The language of referenda through the prism of British press headlines

Shifts and transformations of social and political systems have always happened under the influence of a wide range of media techniques and means employed by newspapers to influence processes and shape public opinion. The paper considers the phenomenon on the example of the UK at the background of the recent political processes in the context of the Independence Referendum of 2014 and the EU Membership Referendum in 2016 (Brexit). To study the language of the British press of the period and to observe in what ways newspapers with different political stance tried to achieve the desired impact on the reader, the paper suggests looking at the headlines of English and Scottish newspapers. The study employs linguistic analysis, supplemented by discourse analysis, as well as elements of content analysis. Headlines were selected according to the thematic principle (Politics, Referendum and Brexit) and classified by the political stance and the geographical location (England or Scotland). The choice of the object of the study is due to the specific nature of British newspaper headlines (works by H. Kniffka, A.M. Simon-Vandenbergen, T.A. van Dijk, K. Schneider, J. Aitchison, E. Semino, A.Yu. Isaeva, and others). The chronological order of the data demonstrates the changes in the techniques used by journalists and politicians to reach to the readers and influence their opinion. In particular, the paper argues that the press coverage of the 2014 Referendum can be characterized as moderate, while the coverage in 2016 demonstrates a shift to manipulative techniques for which a wide range of linguistic tools were used by politicians and journalists to transform values, beliefs, and social and political attitudes. The paper argues that closer to the end of 2019, given the growing uncertainties about the future of the country, the press language grew harsher, with the domination of words with negative connotation and direct verbal abuse. As to manipulative rhetoric choices, most frequently press headlines employed metaphor, antithesis, lexical and syntactic repetition, parallelism, hyperbole, comparison and citation. The study of over 500 headlines demonstrates that the press culture has undergone significant changes which account for the qualitative transformations of the language of the British press, traditionally characterized by a reserved tone. On the other hand, the analysis of the headlines shows that the notions unity, Britishness and identity were frequently referred to. This enables to conclude that the press has given start to new interpretations of the mentioned notions the effect of which will be seen in the long-term perspective. In the course of the revision of the paper, based on the reviewers’ comments, the title of the paper has been concretized, the methodology employed in the paper has been specified, and a more detailed account of the choice of the object of study has been presented. Contribution of the authors: the authors contributed equally to this article. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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