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Article published In: Multimodality, Politics and Ideology
Edited by David Machin and Theo van Leeuwen
[Journal of Language and Politics 15:3] 2016
► pp. 304–321

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Humour, ridicule and the de-legitimization of the working class in Swedish Reality Television

 | Örebro University, Sweden
Published online: 4 August 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15.3.05eri
Abstract
Drawing on tools from Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis this paper analyses the editing techniques in a Swedish docu-soap showing that humour is used to ridicule the working-class participants, representing them as slow, inflexible, undynamic and unstylish. The paper places this within broader discursive shifts in Sweden where the rise of neoliberalism requires a dismantling of the welfare state, legitimized partly though establishing the lower social economic groups as morally flawed and themselves responsible for their increasingly disadvantaged situation as social inequalities increase.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The making of social class through ridicule
  • 3.The case and methodology
  • 4.Ridiculing the working class
    • 4.1Music frames actions and suggests mental states
    • 4.2Re-sequencing of scenes
    • 4.3Camera work
  • 5.Concluding comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (30)
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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