This article examines and interprets the linguistic behaviour of `individuals' and `people' in the official literature of lifelong learning, in the light of theories of individualization in late modern culture and society, particularly those of Beck and Giddens. Using a 950,000-word corpus of recent government and academic publications on lifelong learning, it presents a concordance-based analysis of `individuals' as members of institutionalized collectivities, as agents, as rational citizens, and as consumers. It compares `individuals' with `people' and, for reference, presents a comparison with both words as they occur in the British National Corpus. The study concludes that close analysis of a corpus can provide valuable evidence for the constituent potential of language in theories of society and culture, and that the differences between `individuals' and `people' demonstrate that the discourse of lifelong learning has close affinities with contemporary sociocultural models of individualization, consumption and production, and with the risk society.
Baudrillard, J. (1998) Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity Press.
2.
Baumann, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.
3.
Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
4.
Beck, U. (1994) `The reinvention of politics: Towards a theory of reflexive modernization', in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, 1-55. Cambridge: Polity Press.
5.
Beck, U. (1998) `The Cosmopolitan Manifesto', New Statesman: 20March.
6.
Becker, G.S. (1964) Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, distributed by Columbia University Press.
7.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge.
8.
Coffield, F. (ed.) (1996a) A National Strategy for Lifelong Learning. Newcastle: University of Newcastle.
9.
Coffield, F. (1996b) `Nine Learning Fallacies and their Replacement by a National Strategy for Lifelong Learning', in F. Coffield (ed.) A National Strategy for Lifelong Learning, pp. 1-35. Newcastle: University of Newcastle.
10.
Coffield, F. (1996c) `A Tale of Three Little Pigs: Building the Learning Society with Straw', in F. Coffield (ed.) A National Strategy for Lifelong Learning, pp. 77-93. Newcastle: University of Newcastle.
11.
Coupland, N. (1998) `What is sociolinguistic theory?', Journal of Sociolinguistics2(1): 110-117.
12.
Department for Education and Employment (1998) The Learning Age: A Renaissance for a New Britain. London: HMSO. http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/greenpaper/index.htm.
13.
Department for Education and Employment (1999) UK Lifelong Learning, http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk.
14.
Dohmen, G. (1996) Lifelong Learning: Guidelines for a Modern Education Policy. Bonn: Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology.
15.
Douglas, M. (1994) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge.
16.
Du Gay, P. , Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H. and Negus, K. (1997) Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
17.
Economic and Social Research Council . (1999) The Learning Society. University of Newcastle, Department of Education. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~nfjc/index.html.
18.
Elliott Major, L. (1999) `Storm warning'. The Guardian Higher Education:9March: 43.
19.
European Commission (1995) `Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society'. White Paper on Education and Training. Brussels: European Commission DGXXII. http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/dg22/news/memo162.html.
20.
European Commission (1996) `Accomplishing Europe through Education and Training: Study Group on Education and Training Report'. Brussels: European Commission DGXXII. http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/dg22/reflex/en/homeen.html.
21.
Fowler, R. (1996) `On critical linguistics', in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 3-14. London: Routledge.
22.
Fryer, R.H. (1997) `Learning for the Twenty-first Century: First Report of the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning' (NAGCELL). London: NAGCELL.
23.
Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.
24.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.
25.
Giddens, A. (1994) `Risk, Trust, Reflexivity', in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, pp. 184-197. Cambridge: Polity Press.
26.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.
27.
Hall, S. (1998) `The Great Moving Nowhere Show', Marxism Today. Nov/Dec: 9-14.
28.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd edn.London: Edward Arnold.
29.
Hammersley, M. (1997) `On the Foundations of Critical Discourse Analysis', Language and Communication17(3): 237-248.
30.
Her Majesty's Stationery Office (1995) Competitiveness: Forging Ahead. London: HMSO.
31.
Lash, S. (1994) `Expert Systems or Situated Interpretation: Culture and Institutions in Disorganised Capitalism', in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, pp. 198-215. Cambridge: Polity Press.
32.
Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
33.
Mosley, W. (1997) Gone fishin'. London: Serpent's Tail.
34.
National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1997) Higher Education in the Learning Society (`The Dearing Report')London: HMSO.
35.
Oxford University Computing Services (1999) British National Corpus. http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc.
36.
Piper, A. (in press) `Lifelong Learning, Human Capital, and the Soundbite', Text.
37.
Rose, N. (1999) `Inventiveness in Politics', Economy and Society28(3): 467-493.
38.
Schultz, T. W. (1963) The Economic Value of Education. New York: Columbia University Press.
39.
Scott, M. (1999 [1997]) Wordsmith Tools. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/homepage.html.
40.
Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
41.
Smart, B. (1999) Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality. London: Sage.
42.
Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
43.
Stubbs, M. (1997) `Whorf's children: Comments on Critical Discourse Analysis', in A. Ryan and A. Wray (eds) Evolving Models of Language, pp. 100-116. Clevedon: British Association for Applied Linguistics in association with Multilingual Matters Ltd.
44.
Van Leeuwen, T. (1996) `The Representation of Social Actors', in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 32-70. London: Routledge.
45.
Walker, D. (1999) `Analysis. Anthony Giddens: Sixties' Man of the World', The Guardian, 23March: 17.
46.
Woodhall, M. (1995) `Human Capital Concepts', in M. Carnoy (ed) International Encyclopedia of Economics of Education, 2nd edn, pp. 24-38. Oxford: Pergamon.
47.
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London: Sage.
