Cause I don't thinkWillow has social media.
Where can they find you?
Tamsin (26:03):
You can find me on Twitter at tanin parnell.
Laura (26:07):
Fantastic.
Great.
Well, it's been an absolute pleasurespeaking with you and hearing
about your research and yourknowledge and for everybody else.
Until next time, this is Laura May with aConflict Tipping podcast from media.com.
Hello and welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast for mediate.com,
the podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Tamsin Parnell research
associate at the University ofWarwick in the uk visiting lecturer
at Birmingham City University.
And she recently finished her PhDon how identities of Britishness
(00:34):
and more were constructed in BRrelated migration discussions.
She's interested in homelessness,media, and political dis discourses.
Welcome to Tamson and potentiallyher cat Willow, who may be making
an appearance at some point today.
Tamsin (00:49):
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm looking forward to this
Laura (00:52):
Absolutely.
You know, I'm, I'm delighted to haveyou here cuz I've been really impressed
by your work . So I'm very glad I couldsmuggle you onto the podcast for the day.
So look, I wanna start out just by askinga question about what discourse is because
I understand that this has differentmeanings depending on what your field is.
So in your research where thisidea pops up a lot, what does
(01:14):
discourse actually refer to?
Tamsin (01:17):
That's a good question.
So actually one of the things arounddiscourse that you said is that it has
multiple meanings, and it's not justmultiple meanings in different fields, but
also multiple meanings within linguistics.
Which means that it's a really fuzzy term.
It can be hard to know what it means.
So I kind of follow a researchercalled Bur Vivian Bur, who you might
(01:38):
have heard of before, um, , who has areally amazing definition of discourse.
Um, basically a way, a kind of useof language or a set of meanings
or representations that producea particular version of the world.
And each discourse is a kind ofparticular version of the world.
that can depict mental and social worldsfrom a particular ideological perspective.
(02:02):
Um, so a kind of set ofmeanings that frame the world
in a particular social way.
Laura (02:08):
So if I understand you correctly, then it's sort of like
we're all walking around in our ownlittle discourse bubbles and in our
discourse bubble, we see the world thisway and we understand words this way.
We understand ideas this way,but then other people might be
in their own little bubbles.
Is that fair to say?
Tamsin (02:25):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, I guess one way of thinkingabout it is thinking about Brexit.
So different people have differentviews of Brexit and what Brexit
constitutes and what it means.
And so people will kind of perform, ortalk about Brexit in a different way.
And that shows a different kind ofdiscourse of Brexit, so to speak.
Laura (02:44):
Great.
Okay.
And so since we're already onthe topic, . And you can tell
we boasted research on Brexit.
Cause they're like, allright, let's dive in Um, okay.
So in your research, Iunderstand that you talked about.
Identities of Britishness and Europeanand maybe non-European as well.
(03:04):
So how does that relate todiscourse then and how these
identities were constructed?
Tamsin (03:09):
That's a good question.
So I'm looking at the waythat, particular identities
are represented in language.
So thinking about different kindof perceptions of what it means to
be British or what it means to beEuropean, and the language that is used
to describe that, by journalists, by.
Politicians and byindividual citizens as well.
(03:30):
So I'm looking at the languagesurrounding how people talk about what
it means to be British or European.
Laura (03:37):
And can you give some examples, Like, what kinds of things are they
saying or what does it mean to beBritish or European or, or other?
Tamsin (03:43):
So in media and in politicians, there's a really common frame of
what Ben calls the Decent Britain.
So discourse is around politenessand British people liking to
queue, liking to be really polite.
Um, kind of,
Laura (03:57):
Calm and carry on
Tamsin (03:58):
exactly,
Laura (03:59):
my goodness.
Yep.
Tamsin (04:00):
What's really interesting is that, although that's kind of how journalists
and politicians talk about Britishness,when I spoke to individuals, they were
kind of talking about how Leave votersor Remain voters were not polite at
all, but actually really discriminatory.
So there's this contradictory tensionbetween talking about Britons as
being really polite in institutionaldiscourses, but not when you actually
(04:23):
talk to individuals about it.
Laura (04:26):
That's really interesting.
And I'm sure audiences indifferent countries can also imagine
this happening locally, right?
So you've got this idea of the media andpoliticians and institutions talking about
the people in one way, but then it's notthe same way as their neighbors act.
To me, the US always comes to mindcuz obviously it's always very
visible in the English language press,but also other countries as well.
(04:50):
But I'm wondering, what do youthink are the implications of this
tension in how different groups areactually talked about and perceived?
Tamsin (04:59):
I think it has implications for feelings of belonging.
So one thing that I've kind of talkedabout in my thesis work is if there's
a kind of contradiction between.
The way that politicians talk about whatit means to be British and the way that
individuals do, are individuals going tohave that sense of belonging that they
kind of need or that politicians need,to create that sense of the public.
(05:20):
Um, so I think that there's aproblem there around creating a sense
of belonging to the nation, and.
Without getting too much into my thesisand kind of giving away all the, all the
answers, um, my concern around that isthat at this point in time, the UK kind
of needs a really strong sense of nationalidentity in order to get it through
the tensions that it's experiencingwith the EU and other countries.
(05:43):
Um, but there's a sense that actuallythis national identity maybe is in
crisis, with this sense of nobodyreally agreeing on what it means to
be British at this point in time.
And lots of divisions being talkedabout in terms of Britain as well.
Um, so I think that it has reallystrong democratic implications
for, for the country in terms ofthe sense of feeling of belonging.
Laura (06:04):
That's really interesting, this idea of sort of belongingness
and perhaps some kind ofsolidarity in the face of crises.
And it's just making me wonder aswell, there's that famous idea of
imagined communities and the nationas an imagined community, so that even
though we will never, I'm gonna gostraight out and say we will never meet
every single person of a given country.
(06:25):
That will take a lot of time, maybe ina micro state, we still imagine that
they're like us or they belong with us.
And there's that sense of solidarity.
What I'm hearing from your research isthat not only can we no longer imagine
there's really that community, but there'sactually multiple communities who, who
are maybe drawn to fight one anotheror to try and take over one another.
Tamsin (06:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that that's reallyprevalent in the UK post Brexit with
this kind of cleavage of levers andremainers, that there still is a kind
of strong identity related division inthe UK between levers and remainers.
I mean, in the interviews that I did with.
Levers and remainerson an individual level.
We had people saying they just completelydidn't understand the other perspective
(07:09):
and they didn't understand why peoplewere voting in the way they did.
They felt that the certain groupwas either, kind of racist
or xenophobic on the one hand,or elitist on the other hand.
And so it feels like there are lotsof conflicts within that to do with
kind of levels of education to do withsocial views towards ethnicity and race,
that are really coming to the fore.
(07:29):
Broader division, with the labelsthat we add of lever and remainer
Laura (07:34):
It's, it's really interesting and I found similar
themes in, in my interviewswith, with levers, for example.
But one of the things that sort of gaveme a little hope in these interviews,
and now I'm just talking about myown research, um, is that I found
this consistent story of compassion.
And so that, a month's leave.
It wasn't about, oh, for example,oh, we hate all these immigrants.
(07:56):
So that, that would be a very strongway of putting it, but that's sort
of the way it's portrayed, right?
Or late leaves are spoken about.
But instead, I heard on quite a numberof occasions, this idea of, well, it
doesn't affect me, but I feel sorryfor my person locally, or it doesn't
affect me, but I feel sorry formigrants, um, in crisis in Greece for.
(08:17):
So there was this idea of actuallythis, this compassion driving about to
leave, which is perhaps compelling asfar as drawing people together, right?
So that like, there's no sideshere that are monsters, which
I think can be quite important.
Tamsin (08:29):
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
And actually I think there's atendency, for remain voters to sort
of see themselves as in intellectuallysuperior or kind of morally superior.
And yeah, I found that actually myremain voters that I was interviewing
tended to be more discriminatory towardsleave voters than the other way around.
So I think there's stereotypes surroundingwhat it means to be a leader and a
(08:52):
remainer that absolutely aren't the case.
Laura (08:54):
No, that's really interesting because I mean, one of the things that,
that I found as well is that, whenI spoke with Lis, even earlier on
when they weren't quite so resolutein their vote, they said that one of
the things that really entrenched themin their decision to vote leave and
later their identity as a Libra waseffectively being abused by remain.
(09:16):
And this was consistent.
Every single leader I spoke to said, No,it's because they said that I was stupid
or that I was racist, or whatever else.
I can never be with you if you'rebeing mean to me, basically.
It's really interesting how that, um,converges with, with your work on Yeah.
Well actually remainers mightbe a little discriminatory.
(09:37):
And so when you've got these differenttensions, it's very hard to imagine
these discourse bubbles comingtogether to create a community.
Tamsin (09:43):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Laura (09:45):
And so what actually led you down that path as far
as your doctoral research?
I mean, what drew you to it?
Tamsin (09:51):
So I was actually kind of drawn towards this research
area for a personal reason.
I had family in Scotland.
I also have family who votedto leave in their referendum.
And my Scottish side of the familyfelt after the vote that they wanted
Scottish independence, which is somethingthey hadn't kind of wanted before.
And I just remember thinking to.
(10:11):
I want to understand A, whypeople voted leave and B, why my
Scottish members of the familywanted to have independence now.
And I guess that this was a way ofexploring that, that level of the
family, but at a higher discourselevel because I felt like more people
would be in similar situations to me,having their families kind of affected,
(10:33):
if not torn apart by this vote.
Which at the time wasa very kind of strong.
There are lots of emotionsand strong feelings around it.
So it was kind of personal, I wantto understand the other perspective
and how can I go about doing thatin a way that chimes with my
research interests of the linguist.
So that's how I ended up down that path.
Laura (10:52):
I think that's really relatable and this idea of, well, wanting to look
at how this division is caused in ourfamily by broader societal divisions is I
think really important to a lot of peoplebecause there have been, and I guess will
continue to be some tense Christmas or NewYear or what celebration of choice family
dinners and get togethers going forward.
Tamsin (11:13):
Absolutely.
Laura (11:13):
so one of your papers, which I understand is related to your
thesis was called Humiliating andDividing the Nation in Pro Press.
And so what is this idea ofhumiliation and division and how
does it actually appear in the press?
Like why would they do that to us?
Tamsin (11:31):
Okay, so the discourse of humiliation was
actually really interesting.
So what I did, I looked at newspaper kindof representations from 2016 to 2019 in
my actual thesis, but not in the paper.
And I found this shift from a senseof unity being constructed around
the time of the referendum tojournalists basically saying that
Theresa May's government was inept.
(11:54):
And.
I guess encouraging a shift towardsa different Prime Minister with
a different Brexit on the agenda.
But also that the fact that therewas division in the Parliament
as well was leading the UK tobe a national laughing stock.
Basically, other countries werelaughing at the UK because the UK
couldn't get itself together enoughto achieve Brexit or deliver Brexit.
(12:18):
And so this discourse of humiliationwas very much this idea of.
The political elites are humiliatingus as the ordinary people.
The ordinary people want to voteleave, and they're delaying Brexit.
They are doing everything theycan to stop a no deal Brexit.
And so this was the kind of maindiscourse that was coming through there?
Laura (12:37):
So there was a frustration over this idea of not getting Brexit done?
Yes.
Okay.
Interesting.
And so before I ask about some of yourother research, I'm wondering what
can we take away from all of this?
I mean, if you're gonna fix society,you've got a magic wand, no, you don't
have a magic wand, you've got a PhD.
What kind of things would it youactually do to bring these different
(12:57):
discourse bubbles together?
Tamsin (13:00):
Mm.
I think my biggest kind of concern ischanging the language used surrounding
national identity and changing thelanguage around identity on the
political level, because I thinkthere's a lot of emotional discourse.
There's a lot of discourse aroundconflict and division, and I think
in some ways that's only reinforcingthe senses of division that people
are experiencing themselves.
(13:21):
And I think like thelanguage that you look.
Words like derived scorn,humiliate are very, very emotional.
And I feel like that's encouragingemotional responses to this kind
of political situation as well.
And if we think about what's happened withlike the deaths of Joe Clarks and David
Armes, this kind of highly emotive, Iguess belligerent language, Excuse my
Laura (13:46):
that is a good word.
That's a great word.
Belligerent.
Tamsin (13:49):
This kind of very, highly emotive language is only reinforcing
the sense of division as well.
And I think there needs to be a sort ofstep down from this type of language.
And there's already campaignsgoing on with compassion in
politics, for instance, in the.
Are trying to change the waythat language is being used.
And after the deaths of JoePox and David Arm, this was
(14:09):
kind of discussed in politics.
We need to kind of lower thetone, so to speak, in terms of,
of, this violent language, butit doesn't seem to have happened.
Because still looking at the discoursein 2019, it's still prevalent and Joe
Cox passed away obviously in in 2016.
So they're talking about changingthe language, but they're not
actually changing their language.
(14:29):
And so that's what needs toto change, in my opinion.
Laura (14:33):
And so just for the non UK listeners, the two politicians
that Tanza is mentioning were bothessentially murdered, assassinated,
variously stabbed, as a result of theirpolitical advocacy and or beliefs.
So Joe Cox was, for example, a Romana.
And she was murdered by a constituent.
It was, it was a horror,an absolute horror.
And also has some parallels withwhat's happened in the US in
(14:57):
recent times with Nancy Pelosi'shusband obviously being attacked.
And I mean, perhaps we can see thesame kinds of dis discourses about
division and conflict and victory intrying to win in that kind of situation.
And so what I'm hearing from you thenis this idea of that when we have these
like really strong discusses of emotionand conflict in politics and coming from
(15:18):
our media, coming from our institutions,then things are gonna keep basically
boiling higher and higher and higher.
And violence becomes almost,can I say inevitable?
Tamsin (15:29):
Yeah, naturalized, I think is a kind of natural response to, to
this kind of anguish that people areexperiencing in, in political discourse.
Uh, I think you see kind of with, soRaman talking about the invasion of
migrants as well, the kind of immediately,as soon as she kind of comes into to
talk about why there are problems atthe migrant centers at the moment, this
(15:51):
language is invasion, is encouragingus to, to see or to think that, that
we are being deprived of somethingor that we are kind of threatened.
And the natural response tothat, to, to feeling threatened
is to try and defend yourself.
And then obviously we see what'shappened with petrol bonds being thrown
at a migrant center in the UK as well.
There's, I believe, a directrelation between this kind of
(16:13):
language that's being used andthe actions that are taking place.
Laura (16:16):
Absolutely.
And, and can we take a moment totalk about the dis discourses of
good migrants and bad migrants?
Because as you were saying this about howmigrants are being spoken about in the uk.
It really struck me how migrantshave spoken about locally in Brussels
in the English language media,because my French is terrible.
So, so for example, this past couple ofweeks there's been a lot of articles about
(16:40):
migrant centers in Brussels not providing.
For migrants, essentially, and,and refugees and specifically
mostly Ukrainian refugees.
Right?
Because they're like, All right,well, there's not enough beds.
You've got hundreds of, of familieswith children sleeping outside
or sleeping rough because theasylum centers aren't stepping up.
And there's obviously a huge differencebetween this idea of sort of the good
(17:02):
migrant who is deserving and the um, thestrong inverted comers, the bad migrants
of the, the so-called migration crisis.
Tamsin (17:11):
Mm-hmm.
Laura (17:11):
though like, I mean, I don't know whether there's actually any differences
in terms of who is actually usingthese asylum and migration centers.
And so do you see similarthings playing out in the uk?
Tamsin (17:23):
Yes, Although I actually am just about to publish a paper
on this the government in talkingabout migration, so I was analyzing
policy documents around migration.
And I found that there isdefinitely a distinction.
So when the UK government istalking about non EU migrants,
that is often framed as a threat.
(17:44):
So something that
Laura (17:45):
these Australians, we we're everywhere.
You know, , get theAustralians outta the uk.
Yeah.
Tamsin (17:50):
Exactly.
Yeah, so that definitely framedas a kind of threat that requires
a naval or military response.
And this is very much part ofwhat I've like termed, I suppose
a political intimacy discourse.
So it's actually part of the uk,saying to the eu, Actually, we really
want to work with you on defense.
And so migrants are kind of madethis secondary area, Sort of
(18:13):
reduced to statistics, so to speak.
But then actually when you look atdiscourse around the good migrants
as well, I did this really closelinguistic analysis of Teresa May.
Talking about welcoming French andItalian migrants to the uk and.
There's a real sense that thesemigrants are framed as kind of
(18:33):
economic contributors to the uk.
So they are paying money.
They're paying money, and that's agood thing, but they're still kind of
through language positioned as separatefrom the the national community.
So you have us.
And then you have them, even thoughthey are good migrants and they're
contributing and that's what they shouldbe doing, they're still separated through
(18:54):
language from the national community.
So I think sometimes even when you havethese discourse of the good migrant, if
you look really closely at the languagethat's being used in the grammar, you see
that actually they're still being excluded
Laura (19:06):
It, it makes sense.
Um, so I'm, I'm just gonnatalk about Australians.
Cause I feel like as an Australianit's gonna be less inflammatory
than so the other categories of none migrants, which, which pop up.
Right.
Um, and so you can have this idea of,well, you know, you might have been
in the UK for 20 years, 30 years,but you're still an Australian.
You're still not one of theseBritains that you were talking about.
(19:28):
And so I'm wondering as well, is thatwhy we sort of see this reaction in
terms of being an expat, right, Asopposed to a migrant as a reaction to,
Well, I might to be one of you, butI'm an expat, which makes me a good
migrant, so I'm allowed to be here.
And so almost a reactionarydiscourse about the self.
Tamsin (19:46):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think there's a real tendencyin the UK to refer to UK migrants as
expats as though they're a differenttype of, or different group of migrants
from migrants that are coming to the uk.
I think that language that that wordexpat is definitely a way of softening
the force of the idea of being a migrant.
Yeah, and again, I guess it's, it'sabout naturalizing the idea that
(20:09):
the UK can send people out, but it,it doesn't want people coming in.
Laura (20:13):
Which is quite the interesting take Yeah.
No, I, I suddenly referto myself as a migrant.
Nowadays I'm like, Right, I'm gonna havesome solidarity with the bad migrants.
All right, but let's migrate awayfrom migration then uh, because I
know you've also done a, a little workon health messages during Covid 19,
(20:34):
so something a little bit different.
So what does it actually entail?
Tamsin (20:39):
So it was part of a broader project called Coronavirus Dis
Discourses led by veer adultsat the University of Nottingham.
And it's looking at the way that thepublic responds to messages around or
public health messages around Covid 19.
So we were looking at how.
Members of the public through a surveyresponded to messages from public health
(21:02):
bodies around, Sorry, that's my cat.
Laura (21:05):
Well, I did say that Willow might be joining
Tamsin (21:07):
Yeah,
Laura (21:08):
we have a, we have a special guest,
Tamsin (21:10):
did.
Um, yeah, so basically we were looking athow they responded to adverts or posters
that, and contain public health messages.
So one example was in the uk the,I believe it was the nhs, but it
might have been public health bodyhad adverts saying, Look them in
the eyes and tell them that youare not breaking the rules and
Laura (21:32):
so intense.
Tamsin (21:33):
very intense and very.
The, the way that we had responses,the kind of public responses to
that was, this is scare mongering.
This is trying to make us feel guilty.
And so what we tried to do with thatresearch was advise public health
bodies in the UK about the effectivemessages and the messages that weren't
landing with the public, basically.
(21:54):
And we found that this particular kind ofguilt, guilt laden response was a message
that was just not landing with the public.
They were not happy.
With this type of response.
And so we went, we made a toolkitof kind of ways to respond to public
health messages or ways to producepublic health messages so that the
public health bodies could use that incase of another kind of health thread,
Laura (22:16):
Mm.
So as opposed to justpublicly shaming people,
Tamsin (22:20):
Yes.
Laura (22:21):
cause a well known, helpful strategy for making everyone feel good and
Tamsin (22:25):
I know right?
Laura (22:27):
A funny.
Okay, so look, I just wanna bring thisback again then, because I mean, earlier
when we were talking about Brexit,you said that part of the driver for
your research was wanting to help.
Understand what was happeningwith divisions in your own
family and taking that up.
And so we talked a bit about howthis is ideas of compassion and
(22:47):
toning down discourse at the mediaand institutional level to help
resolve things on a societal level.
Can you make any suggestionsfor we can do as individuals
to actually tone things down?
With either, you know, our familiesand friends or perhaps, for mediators,
people that they're working with,and then trying to bring different
groups of people together.
Tamsin (23:09):
I think it's about being reflective of the language
that you are using as well.
And that's something that I've triedto encourage with my participants in my
interviews that I did for my thesis - toreflect on the language surrounding
the way that you define yourself andthe way that you define other people.
And I think that sometimes, we find that.
We're using language or we've got biasesthat we're not necessarily acknowledging.
(23:32):
And so by encouraging people to thinkcritically about the language that they're
using, sometimes that kind of pointsthem to actually, I have this bias and
I've been using language in this way.
And so one thing that I've beentrying to do is kind of talk to people
and say, Have you thought about.
How you define yourself.
Have you thought about how youthink or talk about other people?
Just as a kind of open question.
(23:54):
And I've found that that encouragespeople to think about actually,
how am I fitting into this problem?
How am I part of this problem?
And how might I change that or not?
So I think it's, I guess it'sabout being more self reflective,
thinking about how we might beusing language that contributes to
this particular sense of division.
And I think we all do it.
I mean, when I started out in myresearch, I had a strong idea of
(24:16):
what I thought a leave voter was.
And through the interviews thatI've done with leave voters, I've
completely challenged those biases.
So I think another thing is encounteringpeople that have got different, And
actually talking to them about thoseviews rather than making assumptions about
why they're voting in a particular way.
And I'm sure you found the same thing inyour research doing interviews that you
(24:36):
might have had preconceptions about what.
A lead voter is interested in, ora main voter is interested in, and
perhaps they've had different opinionsto that when you've interviewed them.
And I think actually as a linguist,that's something that we need to do
more because there's a tendency forlinguists to rally against bad language.
Like bad dis not bad language.
(24:58):
Uh,
Laura (24:59):
Why not
Tamsin (25:00):
Okay.
And but then not talk to people.
And so you don't get thenuance of why people might be
using exclusionary discourse.
It doesn't mean that they're acceptable,but you don't get the nuances of what
is kind of underpinning those thatuse like fear and things like that.
Um, so I think it's important totalk to real people and find out why,
(25:23):
why they're using language in that.
Laura (25:26):
So moving then from, Don't talk like that to Why
are you talking like that?
Tamsin (25:30):
Yes, exactly.
Laura (25:32):
Okay, great.
All right, well I think there's somefantastic recommendations . You know,
you have the self reflection, how doI define myself and how do I talk to
other people or how do I define them?
And then, yeah, moving away to whydo other people talk in this way?
So that's a nice little packet you'vegiven us of some recommendations.
So thank you very much.
So look, Tansen and Willow the Cat,thank you so much for joining me
(25:54):
today and for those interested inlearning more about your work, Tamson.
Cause I don't thinkWillow has social media.
Where can they find you?
Tamsin (26:03):
You can find me on Twitter at tanin parnell.
Laura (26:07):
Fantastic.
Great.
Well, it's been an absolute pleasurespeaking with you and hearing
about your research and yourknowledge and for everybody else.
Until next time, this is Laura May with aConflict Tipping podcast from media.com.
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