The late nineteenth and early twentieth century have been widely
eulogised as a "golden age" of popular platform oratory. This book
considers the language of British elections - especially stump
speeches - during this period. It employs a "big data" methodology
inspired by computational linguistics, using text-mining to analyse over
five million words delivered by Conservative, Liberal and Labour
candidates in the nine elections that took place in this period. It
systematically and authoritatively quantifies how and how far key
issues, values, traditions and personalities manifested themselves in
wider party discourse.
The author reassesses a number of central historical debates, arguing
that historians have considerably underestimated the transformative
impact of the 1883-5 reforms on rural party language, and the purchase
of Joseph Chamberlain's Unauthorized Programme; that the centrality of
Home Rule and Imperialism in the late 1880s and 1890s have been
exaggerated; and that the New Liberalism's linguistic impact was
relatively weak, failing to contain the message of the emerging Labour
alternative.
LUKE BLAXILL gained his PhD in History and the Digital Humanities from
Kings College, London, in 2012; he is currently College Lecturer in
Modern British History at Hertford College, Oxford.