The role of adversarial discourse in political opposition

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bull
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
Ed Miliband ◽  
The Uk

The focus of this study is on the role played by adversarial questioning in political opposition. As an illustrative example, a detailed analysis is presented of two sessions of Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK House of Commons (6 and13 July, 2011), in which the Leader of the Opposition (Ed Miliband) challenged the Prime Minister (David Cameron) regarding his handling of the British phone-hacking scandal. The study is conceptualized in terms of theories of politeness (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987) and impoliteness (Culpeper 1996), also in terms of the concept of follow-ups (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975). It is argued that this analysis has implications for all three linguistic conceptualizations, furthermore that PMQs, despite its many detractors and deficiencies, can play an important role in sustaining political dialogue and political accountability through adversarial questioning.

Calling Mr Speaker ‘Mr Speaker’

Pragmatics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bull ◽  
Anita Fetzer ◽  
Dániel Z. Kádár
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Conflict Avoidance ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Normative Expectation ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Speaker Of The House ◽  
The Uk

Abstract Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the UK House of Commons is a ritual event, governed by a cluster of conventions. Members of Parliament (MPs) must address their remarks to the Prime Minister (PM) through the medium of the Speaker of the House, who is responsible for maintaining order during debates, and determining which MP may speak next. Due to the sacred role of the Speaker and the prevalence of conventionalised conflict avoidance between the PM and those who ask challenging questions, PMQs resembles archaic tribal councils, in which rights and obligations prevail. Yet, the importance of conventionalised indirectness and the sacred role of the Speaker do not correlate with a lack of face-threats and challenges. PMQs represents an aggressive ritual setting in which the ritual roles and rules only offer a façade to package aggression, and indeed may operate as interactional resources whereby participants can even increase the efficiency of their verbal attacks. Thus, PMQs embodies a scene that ritual experts define as ‘anti-structural’ in character: in this setting, the normative expectation in daily life to avoid conflict is temporarily suspended, to such an extent that conflict has become the ritual norm and is regarded as quintessential to this parliamentary institution.

scholarly journals Interview with Guido Rings: “We need intercultural solidarity if we want to survive and prosper in a world hit by ultranationalism”

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Stephen Trinder
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Far Right ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Vice Chair ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Executive Agency ◽  
The Eu

As a master’s and Ph.D. student at Anglia Ruskin University in 2011, I recall the central message in lectures given by my eventual Ph.D. supervisor Professor Guido Rings was that we cannot underestimate the enduring strength of the legacy of colonialism in Europe and its influence on shaping contemporary attitudes towards immigration. Indeed, as I was completing my studies, I became increasingly aware of the negative rhetoric towards migrants in politics and right-wing press. In an attempt to placate the far-right of his party and address a growing threat from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a discourse of ‘othernising’ migrants on the basis of their supposed rejection of ‘Britishness’ from former UK Prime Minister David Cameron in particular caught my attention. The result of this was tightening of immigration regulations, which culminated of course in the now-infamous Brexit vote of 2016. Almost a decade after my graduation, Professor Rings is currently Vice Chair for the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission and continues to work at Anglia Ruskin University at the level of Ph.D. supervisor. He still publishes widely in the field of Migration Studies and his recent high-profile book The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema (Routledge, 2016) and editorships in the fields of culture and identity (iMex Interdisciplinario Mexico) argue for increased intercultural solidarity in Europe as well as a strengthening of supranational organizations like the EU and the UN to offset growing nationalism. I got in touch with Professor Rings to find out where he feels Europe stands today with regard to migration and get his comments on the continued rise of nationalism on the continent.

Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-213
Author(s):  
Christopher Cochrane ◽  
Jean-François Godbout ◽  
Jason Vandenbeukel
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Independent Effect ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Government

Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy with a bicameral legislature at the national level. Members of the upper House, styled the Senate, are appointed by the prime minister, and members of the lower House, the House of Commons, are elected in single-member plurality electoral districts. In practice, the House of Commons is by far the more important of the two chambers. This chapter, therefore, investigates access to the floor in the Canadian House of Commons. We find that the age, gender, and experience of MPs have little independent effect on access to the floor. Consistent with the dominant role of parties in Canadian political life, we find that an MP’s role within a party has by far the most significant impact on their access to the floor. Intriguingly, backbenchers in the government party have the least access of all.

10. EU Legislation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Beale ◽  
Libby Kurien ◽  
Eve Samson
Keyword(s):  
Direct Access ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the ways in which the UK Parliament formally constrains the government and engages with European Union (EU) institutions. The House of Lords and the House of Commons both have processes to ensure that legislation proposed at the EU level has been properly reviewed before it takes effect in UK law. The ‘scrutiny reserve’, which stipulates that ministers should not agree to proposals under scrutiny, is used to elicit information about the government's negotiating position. Parliament also has a role in examining EU legislation and providing direct access to European institutions. The chapter first provides an overview of the EU legislative process, focusing on three principal EU institutions: member states, the European Parliament (EP), and the European Commission. It also considers the formal role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process, the UK Parliament's scrutiny of the EU legislation and its effectiveness, and parliamentary scrutiny after Brexit.

scholarly journals The performance of power and citizenship: David Cameron meets the people

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 678-690
Author(s):  
Peter Lunt
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The People ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Television Studio

How do citizens respond to and engage with the performance of political power in the context of mainstream media? Through an analysis of two television programmes aired during the UK Brexit referendum campaign of 2016, a picture emerges of citizenship as the performative disruption of the performance of power. In the programmes the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, met members of the public for a mediated discussion of key issues in the Brexit referendum. Their interactions are analysed here as a confrontation between the performance of citizenship and power reflecting activist modalities of disruptive citizenship played out in the television studio. The article ends with reflections on questions about political agency as individualistic forms of disruptive political autonomy.

scholarly journals Open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron on food poverty in the UK

The Lancet ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 383 (9929) ◽  
pp. 1631 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R Ashton ◽  
John Middleton ◽  
Tim Lang
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
The Uk

EU-UK deal allows Cameron to campaign against Brexit

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

Subject The package of reforms on a new EU-UK relationship. Significance The agreement between the United Kingdom and its EU partners sets the stage for the UK referendum on EU membership, which Prime Minister David Cameron has set for June 23. Cameron said he had negotiated new terms that would allow the United Kingdom to remain in the EU. Impacts The deal bolsters the campaign to remain in the EU, but the referendum outcome is still highly uncertain. The deal will only come into effect if the outcome is for remaining, forestalling a second referendum for better terms. If the outcome is for leaving, a new relationship with the EU would have to be negotiated during a two-year transition period. It would also probably lead to a second Scottish independence referendum and UK break-up.

scholarly journals Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gaffney ◽  
Amarjit Lahel
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leadership Performance ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
Ed Miliband ◽  
The Uk

This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘received persona’. By using a range of rhetorical and other techniques, Miliband began to adapt the Labour narrative to the ‘personalized political’. The article sets out the theoretical framework for the analysis and returns to the implications for the theory of leadership performance in its conclusion.

scholarly journals “Let me now answer, very directly, Marie’s question”

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bull ◽  
Maurice Waddle
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

Abstract Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the UK attracts much criticism for the adversarial and occasional aggressive language on display. During his successful campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn called for a “new kind of politics” (ITV 2015). One feature of his “new” approach, apparent during his early sessions as Leader of the Opposition, was to include questions to Prime Minister David Cameron sourced from members of the public. Although, subsequently, these “public questions” became less frequent, they provided an opportunity to compare their interactional effects with standard “non-public questions”. Arguably, the aim of this salient feature of corbyn’s approach to questioning Cameron was to redress the moral order of PMQs. We test this proposal via two measures of the PM’s responses: reply rate and personalisation. Results showed that Corbyn’s public questions did not enhance Cameron’s reply rate. However, whereas Cameron used significantly more personal attacks than Corbyn in response to non-public questions, the level of such attacks by the PM for public questions was as low as Corbyn’s, with no significant difference between them. In this latter regard, such an approach showed the potential to mitigate the ritualistic and customary verbal aggression of PMQs.

Reform and Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-200
Author(s):  
Lucy Atkinson ◽  
Andrew Blick ◽  
Matt Qvortrup
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
The Uk

No referendums took place between 1979 and 1997. During much of the 1980s the idea of using this device failed to attract the level of interest it had in some earlier periods. But, in the following decade, the referendum began to gain currency once more. After Labour returned to office in 1997, the Tony Blair administration became the most extensive utilizer of the mechanism to date, holding five in total (though none at UK level). Reflecting the establishment of the referendum as a firmer part of the UK constitution, a more consistent framework for this practice was introduced. After 2004, the Labour governments did not use referendums again. However, the device returned from 2011. During the tenure of David Cameron, as Prime Minister in a coalition (2010–2015) and then a Conservative administration (2015–2016), four referendums were held.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document