Cover not available
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
References
Alexander, Marc & Davies, Mark
2015 The Hansard Corpus 1803–2005. [URL] (13 February 2020).
Baker, Paul
2006 Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul, Gabrielatos, Costas, Khosravinik, Majid, Krzyżanowski, Michał, McEnery, Tony & Wodak, Ruth
2008 A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society 19(3): 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael
2010 Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan & Bulcaen, Chris
2000 Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 447–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cap, Piotr
2018 “We don’t want any immigrants or terrorists here”: The linguistic manufacturing of xenophobia in the post-2015 Poland. Discourse & Society 29(4): 380–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul
2005 Vectors, viewpoint and viewpoint shift: Toward a Discourse Space Theory. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 3: 78–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie & Fairclough, Norman
1999 Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Cramer, Jennifer
2010 “Do we really want to be like them?”: Indexing Europeanness through pronominal use. Discourse & Society 21(6): 619–637. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Cillia, Rudolf, Reisigl, Martin & Wodak, Ruth
1999 The discursive construction of national identities. Discourse & Society 10(2): 149–173. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Fina, Anna
1995 Pronominal choice, identity and solidarity in political discourse. Text: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 15(3): 379–410.Google Scholar
Dekavalla, Marina
2010 Tax, war and waiting lists: The construction of national identity in newspaper coverage of general elections after devolution. Discourse & Society 21(6): 638–654. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
1989 Language and Power. New York NY: Longman.Google Scholar
Fontana, Cary & Parsons, Craig
2015 “One woman’s prejudice”: Did Margaret Thatcher cause Britain’s anti-Europeanism? Journal of Common Market Studies 53(1): 89–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hardt-Mautner, Gerlinde
1995 “Only connect”: Critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. UCREL Technical Paper 6. Lancaster: University of Lancaster.
Hiltunen, Turo, Räikkönen, Jenni & Tyrkkö, Jukka
2020 Investigating colloquialization in the British parliamentary record in late 19th and early 20th century. Language Sciences 79, 101270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunston, Sarah
2007 Semantic prosody revisited. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 12(2): 249–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Imao, Yasu
2008–2018 CasualConc (Version 2.0.7.) [Computer software] [URL] (17 August 2021).
Íñigo-Mora, Isabel
2004 On the use of the personal pronoun we in communities. Journal of Language and Politics 3(1): 27–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Islentyeva, Anna
2018 The undesirable migrant in the British press: Creating bias through language. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 119(2): 419–442.Google Scholar
Krizsán, Attila
2011 “The EU is Not Them, But Us!” The First Person Plural and the Articulation of Collective Identities in European Political Discourse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Lenz, Friedrich
2003 Deictic conceptualisation of space, time and person: Introduction. In Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 112], Friedrich Lenz (ed.), vi–xiv. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ludlow, Piers
2002 Us or them? The meaning of Europe in British political discourse. In The Meaning of Europe, Mikael af Malmborg & Bo Stråth (eds), 101–124. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony, Brezina, Vaclav & Baker, Helen
2019 The UK, Europe and the path to Brexit – the long view: Europe in two centuries of British newspapers. Plenary given at BCICLE 2019: 8th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English, 26–28 September 2019. Bamberg, Germany.
Mollin, Sandra
2007 The Hansard hazard: Gauging the accuracy of British parliamentary transcripts. Corpora 2(2): 187–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter & Harré, Rom
1990 Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Oddo, John
2011 War legitimation discourse: Representing ‘us’ and ‘them’ in four US presidential addresses. Discourse & Society 22(3): 287–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan
2004 “Utterly content in each other’s company”: Semantic prosody and semantic preference. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9(1): 131–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan, Duguid, Alison & Taylor, Charlotte
2013 Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 55]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petersoo, Pille
2007 What does ‘we’ mean? National deixis in the media. Journal of Language and Politics 6(3): 419–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Proctor, Katarzyna & Su, Lily I-Wen
2011 The first person plural in political discourse: American politicians in interviews and in a debate. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 3251–3266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Räikkönen, Jenni
2020 Metaphors separating the United Kingdom from the EU in British parliamentary debates from 2000 to 2016. In Metaphor in Political Conflict: Populism and Discourse, Ruth Breeze & Carmen Llamas (eds), 27–54. Pamplona: EUNSA.Google Scholar
Riihimäki, Jenni
2019 At the heart and in the margins: Discursive construction of British national identity in relation to the EU in British parliamentary debates from 1973 to 2015. Discourse & Society 30(4): 412–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, John
1991 Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2004 Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slembrouck, Stef
1992 The parliamentary Hansard ‘verbatim’ report: The written construction of spoken discourse. Language and Literature 1(2): 101–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun
1993 Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park CA: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2011 “Us” and “them”: Inclusion and exclusion – Discrimination via discourse. In Identity, Belonging and Migration, Gerard Delanty, Ruth Wodak & Paul Jones (eds), 54–77. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, de Cillia, Rudolf & Reisigl, Martin
2009 The Discursive Construction of National Identities. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar