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Part of
Doing Politics: Discursivity, performativity and mediation in political discourse
Edited by Michael Kranert and Geraldine Horan
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 80] 2018
► pp. 27–58

Chapter 2
“We have the character of an island nation”

A discourse-historical analysis of David Cameron’s “Bloomberg speech” on the European Union

More than five years have passed since former British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a much acknowledged and controversial speech on 23 January 2013, in respect to the British relationship with the European Union (EU). Europe and the EU are now, of course, facing different challenges than five years ago. The contrasting national and transnational identities which emerge in the so-called “Bloomberg Speech” (BS) imply a nationalistic body-politics which constructs the United Kingdom and England as separate entities contrasted to “the continent”, i.e. Europe. Hence, the BS oscillates between two extremes in its attempt to alternatively observe maximum distance to the EU and some proximity to its economic policies. Moreover, both the topoi of urgency and threat/danger are appealed to – warning the EU that it would suffer under the loss of the United Kingdom, but also warning British voters that Brexit would damage their future and prosperity. This speech can be perceived as the starting point for the referendum on 23 June 2016, which resulted in a tiny majority wanting to leave the EU (“Brexit”). Of course, there is no clear causal connection between the BS and Brexit, but many arguments of the “Remain and Leave campaigns” can be traced to the BS, as well as the huge ambivalence framing Cameron’s position towards the EU.

Keywords: Brexit, Bloomberg Speech, discourse-historical approach, topos, European Union, nationalism, body-politics, calculated ambivalence, discursive strategy
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The discourse-historical approach and nationalistic body-politics
    • The discourse-historical approach – A summary
    • Nationalism and body-politics
  • Broad and narrow contexts
  • Analysing the Bloomberg Speech
    • Macro-topics
    • Argumentative structure
    • Body-politics – “The island nation”
    • Coda
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.80.02wod
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