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Part of
Exploring Language and Society with Big Data: Parliamentary discourse across time and space
Edited by Minna Korhonen, Haidee Kotze and Jukka Tyrkkö
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 111] 2023
► pp. 142–165

Chapter 5
Leaving the EU out of the ingroup

A diachronic analysis of the use of we and us in British parliamentary debates (1973–2015)

| Tampere University
In this chapter, I examine what types of diachronic changes the use of first-person plural pronouns signal in the way the EU has been discussed in the British House of Commons. By using methods of corpus-assisted discourse studies, I analyse the use of the pronouns in relation to the EU in parliamentary debates in the time period from 1973 to 2015. I am interested in when and in which contexts the EU is included in and when excluded from the ingroup in the debates. The chapter contributes to linguistic studies on Brexit and is part of a larger research project focusing on diachronic changes in the discursive representation of the EU in British parliamentary debates and press.
Keywords: Brexit, the EU, personal pronouns, corpus-assisted discourse studies, Hansard
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Personal pronouns and the discursive construction of national identities
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.We and us in relation to the EU in British parliament
    • 4.1Referents of 1PP in the context of the EU
    • 4.2Party differences
    • 4.3Actions connected to the ingroup
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.111.05rai
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