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Introduction
Research into the role of language in politics and government has tended to focus on the ways in which politicians' discourse constructs a recognisable communicative style. This research has focused on the ways in which types of governance are accomplished (e.g. Wodak 1989; O'Connor, Taha, & Sheehan 2008). It has also considered how different types of discourse become associated with, and construct, the identities of particular parties or individuals. This work is exemplified by Fairclough's (2000) analysis of New Labour discourse, as well as Pearce's (2001) analysis of the language of the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Pearce demonstrates how, in using the 'discourses of ordinary life', Blair is able to present himself as a 'normal person'. His analysis focuses on the relative informality of Blair's language, the 'personalising' of the discourse content, and the use of specific personal pronouns. Pearce (2005) extends this analysis with an examination of UK party political broadcasts between 1966 and 1997. His work shows an increase in the 'informalization' of political talk more generally, as evidenced by the presence of clause structures, lexical forms, and pronoun types more typical of 'conversation', and the increased occurrence of mental verbs and adverbial expressions in party political broadcasts. Further to this, drawing upon Clarke, Sanders, & Stuart (2004), Fetzer & Bull (2012) analyse the semantics of the verb phrase in political speeches and demonstrate that there are two important dimensions for politicians to articulate: competence (the ability to 'get things done') and responsiveness (the ability to 'emote' or connect to an audience).
More recently, there has been increasing interest in the role phonetic variation plays in constructing social meanings in political talk. This work has considered variation between standard and vernacular forms of language in political speeches (Moosmüller 1989), and perceptions of politicians' language varieties (Purnell, Raimy, & Salmons 2009; Soukup 2011). Increasingly, research is focusing on the fluidity of social meanings associated with political talk. This growing body of research is congruent with more general advances in scholarship on the social meanings of linguistic variation (Eckert 2012). This research explores how linguistic features are used to articulate particular stances or alignments which, when used frequently enough, become indexically linked to more enduring social qualities or identities (Ochs 1992;...