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Finlayson, Alan 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-349X, Jarvis, Lee ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-7135 and Lister, Michael
(2023)
COVID-19 and ‘the public’: UK government discourse and the British Political Tradition.
Contemporary Politics, 29 (3).
pp. 339-356.
ISSN 1356-9775
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Abstract
This article presents an original analysis of the UK government’s discursive response to COVID-19 across the first six months of the pandemic. Two arguments are made. First, representations of the state/people relationship were vital to the state’s storying and selling of its response to this crisis. And, second, despite populist-style inflections, the state/people relationship was typically constructed around a ‘government knows best’ claim associated with the ‘British Political Tradition’ (BPT). In making these arguments the article offers three contributions: (i) empirical, via an original thematic analysis of over 120 speeches, statements and documents from the UK government; (ii) analytical, via a new taxonomy of ways in which ‘the public’ is imagined and represented in political discourse; and, (iii) theoretical, via conceptualisation of the flexible and adaptive discourse of the BPT.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | british political tradition,british politics,covid-19,crisis,discourse,rhetoric,sociology and political science,political science and international relations ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies (former - to 2024) |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Policy & Politics Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Cultural Politics, Communications & Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Critical Global Politics |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2022 13:30 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Nov 2024 10:38 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/90329 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/13569775.2022.2162206 |
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