Chapter 12. Colloquialisation, compression and democratisation in British parliamentary debates
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Gerold Schneider
Abstract
We conduct an analysis of the link between colloquialisation and democratisation in debates in the British parliament. Our corpus is a sampler of the Hansard archive, covering the period 1803–2005 and containing 170 million words. We first investigate how the linguistic patterns of parliamentary debates have evolved, and second how the content of the debates has changed over time. Combining these two research questions allows us to step to a third question: are there direct relations between linguistic features, most notably colloquialisation and compression of language, and the topical content of parliamentary discourse, particularly its underpinnings in social and political democratisation processes? We also critically discuss strong correlations between features of language complexity and democracy indices. We adopt an interdisciplinary perspective embedded in both linguistics and political sciences.
Abstract
We conduct an analysis of the link between colloquialisation and democratisation in debates in the British parliament. Our corpus is a sampler of the Hansard archive, covering the period 1803–2005 and containing 170 million words. We first investigate how the linguistic patterns of parliamentary debates have evolved, and second how the content of the debates has changed over time. Combining these two research questions allows us to step to a third question: are there direct relations between linguistic features, most notably colloquialisation and compression of language, and the topical content of parliamentary discourse, particularly its underpinnings in social and political democratisation processes? We also critically discuss strong correlations between features of language complexity and democracy indices. We adopt an interdisciplinary perspective embedded in both linguistics and political sciences.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Perspectives on parliamentary discourse 1
- Chapter 1. Speech in the British Hansard 17
- Chapter 2. Salient differences between Australian oral parliamentary discourse and its official written records 54
- Chapter 3. Hansard at Huddersfield 89
- Chapter 4. Empire, migration and race in the British parliament (1803–2005) 118
- Chapter 5. Leaving the EU out of the ingroup 142
- Chapter 6. From masters and servants to employers and employees 166
- Chapter 7. From criminal lunacy to mental disorder 194
- Chapter 8. “The job requires considerable expertise” 227
- Chapter 9. Processing and prescriptivism as constraints on language variation and change 250
- Chapter 10. Language variation in parliamentary speech in Suriname 277
- Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic and pragmatic variation in conditional constructions in English and Spanish parliamentary discourse 308
- Chapter 12. Colloquialisation, compression and democratisation in British parliamentary debates 336
- Index 373
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Perspectives on parliamentary discourse 1
- Chapter 1. Speech in the British Hansard 17
- Chapter 2. Salient differences between Australian oral parliamentary discourse and its official written records 54
- Chapter 3. Hansard at Huddersfield 89
- Chapter 4. Empire, migration and race in the British parliament (1803–2005) 118
- Chapter 5. Leaving the EU out of the ingroup 142
- Chapter 6. From masters and servants to employers and employees 166
- Chapter 7. From criminal lunacy to mental disorder 194
- Chapter 8. “The job requires considerable expertise” 227
- Chapter 9. Processing and prescriptivism as constraints on language variation and change 250
- Chapter 10. Language variation in parliamentary speech in Suriname 277
- Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic and pragmatic variation in conditional constructions in English and Spanish parliamentary discourse 308
- Chapter 12. Colloquialisation, compression and democratisation in British parliamentary debates 336
- Index 373
