Critical Discourse Analysis of British University Information Materials

Г Жунушова

2026

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.31489/2026phi3(123)/42-49
Data confidence 70 medium
How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

The present study aims to examine how university information materials produced by British universities construct and reflect the changing social value of education within contemporary promotional culture. To achieve this, the study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to a selection of university information texts. It explores how language is strategically employed to promote particular institutional identities, shape prospective students’ expectations, and position higher education within an increasingly competitive market. Linguistic analysis indicates that the social value of education is being changed to something which can beoffered as a commodity, thus leading to the consumerisation of education. The study demonstrates that university information materials function as ideologically charged texts in which university priorities are enacted through linguistic choices. The analysis reveals that education is discursively constructed through carefully chosen lexical, grammatical, and rhetorical strategies. At the lexical level, the materials are characterised by a high frequency of positively evaluative nouns and adjectives which present universities in an aspirational and persuasive manner. Furthermore, abstract nouns replaced concrete descriptions of pedagogical practice leading to a discourse of promise while providing limited detail about students’ actual educational experiences. At the grammatical level, the analysis identified a key preference for nominalisation, particularly in references to learning, assessment, and institutional responsibility. These nominalised constructions obscure agency by removing teachers and students from the clause. As a result, complex educational practices are described as technical processes, thereby limiting the visibility of student effort, commitment, teacher involvement, and shared responsibility. Taken together, these results illustrate how promotional discourse reframes students as consumers and universities as providers of marketable experiences and outcomes. The study therefore highlights the importance of linguistically informed analysis in exposing the ideological assumptions embedded in apparently neutral university communications and showing how these linguistic features contribute to the broader marketisation and consumerisation of higher education.