Unit information: 'The Rise of Political Lying'?: Rhetoric from Churchill to Blair (Level H Special Subject) in 2017/18

Unit name	'The Rise of Political Lying'?: Rhetoric from Churchill to Blair (Level H Special Subject)
Unit code	HIST30048
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. James Freeman
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

Rhetoric is often dismissed as ‘mere words’, the means by which cynical politicians and their advisers manipulate public opinion or tell the truth ‘economically’. Indeed, many historians’ approaches to rhetoric reflect these popular assumptions: they judge politicians’ rhetoric against the reality of policy action or sift through inspiring words to excavate the hidden agendas and ideologies underlying a speech.

In this unit, we will partner archival research with digital methods to question both popular attitudes and historical approaches to rhetoric. By tracing the evolving themes and forms of oratory and propaganda in post-war British politics, we will ask whether it is instead possible to see rhetoric as a necessary part of vibrant democracies with a history of its own.

Rather than reading the period connecting Churchill’s rhetoric with Blair’s as one in which respectable oratory descended into ‘spin’, we will examine how politicians could be alert to the techniques of persuasion and yet unable to escape their own rhetorical visions. Similarly, we will complicate narratives of change and continuity by asking how far new technologies and changing formats, such as television and the political interview, transformed rhetoric and whether or not these made politics more democratic.

Focussing on key rhetorical episodes, we will use archival sources including strategy briefs, speech drafts and speakers’ guides to contextualise politicians' oratory and re-evaluate central interpretations of post-war British politics. We will also widen our analysis to consider a related aspect of rhetoric, such as a trope, technique or medium, and ask how this can be studied over a longer chronology. In doing so, students will engage with rhetorical theory, experiment with digital technologies developed by corpus linguists to examine language at scale, and connect their findings to existing historiographies.

The unit aims, therefore, to encourage students to question popular and academic perceptions of rhetoric, whilst building their confidence in using interdisciplinary, digital research methodologies to critique existing historical narratives.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:

1. Differentiate between historians’ interpretations of the nature and development of political rhetoric in post-war Britain.
2. Integrate digital methods for studying language with in-depth analyses of qualitative primary sources.
3. Synthesise and evaluate primary sources to build wider arguments about rhetorical change and continuity.
4. Critically assess existing historical interpretations and independently challenge these using techniques from other disciplines.
5. Demonstrate advanced writing, research, digital and presentation skills, as well as the ability to both learn independently and contribute to group tasks and discussions.

Teaching Information

1 x 2 hour seminar per week

Assessment Information

3,500 word essay (50%) and a two-hour exam (50%).

Reading and References

• Lawrence Black, Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954-70 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
• Paul Chilton, Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2004).
• Michael Cockerell, Live from Number 10: the inside story of Prime Ministers and television (London: Faber and Faber, 1988).
• Alan Finlayson and James Martin, ‘“It Ain’t What You Say…”: British Political Studies and the Analysis of Speech and Rhetoric’, British Politics, 3 (2008), 445-64.
• Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Richard Toye, A Short Introduction To Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).