Pleb: a history of the word that sparked ‘plebgate’

Parliamentary Affairs, 2001

Discourse and Society, 2003

This article explores discourses of ‘political correctness’ (‘PC’) in a corpus of articles gathered from three broadsheet newspapers in the UK between 1994 and 1999. Using the software package WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1999) two types of analysis were undertaken: first, a numerical count of so- called ‘PC’-related terms (‘political correctness’, ‘politically correct’, etc.) in each of the three newspapers; and second, a compilation of the ‘keywords’ which occurred most frequently within the corpus in relation to the term ‘political correctness’. Our study reveals an overall decline in the use of ‘PC’- related terms throughout the period in question, but suggests some interesting shifts in the way in which discourses of ‘political correctness’ have been drawn upon as a means of framing debates over the British Labour Party.

2014

This chapter examines the impact of the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal on public attitudes towards politicians and politics. Drawing on data from a three-wave representative panel survey fielded between early 2009 and spring 2010, the chapter probes citizens’ evaluations of MPs. It reports the immediate response to the scandal before exploring its impact over the medium term. The chapter finds that, contrary to expectations, the scandal’s impact was surprisingly limited. If anything, respondents were less critical of politicians six months after the scandal than immediately before the media frenzy first broke. The chapter discusses various psychological and structural factors that may account for this finding and locates the public response to the scandal within the broader mood of disenchantment that currently pervades British politics.

Critical Quarterly, 48 (2). pp. 85-90. ISSN 0011-1562 , 2007

Broad questions of political deception and trust in public figures are examined in this article, with reference to a momentary but explosive interlude in British political life: a series of calls for the resignation of Home Secretary Charles Clarke in April 2006 following allegations that he had misled the public during a BBC2 'Newsnight' interview about the release of foreign nationals from UK prisons. Wider issues concerning accuracy in public communication are drawn out from the example discussed, and a notion of public ‘meaning troublespots’ is outlined (as developed further in the author's 'Meaning in the media: discourse, controversy and debate', CUP, 2010).

The paper addresses the meaning that the snowflake lexeme has acquired in public discourse in the post-Brexit UK and the post-election USA. The research of online publications and audience's comments reveals that snowflake, metaphorical by origin, is used to denote a representative of Generation Y and, consequently, verbalizes an intergenerational divide. This semantic nucleus is coupled with the meaning 'a psychological type that combines such traits as hypersensitivity, intolerance and sense of entitlement', which invests the lexeme with negative connotations. When used in an argument, the connotative meaning may supplant the denotation, turning snowflake into a pejorative label. Introduction Issues of generations and their peculiarities are the field of sociology and, for a number of reasons, became important in the 20 th century. To keep the wheel of industry turning, manufacturers had to study consumers' needs and turn to advertising agencies to promote products in an appealing way. In the end of the 20 th century – at the beginning of the 21 st century the trend to commodify everything became obvious: it is not only material goods that are offered for sale. Education, in particular university education, has turned into a service and educational centres compete for students, struggle for new markets, adjust to new circumstances and elaborate their image-building campaigns. Similar competition is observed in the political sphere which has been transformed into show biz where politicians sell their image rather than ideas or ideologies. In all the cases, senders of messages are aware of the competitive environment and study carefully their recipients to win them over. In 2016, the UK European Union membership referendum and the US presidential election rhetoric drew on social stratification issues and the divide ran, among other things, along generational differences. Since Brexit and Donald Trump's entering the White House were crucial to the states' future, in both cases " countervoted " citizens experienced severe frustration. The common assumption that both events were the choice of the older generation has only fuelled the generation gap issue: Trumpers and Brexiteers turned out to be baby boomers and GenXers, while Clintonites and Remainiacs appeared to be mostly Millennials. The public debate soon became very emotional, since the participants did not hesitate to appeal to audience's feeling of belonging, i.e.identity, by coining, investing with specific connotations and using new lexemes to denote generational affiliations.

Abramis eBooks, 2018

Res Rhetorica, 2023

Recenzja/Review: Ofer Feldman (ed.), Debasing Political Rhetoric: Dissing Opponents, Journalists, and Minorities in Populist Leadership, Springer 2023 and Ofer Feldman (ed.), Political Debasement: Incivility, Contempt, and Humiliation in Parliamentary and Public Discourse, Springer 2023

Contemporary Politics, 2012

This article makes an argument of almost primitive simplicity: politicians have become examples of Cohen's 'folk devils'. This, in turn, raises as yet unexplored questions about demonisation and social discourse, the capacity of politicians, the role of invisible political actors, the dangers of 'self-evident truths' and the challenges of revitalising politics within a low-trust high-blame environment. More specifically, this article engages in a process of conceptual travelling through which the theory of moral panics and the concept of 'folk devils' are deployed in order to tease apart a recent political crisis. The core argument of this article is that Cohen's seminal work on folk devils provides a powerful conceptual lens through which to generate a more reasoned and balanced account of political behaviour. More broadly, it argues that the 'bad faith model of politics' presents a severely distorted view of political reality that urgently needs revision.

Undergraduate, 2001

History 323 2001?

Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2018

Concerns have reached the mainstream about how social media are affecting political outcomes. One trajectory for this is the exposure of politicians to online abuse. In this paper we use 1.4 million tweets from the months before the 2015 and 2017 UK general elections to explore the abuse directed at politicians. Results show that abuse increased substantially in 2017 compared with 2015. Abusive tweets show a strong relationship with total tweets received, indicating for the most part impersonality, but a second pathway targets less prominent individuals, suggesting different kinds of abuse. Accounts that send abuse are more likely to be throwaway. Economy and immigration were major foci of abusive tweets in 2015, whereas terrorism came to the fore in 2017.