A fool and his money are soon parted: A critical examination of credit card websites

TY - JOUR

T1 - A fool and his money are soon parted

T2 - A critical examination of credit card websites

AU - Mooney, Annabelle

PY - 2019/9/19

Y1 - 2019/9/19

N2 - This paper critiques the idea that a fool and their money are soon parted by using multimodal analysis to explore one of the ways in which people are parted from money: credit cards. I analyse the homepages of two products, the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ as rated by UK consumer organisation Which? In order to understand the range of communication used in these websites, I employ a multimodal analysis of their language, choice of colour, typeface, layout and images (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006; van Leeuwen 2005, 2011). Together, these show that the individual is constructed in different ways by the two products. For the card rated best, the viewer is constructed as a trustworthy consumer who is rewarded for this with further opportunities for consumption. For the card rated as worst, the viewer is positioned as a failed, but redeemable, consumer. The different constructions of the consumer also suggest that ‘credit’ is desirable but ‘debt’ is not. Taking into account the moral complexity of debt, I suggest that the lexical item credit card would be better changed to debt token. I argue that the real foolishness is the system itself, the one that credit cards (‘debt tokens’) index and exemplify. Taking the two sites together, I show that consumption is constructed as both desirable and risky. As credit cards construct the individual as an (isolated) person with few rights and great responsibility (Henry 2010), I suggest that these sites index the central role of the individual as a consumer. A good citizen is parted from their money.© 2019, The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper due to be published in RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version mayremain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish tocite from it.

AB - This paper critiques the idea that a fool and their money are soon parted by using multimodal analysis to explore one of the ways in which people are parted from money: credit cards. I analyse the homepages of two products, the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ as rated by UK consumer organisation Which? In order to understand the range of communication used in these websites, I employ a multimodal analysis of their language, choice of colour, typeface, layout and images (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006; van Leeuwen 2005, 2011). Together, these show that the individual is constructed in different ways by the two products. For the card rated best, the viewer is constructed as a trustworthy consumer who is rewarded for this with further opportunities for consumption. For the card rated as worst, the viewer is positioned as a failed, but redeemable, consumer. The different constructions of the consumer also suggest that ‘credit’ is desirable but ‘debt’ is not. Taking into account the moral complexity of debt, I suggest that the lexical item credit card would be better changed to debt token. I argue that the real foolishness is the system itself, the one that credit cards (‘debt tokens’) index and exemplify. Taking the two sites together, I show that consumption is constructed as both desirable and risky. As credit cards construct the individual as an (isolated) person with few rights and great responsibility (Henry 2010), I suggest that these sites index the central role of the individual as a consumer. A good citizen is parted from their money.© 2019, The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper due to be published in RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version mayremain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish tocite from it.

U2 - 10.22363/2312-9182-2019-23-3-642-658

DO - 10.22363/2312-9182-2019-23-3-642-658

M3 - Article

SN - 2312-9212

VL - 23

SP - 642

EP - 658

JO - Russian Journal of Linguistics

JF - Russian Journal of Linguistics

IS - 3

ER -