Brexitspeak
Demagoguery and the Decline of Democracy

Was the UK electorate talked into Brexit? This book shows how Brexit propaganda swayed voters in the 2016 referendum.

Paul Chilton (Author)

9781108840811, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 December 2024

224 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Finally, we can understand and explain why Brexit actually happened. In Paul Chilton's outstanding detailed analysis of the range of discourses mobilizing the anti-EU demagogy in the UK, the populist propaganda is deconstructed and illustrated, specifically in respect to Britain's national identity politics. A must-read for everybody, scholars and lay-persons alike!' Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies, Lancaster

Were we talked into Brexit? And who is 'we'? It's impossible to do politics without words and a context to use them in. And it's impossible to make sense of the phenomenon of Brexit without understanding how language was used – and misused – in the historical context that produced the 2016 referendum result. This interdisciplinary book shows how the particular idea of 'the British people' was maintained through text and talk at different levels of society over the years following World War II, and mobilised by Brexit propagandists in a socially, economically and culturally divided polity. The author argues that we need the well-defined tools of linguistics and language philosophy, tied in with a political science framework, to understand a serious, modern concept of demagoguery. Written in an accessible manner, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to probe the social, political and ideational contexts that generated Brexit.

Introduction: populists, demagogues, language
1. Identity
2. We
3. The people
4. The British people
5. Fear of foreigners
6. Fear of foreigners mobilised
7. How demagogues do it
Conclusion: brexitspeak, demagoguery, decline of democracy
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]