Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics

The Idea of Politics in “political” Rhetoric

Th e author claims that analyses of “political discourse” or “political rhetoric” should be grounded in what it is that participants try to do politically with language. Words, actions, and events work together; words interpret events or actions, as well as constitute political facts, while actions in various ways help words gain their political effi cacy. Analyses of political rhetoric (or dis...

Texts and Politics: Postcolonial Revaluations of two British Classics

The major argument of this essay is that Kipling treats the colonial subject as the "other," and Forster proves to be almost as pro-Empire as writers like Kipling. Nevertheless, A Passage to India is eloquent in rejecting British values and introducing Indian voices. This novel records a shift in attitude in terms of exposing the bitter realities about and attitudes of British imperialists. Des...

The politics of pain: rhetoric or reform?

Remembering Nyerere: Political Rhetoric and Dissent in Contemporary Tanzania

This article examines the changing uses of political rhetoric around the burial of Julius Nyerere in 1999. It argues that the ruling party uses rhetoric as a means of ‘soft power’, but also documents how this rhetoric, though geared towards legitimizing Nyerere’s successors, employed tropes that were rejected by some people and were used by others to critique leaders who were perceived to lack ...

Understanding Tradition in British Politics and Beyond

Please do not cite without permission The concept of 'tradition' is used in a range of different ways within studies of British politics. Despite this there have been only a few attempts to theorise notions of tradition within British political science. Furthermore the different concepts of tradition forwarded by conservatives, interpretivists and realists have each been contested. This paper e...