A Critical Discourse of the 2011 General Election Manifestos Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast “I like your manifesto, put it to the testo.”—Sultans of Ping
“Because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation.”—Norman Fairclough
ABSTRACT:
This article presents a case for Critical Discourse Analytical techniques, and their expediency
in analysing political discourse. More specifically, it demonstrates the efficacy of such
techniques in analysing political manifestos. Political
manifestos are wordy and imbued with
power: thus making linguistic approaches to their
study appropriate. This research, however,
Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast is motivated, in part, by a notable lack of linguistic methodologies being employed in their
study in an Irish context, and indeed Irish political discourse as a whole. The article primarily
aims to demonstrate the synergy that can be created when amalgamating typical political
approaches to manifesto research, and corpus driven, critical discourse analysis.
Drawing from the 2011 general election manifestos of three political parties, it will firstly
examine the discursive (re)construction of valence issues. Due to limitations, attention is
focused on the core issue of the economy. Testing Budge’s Saliency Theory, which it
employs as a theoretical underpinning, the research shall exhibit how parties differ in relating
this valence issue to the electorate by creating both positive and negative semantic prosodies.
The research shall then discuss how passivisation is discoursed in parties’ manifestos to
delete responsibility and create political distance. The final section exhibits, by means of
corpus analysis, the correlation between modality and power relations within political
discourse. Heuristic in its goal, the essay serves as a polemic for the integration of corpusdriven critical discourse analysis into Irish political manifesto research.
INTRODUCTION
The subsequent research discusses the role of critical discourse analysis in manifesto
research. Manifestos by their nature are imbued with modality and power. They are
collections of words that relate policy on a top-down basis. Irish manifesto research has
tended to be macro-analytical in nature—focusing on means of production (Dauebler 2012)
or on their political significance—with a focus on texts at a sentential or quasi-sentential level
being the deepest level of analysis (Dauebler et al. 2012) . Vogel and Gijsel (Vogel and Gijsel
2003) report on their success in the use of author identification techniques (at a morphemic
level) in determining corpus homogeneity between right-wing parties in Europe. This,
however, is an inherently linguistic endeavour, merely reflective of politics, not critical of it.
1 2 Following research of its kind undertaken in Britain, this article concentrates on the lexical
level, undertaking an empirical corpus analysis of Irish political manifestos, with the aim of
critiquing traditional approaches to manifesto research through critical discursive analytical
techniques.
Before commencing, it is first necessary for us to truly grasp what manifestos are, and the
role they play in political discourse. As texts, manifestos act ambivalently. They are
ephemeral, insofar as they are written with the intent of being utilised over the short span of
an election campaign. Yet, they also hold relevance long after their respective elections have
passed. They enable us to track political progress and change on certain issues and hold
political entities to account. Whilst it is true that very few voters actually read an entire
manifesto (Dauebler 2012: 53) (most encounter condensed policies in election material) they
are still a political necessity for all parties—to not produce a manifesto would surely entail
political disaster. Election material, such as leaflets and posters, tend to be short and snappy
with the aim of quick consumption and lasting effect. Acting as the backbone of party-policy,
manifestos, conversely, are linguistically ‘heavy’. That is to say they are detailed and wordy:
making
them
far
more
suited
to
linguistic
analysis.
Much work has been done by academics in analysing manifestos. Most notable is without
doubt The Manifesto Project/Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR). In
its own words ‘MARPOR addresses the collection and the comparative content analysis of
parties’ manifestos” (https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/information/documents/information). It
does so by amassing all the manifestos of parties throughout the world as a corpus. The
project operates ‘under the assumption that parties compete against each other by
emphasising different policy issues rather than taking opposing positions on the same issues.’
(Gemenis, 2013:1). This is an underpinning premise of what MARPOR’s founder, Professor
Ian Budge coined as Saliency Theory. Saliency Theory argues that parties only differ in the
2 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast emphasis they afford certain issues in their manifesto, and that they ultimately agree on the
underlying, central issues at play. As Gemenis (2013: 4) writes “party competition is
characterised by the prevalence of valence issues, that is, issues in which there is a broad
agreement about the desired outcome”. Furthermore, Dolezeal et al. (2014: 60) note that
parties
emphasise
issues
that
they
have
particular
ownership
of.
In light of the above, we approach the task of analysing the 2011 Irish General Election
manifestos with the aim of identifying how the predominant issues play out linguistically. It
would be remiss to undertake any analysis of discourse without first offering exposition and
contextualisation. Therefore, it is necessary to familiarise ourselves with the reality behind
the
discourse.
EXPOSITION
Hindsight, and election analysis carried out afterward, allows us to truly appreciate the extent
to which the economy was at the heart of the 2011 election. The selected manifestos were
created for an election that took place a mere three months after the nation received a bank
bailout, after its banking system collapsed. As Marsh and Mikhaylov (2012: 1) noted, the
2011 General Election was an archetypal case of “‘economic voting’ in which a government
is punished for incompetent performance.” Media and political discourse had, in the run up to
the election, been saturated with economic discussion and debate. It comes therefore as no
surprise to find concurrence amongst political scientists that “Irish general election was
dominated
by
the
economy”
(Farrell
et
al.
2011:
1).
Therefore, this article shall, firstly, seek to examine the manner in which each of the main
parties’ manifestos relate the valence issue of the economy. It will do so by means of a corpus
assisted critical discourse analysis, the methodology of which is explained below.
3 4 METHODOLOGY
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is preoccupied with the relation between language and
power in society. It seeks to illuminate how language acts as the main conduit for social
action, and how it is imbued with power. Writing on Critical Language Studies (the precursor
to CDA), Norman Fairclough (1989: 2) wrote that the underlying aim of the work was to
tackle widespread underestimation of how language influences power. ‘Ideology’ in
Fairclough’s opinion ‘is pervasively present in language’ (2001: 2). He sought to increase
the consciousness of how language leads to control in our day-to-day lives, and how societal
institutions use discourse. Though written in the discipline’s infancy, CDA still is
underpinned by the heuristic goal of illuminating the true nature of discourse. Van Dijk goes
further stating that CDA should be used to ‘understand, expose and ultimately to resist social
inequality.’(1998: 1) Wodak (2009: 10) offers a reasoning behind the choice to focus on
language,
stating
that:
“Power is central for understanding the dynamics and specifics of control (of action)
in modern societies, but power remains mostly invisible. Linguistic manifestations are
under investigation in CDA.”
CDA, nowadays, acts as an umbrella term for a heterogeneous array of approaches to
discourse analysis. This article will undertake a Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis
(CACDA), wherein it employs corpus linguistic techniques to further our investigation. The
reasons for undertaking corpus-based research are manifold. Firstly, one of the most
prevalent criticisms levelled against CDA is that it falls short of objectivity. Typical CDA is
susceptible to what Wodak (2009: 11) refers to as ‘cherry-picking’ where the objects of study
4 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast are selectively chosen to bolster certain arguments. This overly-qualitative methodology casts
doubt upon the veracity of conclusions and reflectiveness of society in its findings. To
combat this, it is necessary for us to introduce a more quantitative element to our research.
This
is
where
corpus-based
techniques
prove
invaluable.
Corpus approaches to discourse analysis allow analysts to dissect and view texts in a way
not readily available to them without concordance software. Word frequencies, collocates and
substantive data become available at the click of a button. Mautner (2009: 123) cites three
reasons
as
to
why
corpus
techniques
can
improve
CDA:
1) Firstly, she notes how corpus linguistics enables discourse analysts to analyse much larger
texts.
2) As mentioned above, corpus linguistics allows analysts to rule out ‘researcher bias’ and
‘broaden
their
empirical
base.’
3) Corpus linguistics affords CDA a means of bridging the gap between qualitative and
quantitative research. (Although, it is also noteworthy, as Biber, Rippen and Conrad (1998: 4)
note, that without both qualitative and quantitative methods, corpus linguistics would be
inapt).
DATA:
The data analysed is comprise of the 2011 general election manifestos of three parties:
namely, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. Each text is treated as its own corpus to ensure
internal homogeneity. Each text was reduced to its plain text and saved in .txt file format. It
was analysed for frequencies using AntConc concordance software. Frequency lists denote
the most common Ngrams within a corpus.
5 6 ANALYSIS:
Semantic
Prosody
of
The
Economy:
Our first analytical endeavour will be to show how the economy manifests itself textually in
each of the respective manifesto. We will do this by means of a simple corpus based analysis,
wherein we produce frequency lists, and analyse the effect of collocated lexical items.
Notions are reduced to words in manifestos, accordingly, in order to address how the parties
treat the issue of the economy, we must narrow our focus to the word ‘economy’ and its
variants (i.e words with the root ‘econom’) as well as other words that denote economic
concepts. Throughout our study, we must keep in mind Firth’s guiding dictum: ‘You shall
know a word by the company it keeps’ (Firth 1957:11). ‘Economy’ in and of itself connotes
neither positively nor negatively. Its neutrality allows it to be heavily influenced by the words
in its proximity. In what follows we seek to examine how the words that surround ‘economy’
in each respective manifesto, influence how it is perceived by the reader. This notion is what
linguists refer to as Semantic Prosody (SP) (Louw 1993). It seeks to account for the manner
in which the semantic colouring of words spread beyond their own boundaries. Zhang (2010:
191) notes that all words, when studied in relation to SP, act in a ‘mutually selectional
relation.’ In terms of Critical Discourse Analysis, the choice of words that are utilised to
semantically colour ‘economy’ are going to be influenced by the ideologies and goals of the
text’s authors. Therefore, our analysis seeks to demonstrate how each party loads the word
‘economy’ with a semantic weighting that benefits their own political goals, and is reflective
of
their
current
political
situation.
Firstly, let us turn our attention toward the incumbent government party of the time,
Fianna Fáil.
‘Economy’ appears in the most popular lexical items of the text, with a
frequency of N=37. This seems to be in line with the other parties’ frequencies. ‘Economy’ is
6 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast found either abutting or in the vicinity of mainly positive words, and many attributive
adjectives,
as
is
demonstrated
by
the
figure
below:
The above examples reveal how adjectives such as ‘Green’, ‘Smart’, ‘open’, ‘flexible’ and
‘modern’ all ensure that the word ‘economy’ connotes positively to its reader. Little or no
attention is paid to what is wrong with the economy in Fianna Fáil’s text. Instead attention is
focused on aspects of it that are constructive or on the ways it could be better. ‘New’ (N=50)
in the manifesto—when not talking about electoral reform—seems to exclusively dedicate its
fifty
appearances
to
positively
connoting
economic
issues
and
job
creation.
The first section of Fianna Fail’s Manifesto is labelled ‘Reviving the Economy and Restoring
Public Finances’. This title is in keeping with the position that Fianna Fail’s lexical items
portray:
one
of
restoration,
revitalisation
and
amelioration.
Fianna Fáil’s manifesto broaches the issue of the economy in an unambiguously positive
fashion, affording it relative dominance of the text. As established in our exposition, Fianna
Fáil were voted out of government as a result of their poor handling of the economy prior to
the 2011 election. Prior to this, media discourse had ensured that, as Marsh and Mikhaylov
(2012: 2) say, “the electorate as a whole was very conscious that there was an economic crisis
and was convinced that the blame for this should be laid firmly at the government’s door”.
7 8 Fianna Fáil’s choice to represent the economy only in positive terms is indicative of them
wanting to minimise the effects economic voting could have on them on election day.
In contrast to Fianna Fail’s unilateral approach to the economy, ‘Economy’ and its various
forms appear in two distinct semantic environments in the Fine Gael manifesto. On the one
hand, it is portrayed negatively, predominantly in relation to ‘economic’, which is
semantically
influenced
by
the
word
that
directly
follows
it.
In the above examples ‘collapse’, ‘problems’, ‘difficulty’, ‘crisis’ and ‘exploitation’ all
colour the preceding ‘economic’ with negativity. Yet simultaneously, ‘economic’ also sees
the
economy
connoted
positively
within
the
Fine
Gael
manifesto:
Here, as above, the connotations of the words directly following ‘economic’ influence the
perception of the economy. However, in these sentences optimism and positivity are
connoted. This positive connoting is particularly emphatic when one examines the use of the
word
‘economy’.
‘Knowledge’, ‘thriving’, ‘roaring’ and ‘New’ all serve to denote the word in an affirmative
light.
8 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast A binary treatment of the economy also occurs in Labour’s manifesto wherein semantic
environment is used to construct two distinct agendas. It appears in positive semantic
environments, as in the following figure illustrates with regard to the word ‘economy’:
At the same time, and similarly to Fine Gael, the Labour manifesto features ‘economic’
being negatively coloured by the word directly following it:
This simultaneous, dualistic semantic handling of the economy in both Labour and Fine
Gael’s manifesto is easily accounted for when one further examines the sentences in which
both the negative and positive appear. Negative semantic prosody is created by collocates
when referring to the past actions or the present economic turmoil. Positive semantic prosody
is invoked in sentences that deal with the prospects of the future, and the potentiality for
change
that
follows
on
from
a
change
in
government.
Sentence position, too, offers an interesting insight into the creation of semantic prosodies,
and how these can be indicative of ulterior motives. ‘Economy’ in the Fine Gael manifesto
appears largely at the end of a sentence or a clause, and is typically separated from the
following word by punctuation markings, thus enhancing its perceptive efficacy. Conversely,
‘economy’ in Fianna Fáil’s manifesto predominantly appears sentence-medially allowing it to
be
more
influenced
by
other
words,
9 and
rendering
it
less
pronounced.
10 A final, marked difference between parties’ depictions of the economy is how it is
denoted in terms of ownership. Fianna Fáil typically chose to use the non-possessive
determiner
‘the’
to
precede
‘economy’.
Expectedly, Fine Gael and Labour’s manifestos also feature the definite article determiner,
but
see
very
high
frequencies
of
‘Irish’
being
used
to
precede
‘economy’.
This difference in referential strategies is indicative of Fianna Fáil’s aim to create distance
between themselves and the economy, and Fine Gael’s electoral goal to return the valence
issue of the economy back to the Irish people: something that would prove highly popular
amongst
voters.
What the above analysis exemplifies is the extent to which the tenets of Saliency Theory
are either debunked or hold true under a lexical analysis. Parties treat the economy as a
valence issue—and each of them afford it similar exposure in their manifestos, as
demonstrated by the above frequency analysis. However, disparity is found in the semantic
environments in which they relate it, this contradicting the claim that parties agree on valence
issues.
Passivisation:
Passivisation is the act of turning a sentence from an active one (which consists of an subject
10 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast performing something to an object), to a passive one (wherein the subject does not perform
the verb). A convenient example of passivisation is turning the following active sentence:
(1)
‘I
(Where
‘I’
ate
is
Into
the
subject,
the
(2)
the
and
‘the
pie’
following
‘The
pie
pie.’
is
the
passive
was
object).
sentence:
eaten
by
me’.
(Where the object is now in the subject’s position, but is still subject to being eaten by me).
This
can
(3)
be
shortened
‘The
pie
further
to:
was
eaten.’
The laws of grammar and logic determine that we are able to passivise (1) à (3). We
are, however, unable to passivise (3) à (1) as we have no subject present to form an active
sentence.
Hence,
the
action
accredited
for
in
(3)
is
void
of
agency.
In terms of our present research, the choice to passivise a sentence can be ideologically
charged. That is to say, it may be symptomatic of some underlying political reason for doing
so. Social actors, as Van Leeuwen (1995: 2) notes, can be depicted textually as either active
forces with agency, or as passive ones. Many notable linguists, most prominently Fowler
(1991), have noted that passivisation can influence how a text conveys power relations. It
achieves this by deleting agency and reifying processes (Billig 2008: 3). In what follows we
identify how passive voice is utilised within our data-set manifestos, with the aim of
illustrating how passivisation—like semantic prosody—can influence the efficacy of political
discourse in communicating ideologies and political motives. Owing to limitations of space,
we shall narrow our focus to an archetypal usage of passivisation to delete agency, found in
Fianna
(4)
The
Fáil’s
revised
CCMA
was
published
manifesto:
on
the
6th
of
December…
Here we see how no entity is given responsibility for publishing the Code of Conduct
11 12 Mortgage Arrears. An adjunct phrase—such as ‘by me’ as in sentence (2)—would be
necessary to attribute the action to an agent. An active form of this sentence would take the
following
(5)
X
form:
published
the
CCMA
on
the
6th
of
December…
Here X, the agent, is in the subject position and takes full credit for the action. Activation
of sentences is employed by political parties when they wish to promote actions that they
have taken, and they feel will resonate with the voters. Passivisation, on to contrary, is used
to
create
political
distance
from
actions.
Modality:
In this essay’s first section we looked at how lexical items interplayed with each other to
produce meaning. This is in line with the dominant trend in CDA, whereby lexical words (i.e
open class words) are triumphed as more coherent objects of study than functional words (i.e
closed class words), such as determiners, prepositions, modals etc. Pearse, however, has
shown that this is not always the case. (Pearse 2014: 23) In his corpus study of a UK
Elections Manifestos, he concludes that overlooking the functional class of words is grave
error. He contends that the focus on lexically rich items, as endorsed by Mautner, is
insufficient. Functional words serve to structure the texts we encounter at a phraseological
level. As such, they structure the ideologies that are embedded in the texts. Whilst they lack a
richness of meaning themselves, they dictate the manner in which other lexical items become
textually
manifest.
Below, we will apply a series of corpus analytical measures, similar to those undertaken
by Pearse, in an aim to better understand the use of modal ‘will’, one of the most frequently
employed functional words in our corpora. The choice to study modals is not unmotivated.
Rather, modal ‘will’ was chosen as it is inherently linked to the raison d’etre of a manifesto:
12 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast Manifestos are a statement or a declaration of what a group or an entity intends to do,
therefore a study of modality is appropriate. Levels of modality in manifestos can signal
where a party stands in relation to the balance of power. Low use of the modal ‘will’ is
suggestive of a party not expecting power, or indeed one that lacks intentions. In contrast,
heightened use of ‘will’ is typically found in manifestos of parties expecting power, and with
a wealth of intentions (quite typical of opposition parties, vying for more support). When
found collocated with the verb ‘continue’, ‘will’ can demonstrate how a party in government
wishes
to
carry
on
their
in
their
position
of
power.
The following table was compiled from the data produced by running our manifestos
through AntConc corpus analysis toolkit for concordancing and text analysis. Frequency lists
were produced, and concordance hits analysed. The figure next to the party’s name represents
the total frequency of modal ‘will’ in each manifesto, with each column denoting the
frequency
of
its
four
most
common
usages
in
each
Fianna Fáil (199)
Fine Gael (1160)
Labour (816)
‘We will’ (34)
‘We will’ (493)
‘Labour will’ 306
‘Ireland will’ (11)
‘Fine Gael will’ (196)
‘We will’ 60
‘Fianna Fáil will’ (8)
‘Government will’ (36)
‘Labour
in
text.
Government
will’ 23
‘This will’ (7)
‘This will’ (39)
‘This will’ 23
We see from this table that the government’s usage of ‘will’ pales in comparison to those of
the opposition parties. Fianna Fáil use the sentence initial ‘we will’ a mere 34 times, in
comparison to Fine Gael’s 493. Employing ‘We will’ in a sentence/clause initial position is
an effective rhetorical device (anaphora). (Pearse 2014: 28) Also, the usage of sentence initial
13 14 ‘we will’ can be ambiguous as to whether it refers to the party using it, or the readership as a
whole—thus increasing the inclusivity of the text. Labour chose a different approach,
choosing to use their party name instead of ‘we’. This referential strategy is also exhibited in
the less frequent ‘Labour in Government will’.
Conclusion:
In concluding, we shall outline what is deducible from the above analyses, before finishing
with a few words on CDA’s role in analysing political discourse. The first section tested the
veracity of claims laid out by ST. It revealed that each party held the economy to be a valence
issue, and that congruence was found in exposure afforded to it. Where each party differs,
however, is in the angle it approaches it from and the semantic environment it builds around
it. These differences are revealing of ulterior political motives and the reality behind the
discourse. We have also learned of how neutral words that denote key political concepts, such
as ‘economy’ and ‘economic’, are susceptible to both positive and negative semantic
prosodies.
Through the second section’s exemplification, we have shown how social actors
discursively create distance between themselves and actions, by using passivisation. The
importance of detecting this feature when examining manifestos is made evident from the
author’s
ability
to
delete
agency
from
contentious
actions
of
the
past.
The final section has established the inherent link between political power and linguistic
modality. Through analysing the corpus, the article demonstrated the high correlation
between
the
usage
of
modal
‘will’
and
expectancy
of
political
success.
Above all else, the essay has aimed to raise consciousness of the effect language has in
political discourse—both subliminally and explicitly. It has exemplified how the integration
of CDA, both corpus-driven and qualitative, can be beneficial to Irish manifesto research. Yet
14 Stephen Goulding, Queen’s University Belfast the boundaries for such integration should not be set at manifestos as many other political
texts are appropriate for linguistic analysis. Election material, political speeches and Dáil
transcripts all present analysts with discursive texts that are lexically infused with power and
are of intrinsic importance to Irish politics. A myriad of data exists, waiting to be analysed.
All that is required to access it is a shift in focus to lexicality, and a willingness to embrace
something that is too often taken for granted: the power of words.
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