Overview
- Considers the ways in which we use language to talk about political, national, social and racial divisions
- Analyses what identities were invoked during and after recent UK electoral and referendum campaigns
- Questions whether linguistic practices can forge unity in a post EU and UK setting
Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society (RPS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book focuses on the language of two unions (the United Kingdom and the European Union), tracing the emergence of divisive discourses from indyref to Brexit. It explains the background to the creation of these unions and summarizes recent political events that have brought their future into question. It considers which identities (national, supranational, social, ethnic or racial) were invoked during the indyref and EU referendum campaigns, emphasising the crucial role played by language in maintaining these identities, in conceptualizing the nation, to do politics, and its power to unite or divide. Based on analysis of three specialist corpora totaling over 143 million words and comprising multiple text types (newspapers, speeches, Twitter posts, parliamentary debates, party political websites and campaign materials), it interrogates the language used by politicians, the media and the public, uncovering increasingly problematic, scaremongering, xenophobic and incendiary linguistic strategies used to divide us from them.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Fiona M. Douglas is Lecturer in English Language in the School of English, University of Leeds, UK. Her academic interests include corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, media language and dialects of English. She is the author of Scottish Newspapers, Language and Identity (2009).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Political, Public and Media Discourses from Indyref to Brexit
Book Subtitle: The Divisive Language of Union
Authors: Fiona M. Douglas
Series Title: Rhetoric, Politics and Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67384-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-67383-3Published: 23 April 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-67386-4Published: 23 April 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-67384-0Published: 22 April 2021
Series ISSN: 2947-5147
Series E-ISSN: 2947-5155
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 161
Number of Illustrations: 12 b/w illustrations, 13 illustrations in colour
Topics: European Politics, Political Communication, Political Sociology, Political Science, Linguistics, general, Electoral Politics