Academic Irregularities: Language and Neoliberalism in Higher Education

by Liz Morrish, Helen Sauntson

This volume serves as a critical examination of the discourses at play in the higher education system and the ways in which these discourses underpin the transmission of neoliberal values in 21st century universities. Situated within a Critical Discourse Analysis-based framework, the book also draws upon other linguistic approaches, including corpus linguistics and appraisal analysis, to unpack the construction and development of the management style known as managerialism, emergent in the 1990s US and UK higher education systems, and the social dynamics and power relations embedded within the discourses at the heart of managerialism in today’s universities. Each chapter introduces a particular aspect of neoliberal discourse in higher education and uses these multiple linguistic approaches to analyze linguistic data in two case studies and demonstrate these principles at work. This multi-layered systematic linguistic framework allows for a nuanced exploration of neoliberal institutional discourse and its implications for academic labor, offering a critique of the managerial system in higher education but also a larger voice for alternative discursive narratives within the academic community. This important work is a key resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, sociology, business and management studies, education, and cultural studies.

252 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 23, 2019

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The indignation is clear. The evidence clinical. Managerialism has neo-liberalised out anything that was good about universities. Failure in the form of an irrelevant, meaningless version of business, but TiNA.
Morrish & Sauntson reveal how the insidious language of management grows like a fungus covering everything it touches in slime and filth. Morally speaking. They testify to our experience in linguistic data. It is touching. Affirming. I cannot be completely insane if all other academics are exhausted to oblivion by adminicide.
This book inspired me to commit a rebellious act in a university: Read. At work. More than a few bullet points. About my discipline, to learn about my specialisation. But my work-plan, so-called, does not allocate time for this activity so central to keeping up with the ever-increasing outputs of intellectual labour. (And they all impact society. Somehow.) This reading happens by magic. Somehow. Osmosis is what I heard. Luckily I often have to walk past the library.
Before I read Academic Irregularities I was ready for it. I rebel through language. At our last announcement of change, managers demanded we peer observe for professional development. Like we did 10 years ago before it got pushed out by 47 other crisis-change-management cycles. So I asked the question you can never ask (not "How come we've been given the shit sandwich and asked to make it taste good again?): "What are we Not doing?" "Sorry, what?" "Well, as our managers you know that we're all over our heads in work, over capacity, and stressed out (because you keep reminding us each time you ask us for more because we have to know just how caring of our well-being you are.) So what are we Not doing to give us time for this really important activity for our professional development?" Peer observation for professional development was so important to our managers that they had not thought of a single task that we could drop to give it space. Oh well. Even less time for reading then. Well nobody else reads these days do they? Because Internet. Oh look, shoes.