O'Grady, Gerard  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1730-9074
2026.
Signalling a change: The evolution of leaders' speeches in the United Kingdom.
Feldman, Ofer, ed.
The Transformation of Political Oratory: Argumentation and Style in the Modern Era,
The Language of Politics,
Singapore:
Springer,
pp. 183-205.
(10.1007/978-981-95-6175-9_9)
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Abstract
This chapter examines conference speeches from eight newly elected prime ministers dating from 1946 to 2024 to show how political speeches have evolved in response to societal and technological changes. All the speeches were delivered at times of significant change, representing the first opportunity the politician had to share their new vision and agenda with party members, press, and voting public. The speeches were first examined in terms of lexical density, the proportion of content versus grammatical words in a clause. It was found that while all the speeches had overall lexical densities redolent of written language, all speeches contained a high proportion of clauses with lexical densities more typical of spoken language. Two differences were discovered between the earlier and later speeches. The first is the increased amount of offers, and the second is the large increase in moodless clauses reporting on plans and past actions. While all their speeches are demonstratively leader-like in tone, the more recent speeches are attuned to the new modes of reaching the general public, evidence that political speech has been colonized by commercial practice.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Published Online |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| ISBN: | 9789819561742 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Mar 2026 14:00 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/185616 |
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