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Cited by 118Rhetoric and Communication StudiesCultural and political discourse analysisComputational and Text Analysis Methods

Playing to the Gallery: Emotive Rhetoric in Parliaments

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OSNABRÜGGE, MORITZ, HOBOLT, SARA B., RODON, TONI·2021·American Political Science Review
DOI 10.1017/s0003055421000356
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Abstract

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

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  • The approach yields novel insights about the relationship between the UK Prime Minister and his backbenchers on the European Union.

    “We build on earlier work (e.g., Osnabrügge, Hobolt, and Rodon 2021;Slapin et al. 2018) for the UK House of Commons, yielding novel insights about the relationship between the UK Prime Minister and his backbenchers on the European Union.”

    From Embedding Regression: Models for Context-Specific Description and Inference (2023) · cites this paper as Osnabrügge, Hobolt, and Rodon 2021

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Authors
OSNABRÜGGE, M., HOBOLT, S. B., & RODON, T.
Affiliations
  • Durham University (GB)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science (GB)
Corresponding author
  • OSNABRÜGGE, MORITZ
  • HOBOLT, SARA B.
ORCID
Venue
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2021-05-24
Volume
115
Issue
3
Pages
885-899
ISSN
  • 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5943
DOI
10.1017/s0003055421000356
OpenAlex
W3164404319
Cited by
118
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 35 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 1
FWCI
78.89
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • American Political Science Review (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (acceptedVersion)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science Theses Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Repositori digital de la UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • London School of Economics and Political Science
  • University College London
  • Durham University
  • Universitat de Barcelona
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
  • Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Cultural and political discourse analysis
  • Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
Keywords
parliamentary speeches, legislative debate, emotions in politics, political representation, voter appeal, Prime Minister's Questions, House of Commons, Irish Parliament, affective language, word embeddings

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