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ABSTRACT
During her time as US Education Secretary (2017–2020), Betsy DeVos deployed specific naming practices in her speeches and public statements in service of a neoliberal educational agenda. Using discourse analysis, I explore framing and categorization as linguistic phenomena, and highlight the role words play in shaping political and cultural outcomes. Although the paper offers only a snapshot of DeVos’s framing strategies, her speech is part of a broader populist discourse that embraces an unrelenting “othering” of political opponents through emotionally charged rhetoric that seeks to accelerate private intervention in public schools. Through careful lexical choices and naming practices, DeVos builds a worldview that seeks to inform macro-level educational narratives, policies, and practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Lubienski, Brewer, and Londe, “Orchestrating Policy Ideas,” 61.
2. Ibid., 62.
3. Kelly and McGoey, “Facts, Power and Global Evidence,” 2.
4. Povinelli, “What Do White People Want?”
5. Kelly and McGoey, “Facts, Power and Global Evidence,” 18.
6. Jay Van Bavel, Power of Us, 262.
7. Ibid., 237.
8. Parry-Giles and Steudeman, “Crafting Character,” 68.
9. Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism, 5.
10. Asen, School Choice, 78.
11. Hlavacik, Assigning Blame, 11.
12. Ibid., 24.
13. Jensen, “Localized Ideographs,” 306.
14. Ball, Global Education Inc, 93
15. deMarrais et al., Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, 17.
16. Saltman, Swindle, xi.
17. Hursh and Henderson, “Contesting Global Neoliberalism,” 171.
18. Berliner, Manufactured Crisis, 3.
19. deMarrais et al., Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, 94.
20. Roberts-Miller, “Democracy, Demagoguery,” 459.
21. van Dijk, Ideology, 267.
22. Ibid., 267.
23. Clegg, “State, Power, and Agency,” 7.
24. van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 254.
25. Fairclough, “Critical and Descriptive Goals,” 739.
26. Steudeman, “Rethinking Rhetorical Education,” 298.
27. Charteris-Black, Analysing Political Speeches, 185.
28. Ibid., 185.
29. Blommaert, Discourse, 120.
30. van Dijk, Ideology, 262.
31. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 68–9.
32. Kramsch, Language as Symbolic Power, 103.
33. Ibid., 198.
34. van Dijk “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis, 279; Hart, “Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Analysis,” 97; van Dijk, Discourse and Knowledge, 12 .
35. Ibid., 91.
36. Hart, “Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Analysis,” 97.
37. Ibid., 97.
38. Ibid., 97.
39. Ibid., 97.
40. van Dijk, Discourse and Knowledge, 93.
41. Hart, “Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Analysis,” 104.
42. Olson, Power to Name, 4.
43. Tracy, “What’s in a Name?”, 83.
44. Charteris-Black. Analysing Political Speeches, 111–12.
45. Ibid., 112.
46. Hart, “Cognitive Linguistic Critical Discourse Analysis,” 99.
47. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos on 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress Results,” para. 45.
48. DeVos, “US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Addressed the National Association of State Boards of Education in Washington, DC,” para. 27.
49. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on FY19 Budget to Labour-HHS-Education and Related Agencies House Appropriations Subcommittee,” paras 26–27.
50. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos at the Manhattan Institute’s 19th Annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner,” para. 22.
51. Lakoff, “Mapping the Brain’s Metaphor Circuitry,” 5.
52. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to the 2017 ASU GSV Summit,” para. 12.
53. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to the American Enterprise Institute,” para. 82.
54. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos to Students and Faculty at Woods Learning Center,” paras 24–5.
55. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos at the Manhattan Institute’s 19th Annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner,” paras 28–9.
56. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos at Hillsdale College,” paras 63–4.
57. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by Secretary DeVos to Students and Faculty at St. Marcus School,” paras 39–40.
58. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to South by Southwest-Education Conference,” para. 7.
59. DeVos, “U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Addressed the National Association of State Boards of Education in Washington, D.C.,” para. 20.
60. DeVos, “Prepared Remarks to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies,” paras 7–8.
61. Nichols, Our Own Worst Enemy, 20.