‘Tinpot Revolutionary Agitation’: Framing Brexit-related Demonstrations in the British Pro-Brexit Press

Abstract

This corpus-assisted critical discourse analytical study examines representations of real and imagined Brexit-related demonstrations in five British pro-Brexit newspapers in March and
September 2019. These two months correspond to the United Kingdom’s original withdrawal date from the European Union (March) and the attempted prorogation (suspension) of the UK Parliament (September). Examining social actor and action representation (KhosraviNik, 2010; van Leeuwen, 1995) in concordance lines from two semantic domains (Rayson, 2008), the paper illustrates that the newspapers represent the democratic actions of Remain-backing MPs as illegitimate coups and rebellions. In contrast, real and imagined Leave-backing protests are framed as legitimate expressions of justified despair, even if they are violent. Alongside these conflicting representations, the newspapers depict politicians’ metaphors of unrest as harmful to individuals and the imagined community of the nation (Anderson, 2006). The study argues that the newspapers’ discourses of unrest delegitimise calls for political action that could have, at the time of the articles’ publications, prolonged Brexit. It concludes that by blaming politicians, citizens, and activists for unrest in the UK, the newspapers avoid acknowledging the role their coverage might play in reproducing and reifying social and political divisions.