A corpus-pragmatic analysis of linguistic democratisation in the British Hansard

Abstract

In this article, we investigate changes in British parliamentary discourse by using the Hansard Corpus (1803–2005). Our first goal is to determine whether parliamentary speeches have become colloquialised by studying frequency changes of select features associated with informal spoken language. Second, by analysing data from the House of Commons and the House of Lords separately, we show that the texts from the two Houses should be considered distinct sub-registers, each with their own conventions and development paths. Finally, we analyse a pattern that seems particularly relevant to parliamentary debates: one where speakers imply disagreement by referring to their peers in the third person, thus circumventing a parliamentary regulation whereby speakers are prohibited from addressing one another directly. Our findings support the idea of an ongoing colloquialisation/democratisation trend affecting parliamentary discourse while also suggesting that this process is not entirely transparent in the written record because of editorial interference.