Denying, downplaying, debating: defensive discourses of inequality in the debate on Piketty.
A clear sign of the heightened interest in economic inequality was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the twenty-first century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a 'media sensation' and Piketty himself as a 'rockstar economist'. Piketty's key t...
| Published in: | Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 16; no. 3; pp. 264 - 282 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Jun2019
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=135413150&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 135413150 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 17405904 RF5 jtl: Critical Discourse Studies issn: 17405904 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2019 vid: 16 iid: 3 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 135413150 10.1080/17405904.2019.1570289 ppf: 264 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.5MB tig: atl: Denying, downplaying, debating: defensive discourses of inequality in the debate on Piketty. aug: au: Grisold, Andrea Silke, Henry affil: Institute for Institutional and Heterodox Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria School of Culture and Communication, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland su: Income inequality Economic development Discourse analysis Debate Capitalism sug: subj: Income inequality Economic development Discourse analysis Debate Capitalism keyword: defensive discourses Economic inequality economic journalism ab: A clear sign of the heightened interest in economic inequality was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the twenty-first century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a 'media sensation' and Piketty himself as a 'rockstar economist'. Piketty's key thesis stated that the return on investment will be higher than economic growth (r > g), meaning that inequality is destined to worsen and that the post-war Keynesian period of progress, in terms of a flattening of inequality, was in fact a small break from the norm. What he termed patrimonial capitalism would see continual increases in rates of socio-economic inequality unless drastic action is taken. In this article, Piketty's book is treated as a paramount example of the mediation of economic inequality. The book received a generally positive response, however some writers acted defensively against the book's main thesis, that is the secular trend of growing inequality. Exploring the press in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Austria we investigate what we term defensive discourses on inequality, meaning discourses which act to downplay, deny or conflate Piketty's findings including discourses challenging his data and methods, discourses defending inequality as a necessity and discourses opposing regulation. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Critical Discourse Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Critical Discourse Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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