Playing to the Gallery: Emotive Rhetoric in Parliaments

Research has shown that emotions matter in politics, but we know less about when and why politicians use emotive rhetoric the legislative arena. This article argues is one of tools can strategically to appeal voters. Consequently, expect legislators are more likely debates have a large general audience. Our analysis covers two million parliamentary speeches held UK House Commons Irish Parliament. We dictionary-based method measure rhetoric, combining Affective Norms for English Words dictionary with word-embedding techniques create domain-specific dictionary. show pronounced high-profile debates, such as Prime Minister’s Questions. These findings contribute study speech political representation by suggesting used directly