Political discourse. Linguistic aspect



This article deals with the problem of political discourse analysis of hustings between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss in the UK. We give the definitions of what discourse and political discourse are, analyse the candidates’ verbal and non-verbal acts of communication and their presentation literacy, describe the conservative leadership election, look at the reaction from the media and carry out the linguistic analysis of the hustings. The conclusion that we’ve come to in our analysis is that these hustings were aimed at forming or changing party members’ opinions on their favourite candidate through verbal and non-verbal communication, the knowledge of presentation literacy and various linguistic means.

Keywords : discourse, political discourse, verbal and non-verbal acts of communication, presentation literacy, conservative leadership election, hustings, linguistic analysis.

Статья посвящена вопросу политического дискурса предвыборных выступлений Риши Сунака и Лиз Трасс в Великобритании. Мы даём определение понятиям дискурс и политический дискурс, анализируем вербальные и невербальные акты коммуникации кандидатов и их грамотность изложения информации, описываем внутрипартийные выборы в Консервативной партии, рассматриваем реакцию СМИ и выполняем лингвистический анализ предвыборных выступлений. Вывод, к которому мы пришли, заключается в том, что данные предвыборные выступления были нацелены на формирование или изменение мнения членов партии относительно их любимого кандидата с помощью вербальной и невербальной коммуникации, грамотности изложения и различных лингвистических приёмов.

Ключевые слова : дискурс, политический дискурс, вербальные и невербальные акты коммуникации, грамотность изложения информации, внутрипартийные выборы в консервативной партии, предвыборные выступления, лингвистический анализ.

Political discourse analysis of hustings between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss during the summer of 2022 in the UK is what this article deals with. Considering different personality types, backgrounds, the position in the UK government and the reputation of both candidates, it becomes quite prominent how certain verbal and non-verbal features and actions can form public opinion, create a certain image and change the way people think.

Dealing with such phenomenon in British politics as hustings, we carry out political discourse analysis in this article. But first we need to understand what the discourse itself is, what political discourse is, what it comprises and relates to.

Discourse is one of the four systems of language, the others being vocabulary, grammar and phonology. It may have various definitions but it is most frequently defined as spoken or written language in context, extended language, which has unity and purpose. The intensification of political life that is currently observed everywhere leads to an increasing interest in the problems of political communication and manifests itself, among other things, in greater popularity of political discourse analysis. Political discourse analysis, though sometimes ambiguous in its definition, generally focuses on the analysis of political discourse. It is normally defined as a special sign system designed specifically for political communication: for developing public consensus, making and justifying political and socio-political decisions. Political discourse in its turn is identified by the ones who create it, i.e. politicians. The vast majority of studies on political discourse are about the written and oral texts of politicians or political institutions. However, politicians are not the only participants here. They interact with different audiences: people, citizens, non-governmental organisations, masses etc. These groups are recipients. But context as an entity also matters. Here we can name various political events and encounters, settings such as time and place, intentions, goals etc.

We also analyse the linguistic component of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s hustings. Here it is also essential to understand what political linguistics and political communication are. Modern political linguistics is closely connected, among other things, with functional stylistics and text linguistics. Research here is interdisciplinary and includes elements of stylistic and rhetorical linguistic analysis. Political linguistics also deals with the problems of language, genre features typical of political discourse and transformations of vocabulary and phraseology which are determined by the features of political communication. But “the dominant purpose of political linguistics is a study of various connections between language, thinking, communication, entities of political activities and political condition of society and also strategies and tactics of political activities” [1]. And political communication is a process of transmitting information among politicians, mass media, and the public. It includes media and political speech analysis, attempts of certain individuals to influence some political process and also formal and informal interactions between the members of the public.

In summer 2022 on Thursday, the 7 ^th of July, Boris Johnson, British prime minister since 2019, resigned after a torrent of resignations by ministers and the then ongoing scandals. His resignation triggered a contest within the Conservative Party to become their next leader and the country’s prime minister. General election was not to be held but the conservative leadership election was. The rules of the contest are as follows: 1. Tory leadership campaigns have 2 stages: an elimination campaign through MP’s votes (MP — Member of Parliament) and then a head-to-head members vote. 2. In the first stage MPs vote in a secret ballot for their preferred candidate and at the end of each round the candidate with the least votes is eliminated until just two candidates remain. Those two are then put to the membership of the conservative party and whoever wins that vote will become party leader and with it inherit the position of prime minister. This is how the rules are described in the House of Commons Library briefing paper: Conservative Party leadership elections usually consist of two stages:

— Stage 1 — Conservative MPs choose two candidates to put forward to stage two.

— Stage 2 — Party members are balloted. The candidate with the most votes wins. [2]

The first stage started on the 13 ^th of July. That’s when the first ballot was held. Excluding the candidates who decided to withdraw from the election before the deadline for nominations came and including the ones who had reached the required threshold, there were 8 candidates. They were: Jeremy Hunt, Nadhim Zahawi, Suella Braverman, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. There were 5 rounds: 1 ^st round — 13 ^th July (Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were eliminated), 2 ^nd round — 14 ^th July (Suella Braverman was eliminated), 3 ^rd round — 18 ^th July (Tom Tugendhat was eliminated), 4 ^th round — 19 ^th July (Kemi Badenoch was eliminated), 5 ^th round — 20 ^th July (Penny Mordaunt was eliminated). Eventually Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss became the candidates to go forward to the ballot of party members. Rishi Sunak had the majority of MPs’ votes: 137 votes. Liz Truss had 113 votes. (Table 1)

Table 1

It was after the announcement of the two candidates that the time came for them to promote their campaigns even more vigorously. The timetable then was as follows: 21 ^st July — the House of Commons began its summer recess, 25 ^th July — the BBC held live leadership election debate, 28 ^th July — the first hustings event for Tory party members took place in Leeds. These events continued over the whole summer. 1 ^st August — ballot papers started being sent to party members, 4 ^th August — Sky News held live leadership election debate, 31 ^st August — the final hustings event took place in London, 2 ^nd September — the deadline for Tory party members to cast ballots came, 5 ^th September — the result of the membership ballot was announced, 6 ^th September — the winner of the ballot was appointed prime minister. [3]

So, as we’ve come to debates and hustings we need to distinguish these phenomena. A hustings is a meeting where election candidates or parties debate policies and answer questions from the audience. Hustings provide voters with an opportunity to hear the views of candidates or parties. [4] A debate is a formal discussion, for example in a parliament or an institution, in which people express different opinions about a particular subject and then vote on it. [5] In this article we are dealing with hustings.

12 hustings took place across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. We are going to analyse Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s performance in these events, their behaviour, verbal and non-verbal acts of communication, presentation literacy, vocabulary and grammar that they tend to use the most and also some phonetic peculiarities of their speech.

But first let’s learn more about them. We’ll start with Rishi Sunak. Rishi Sunak used to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer during Boris Johnson’s premiership. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is normally considered second most powerful member of the government after the prime minister. Rishi Sunak had long been seen as heir apparent to Boris Johnson but he had a turbulent few months before the summer events started. He was fined over partygate and his wife’s tax affairs were publicly scrutinized and challenged. Even though it might have bruised his reputation, it did so ever so slightly. So at the beginning of the conservative leadership election he was still the favourite candidate. He is one of the most recognisable MPs among the general public. He is also the richest MP in Parliament so there was some talk whether or not he was too rich to be prime minister. There could be a negative attitude from certain MPs, especially the ones who still backed Boris Johnson, because in their opinion he betrayed Boris when he resigned as Chancellor. His slogan was “Ready for Rishi”. Liz Truss was at the time the foreign secretary. She had had a pretty decorated career as a high-functioning politician. Over the years she had had a number of positions in government. She’s even got the record of being the longest continuously serving member of the then existing cabinet. Liz Truss sees herself as an anti-woke libertarian. One of the issues she could run into was the fact that she was quite closely linked with Boris Johnson and since many Tory MPs wanted a clean break from him, she could be considered not to be the candidate to rejuvenate the party. Her slogan was “Liz for Leader”.

Now let’s look more closely at their policies. Rishi Sunak had ruled out tax cuts until finances improved, he declined to raise defence funding and lift ban on new grammar schools and he also supports the Government’s controversial Rwanda asylum policy. Liz Truss pledged to cut taxes if she became prime minister, she backed reversal of the national insurance increase and wanted to cut regulation around farming, she pledged to increase defence spending and she similarly supports the Rwanda policy. She also wanted to introduce a long-term plan to reduce the size of government.

Now let’s move on to the hustings themselves. As we’ve already said, there were 12 of them: BBC live leadership election debate on the 25 ^th of July, hustings in Leeds on the 28 ^th of July, Sky News live leadership election debate on the 4 ^th of August, hustings in Eastbourne on the 5 ^th of August, in Darlington on the 9 ^th of August, in Cheltenham on the 11 ^th of August, in Perth, Scotland on the 16 ^th of August, in Belfast, Northern Ireland on the 17 ^th of August, in Manchester on the 19 ^th of August, in Birmingham on the 23 ^rd of August, in Norwich on the 25 ^th of August and in London on the 31 ^st of August.

In this article we are going to analyse and compare Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s hustings in Scotland and Norwich. We will also track down reactions from the British mass media.

So, Perth, Scotland, the 16 ^th of August. The stage is set right in front of the audience. It has a rectangular shape, so it’s quite narrow. In the middle of it there stand two chairs and a few coffee tables. The space for walking around is quite limited. As it usually goes, first the host of the hustings gives his speech, then goes out one supporter, an MP, who backs the candidate who is the first to give a talk this time. Today it’s Rishi Sunak. Once his campaign video has been rolled, he goes out onto the stage greeting the audience. Then his talk takes off. What has really got me about his speech is that it was always the same, hardly with any changes to it (except for some regional issues that he addressed in different towns or cities). But I don’t mean it in a negative way. It is a well-prepared speech, very much thought-through and not mundane in the least. He makes an introduction where he talks a little bit about his past “My dad was an NHS GP, my mom ran the local chemist where I grew up. And I spent all my time working in her shop…” and his values “So, that in a nutshell are my values: patriotism, family, hard work, service”. What is also good about his speech is that he outlines the main points he is going to cover: “Well, we need to do three things. First, we must restore trust. Then we need to rebuild the economy. And we need to reunite our country”. His speech consists of these three major topics on which Rishi elaborates.

Now let’s talk about his non-verbal acts of communication. How does the candidate move, what are his facial expressions, what gestures are typical of him? Rishi Sunak uses all the space available, moving left and right as if to address different parts of the audience. His gestures are open, his movements are smooth and fluid. He looks natural and not nervous at all. Even tough his speech may sound repetitive going from one hustings to another, it’s passionate and zealous. He even slightly squats sometimes when he makes an emphasis.

Now let’s talk about Liz Truss. First, her supporter gives a small introductory speech, her campaign video is played and then she walks onto the stage. Her speech begins. It’s hard to tell whether or not her speech is the same as the previous one but, in many ways, I suppose it is, with the most vital issues and topical problems to address and just some tweaks to make depending on the region you present your ideas to, but it doesn’t look as if it was entirely learnt by heart which is contrary to Sunak’s speech. She also begins with talking about her childhood calling herself “a child of the Union”. She recalls her schooldays when she “went to primary school in Paisley” before she “moved to Leeds in England”. In her speech she talks about how she wants to grow the economy, speaks about migration and scrapping certain EU laws and also about energy.

Talking about her non-verbal acts of communication, compared to Rishi Sunak Liz Truss doesn’t walk around on the stage but only turns. Her gestures are also quite open but they are a bit jerky and they may sometimes look quite unnatural or at least that’s how it struck me. What was odd is that she could stand and talk with just one rigid gesture for several minutes. She doesn’t look nervous but the way she presents her ideas and gesticulates while doing that creates an image that it’s hard for her to get her idea through without this particular gesticulation. In her speech speech Liz sounds enthusiastic but her talk is less engaging than Rishi’s.

Then it’s time for the questions from the audience. The host of the hustings controls the whole process. First goes Rishi Sunak. He and the host both sit on the chairs while the host asks the candidate questions on different issues and his policies. But when the audience’s turn to ask questions comes, the most prominent thing about Rishi’s behaviour is that he always stands up in order to see the person asking the question. Then Liz Truss comes back onto the stage. When she answers the questions from party members she doesn’t always stand up like she didn’t during the hustings in Norwich. That’s the only difference between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak here.

Hustings in Norwich went pretty much in the same way. But what is interesting here is the quick-fire questions from the host and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s answers. It went as follows:

Table 2

Rishi Sunak	The host	Liz Truss
Furlough scheme did okay. <…>	12 years in power under the Tories. Can you give me a single public service in this country that works well?	Well, I think our education system has got a hell of a lot better over the 12 past years. <…>
Friend.	President Macron: friend or foe?	The jury’s out. If I become prime minister, I’ll judge him on deeds not words
I mean clearly fighting crime.	Police officers dancing the macarena or investigating crimes?	Investigating crimes, obviously.
No.	Mask mandates or no mask mandates?	No mask mandates.
No.	Yes or no. Is a trans woman a woman?	No.
There’s no woke bias option in there. Look, the BBC is a proud British institution, right? It easy to bash the BBC and clearly if I did that, everyone would clap and that’d be fine. You know, I actually think the BBC is something that everyone in this country is actually proud of but it’s right that it reflects the values of everyone in this country. <…> It’s not about labour or conservative. It’s about reflecting the values. And maybe actually it’s rural communities or urban communities quite frankly.	The BBC: Tory bias or Labour bias or studiously neutral?	I don’t think anybody is neutral. I think we’re kidding ourselves if we pretend there are institutions or people who are neutral. I’d rather have more honest bias.
Gosh. Um… Crikey. I’d take the stairs.	Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with: Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon?	Liz Truss: Uh… Probably… I think, Nicola Sturgeon. The host: Why? Liz Truss: Well, I’d hope to persuade her to stop being a separatist be the time we got to the ground floor. Frankly, the idea of being stuck in a lift with Keir Starmer strikes me as extremely boring. The host: Do you know what Rishi Sunak said? Liz Truss: What? The host: He said he’d take the stairs.
Oh Gosh. I mean Liz Truss… We’re here in her hometown and regardless of that, her home area. Look, we’ve got to move forward as a party, right? <…> I’m sure, you know, upset with me for resigning, you wish Boris was here. That’s not gonna help us move forward, right? It is simply not. We have got to move forward as a party and when this is over, we’re on the same team, we’re on the same family, we’ve got to focus on beating Keir Starmer and we’re not gonna do that if we’re looking backwards. We’ve got to look forward.	And finally. If not you, who would make a better prime minister: Boris Johnson or Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak?	Boris Johnson.

Looking at their answers you can already tell how different they are and maybe make your own conclusions on the way the both candidates are. When watching this fun segment of this hustings, you can also observe how the contestants answer the questions: how fast they speak, how they move etc. Rishi Sunak concentrates on the questions just as Liz Truss, they both make little jokes. Rishi Sunak is all smiles and feels calm and relaxed but he sometimes tends to speak quite at length to get his point across and while talking he maintains direct eye contact both with the audience and the host. His speech is quite rapid compared to that of Liz Truss.

Now that we’ve covered the hustings themselves, let’s look at the reaction from mass media. At the very beginning of the conservative leadership election, even before the beginning of the members vote, Rishi Sunak was considered to be the favourite candidate and in fact he was among MPs with him passing Liz Truss with 24 votes at the final round of stage 1. When the second stage began and the candidates were to convince party members to vote for them, the opinions of party members appeared to be a bit different. (Fig. 1, 2) Almost halfway through the second stage, with Sunak behind in the polls and very little time left before the conservative membership began casting their ballots, Rishi started making some fairly drastic last minute campaign changes. He especially updated his tax plan in order to make it more appealing. People started wondering why he was getting increasingly desperate. So it turned out that party members mostly supported Liz Truss which was contrary to MPs. But Rishi started losing some MPs as well at the time with some high-ranking Tory MPs falling in line behind Truss. In his shifts Rishi Sunak was moving to the right. Many believed at the time that he was being reactive but not necessarily proactive and started fighting on Truss’ terms. At around that time and since that time the idea that Sunak might lose and Truss win was lingering in the air and was in fact pretty much until the result of membership ballot was announced on the 5 ^th of September. At some point Rishi Sunak started calling himself an underdog which became the leitmotiv of his campaign videos. In a nutshell, during the first stage the media were quite neutral but during the second stage the strengthening of Liz Truss’ position was becoming more and more accentuated and according to most of the mass media Sunak’s chances to win were unlikely.

Fig. 1	Fig. 2

Now let’s finish off with the linguistic analysis of the hustings. We’re going to talk about the vocabulary that the candidates use, grammatical constructions that they prefer and some phonetic features of their speech. Vocabulary-wise the vocabulary they use is mostly typical daily-life one with a number of Business English terms, political terms and certain names of UK organisations, institutions, policies and movements such as VAT (value-added tax), corporation tax, the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, the NHS (National Health Service), the SNP (Scottish National Party), Furlough scheme/ the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme etc.

Grammar-wise Rishi Sunak’s speech is abundant in subordinate clauses such as, for example, adjective clauses (Now, for my parents there was one thing that they believed above all else… ) (And that’s why today I passionately believe that the best way that we reduce inequality in society , the best way that we spread opportunity , indeed the best way that we transform people’s lives is by ensuring that the birthright of every child is a world-class education) (And as you can see in this leadership race I have not chosen to say the things that people may want to hear , I have said the things that I believe they need to hear ) and noun clauses (And that’s why today I passionately believe that the best way that we reduce inequality in society, the best way that we spread opportunity, indeed the best way that we transform people’s lives is by ensuring that the birthright of every child is a world-class education ) (And I know looking at you that those are your values too) . Liz Truss’ speech contains more simple sentences compared to Rishi Sunak’s and more compound rather than complex sentences (We promised we wouldn’t do it and we are making it harder for ordinary families and ordinary businesses. We can afford not to do it, we can still pay the debt down after three years. I’d also have a temporary moratorium on the green energy levy to save people money on fuel bills) (And I’ve seen the type 26 being built and governed, and I want to see more of our successful defense industry here in Scotland succeed. And I will make that happen. And I will also make sure we protect and renew our independent nuclear deterrent) That may be one of the reasons why her speech may sound less coherent than Rishi Sunak’s. They both have a good number of infinitives in various functions (Rishi Sunak: Because we as conservative know the bonds of family are more important than anything any government could ever hope to replicate (object) and we must never forget that; Now, in my family the thing we prioritized was hard work as the way to forge (attribute) ahead; Then we need to rebuild (object) the economy) (Liz Truss: What they want is for their children to have (predicative) a good education; I’d also have a temporary moratorium on the green energy levy to save (adverbial modifier of purpose) people money on fuel bills; And we need to be proud (object) to be conservatives) What was peculiar about Truss’ speech in particular is that she generally has a tendency to repeat one and the same word 3 times for emphasis (But most of all I will make sure that now and forever our fantastic union goes from strength to strength to strength ).

Phonetics-wise both of the candidates speak with the British accent. Rishi Sunak sounds quite standard to me while Liz Truss has some interesting features in her accent. Considering the nature of hustings, the phonetic style in this case is prepared speaking. The type/style of pronunciation is neutral because the candidates speak in front of medium-sized audiences. This style of pronunciation is characterised by a complete set of sound modifications in connected speech: fairly high degrees of assimilation, reduction, elision and monophthongisation of diphthongs and triphthongs. On the prosodic level it is an average between the full and the conversational styles. The length of sense-groups is largely determined by the lexical and grammatical structure of the sentence. The degree of loudness and the range can be characterised as medium. The tonetic patterns are most diversified. The most typical scales are all kinds of the so-called heterogeneous, or mixed scales, comprising elements of the homogeneous ones — gradually or broken descending and ascending, sliding, scandent and level in combination with a vast variety of tones (simple or compound). When the candidates answer the audience’s questions, we observe the phonetic style of spontaneous speaking but the style of pronunciation is still the neutral one because it falls into the type of formal speaking with strangers rather than informal everyday speech. [6]

To conclude, hustings between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss in the UK were aimed at forming, changing or solidifying party members’ opinions on who they wanted to vote for. It was done through verbal and non-verbal communication, the knowledge of presentation literacy and other means analysed in this article. The candidates performed to the best of their ability and tried to convince the party members, the media and the general public that they were the candidate to lead the Conservative Party and also be the new prime minister of the UK.

References:

1. Чудинов А. П., Политическая лингвистика, Москва, Издательство «Флинта», Издательство «Наука», 2007, с.7.
2. commonslibrary.parliament.uk; by Neil Johnston; 25th October 2022
3. The Daily Record; 21st July 2022
4. www.electoralcommission.org.uk
5. Collins Dictionary
6. Медведева Т. В., Скопинцева Т. С., Стёпкина И. Ю., Коммуникативная фонетика английского языка.