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The hegemony of inclusion: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of deixis in education policy

This article presents findings from a critical historical analysis of UK education policy discourse from 1972 onwards. It argues that the pronoun we was introduced as an important rhetorical tool by which New Labour was able to legitimate its policy decisions through the idea of a neoliberal ‘consensus’ on the context of education, while at the same time articulating a ‘politics of inclusion’. The study combined a corpus-aided approach to critical discourse analysis with political economic theory in order to interpret the data in relation to its historical context of a profound rethink of the relationship between education, the state and the economy. The analysis reveals how the flexible semantics of person deixis are exploited in a highly systematic way so as to claim consensus over politically contestable claims.