Ideology and popular radio: a discourse analytic examination of disc jockeys' talk

Situated within contemporary debates about language, ideology and the media, this thesis represents an attempt to try out and develop recent approaches to language within social psychology, and to argue that popular radio can be understood as ideological in several respects. Attempting to forge a position between marxism and post structuralism, the thesis argues that discourse analysis should eschew a total relativist position and/Should adopt a critical definition of ideology, which sees ideology as maintaining assymetrical power relations. The thesis consists of a detailed analysis of disc jockeys' on-air talk on BBC Radio One, looking at how particular views of the world are constructed and maintained by disc jockeys in their patter, and at how relations of inequality are brought off as natural and inevitable The research also analyses several interviews with broadcasters, examining the way they see their role and their audience, and looking in particular at the centrality of constructions of gender. Finally the research examines the accounts of disc jockeys and Programme Controllers for the lack of women in popular radio, highlighting the flexibility of sexism and drawing attention to features of the accounts offered which would have been ignored by more traditional approaches.