1. IHR Digital History Seminar
Quantifying the Language of
British Politics, 1880-1914
Dr. Luke Blaxill:
King’s College London
Luke.blaxill@kcl.ac.uk
1
2. The Linguistic Turn and Electoral Politics
• Great deal of recent interest in language in electoral politics since
the ‘linguistic turn’
• The turn has given us a great deal, but its focus on deep readings of
specific texts in isolation has often caused historians, especially of
language, to be gun-shy of offering broader explanations.
• Many historians have called for a ‘reintegration’ of the explanatory
ambition of the old social-scientific historical tradition with the new
sensitivity to language.
But how could such a reintegration occur?
3. My Proposal: Quantitative language analysis
with a Corpus
A corpus: a huge bank of text of several million words
Computerised Corpus:
Candidates’ Speeches from Press SCANNED
Millions of words of
freely searchable text
4. My Corpora
1 2
East Anglian Speeches 1880-1910. National Speeches 1880-1910.
Subdivided per party, per election Subdivided per party, per election
(1 million words) (4 million words)
What are they used for?
To trace the patterns and associations of interesting words on
a huge scale.
6. Corpus-driven Quantification in action:
Example Two: Imperialism 1880-1900
How can we measure the ‘language of Imperialism’ with a corpus?
Proposed solution: try to construct a controlled vocabulary or a
‘taxonomy’ composed of words which reliably correlate to occasions
when a speaker is using such language.
A five word Taxonomy of Imperialism:
• Imperial (and all variants)
• Empire
• Flag
• British (and all variants)
• Colony (and all variants)
7. Corpus-driven Quantification in action:
Example Two: Imperialism 1880-1900
To ensure the ascriptions of ‘the language of imperialism’
are correct, each word is checked in its original context:
9. The Case for using Corpus-driven quantification
to study Political Language
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10. The Case for using Corpus-driven quantification
to study Political Language
Five Arguments
1. Amenability of political (especially electoral) language to
analysis by these techniques.
2. Difficult to measure quantity by intuition.
3. Corpora can help establish typicality better than
selected quotations from speech.
3. Numerical conclusions easy to verify
4. More empirical approach to working can illuminate
unexpected patterns otherwise hard to detect
11. Case Study: The Impact of the 1883-85
Reforms on Rural Political Language
1. Was there a major shift in the nature of political appeals in East
Anglia? Were farmers issues and the language of farming
supplanted by agricultural labourer’s issues?
2. Can we attempt to measure the influence of Chamberlain's
Unauthorised Programme on political language in East Anglia?
Was it influential?
16. The word ‘Land’ in context in 1885
Percentage of total
Context of Liberal Mentions of Land (130 total) Score mentions
Benefits of owning land 30 23%
Land ownership monopoly 20 15%
Attacks on landowners 24 18%
Transfer of land simplification/ facilitation 16 12%
Evocations of the past 8 6%
Compulsory purchase 8 6%
Percentage of
Context of Conservative Mentions of Land (158 total) Score total mentions
Theft/compulsory taking of land 36 23%
Transfer of land simplification/ facilitation 27 17%
General mocking of Radical land reform 14 9%
Good Landlords 13 8%
General issues of agriculture and farming 18 11%
17. Conclusions
1. Major break from the past in 1885 in language, not just in
electioneering.
2. The Agricultural Laborer eclipsed the farmer as the most visible in
vocabulary remarkably quickly. This suggests that the perceived interests
of the voting base were perhaps the key factor in determining the
content of platform speeches.
3. Unauthorised Programme had a big impact on electoral language in the
countryside.
4. Overall: Chamberlain was in a much stronger position after 1885 than
Historians have argued, but the biggest group within the electorate who
supported him was the agricultural labourer- not who he had thought.
21. ‘Gladstone’: Top Contexts
42% Foreign Policy Weakness General Greatness 20%
17%
17% Inferiority to Disraeli
8% Good orator 1880 Financial competence
Bringer of Peace
Superiority to Disraeli
14%
14%
16% Disunity
Manifesto/Programme 21%
11% Disestablishment
7% General Gordon
7% Financial incompetence
1885 Party unity
General Greatness
21%
20%
57% Irish Home Rule Irish Home Rule 40%
General Greatness 29%
11% Liberal Unionists
7% Abandoning Land Reform 1886 Party unity 17%
Superiority to Chamberlain 13%
56% Irish Home Rule Irish Home Rule 39%
14% Disunity
12% Newcastle Programme 1892 General Greatness 30%
Newcastle Programme 12%
11% General Greatness
22. Boroughs versus counties in 1885
East Anglia East Anglia Other Other
Lemma
Borough County Borough County
Radical 96 86 72 99
Class 64 132 56 78
Programme 50 16 37 37
Chamberlain 70 88 60 72
Land Reform 276 374 72 142
Church 220 186 151 180
Education/School/Child 254 248 176 177
Working Man/Class 42 104 50 43
Reform 56 116 67 93
Total 1128 1350 741 921
23. Education Issue in 1885: top contexts
Liberals mentions of
School, Child, Education (163 Percentage of total
mentions) Score mentions
Poor people priced out of education 34 21%
General expressions of support in favour
of free education 34 21%
Will give dignity to poor/ will help poor 19 12%
Improve social mobility of poor 14 9%
Reassurance that religious aspect to
education will be kept 9 6%
Conservative mentions of school, Percentage of total
Child, Education (146 mentions) Score mentions
Weaken voluntary schools 26 18%
Expensive, wasteful 24 16%
Highlighting Liberal attack on religious
basis of education 19 13%
Stops people being stakeholders* 13 9%
Criticising compulsory and universal
education 16 11%
Poor standard of board Schools 5 3%
24. Church Disestablishment in 1885: top
contexts
Context of Liberal Mentions of Church (105
total) Score Percentage of total mentions
Proclamations in favour of Disestablishment 37 35%
Disestablishment as a route to Religious
Equality 17 16%
Candidate distancing themselves from
Disestablishment 10 10%
Attacks on Conservatives for politicising the
Church 9 9%
Context of Conservative Mentions of
Church (111) Score Percentage of total mentions
Attacks on Liberals for tying to weaken/
abolish Church 36 32%
General vows to protect Church 31 28%
Benefits of Church (Education) 5 5%
Benefits of Church (Church sponsored
charities) 11 10%
Benefits of Church (Classless, available for all
Classes) 10 9%
Benefits of Church (Education) 3 3%
Benefits of Church (Improvement of character) 3 3%
