Technologization of discourse

This chapter is concerned with processes of ‘technologization of discourse’ in workplaces during the past 40 to 50 years, especially in higher education, associated with the ‘neoliberal’ form of capitalism. Technologization of discourse combines research into (re)design of and (re)training in discourse practices. I discuss the main characteristics of technologization of discourse, its relationship to wider processes of social and cultural change, and how it affects actual discourse practices (my particular example is marketing in an extract from a British university prospectus). I conclude with a summary of how marketisation of universities has evolved and spun out from the 1980s up to the present.