1880-1914
A01=Luke Blaxill
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Luke Blaxill
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British elections
British history
British politics
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD1
Category=HBLL
Category=N
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
election rhetoric
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
historical analysis
language of politics
Language_English
PA=Available
political discourse
political speeches
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
radical approach
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780861933549
- Weight: 660g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 17 Apr 2020
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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A radical new approach to the political speeches delivered during this period.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century have been widely eulogised as a "golden age" of popular platform oratory. This book considers the language of British elections - especially stump speeches - during this period. It employs a "big data" methodology inspired by computational linguistics, using text-mining to analyse over five million words delivered by Conservative, Liberal and Labour candidates in the nine elections that took place in this period. It systematically and authoritatively quantifies how and how far key issues, values, traditions and personalities manifested themselves in wider party discourse.
The author reassesses a number of central historical debates, arguing that historians have considerably underestimated the transformative impact of the 1883-5 reforms on rural party language, and the purchase of Joseph Chamberlain's Unauthorized Programme; that the centrality of Home Rule and Imperialism in the late 1880s and 1890s have been exaggerated; and that the New Liberalism's linguistic impact was relatively weak, failing to contain the message of the emerging Labour alternative.
LUKE BLAXILL gained his PhD in History and the Digital Humanities from Kings College, London, in 2012; he is currently College Lecturer in Modern British History at Hertford College, Oxford.
