NATIONAL POPULISM, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY (RE)CONSTRUCTION: How Vote Leave framed a “Brexit identity”. - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

NATIONAL POPULISM, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY (RE)CONSTRUCTION: How Vote Leave framed a “Brexit identity”.

Résumé

Within the myriad of academic papers on Brexit, many authors have tried to explain the structural reasons behind the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) in 2016. In a particularly convincing and influential monograph, Eatwell and Goodwin decided to lay emphasis on the social/ societal and ideological levers at the origin of the fateful referendum. They contend that the rise of “national populism” represents a key element in what was seen by many pundits as an unexpected result. They argue that this process was a long time coming and that, therefore, Brexit should not be seen as much of a surprise. They explain that national populism built its appeal on what they call “the Four Ds”, that is, distrust in elites, fear of destruction of national culture, relative deprivation in the economic sphere and dealignment in political identification and voting behaviour. Successful pro-Brexit politicians seem to have made the most of this socio-political evolution, which has had tremendous consequences on the Westminster model, but also on the British society as a whole. The traditional, and inclusive, conception of British identity seems to be questioned by this populist surge. At the heart of populist discourse lays the claim that populist leaders will defend the interests of the “pure” people who want to protect their nationalist worldview against the ambitions of an internationalist and supposedly corrupt elite in order to uphold the principles, rights and traditional values that should organize social life. As a consequence, the overall political narratives, or storytelling, about the very concept of “identity” become central. This, in turn, raises several questions: how was the notion of British identity narrativized during the Brexit campaign, and what does it mean to be British in the eyes of pro-Brexit leaders? In other words, how much of an influence had this populist vision of British identity on the very framing of the Brexit debate? Last but not least, which narrative tropes were favoured in order to convince a majority of British voters that leaving the EU was the safer choice to secure Britain’s sovereignty and maybe more importantly, to preserve a certain vision of Britishness? To answer those research questions, we will analyse a corpus of documents (speeches, declarations, interviews, open letters) delivered by the successful official campaign to leave the EU, Vote Leave, to see how they made use of the so-called “Four Ds” in their official communication. This will enable us to understand the overall context in which Vote Leave deployed and displayed its successful rhetoric. We will use critical discourse analysis (CDA) as theoretical framework. Van Dijk (2001, 352) describes CDA as “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context”. Wodak (2011, 38) explains that CDA “is a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research programme, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical models, research methods and agenda […] what unites them is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, identity politics and political-economic or cultural change in society”. CDA will enable us to shed some light on the way Vote Leave members managed to convince their audience to do something that was arguably not in their best interest, as pro-leave areas have suffered the biggest economic hit since the 2016 referendum, and to decipher the underlying ideology they promoted. There is no specific CDA method, but rather a large variety of approaches. Charteris-Black nonetheless argues that CDA must follow a three-stage methodological process. First, close attention should be paid to the overall context or “speech circumstances”. This is why we have decided to focus on the rise of national populism to better understand how Vote Leave capitalised on this populist fertile ground. The second stage involves the identification and analysis of language and performance features. In this paper, we propose to adopt an original approach and to focus on storytelling. Storytelling is a relatively old and polymorphous marketing technique, whose aim is to arouse interest and support by telling stories to audiences. We argue that this ubiquitous rhetorical device is suitable for CDA because of its cognitive and persuasive dimension. Polletta (2015) argues that storytelling is an effective rhetorical tool for two main reasons. First, we tend to identify with the heroes of the story, and share their points of view, which facilitates the process of persuasion. Second, the willing suspension of disbelief entailed by the narrative format tends to reduce our will to counterargue. The final stage consists in providing “an understanding of the social world by interpreting the persuasive effect and social purpose of the speeches” (Charteris-Black 2014, 91). This will be done in the discussion section. Thanks to CDA, we will study how storytelling helped Vote Leave members uphold their boundary-making rhetoric, which will enable us to draw attention to the way they defined political belonging – and exclusion – during the referendum. The ultimate aim is to understand the vision of British identity, or Britishness, that was rhetorically framed by leading Brexiters and how this divisive narrative effectively convinced a majority of British voters. The outcome of the research will introduce the concept of “Brexit identity”, which has been a key element in the recent political polarisation of the British society between so-called Leavers and Remainers.
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hal-04509583 , version 1 (18-03-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04509583 , version 1

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Alma-Pierre Bonnet. NATIONAL POPULISM, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY (RE)CONSTRUCTION: How Vote Leave framed a “Brexit identity”.. “Languaging identities in changing times: Challenges and opportunities”, The Università di Torino, Dec 2023, TURIN, Italy. ⟨hal-04509583⟩
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