Stage 1: Focus upon a social wrong, in its semiotic aspect
The social wrong I shall focus upon is the suppression or marginalization of political differences over important issues of strategy and policy – how to respond nationally to rational international economic changes (and the prior question of what the changes actually are) – in favour of creating a consensus, which is, as I indicated above, a social wrong in that it undermines democracy but also poses the danger that dissent, which cannot be politically articulated, may emerge in nationalist or xenophobic forms. A semiotic point of entry is possible and fruitful, focusing upon semiotic realizations of the macro-strategy of depoliticization, in accordance with the construction of the object of research which I have discussed above. The second text, an extract from a book (Brown and Coates, 1996) written by former members of the Labour Party criticizing Blair’s New Labour’ government, exemplifies semiotic realizations of the macro-strategy of politicization. (Note that both macro-strategies may however be at work in the same text.) Blair’s text is representative of the dominant tendency of the times towards depoliticization; but this tendency coexists with politicizing responses such as that of the second text, even if the latter often have a relatively marginal effect on government strategy and policy. I have already discussed steps 1 and 2 above, on the construction of an object of research for the research topic, in anticipation of the illustration, so we can move on to Stage 2