CONFLICTING DISCOURSES OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ AND ‘EQUALITY’: A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE OF PRO- AND ANTI-LGBTQ+ INCLUSION IN THE RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX EDUCATION GUIDANCE FOR SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND

ABSTRACT New statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance for schools in England was published in 2019. One of the major revisions since the preceding version has been the new inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. Some groups in the UK have recently protested against this inclusion of positive teaching about LGBTQ+ identities and relationships, suggesting that, although there is overwhelming support for the new guidance, there are still groups in society who are opposed to democratic teaching about this dimension of equality. Focusing on publicly-available video recordings of the protests, this article firstly critically analyses the key discursive strategies deployed by the anti-LGBTQ+ protest groups to produce discrimination and denial. I then compare the language used by the protest groups against the language used by other UK groups who support and continue to campaign for LGBTQ+ inclusion in RSE. Positive discourse analysis, as a progressive dimension of critical discourse analysis, is used to examine how the language used by these groups functions to resist the discriminatory discourse used by the anti-LGBTQ+ groups analysed in the first part of the article. Analysis of the discourse used by the two sets of groups reveals conflicting discourses around what is perceived to constitute ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ in the context of LGBTQ+ inclusion and schools, suggesting that these are fragile concepts in the current British political climate.摘要 2019年，英国英格兰地区发布了全新的法定性关系与性教育（Relationships and Sex Education, RSE）学校指导方针。相较于此前版本，本次修订的重大调整之一在于首次纳入了LGBTQ+群体身份与相关关系的教学内容。近期英国部分团体发起抗议，反对在教学中正面讲授LGBTQ+群体身份与相关关系的内容，这些团体声称，尽管新指导方针获得了压倒性的公众支持，但社会中仍有群体反对围绕这一平等维度开展的民主式教学。本文以抗议活动的公开录像为研究样本，首先批判性剖析反LGBTQ+抗议团体所采用的核心话语策略，以探析其如何制造歧视与否认言论。随后，本文将抗议团体所使用的话语，与英国其他支持并持续倡导在RSE中纳入LGBTQ+相关内容的团体所使用的话语进行对照分析。作为批判性话语分析（Critical Discourse Analysis, CDA）的进步分支，积极话语分析被用于探析上述支持团体的话语如何发挥作用，以抵制本文第一部分所分析的反LGBTQ+团体的歧视性话语。对两类团体话语的分析显示，围绕在学校教育语境下纳入LGBTQ+相关内容一事，何为"民主"与"平等"的认知存在明显冲突，这表明在当前英国政治氛围中，这两个概念仍属于易受争议的脆弱议题。