Abstract Summary
Investigating a corpus of newspaper articles on the controversial topic of executive pay published recently in the major British newspapers and a second corpus of online below-the-line comments posted by the readers, we explore the role of numbers in co-constructing the notion of fairness and unfairness in the public domain
Abstract :
Starting with the understanding that numbers are not just exercises in calculation and bearers of information but mediational means which, just like any other cultural and symbolic tools, are used to do ‘something’, we focus on the role of numbers in co-constructing notions of fair and unfair pay in the public domain. To this end, we investigate a large corpus of newspaper articles on the newsworthy and controversial topic of executive pay published in the major British newspapers in the last five years. Drawing on Vollmer’s (2007) three-dimensional understanding of numerical signs and using the tools of corpus-based discourse analysis, we identify the key numbers reflecting executive pay in the debates and study their discursive uses through collocational profiles. To understand how these numbers are received and recontextualised by the wider public, we additionally explore a second corpus of online below-the-line comments posted by the readers of articles that we identified as especially topical. Our analysis shows that in media reporting on executive pay, the symptomatic and calculative qualities of numbers are foregrounded, which serve to portray executive pay as not just but still an arithmetic rational exercise not out of line with the neo-liberal order. In contrast, in the below-the line comments the numbers undergo a ‘volatile reception’ (Vollmer 2007) in that their existential qualities play the dominant role making them more malleable and fluid. Here, the amounts paid to executives become triggers of contestations and distrust facilitating moral storms, transgressions and visions of a different social order.
