Browsing by Author "Auramo, Anna-Liisa Vilhelmiina"

This thesis explores the possibility of analysing political speeches through a structuralist literary theoretical approach. The analysis focuses on Eurosceptic rhetoric in the United Kingdom (UK) and whether this rhetoric shares codified similarities with the way monsters are constructed in cultural narratives. This hypothesis is based on the us versus them cleavage and the process of Othering present in both Eurosceptic rhetoric and monster narratives. The reluctant role of the UK in the history of European integration has developed into an us versus them cleavage, with UK politicians repeatedly applying the process of Othering to the European Union (EU). In monster narratives, the monster represents the ultimate Other, embodying the fear of difference. The purpose of this analysis is to show that the potency of populist rhetoric goes deep into the level of fundamental human anxieties that manifest through narrative monsters. The thesis aims to identify the mechanics of monster-making in Eurosceptic political speeches by analysing three speeches from conservative British prime ministers through the structuralist literary theoretical approach: Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges Speech, David Cameron’s Bloomberg Speech, and a speech by Boris Johnson. The structuralist approach takes an underlying universal narrative structure as a frame of reference, codifies it, and then identifies occurrences of these codes in a text. The underlying universal narrative selected for this analysis is Jeffrey Cohen’s monster theory that he presents in seven theses, which represent the building blocks of narrative monsters observed in monster stories throughout human history. Four theses were selected for codification suitable for analysing political speeches, and the resulting codes are: Liminality, Otherness, Warning and Perception. The occurrences of these four codes in the three speeches is termed as the mechanics of monster-making. The results of the analysis show a clear presence of the mechanics of monster-making in the three selected speeches, proving that Eurosceptic rhetoric does share similarities with monster narratives. All three speeches contain occurrences of all four codes, and while the number of occurrences varies, the overall number of occurrences increases notably over time. This not only shows that the conservative politicians paint a picture of the EU as an escalating threat that is becoming more and more separate from the UK, but it also shows that in Thatcher’s time this monstrous threat is indicated to be in the future, whereas in Cameron and Johnson’s times the threat is conveyed as imminent. The results support the idea that applying an approach from cultural theory can contribute to the research of political narratives. Since humans are cultural beings and political speeches do not exist in a political vacuum, applying codes from an underlying universal narrative to political speeches can reveal depths of interpretation the more common discourse analytical approaches cannot reach.