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Discourse of Olympic Security

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The Discourse of Security

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the discursive realization of the security operation for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Drawing on Didier Bigo’s (Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes After 9/11. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, 2008) conceptualisation of the ‘banopticon’, it explores which distinctive linguistic features are used in documents relating to security for London 2012 and how Olympic security is realized as a discursive practice. Our findings suggest that this discourse indeed realized key features of the banopticon: exceptionalism, exclusion and prediction; as well as what we call ‘pedagogisation’. Claims were made for the exceptional scale of the Olympic events; predictive technologies were proposed to assess the threat from terrorism; and access to Olympic venues was constituted to resemble transit through national boundaries. Finally, pedagogic practices were constituted to regulate the training of security operatives for the Games.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Malcolm N. MacDonald

  2. School of Education, University of Hull, Hull, UK

    Duncan Hunter

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  1. Malcolm N. MacDonald
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  2. Duncan Hunter
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Correspondence to Malcolm N. MacDonald .

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MacDonald, M.N., Hunter, D. (2019). Discourse of Olympic Security. In: The Discourse of Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97193-3_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97193-3_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97192-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97193-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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