Not now! Construction of the "now-is-not-the-time" discourse of Theresa May and Boris Johnson vis-à-vis the second Scottish independence referendum.

IF 1.5 3区社会学 Q3 POLITICAL SCIENCE

British Politics Pub Date : 2022-08-05 DOI:10.1057/s41293-022-00214-x

Monika Brusenbauch Meislová

{"title":"Not now! Construction of the \"now-is-not-the-time\" discourse of Theresa May and Boris Johnson vis-à-vis the second Scottish independence referendum.","authors":"Monika Brusenbauch Meislová","doi":"10.1057/s41293-022-00214-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Between 2016 and 2021, in response to calls for a second Scottish independence referendum, two British Prime Ministers-Theresa May and Boris Johnson-adopted a holding position, at the core of which was the \"now-is-not-the-time\" argumentative scheme. As a particular expression of strategic ambiguity, this delay discourse was intended to fulfil a specific political function: to postpone the second plebiscite sine die. As such, it marked a stark difference to the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign and provided the anti-independence camp with a new rhetorical resource. Having adopted the general orientation of the Discourse-Historical Approach to discourse analysis, and working with a dataset of May's and Johnson's public utterances on the second Scottish referendum, this article investigates how exactly this discourse of referendum delay was constructed in prime ministerial rhetoric. It concludes that some differences notwithstanding, the two PMs managed to create a largely consistent argumentative scheme.","PeriodicalId":46067,"journal":{"name":"British Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9362570/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00214-x","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2021, in response to calls for a second Scottish independence referendum, two British Prime Ministers-Theresa May and Boris Johnson-adopted a holding position, at the core of which was the "now-is-not-the-time" argumentative scheme. As a particular expression of strategic ambiguity, this delay discourse was intended to fulfil a specific political function: to postpone the second plebiscite sine die. As such, it marked a stark difference to the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign and provided the anti-independence camp with a new rhetorical resource. Having adopted the general orientation of the Discourse-Historical Approach to discourse analysis, and working with a dataset of May's and Johnson's public utterances on the second Scottish referendum, this article investigates how exactly this discourse of referendum delay was constructed in prime ministerial rhetoric. It concludes that some differences notwithstanding, the two PMs managed to create a largely consistent argumentative scheme.

查看原文本刊更多论文

现在不行！构建特雷莎·梅和鲍里斯·约翰逊关于第二次苏格兰独立公投的“现在不是时候”话语

在2016年至2021年期间，为了回应第二次苏格兰独立公投的呼声，两位英国首相——特蕾莎·梅和鲍里斯·约翰逊——采取了一种保留立场，其核心是“现在不是时候”的辩论方案。作为战略模糊性的一种特殊表达，这种延迟话语的目的是实现一种特定的政治功能：无限期推迟第二次公民投票。因此，它标志着与2014年苏格兰公投运动截然不同，并为反独立阵营提供了新的修辞资源。本文采用话语-历史方法进行话语分析，并利用梅和约翰逊关于第二次苏格兰公投的公开话语数据集，研究了首相修辞中关于公投延迟的话语究竟是如何构建的。文章的结论是，尽管存在一些分歧，但两位总理设法创建了一个基本一致的论证方案。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

British Politics POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

2.40

自引率

9.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： British Politics offers the only forum explicitly designed to promote research in British political studies, and seeks to provide a counterweight to the growing fragmentation of this field during recent years. To this end, the journal aims to promote a more holistic understanding of British politics by encouraging a closer integration between theoretical and empirical research, between historical and contemporary analyses, and by fostering a conception of British politics as a broad and multi-disciplinary field of study. This incorporates a range of sub-fields, including psephology, policy analysis, regional studies, comparative politics, institutional analysis, political theory, political economy, historical analysis, cultural studies and social policy. While recognising the validity and the importance of research into specific aspects of British politics, the journal takes it to be a guiding principle that such research is more useful, and indeed meaningful, if it is related to the field of British politics in a broader and fuller sense. The scope of the journal will therefore be broad, incorporating a range of research papers and review articles from all theoretical perspectives, and on all aspects of British politics, including policy developments, institutional change and political behaviour. Priority will, however, be given to contributions which link contemporary developments in British politics to theoretical and/or historical analyses. The aim is as much to encourage the development of empirical research that is theoretically rigorous and informed, as it is to encourage the empirical application of theoretical work (or at least to encourage theorists to explicitly signify how their work could be applied in an empirical manner).