A Critical Discourse Study of Youth Crime and Media in the UK

2022 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 22K01901
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: E・T・W Haig 名古屋大学, 人文学研究科, 教授 (80377770)
• Project Period (FY): 2022-04-01 – 2025-03-31
• Keywords: crime / youth / media / discourse / radio / Britain / CDA / SFL

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

During this, the first year of this three-year project, I have mainly focused on three activities.
Firstly, I have spent much of the time reviewing and critiquing the literature regarding the projects overall topic of youth crime and media discourse in the UK. Since this project is intended to be a continuation of, and comparison with, my PhD research topic, which was completed over 13 years ago, and since I have not been actively involved in researching this topic during the intervening years, I have found it necessary to devote a considerable amount of time to this part of the project.
Secondly, I have been working on organizing, cataloging and transcribing the radio audio recordings that I made as part of my original research on this topic in the summer of 2007.
Thirdly, I have been preparing and testing the hardware and software necessary to make a new set of radio news broadcast recordings during the summer of 2023.
Unfortunately, due to having a serious traffic accident in May 2022, which resulted in me needing to have two surgical operations spread over six months and a long period of rehabilitation, I was not able to make as much progress as I had intended during this year. In particular, I was not able to participate in any conferences and I did not publish any books or papers. However, my health is now much better now and I hope to engage in these activities more actively during the coming year.

Current Status of Research Progress

3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.

Reason

Currently, I am involved in three areas of activity.
Firstly, I am continuing to review the latest literature relating to the topic of youth crime and media discourse, particularly concerning the UK. This is a rapidly developing field which has attracted the attention of numerous scholars and I am endeavouring to keep abreast of the latest research in this field.
The above work on reviewing the literature is enabling me make progress with the second area of activity, which is the creation of a theoretical framework and a methodological protocol for analysing radio news discourse. Essentially, in terms of theoretical framework, I am working on a model based on the later version of Norman Fairlough's model of critical discourse analysis (CDA). As for the methodology, I am hoping to adapt and extend the model proposed by Michael Halliday and his associates, known as Systemic Functional Lingusitics (SFL), including the important work of J. R. Martin and others on Appraisal Theory (AT).
The third activity is to prepare and test the experimental equipment and protocols required for conducing the radio news recordings during the summer of this year.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

As noted above, this year I am hoping to move forward from the literature review and preparatory stage to make more progress on the actual collection and analysis of radio news recording data. In particular, during the summer I am planning to conduct a large number of recordings of British radio broadcasts. From the autumn, I will begin the labour-intensive and time-consuming but necessary work of transcribing and subsequently analysing the data according to a modified version of Fairclough’s CDA framework. For the actual linguistic and discoursal analysis I intend to make use of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistic and Martin’s Appraisal Theory methodologies.

Causes of Carryover

The reason why I need to carry over some of the money from last year to this year is that I was unable to carry out many planned activities, such as participating in international conferences overseas, because of the traffic accident that I was involved in, which resulted in my needing to have two surgical operations over six months and a period of rehabilitation.
I would like to use the money this year to participate in several international conferences and make progress with my plan to record, transcribe and analyse a number of British radio news broadcasts related to youth crime.