Arguments for Brexit : Rhetorical Analysis and Comparison of The Communication of Key Actors in the Leave Campaign

Details

Supervisors

Arblaster, Paul

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue

Abstract

enBrexit is a complex topic that occupied a large share of the media since it has been announced in 2013 by the leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron. Three years later, on the 23rd of June 2016, the British people voted in the context of an historical referendum which was already called the most important decision the British people had to make in a century. That day, the British people decided to leave the EU after a campaign full of positive but also negative events. The objective of this thesis is to analyse the arguments put forward by the key actors of the Leave campaign to determine if this campaign was homogenous or not. The question is raised by the fact that the Leave campaign was composed of smaller organizations which had, as we will see, different objectives. The Remain campaign was united in one bloc campaigning for the UK to remain a member of the EU. As the small organizations had different objectives, were the arguments they put forward different, and if so, to which extent? To answer this question it is important to take a look back at the history of the UK. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the arguments and the motivations of the Leave campaigners without being aware of certain historic facts. When we take a look at the common history of the UK and the EU, we realize that everything has not always been easy and that this will to leave the EU has deep roots within the British society as the entry of the UK in the EU was already controversial from the very beginning. Then, it is also necessary to take a look back at the key events of the referendum campaign as those events also played an important role in the way the campaigners tackled certain topics. In the third part of this thesis, I analysed the arguments of the key actors of the Leave campaign to observe the way they tackled the key issues of Brexit. The objective was to analyse the way the key actors tackled the main issues that the fact of leaving the EU implied, with which arguments did they justify their choice to leave and what solution did they put forward to ease the worries of the population and with which words. The objective remained to observe the similarities or the differences they were between the different groups of the Leave campaign. In the last part of this thesis, I present the results of this analysis and draw the conclusion accordingly.