Discourse and Political Culture The Language of The Third Way - Kranert, Michael

politics, society and culture
discourse approaches to
Discourse and
Political Culture
The language of the Third Way
in Germany and the UK
Michael Kranert
86
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Volume 86
The language of the Third Way in Germany and the UK
by Michael Kranert
The language of the Third Way
in Germany and the UK
Michael Kranert
University of Southampton
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For Helen
Table of contents
List of tables xi
List of figures xiii
List of abbreviations xv
Acknowledgements xvii
Chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1 Comparative discourse research: Global and local discourse structures 1
1.2 The Case study: Discourses of the Third Way 4
1.3 Aims and Research Questions 7
Chapter 2
Elements of Comparative Politico-Linguistic Discourse Analysis 9
2.1 From Politico-Linguistics to Comparative Politico-Linguistic Discourse
Analysis: Theoretical origins 9
2.2 Discourse as texts in context, or Discourse Linguistics as
Cultural Studies 15
2.3 The contexts of political discourses 21
2.3.1 The context of culture: Political institutions and political
culture 21
2.3.2 Context and subject of political discourse: Ideology and
ideologies 24
2.4 Conclusions: Methodological approaches to comparative political
discourse analysis 30
Chapter 3
Contexts of the Third Way in Germany and the UK 31
3.1 The long end of the social democratic century: A brief comparative history
of Labour and the SPD 31
3.2 Discourses of the Third Way – a global phenomenon? 44
3.3 The political systems and political cultures of Germany and the United
Kingdom as discourse contexts 47
viii Discourse and Political Culture
3.4 Texts of the Third Way in Germany and the UK: Corpus justification and
description 57
3.5 Conclusions: Research questions for a comparative politico-linguistic
discourse analysis of Third-Way discourses 65
Chapter 4
Texts in context: Register and genre in the discourses of the Third Way 69
4.1 Genre and the text-context relations in political discourse 69
4.2 Uniting the party, uniting the nation: Party conference speeches as a genre
in the discourses of the Third Way 72
4.3 Integrating and promoting the party: The genre election manifesto in the
discourses of the Third Way 84
4.4 Conclusions: Register and genre as reflections of political culture 98
Chapter 5
Lexical strategies in the discourses of the Third Way 101
5.1 Political lexis: Politics as semantic struggle 101
5.2 The conceptualisation of the Third Way as a lexico-semantic frame 108
5.3 The Realisation of the Third Way frame in Germany and the UK 112
5.3.1 Ideological publications and party conference speeches 112
5.3.2 The Third Way semantic frame in political competition:
Election manifestos 117
5.4 Ideological decontestation – redefinitions and recontextualisation
of lexical elements 123
5.5 Evidence of context-sensitivity of political lexis in the
Schröder-Blair paper 129
5.6 Metalinguistic comments as indicators of an ongoing ideological battle
between Schröder and Lafontaine 134
5.7 The lexis of election manifestos – A corpus linguistic view 138
5.7.1 Actors and actions in the manifestos 138
5.7.2 Keywords – indicators for political culture, political competition
and ideological change? 147
5.8 Political lexis and political myth: re-, rück- and wieder-derivations as
signifiers for a golden-age myth 161
5.9 Conclusions: Political lexis and political culture 166
Table of contents ix
Chapter 6
The argumentative structure of party-political discourse in the
discourses of ‘new Labour’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’ 169
6.1 Political deliberation and ideology: The argumentative structure
of politics 169
6.2 Legitimisation of ideological change in ideological publication 174
6.3 The construction of ideology in the pre-election speeches of Tony Blair
and Gerhard Schröder 185
6.4 Personal Stories: Mythopoetic legitimation of a leader 190
6.5 Counter-discourses in the SPD 1998: Lafontaine’s speeches as
party leader 193
6.6 Rhetoric in times of change: Blair’s Clause Four and Schröder’s
Agenda 2010 198
6.7 Conclusions: Legitimation of ideological change in political context 205
Chapter 7
New politics, new metaphor? 207
7.1 Metaphor in political discourse 207
7.2 The conceptual metaphor politics is a journey 216
7.3 The conceptual metaphor politics is building 221
7.4 The conceptual metaphor politics is battle 223
7.5 Religious metaphors in the introduction to Labour’s manifesto
in 1997 226
7.6 The Target domains state, society and welfare 229
7.7 Constructions of necessity in the metaphorical ideation
in ideological publications 231
7.8 The metaphorical construction of political myths in the party conference
speeches 235
7.9 The art of aestheticisation and promotionalisation through metaphorical
programme terms in Blair’s conference speeches 238
7.10 Conclusions: Metaphors of the Third Way 246
Chapter 8
Conclusions: Political cultures and the political discourses 249
8.1 Genres differences in political discourse 249
8.2 Legitimation of party-ideological change 251
8.3 Linguistic construction of Third Way ideology in Germany and
the UK 253
8.4 The text-context relation in political discourse 256
x Discourse and Political Culture
8.5 Theoretical and methodological conclusions for a comparative politico-

linguistic discourse analysis 257
8.6 Social democracy after the Third Way: Questions for future comparative
politico-linguistic research 259
Appendix: Short Biographies of Political Actors 265
References 269
Name index 293
Subject index 295

List of tables
Table 1. Self-references in party conference speeches (Kranert 2017: 192) 80

Table 2. Semantic frame of programme and stigma terms in the discourses of the
Third Way 113
Table 3. ‘our’/ ‘uns’ in election manifestos 139
Table 4. Frequency of ‘CDU’, ‘SPD’ and ‘rot-grün’ in the election manifestos 140
Table 5. High-frequency verbs in Labour/SPD election manifestos between 1987 and
2002 142
Table 6. Recipients of the verb ‘help’ in the 2001 Labour manifesto 144
Table 7. The nominal and verbal use of ‘reform’ in the Labour and SPD manifestos
between 1987 and 2001 145
Table 8. Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1997
Conservative manifesto 149
Table 9. Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1987
Labour manifesto 153
Table 10. Keyness of ‘resource’ in Labour and Conservative manifestos 153
Table 11. ‘Community’ and ‘Gemeinschaft’ in the election manifestos 158
Table 12. Keywords in the 1998 SPD election manifesto compared to the 1998 CDU
manifesto 160
Table 13. Keywords in the 1998 SPD election manifesto compared to the 1990 SPD
election manifesto 160
election manifesto (continued) 161
Table 14. re- and rück- and wieder-derivations 162
Table 15. Metaphors in party conference speeches 211
Table 16. Metaphors in the SPD and Labour manifestos 1990–2002 212
Table 17. Concordance ‘build’ in the 1997 Labour manifesto 222
Table 18. ‘Nation’ metaphors in Blair’s party conference speeches 236
List of figures
Figure 1. Exclusive and inclusive ‘we’ 78

Figure 2. Front cover of the 1987 Labour manifesto 88
Figure 3. Front cover of the 1992 Labour manifesto 89
Figure 4. Pages 6 and 7 of the 1992 Labour manifesto 90
Figure 5. Front cover of the Labour 1997 manifesto 91
Figure 6. Detail from the top left corner of page 4 in Labour’s 1997 election
manifesto 92
Figure 7. Second double page of Labour’s election manifesto 2001 (pp 2–3) 93
Figure 8. Pages 6 and 7 of the SPD manifesto 1994 95
Figure 9. Double page from ‘Wir sind bereit’ (Vorstand der SPD July 1998,
42–43) 97
Figure 10. Concordance ‘politics’ in the 1997 Labour manifesto 151
Figure 11. Toulmin’s Model of Argumentation, my figure, original example from
Toulmin (2003: pp. 90–97) 170
Figure 12. Austin’s stages of action and Klein’s argumentative macro topoi in political
discourse, translated and adapted from Klein (2000a, 34) 171
Figure 13. Macro topoi in political discourse, adapted and translated from Klein
(2000a: 638) 171
Figure 14. Argumentative structure of political discourse, adapted from Kuck and
Römer (2012: 77) 172
Figure 15. Macro topoi in the discourses of the Third Way 175
List of abbreviations
adav Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein

cda Critical Discourse Analysis
cdu Christlich-Demokratische Union Deutschlands
clp Constituency Labour Party
dgb Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
dha Discourse-Historical Approach
dimean Discourse linguistic multi-layered analysis
dl Discourse linguistics
enep Effective number of electoral parties
enpp Effective number of parliamentary parties
fdp Freie Demokratische Partei
frg Federal Republic of Germany
gdr German Democratic Republic
mk Michael Kranert
pds Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus
pfi Private finance initiatives
plp Parliamentary Labour Party
sapd Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands
sdap Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei
sfl Systemic Functional Linguistics
spd Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
uk United Kingdom
Acknowledgements
Despite carrying one name on the title page, research and writing is never a purely
individual undertaking. I am indebted to many people and institutions who sup-
ported this study and whom I would like to thank. First and foremost, my thanks
go to my PhD-supervisor Dr Geraldine Horan. She kept my floating attention
focused and my interest in the subject alive, and patiently reminded me to stop
reading and start writing. I am immensely grateful for her careful reading of all
my academic writing, which went far beyond her duty as a supervisor. It truly
helped me to improve the clarity and style of my writing in English. I also have to
thank my second supervisor, Professor Mark Hewitson, for valuable feedback on
my work. Special thanks go to Professors Josef Klein and Thomas Niehr for very
helpful comments on earlier drafts of my work, and long conversations about lan-
guage and politics. I would also like to convey my thanks to the network ‘Sprache
in der Politik’ for inviting me to present my work at their meeting in Münster
in September 2013.
I am most grateful to UCL for providing generous funding for my doctoral
research, in which this monograph is based, in the form of the Impact Scholarship,
the Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies Scholarship and the Fielden Research
Scholarship.
As a linguist without training in using archives, I owe many thanks to the
knowledgeable people at the archives I used: I would like to thank Dr Beate Häupel
for allowing me to use the Political Archive of the SPD at the Willy-Brandt-Haus
in Berlin, and Dr Astrid Stroh for guiding me through a wealth of information
there. My thanks also go to Darren Treadwell, the very helpful archive assistant at
the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s History Museum, Man-
chester. I would also like to thank the Labour Party and the SPD for granting me
permission to reproduce excerpts from their election manifestos.
Nathalie and Steven Bending took on the immense work of proofreading my
first drafts, and I have to thank Robert Matthews for his great attention to detail in
copy-editing the final draft of my thesis, on which this monograph is based. Manya
Elrick kindly ‘declunced’ my translation of the quotations from German sources
for this book. Nick Pilcher and Sal Consoli kindly commented on the last draft of
this book. I am also immensely grateful to the series editor Professor Jo Angouri
xviii Discourse and Political Culture
for her encouragement and support with this monograph, and to Isja Conen from
John Benjamins for keeping the project on track.
Of all my friends who supported me through the time of this research, I would
particularly like to thank Hendrik Lange for keeping me interested in politics, and
Roland Schaette for teaching me to bake sourdough bread, an activity that was
invaluable for clearing my head before attempting any type of writing.
My thanks also go to my parents, Susanne and Günter Kranert, for supporting
my interest in everything and for allowing me to extend my studies for as long as I
did. I apologise to my lovely children, Josef and Louisa, who always had to be quiet
around the house and who could say ‘Papa muss arbeiten’ before they learned to
say anything else. Most of all, however, I am indebted to my wife Helen, who gave
me the love, time and patience to finish this project without losing my sanity. It is
to her that I dedicate this work.
Chapter 1
Introduction
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just
what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different
things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass1)
1.1 Comparative discourse research: Global and

local discourse structures
Changes in political ideologies and movements seem to happen in global waves

and move globally from place to place, from polity to polity, whether it is social-
ism, fascism, social democracy, or the now so-called populism. But do these global
political ideologies differ globally, and if so, how and why?
In this book, I am going to answer this question in a case study as a linguist,
looking at the language used to construe political ideologies. I do so because I
believe that politics to a large extent does, amongst other human activities, rely on
the use of language. In fact, I follow Chilton and Schäffner (2002a, 3) who argue
that the use of language is constitutive for doing politics. While this was already
recognised by Plato and Aristotle, only in the 20th century did linguistics and po-
litical scientists start engaging in the analysis of language use in politics. In recent
years, political discourse analysis has developed as a transdisciplinary endeavour
combining discourse analysis to analyse language use in context with the analysis
of discourses as systems of knowledge and ideology in political science (Kranert
and Horan 2018: 3–4).
This book is an intervention in this debate and aims to present a framework
for comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis. This framework will allow
an answer to the overarching question of how global changes in political discourse
are adapted locally, or, to phrase it in linguistic terms, how political contexts
1. Quoted from Carroll, Lewis, John Tenniel, and Martin Gardner. 2001. The Annotated Alice:
The Definitive Edition. London, New York: Penguin Books., p 224.
2 Discourse and Political Culture
dominated by the local political system influence political language use. Using
the case of the discourses of the Third Way in Germany and the UK, i.e. the social
democratic reform discourses at the turn of the 21st century, I will explore how
discourses, genres and party-political ideologies are sensitive to their political
contexts, and develop a methodological and theoretical framework to describe
this interdependency. Combining discourse analytical tools from the anglophone
tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the German tradition of politico-
linguistics and comparative methods from political science, I will develop an in-
terdisciplinary approach to comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis. The
approach is interdisciplinary in the sense of van Leeuwen’s (2005) integrationist
interdisciplinarity, which is sometimes also named transdisciplinarity: ‘Here it is
recognized that no single discipline can satisfactorily address any given problem
on its own’ (van Leeuwen 2005: 8). This integrationist interdisciplinarity is typical
for the developing field of Discourse Studies (Kranert and Horan 2018: 4).
Comparative methodologies have long been established in political science.
They became fashionable in the systems approach in the 1950s in the United States,
but can be traced as far back as the philosophers of the Enlightenment (Hantrais
2009: 24), if not further: ‘States, kingdoms and principalities have been compared
for approximately 2,500 years’ (Deutsch 1987: 5). Lijphart (1971, 682) argues
that comparison is, together with experiments, statistics and case studies, a basic
research method. He points out that it is ‘a method of discovering empirical rela-
tionships among variables, not […] a method of measurement’ (Lijphart 1971: 683,
original emphasis). Landman (2008: 4) goes further by seeing comparison as es-
sential to human knowledge.
With the advent of comparative research in the social sciences in more general
terms, often under the name of Cross-National Studies, the question of the unit of
comparison gained more interest, and with the transition to ideas of Transnational
Studies, it was asked whether ‘the concepts of the “nation-state” or “society” still
continue to have relevance in our globalized, cosmopolitan world’ (May 2011: 244).
The answer was of course that we need to understand how the global and the local
are interdependent, and scholars of communication have understood from early
on that global communication is contextualized locally (e.g. Slevin 2000), a pro-
cess for which we need analytical tools. May (2011: 246) therefore concludes that
‘insights into forms of life are enhanced by studying the ways in which different
cultures and societies organize their social and political affairs.’
Comparative approaches are of course not alien to linguistics. In fact, they
were dominant in the 19th century as linguists then were mainly interested in
diachronic changes of languages and in the analysis of language families, a
contrastive view that led to taxonomies of languages (Hartmann 1980: 23). This
thinking had a lasting influence on 20th century historical linguistics and later in
Chapter 1. Introduction 3
theories of language contact. Interest in the transphrastic level, i.e. language above
the sentence, started with Harris’ (1952) discourse analysis which is, from today’s
point of view, a text linguistic approach: it identifies linguistic features and their
distribution in the text relative to each other in order to develop a theory of text
structures and text linguistics. This was picked up by many linguists interested
in textual structures, and Hartmann (1980), amongst many others, introduced a
comparative element into it by combining traditional contrastive linguistic analysis
and discourse analysis into a comparative textology. However, discourse analysis
in this context was still understood as text linguistics and not as the transtextual
analysis it is today. The comparative element was introduced by Hartmann (1980)
to further foreign language learning and teaching as well as translation theory.
Politico-linguistic discourse analysis in the German tradition partly evolved
around the idea of ‘Sprachgeschichte als Mentalitätsgeschichte’ (language history
as history of mentality) (Hermanns 2012), aiming to grasp the cognitive and af-
fective patterns of social groups through the changes of keywords, metaphors and
argumentative structures that indicate changes in mentality. For a long time, this
was often conducted intradiscursively with a focus on Germany, but comparative
aspects entered the debate in the early 2000s. In their programmatic paper, Böke
et al. (2000: 12) discuss methodological questions for inter-lingual corpus building
as well as for the analysis of lexis, argumentation and metaphor in those corpora.
Despite their implicit suggestions for a multi-layered analysis, even today com-
parative analyses mainly focus on the lexical domain (see for example Leuschner
and Jaworska 2018).
In her comparative analysis of the catch term ‘multicultural society’ in Ger-
many and the UK, Schröter (2013) reflects on different possible approaches to
comparative discourse analysis: she takes the route of a discourse comparison by
analysing political keywords as ‘discourses in a nutshell’ (Schröter 2008). As an
alternative approach, she suggests a comparison of phenomena such as genres, lin-
guistic strategies and metaphors, but worries that, in this case, the findings could
not be integrated into a contrastive programme. Such integration would only be
possible in what she calls a structural comparison – and this is the approach the
present study is taking: It is defined as a comparison of language in institutional
contexts based on comparative politics, arguing that this approach would be fruit-
ful if it could demonstrate how the systemic differences can be traced down to
the level of linguistic patterns in political discourse.2 This idea fundamentally
opposes a line of thought represented by recent studies on political discourses
2. 'Ein solcher top-down-Ansatz wäre besonders dann gewinnbringend, wenn sich solche
Systemunterschiede tatsächlich bis auf die Ebene von Sprachgebrauchsmustern im politischen
Diskurs verfolgen ließen.' (Schröter 2013: 92).
which start out from a transnational hypothesis such as Gür-Şeker (2012), who
aims to demonstrate that in discourses of security in Germany, the UK and Turkey,
many linguistic patterns, especially metaphors, are recurrent – despite differing
political cultures. I aim to show that this is certainly not true for the discourses
of the Third Way. We will see instead that political and ideological discourses,
especially in politics, are localised versions of global discourses because national
political cultures form discourse systems (Scollon, R., Scollon, S. B. K., and Jones
2012) dependent on political institutions and political cultures. We will see that
the analysis therefore needs to start with differences at the genre level, an insight
that has been neglected by almost all comparative studies so far.
1.2 The Case study: Discourses of the Third Way
Let us together build social democracy’s success for the new century. Let the
politics of the Third Way and the Neue Mitte be Europe’s new hope.3
(Blair and Schröder 1999: 12)
On 8th June 1999, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair along with the German
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder presented the policy paper ‘Europe: The Third Way/
Die Neue Mitte’4 in London. This signalled how, in their cases, as leader of their
social democratic party, they had overcome an electoral crisis of their parties that
had left them in opposition for nearly two decades. With the label of the ‘Third
Way’, a reformed, pragmatic, post-ideological vision of social democracy, they had
led their respective parties into victory, and now proclaimed the Third Way as a
model for social democratic parties in the rest of Europe. But how were the reform
discourses in the two parties connected, how did their language use differ and why?
In order to understand how global political discourse changes are adapted
locally, I aim to undertake a comparison of the political discourses of New Labour
and the German SPD of the ‘New Centre’ (‘Die Neue Mitte’) at the turn of the
twenty-first century, a period during which both parties sought to win over the
‘middle ground’ of the electorate in order to return to power. This study will also
contribute to the growing literature on the discourses of the Third Way that are, as
we will see later, mainly focused on the discourse of New Labour and has, so far,
largely neglected the German discourse of ‘Die neue Mitte’.
3. The title ‘Die neue Mitte’ for the German SPD in the late 1990s translates as ‘new centre’.
4. The German version is entitled ‘Der Weg nach vorne für Europas Sozialdemokraten. Ein
Vorschlag von Gerhard Schröder und Tony Blair. ’ (Schröder and Blair 1999). Because it
was jointly presented by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, it is better known in Germany as
‘Schröder-Blair-Papier’. Henceforth, I will refer to it as the ‘Schröder-Blair paper’.
The New Labour and the ‘Neue Mitte’ discourse lend themselves to a compara-
tive study: Both parties won their first election in 1997 (Labour) and 1998 (SPD)
after having been in opposition for 18 years and 16 years respectively and having
both lost four consecutive general elections. Changes in society, especially the
dissolution of the traditional working class and the rise of post-materialist values,
led the European social democratic parties into electoral difficulties, prompting a
modernisation discourse in European social democratic parties.
The Schröder-Blair paper also indicates a clear connection between the
modernisation discourses of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’. The discourse of a
‘Third Way’ as presented in the Schröder-Blair paper suggests that social democ-
racy must adapt to ‘objective’ changes in world politics, especially to globalisa-
tion. The argument focuses on economic policies, abandoning traditional social
democratic positions such as Keynesian economics and a strong welfare state. It
suggests combining social democratic aims with policy elements from economic
liberalism such as a more flexible labour market and a welfare-to-work approach
to reduce the effects of unemployment. The Schröder-Blair paper had barely any
impact in the UK, possibly because the discourse of economic liberalism had long
been established during Margaret Thatcher’s government. It was, however, very
controversial in Germany, as it seemed to import a discourse from the UK. The
different reception of this text suggests that the distinct political cultures and dis-
course-historic backgrounds had a marked influence on its evaluation. Both New
Labour and the SPD tried to modernise, following the example of the Democratic
Party in the United States, in order to win swing voters politically to the left of the
Conservatives/CDU, but still to the right of the Labour/SPD. We will see that both
parties collaborated with politicians from the US and social scientists to develop a
coherent Third-Way ideology, but had to adapt their rhetoric to the local discourse.
The social democratic discourses of the Third Way have been analysed pre-
dominantly by political scientists, who use discourse analysis on a much more
abstract level and do not undertake detailed analyses of linguistic features. A typi-
cal example of this approach is Finlayson (2003), who reconstructs the political
theory of New Labour from New Labour’s policies as well as from its political
rhetoric. A similar approach is used by Turowski (2010), who compares social
democratic modernisation discourses in Sweden, the UK, and Germany. He
focuses his analysis on this selection of countries because they are comparable as
capitalist welfare states and liberal democracies, and all introduced reforms in reac-
tion to internal and external challenges. However, they differ considerably in their
political structures and cultures and are therefore suitable for comparative analysis
(Turowski 2010: 33). Turowski (2010) describes reform discourses as a resource of
political power and asks what a social democratic governmental reform discourse
could look like under the specific political conditions of the compared countries.
The focus of Turowski’s research is the contextual influence, and his analysis has
informed my work in this respect, but his approach to political discourse analysis
is not aimed at the details of the political language used in the different countries.
Fairclough (2000) is the most prominent source on the discourse of New
Labour that actually analyses its language. However, Fairclough characterises
political language as manipulative language from the outset. As I will argue in the
following chapter on the analysis of political language, strategic language use must
not be equated with manipulative language use, since the idea of manipulation is
built on the notion of an objective truth being accessible. Although my approach
differs in this basic assumption, it is similar in focus: I will similarly consider
‘styles, discourses, and genres’ (Fairclough 2000: 14), but will also concentrate
on the discursive difference which can be explained with differences in political
institutions and political culture.
The most recent addition to the analysis of the Third Way from a linguistic
perspective is L'Hôte's (2014) corpus assisted study which compares a New Labour
corpus to corpora of the Labour Party before 1994 and texts of the Conservative
Party. Her study, like many corpus linguistic studies, analyses lexis and metaphor
but does not consider argumentation and genre. The quantitative analysis points
out significant changes in the Labour Discourse under New Labour and sees it
as being closer to the Conservative discourse than to Labour before 1994. L'Hôte
(2014) discusses changes in the identity of the Labour Party on the basis of the lin-
guistic evidence without presenting a theory of party political identity, a gap that
I will fill in the development of my framework of comparative politico-linguistic
discourse analysis. Her corpus assisted approach also neglects differences in the
realisation of political discourses in different genres, as her corpora consist of a
combination of speeches, manifestos and pamphlets, and therefore ignore con-
textual differences realized by these genres. Nevertheless, I will use her results
of the lexical differences as points of reference in the discussion of the analysis
presented here.
In the German tradition of politico-linguistics, which my research also
draws on, there is no comparable work on the language of ’Die Neue Mitte’.
However, Josef Klein has published several articles on aspects of its language use.
Klein (1999b) is a more general and brief analysis of the linguistic strategies in
the general election of 1998. Klein observes a change in the semantic strategy
of the SPD driven by modernisers such as Schröder and Hombach because the
manifesto and the speeches adopt ‘Markt’, ‘Wettbewerb’, ‘Leistung’ and ‘Flexibil-
ität’ as catch terms, and focus on renewal and modernisation. Klein (1999b) also
notes personalisation in the election campaign, and Klein (2007a) analyses the
language of the reform discourse ‘Agenda 2010’, which introduced controversial
welfare reforms in Germany. He discusses Schröder’s changing use of the term
‘Reform’ and contextualises the unprepared announcement of the agenda without

a more detailed linguistic analysis. The actual linguistic analysis of the ‘Agenda’
speech, in which Schröder announces the ‘Agenda’ reforms, is undertaken in Klein
(2007b). In this analysis, Klein also contextualises the speech through interviews
with important political actors of the SPD at the time (Wolfgang Clement, Achim
Großmann and Gernot Mittler). In an analysis of the argumentative topoi of the
Agenda speech, Klein demonstrates that it constitutes a problematic attempt to
reframe the central policies of the SPD: Schröder had not prepared the party for it,
hence the failure of his carefully crafted catalogue speech, specifying a staggering
total of 66 political measures.
1.3 Aims and Research Questions
As we have seen, there are linguistic studies exploring the linguistic features of
the Third Way discourses on the one hand, and comparative studies in the social
sciences analysing the contexts of modernisation discourses in social democratic
parties on the other. In this study, I combine both approaches in order to reveal
a clearer understanding of the relation between text and context in political
discourse. I suggest that a linguistic analysis and comparison of the discourses
of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’ can demonstrate how differences within
the political context have influenced linguistic strategies: while Blair renewed his
party using elements of the discourse of Thatcherism in the context of a (more or
less) two-party system that would lead to a single-party government, Schröder had
to face a more complex and difficult party situation. He had to share the leadership
with Oskar Lafontaine at the beginning and was planning to win the election in
coalition with the Green Party, which in turn had its own ideas.
Starting from these apparent differences, I will ask how the discourses of New
Labour and the SPD of the ‘Die Neue Mitte’ differ, and how these differences are
related to the discourse-historical and political context. This general research
question can be divided into five questions:
(1) Which theoretical elements and research methods are appropriate for a com-
parative linguistic analysis of political discourses?
(2) How do genres of political discourse differ in the Third Way discourses in
Germany and the UK?
(3) How are changes in the social democratic party-political ideologies in Ger-
many and the UK represented and legitimised in the language use of the party?
(4) Does the language use and the construction of the Third Way ideology differ
in Germany and the UK?
(5) How can differences in political language be explained with reference to the
political context?
In Chapter 2, I will introduce the idea of comparative politico-linguistic discourse
analysis as part of Applied Linguistics in order to answer Research Question 1. My
theoretical ideas are based on the developments of politico-linguistics in Germany,
as well as on the debate of Applied Linguistics as part of cultural studies. Both no-
tions form the basis of my model of the text-context relation in political discourse.
This model allows an analysis of the connection between a political discourse and
the political system or political culture it is situated in.
Chapters 3–8 are dedicated to a case study which analyses the discourses of
the Third Way in Germany and the UK. This case study has a two-fold function:
Firstly, it will further develop my approach by introducing methodologies to com-
paratively analyse political discourse in a multi-layered manner concentrating on
genre, lexis, argumentation and metaphor. Secondly, they will present a detailed
comparative analysis of the Discourses of the Third Way in Germany and the UK
to fill a gap in discourse-historical research.
Chapter 3 introduces the discourse-historical background of the Third Way
discourses, describing the historical roots of the British Labour Party and the
German SPD and the different situations the two parties found themselves in
during the 1990s. I will also discuss the general discursive features of Third Way
discourses as introduced by Bastow and Martin (2003). They argue that a plurality
of third way discourses existed in the twentieth century, of which the discourse
of the Third Way in the social democratic parties of the 1990s has been only one
variety. This discussion is followed by an analysis of the differences between the
political institutions and political cultures of Germany and the UK. The chapter
concludes with the definition and discussion of the corpus for the present study
Chapters 4–7 are dedicated to the analysis of the discourse, each focusing on
one linguistic area. Each chapter introduces the theoretical and methodological
basis of the analysis presented.
Chapter 2
Elements of Comparative Politico-Linguistic

Discourse Analysis
This chapter situates the present analysis conceptually, laying out my approach
of comparative political discourse analysis. To do so, I will first demonstrate how
this approach is indebted to the German tradition of Politico-Linguistics,1 to its
extension, Linguistic Discourse Analysis, and, in parts, to the Discourse-Historical
Approach within Critical Discourse Analysis. I will argue for a conceptualisation of
discourse linguistics as part of cultural studies, and the necessity to research the
connection between text and context, as well as discuss how political language is
related to different levels of context.
2.1 From Politico-Linguistics to Comparative Politico-Linguistic

Discourse Analysis: Theoretical origins
A central justification for a linguistic approach to language in politics results from

the insight that language is a central condition for the existence of politics (Girnth
2002: 1), which can be justified linguistically as well through a classical idea of
political philosophy. The linguistic argument is based on speech act theory and the
pragmatic function of language: it has been known for a long time that speaking
means acting (Austin 1962; Searle 1969). The main acts of a politician are linguistic
acts, since the important task a politician’s day is acting through language – giv-
ing speeches, reading statements or bills, following public discourse in media and
formulating responses to it. The central trade of politicians is to change the world
views of others in order to influence their actions. Political language is thus a tool
of persuasion. Argued from the point of view of political philosophy, language
is the defining ability that distinguishes humans from the animal kingdom and
1. ‘Politolinguistik’ is a research paradigm in German linguistics (see Burkhardt 1996; Niehr

2013, 2014). In English publications it is often translated as polito-linguistics (Reisigl 2008a; Ce-
droni 2013), while other authors prefer the more anglicised term politico-linguistics (Townson
1992: 164; Charteris-Black 2014; Baker and Ellece 2011: 33), which I will use.
allows them to deliberate their actions (Chilton and Schäffner 2002a, no. 2; Chilton
2004: 4–6). This argument was first brought forward by Aristotle, who famously
defines humans as political animals because of their capacity for language, since
language is a means to distinguish the just from the unjust, and good from evil
(Aristotle 1998: no. 1253).
My concept of comparative political discourse analysis draws on the Ger-
man tradition of politico-linguistics. In his seminal article, Burkhardt (1996: 76)
describes Politico-Linguistics as a field settled between linguistics and political
science. Writing in the 1990s, he can look back on a long tradition of analysing
political language in Germany that started with the reflection on National Socialist
language and that resulted in a long and intensive reflection on the nature of po-
litical language under the varying titles ‘language in politics’, ‘language of politics’
and ‘political use of language’ (see Burkhardt 1996: 76–80), which mainly applied
an eclectic mix of linguistic methods from lexico-semantics, sentence and textual
semantics, and semiotics (for a catalogue of methods see Burkhardt 1996: 90–91).
Rooted in politico-linguistics, some German linguists analysing language in
politics have been influenced by Foucault’s approaches to discourse, and aimed to
integrate corpus and text linguistics with Foucauldian epistemology (Busse and
Teubert 1994; Konerding 2009; Spitzmüller 2011; Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011),
a development that was later named ‘Diskurslinguistik’ (henceforth: discourse
linguistics). This approach attempted to integrate notions of discourse that Gee
(2005: 7–8) captured in the distinction between ‘little d discourse’ and ‘big D
Discourse’, referring to discourse (little ‘d’, singular) as language in context, often
understood as the most abstract element in the hierarchy of linguistic signs, and
to ‘Discourses’ (big ‘D’, plural) as systems of knowledge and ideology in the sense
of Foucault’s discourse theory.2 In this monograph, I will use the term ‘language
use’ for little ‘d’ discourse, and reserve the term ‘discourse’ for big ‘D’ discourse.
The German school of Discourse Semantics attempted to reconcile the two
understandings of discourse by defining discourse as a virtual text corpus that
consists of all texts belonging to a topic, or to complexes of knowledge referring to
each other. The discourse analyst must then define a specific corpus in order to de-
scribe the virtual corpus with the aim of understanding the conceptual structures
of the field chosen (Busse and Teubert 1994). This approach to discourse, however,
has been criticised for neglecting the embeddedness of discursive structures in
concrete texts. Fairclough (2003: 2–3), therefore, distinguishes textually oriented
analysis from not textually oriented analysis and argues that a connection of both
is necessary: a close analysis of texts reflecting the discourse as a whole.
2. For a detailed discussion of these relations, see Warnke 2007.

Chapter 2. Elements of Comparative Politico-Linguistic Discourse Analysis 11
A slightly different focus by a more recent generation of discourse linguists,

Spitzmüller and Warnke (2011), aims to integrate the different linguistic meth-
ods into a multilevel linguistic analysis of discourse, DIMEAN.3 Accepting the
necessary integration of textual orientation with the discourse orientation, they
argue that the concrete material of observation of discursive practices are texts,
since they represent the linguistic material and indicate abstract discourses and
practices. They therefore suggest an intra-textual layer of analysis comprising
of a word-oriented analysis, a proposition-oriented analysis and a text-oriented
analysis, which again involve various analytical methods. As the linguistic analy-
sis of discourses aims to transcend individual texts in order to grasp recurring
discursive patterns such as scripts and frames, argumentative patterns as well as
ideologies, Spitzmüller and Warnke (2011) propose a transtextual layer, which
they also describe as the plane of collective knowledge: ‘Collective knowledge
manifests itself in systematic linguistic practice. The analyst can reconstruct col-
lective knowledge (only) by analysing these patterns. Consequently, discourse
analysis requires corpus analysis.’ (Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 87) The trans-
textual layer contains analytical categories such as schemata, frames, and scripts,
all formed of metaphors, lexis and arguments.
Both layers are mediated by the agent layer, which is assumed to capture
how discursive practices are shaped by rules and roles of interaction, but at the
same time shape these rules and roles. Although the rules of a situation normally
shape the discursive strategies of actors, they are also able to bend or break rules,
and thereby reshape the discursive situation – and if other actors follow his ex-
ample, an actor might change the rules and expectations of this genre of discourse
for the future.
In a similar fashion to Burkhardt’s (1996: 89–91) overview of methods and
categories in politico-linguistics, Spitzmüller and Warnke (2011, 88–89) accept
that their methodological model is eclectic, a characteristic that they see as a
necessity rather than a problem, as each analysis needs to adapt its catalogue of
methods to its object. This view is shared by other schools of discourse analysis,
such as Critical Discourse Analysis (for example Wodak 2004: 200).
As much as DIMEAN was welcomed as providing a systematic overview of
discourse linguistic methods, it has also been criticised for being undertheorised,
as it does not take into account the recent discussion of Foucault’s discourse theory
(Konerding 2009: 170). It is also not always systematically clear; for example, why
do metaphorical fields appear in the intratextual layer if they are often clearly
3. DIMEAN is the acronym of ‘Diskurslinguistische Mehrebenen-Analyse’ which translates as

discourse linguistic multi-layered analysis. The model was first published in German in 2008 as
Warnke and Spitzmüller (2008).
indicative of whole discourses? We will see later in Chapter 7 that metaphors are
cognitive phenomena that form reoccurring schemata, and should therefore
appear in the transtextual layer. Furthermore, text types and genres should also
be understood as transtextual as they are culturally dependent. This is also true
for keywords and stigma terms, which are connected in frames. Spitzmüller
(2011: 187) acknowledges this problem, and argues that the three layers are in fact
to be seen as integrated, since the interaction of intratextual elements, transtextual
structures and actors is one of the main characteristics of discourse. This complex
interaction can be described as the relation between text and context. Spitzmül-
ler (2011: 124) defines contexts as conditions of existence of discourse and as a
complex field of transtextual dimensions of language in complex interaction with
and of discourse agents, based on Foucault’s distinction between questions of
linguistic analysis and questions of discourse analysis:
The question posed by language analysis of some discursive fact or other is always:
according to what rules has a particular statement been made, and consequently
according to what rules could other similar statements be made? The descrip-
tion of the events of discourse poses a quite different question: how is it that one
particular statement appeared rather than another? (Foucault 2002: 30)
However, neither Foucault nor Spitzmüller offer an explicit theory of the text-
context-relation, an omission I will attempt to remedy in Section 2.3.
Before adapting discourse linguistics for the purpose of the present analy-
sis, influences of a further major school of discourse analysis on my concept of
comparative political discourse analysis need to be discussed: the ideas of Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) in general (Fairclough 1989; van Dijk 1993; Wodak
and Meyer, M. 2009b; Jäger 2009), and the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)
in particular (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 2009; Wodak et al. 1998, 2009). Similar
to Discourse Linguistics (DL), CDA is a collective term for different method-
ological approaches, or, as one of the founders of CDA put it, CDA is ‘at most a
shared perspective on doing linguistics, semiotics or discourse analysis’ (van Dijk
1993: 253). Both DL and CDA employ discourse-analytical methods using one
central criterion: while discourse linguists concentrate mainly on the linguistic
analysis of a discourse, critical discourse analysts foreground the critical approach
(Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 78–79).
Within discourse analysis, the strong notion of criticism proposed by Fair-
clough (2009: 168), as well as Jäger and Maier (2009: 36), has been criticised for
being circular by taking a stand: it runs the risk of predetermining results and
therefore deviating from the rules of academic discourse (Widdowson 1995;
Blommaert 2005: 51; Wengeler 2011). It is also reductionist in terms of top-
ics and methods if purely focused on the critique of social wrong (Warnke and
Spitzmüller 2008a: 22–23). The possibility of avoiding these fallacies while still
allowing critique is offered in Wengeler’s (2011) idea of enabling critique through
thorough description and analysis of the discursive construction of social reality,
a position that seems to be reflected in Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) Discourse-
Historical Approach.
The main differences between DL and DHA are seen in the research interests
and the data sets (Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 75–77): While DL originates
in Busse’s (1987) discourse semantics and traditionally focuses on knowledge
and the epistemological structures of discourse, DHA focusses on pragmatical
meaning. In corpus construction, DL aims to cover the whole virtual corpus for a
discourse, while DHA is based on heterogeneous data sets. However, Spitzmüller
and Warnke (2011: 75) argue that in recent years CDA and DL have been converg-
ing and ‘[y]oung scholars set out to combine both approaches and demonstrate
not only that these approaches are far less “distinct” than postulated, but also and,
more importantly, that each branch can benefit a lot from the fruits of the respec-
tive other, both in terms of methods and methodology and in terms of theoretical
and conceptual inspirations’.
As a lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic basis for the linguistic
analysis of discourses, I will draw on the model of Systemic Functional Linguistics
(henceforth SFL) because it is a comprehensive theory of language use that shares
the idea of language as a social phenomenon with other sociological theories that
have influenced the field of discourse analysis, such as Wittgenstein’s ordinary
language philosophy (Wittgenstein 1963) and the sociology of knowledge (Berger
and Luckmann 1991). It has also had a strong influence on CDA, particularly on
Norman Fairclough. SFL understands language always as language in context,
which means that language use, meaning and form are linked in a system. Lan-
guage is understood as a tool and a system of potentials to be realised by choice.
The concept of ‘meaning’ is a very wide concept in SFL, since it includes many
aspects that traditionally belong to the strata of semantics as well as pragmatics
(Smirnova and Mortelmans 2010: 50–52).
SFL also assumes a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by pointing
out that we use socially shared linguistic categories to typify experiences:
It is clear that language does – as we put it – construe human experience. It names
things, thus constraining them into categories; and then, typically, goes further
and construes the categories into taxonomies, often using more names for do-
ing so. […] language provides a theory of human experience, and certain of the
resources of the lexicogrammar of every language are dedicated to that function.
(Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 29, original emphasis)
SFL starts its analysis of the language system on the stratum of the text and from
this perspective it approaches lexico-grammar as well as discourse semantics. It
is therefore a unified theory of the semiotic system of ‘natural language’ that can
enable us to describe the complexity of text and discourse. The complex systemic-
functional analysis of the system of language starts with the idea of three meta-
functions which represent how we use language to construe human experience by
naming things, distinguishing them into categories, and construing taxonomies
for categories:
1. The ideational metafunction describes how language construes experience;
2. The interpersonal metafunction captures how we interact socially using lan-
guage, and how language always represents social relations;
3. The textual metafunction is responsible for the discursive organisation of
ideational and interpersonal functions.
SFL also provides a strong theory of textual grammar. It analyses a clause as a
message, i.e. the information structure of a sentence, as exchange, i.e. the mood
system, and as representation – transitivity and grammar of role. Having analysed
these properties of a clause, SFL has a good foundation to go beyond the clause. It
therefore consistently moves on to look at system networks for the construction of
clause complexes and textual cohesion. More recently, exponents of SFL have also
developed a genre theory and an approach to discourse, and the system networks
for the resources of meaning-making have proven to be a practical analytical tool
for genre description and the analysis of discourse structures. Particularly enlight-
ening for our linguistic approach to discourse will be the theory of grammatical
metaphor that has been developed in SFL.
One final point is necessary to define my approach to politico-linguistics: we
need to return to the methodological debate about the benefits of a comparative
approach. In the introduction, I argued that in political science, the value seen
in the comparison of different systems can be measured by the success of com-
parative politics and the number of high-profile publications. In media-research,
Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) have argued that comparative research is not only
productive because it expands the database and avoid naïve universalism as well as
parochialism, but also because of
…its capacity to render the invisible visible. It draws our attention to imperatives
and constraints built into the very structure of political communication arrange-
ments, which, though influential, may be taken for granted and difficult to detect
when the focus is on only one national case.
(Blumler and Gurevitch 1995: 75–76)
However, the value of comparative analysis for politico-linguistic research had

also been recognised early on: Burkhardt (1996: 96) argued that comparative
studies would support the politico-linguistic aim to produce classifications of dis-
courses and discursive elements, whilst simultaneously supporting intercultural
understanding. In line with this idea, my work aims to understand the text–con-
text relation in party conference speeches and election manifestos by comparing
a corpus of texts from a historic period where social democratic parties all over
Europe drew on the discourse of a ‘Third Way’ to reposition themselves and to
return to power. Being comparable in this respect, there are two central questions:
(1) How do party conference speeches and election manifestos in Germany and
the UK differ as a genre due to the contrasting political contexts? (2) How did the
recontextualisation of this discourse in the different cultural contexts lead to an
adaptation of discursive elements in lexis, argumentation and metaphor?
2.2 Discourse as texts in context, or Discourse Linguistics as

Cultural Studies
The last section argued for a comparative approach to political discourse in order
to gain a better understanding of the relationship between discourse and context.
The global context of discourse can be seen, in the widest sense, as a context of
culture. But how does culture influence discourse? Is this a reciprocal relationship:
does not every speaker form culture through their actions?
In recent years, there have been repeated calls to understand (applied)
linguistics as a part of cultural studies (Benke 2003; Günthner and Linke 2006;
Kuße 2012), arguing that linguistic discourse analysis is intertwined with cultural
studies. Benke (2003: 45), for example, sees the ‘interplay of texts in society’ as the
central research topic of Applied Linguistics: In her view, cultural studies aim to
understand the dialectic between societies and individual identity, but need Ap-
plied Linguistics as their ‘empirical other side’. Applied Linguistics in turn needs
the contribution from cultural studies to facilitate a more complex understanding
of structures of texts and discourses (Benke 2003: 47–48).
Building on this idea, Kuße (2012: 19–21) suggests ‘Cultural Linguistics’4 as an
integration of various branches of Applied Linguistics such as politico-linguistics,
discourse-linguistics, sociolinguistics and text linguistics. He also proposes to
4. Kuße talks about ‘Kulturwissenschaftliche Linguistik’, which could be understood as ‘lin-

guistics as cultural studies’. It is, as the capitalisation suggests, also understood as a proper name
for a programme of research, which he describes in his monograph. Henceforth, I will use the
translation ‘Cultural Linguistics’, using it as a proper name referring to Kuße’s concept.
integrate non-verbal semiotic systems, and thus sees semiotics as a basis for this
field. The task of Cultural Linguistics must consequently be to analyse the relations
of internal linguistic and external cultural phenomena, both synchronically and
diachronically. This must take into account the regularities between discourses,
genres and texts, as well as the cultural contexts, a relation that is missing in the
system of discourse linguistic multi-layered analysis suggested by Spitzmüller
and Warnke (2011).
Regarding the status of the relation between discourse and language use, Kuße
(2012: 120–21) argues that it must not be misunderstood as causality. This would
be a fallacy that Simpson (1993: 111–16) calls ‘interpretative positivism’: a theory
of discourse must not be designed resting on the assumption of a one-to-one cor-
respondence of discourses and linguistic structures but should critically analyse
the relationship between these phenomena. Therefore, the relation between dis-
course and language use must be understood as discourse sensitivity as opposed
to discourse dependency: language use is not determined by discourse, but the
discourses show distinctive linguistic features (‘Auffälligkeit’) such as typical lexis,
metaphor use and genre structure, which can be interpreted. I would like to argue
that this idea can be extended to context-sensitivity,5 since text and context are also
not in a causal relation, but part of a relation between discourse participants, dis-
course structures and contextual restrictions – restrictions participants can accept
or break, change slowly or revolutionise. The linking element explaining context
sensitivity are discursive strategies as discussed by Wodak et al. (2009: 30–33).
They adapt Heinemann and Viehweger’s (1991, 214–16) concept of strategy from
text linguistics for DHA and describe them as a mediating component between
the communicative situation including individual communicative goals and the
realisation of these goals through linguistic means (types) and linguistic realisa-
tions (tokens). Discourse strategies can therefore be the missing link between text
and context. In order to avoid any confusion with the notion of manipulation,
Wodak et al. (2009) take inspiration from Bourdieu’s sociological idea of strategic
action: although it is goal oriented, it is not necessarily instrumentalist, finalistic
and voluntary, as there is no absolute freedom of social actors (Bourdieu 1993: 90;
Wodak et al. 2009: 31–32).
Concentrating on the discourse of political actors, Chilton and Schäffner
(Chilton and Schäffner 1997; Chilton 2004) suggest analysing political discourse
as strategic language use. They introduce the idea of strategic functions of political
discourse in a similar fashion to the discursive functions in DHA: both the discur-
sive functions and the strategic functions link the context of an utterance to the
structure of discourse. These following three strategies can either be understood
5. The term was first used by Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 31), but not defined.
as interpretative rules for the discourse analyst, or as productive rules that the
analyst can attribute to the speakers, who aim to produce coherent discourse in the
context of their political culture (Chilton and Schäffner 1997: 213):
(1) Coercions are speech acts backed by possible legal and physical sanctions:
commands, laws, edicts, etc. Political actors can influence discourse coercively
in setting agendas, selecting topics in conversation, positioning themselves and
others in specific relationships, and making assumptions about realities that hear-
ers are obliged at least temporarily to accept in order to process the text or talk.
This includes the control of others’ use of language through different types and
degrees of censorship and access control. The counter strategies against coercion
are resistance, opposition and protest.
(2) Legitimisation and delegitimisation are the most basic strategies of political
discourse in democratic countries. Political actors do not normally act by physical
force, but should use the speech act of ‘defending oneself ’. The felicity conditions
of this type of speech act are good reasons and acceptable motivations for past or
present actions which are prone to be criticised. In Section 6.1 we will see how
these strategies work on an argumentative level. Legitimisation as a special case
of ‘defending oneself ’, however, does not have actual attacks or challenges as a
precondition, as does the speech act defence. Rather, it anticipates and reacts to
possible counterarguments. The struggle over resources and legitimacy can be
regarded as an ideological struggle. We will see later how ideologies provide the
basis for judgements of specific groups and how these groups are constructed us-
ing lexical strategies (Section 5.1).
The counterpart of legitimisation is delegitimisation – here others are presented
negatively, and as not having the right to do or say what they do. Analysing racist
discourse, van Dijk (1998: 259) suggests sub-strategies of delegitimisation that are
linked to the category of group membership such as the delegitimisation of group
membership itself (‘THEY do not belong to US’), of actions and discourse (‘THEY
have no right to do/say X’), as well as of goals, norms and values. Furthermore,
certain types of discourse themselves can be delegitimised by negative description
(‘Marxist’, ‘radical’). Another means of delegitimisation is the control of meanings
by controlling mass communication.
(3) The strategies of representation and misrepresentation are concerned with
qualitative and quantitative control of information. At the linguistic level, they
are again about claiming positive lexemes for oneself or employing stigmatising
lexemes against competing groups. Another important means for representation
and misrepresentation is the metaphorical construction of arguments (see Sec-
tion 7.1). Klein (1998) has suggested three main discursive strategies in political
discourse which can also be subsumed under representation and misrepresenta-
tion: basic strategies, which target the audience cognitively and emotionally, as
obfuscation strategies to conceal deficits and strategies of semantic competition.

Strategies of competition are generally employed to form and occupy the appropri-
ate terminology for one’s own political programme. I will discuss these strategies
on the lexico-semantic level in more detail in Section 5.1.
A necessary extension of the system of basic strategies suggested by Chilton
(2004) is the strategy of politicisation and depoliticisation, i.e. the question of
which problems in society become part of the political discourse. In political sci-
ence, politicisation is defined as a process in which ‘issues […] become the subject
of deliberation, decision making and human agency where previously they were
not’, while depoliticisation is ‘the effective demotion of issues previously subject
to formal political scrutiny, deliberation and accountability to the public yet non-
governmental sphere. This may take one of two general forms: the displacement of
responsibility from governmental to public or quasi-public authorities and the off-
loading of areas of formal political responsibility to the market’ (Hay 2007: 81–82).
But politicisation and depoliticisation can also be found as strategies in political
discourse and language, as Muntigl (2002) argues: given that politics and policies
are stable political structures, there has to be the possibility of changing these
structures in order to introduce new political thinking or to react to political
circumstances. Thus, politicisation refers to the discursive creation of alternatives
for acting and for defining social reality. It opens the discursive space and creates
new opportunities for political action by identifying alternatives. Politicisation
and depoliticisation seem to be a valuable extension of Chilton’s notions of stra-
tegic functions in political language because they supply an analytical tool for an
aspect that is a blind spot in them: in political communication the discourse can
be closed by construing a policy as without alternative and construing alternatives
as not accepting the necessity of it.
A possible alternative to the concept of strategies in political discourse is
the idea of persuasion and persuasiveness. It originates in the debate about the
manipulative character of political discourse or rhetoric in more general terms. I
would like to argue that strategic language use must not be equated with manipu-
lative language use, as the concept of manipulation is based on the assumption
that something like an objective truth is directly accessible to people. But it also
implies a reductionist theory of the effects of language, assuming a direct relation-
ship between language and action, which as Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 33) argue,
‘risks incapacitating the recipients (hearers or readers) as autonomous, self-aware
and self-reflective psycho-physical organisms.’
The school of New Rhetoric has therefore tried to turn the notion of persua-
sion in rhetoric in a more positive direction: ‘Argumentation is intended to act
upon an audience, to modify an audience’s convictions or dispositions through
discourse, and it tries to gain a meeting of minds instead of imposing its will
through constraint or conditioning’ (Perelman 1982: 11). More recent literature

has stated that language is generally persuasive and has defined persuasion as lin-
guistic behaviour that aims to change thinking or behaviour as well as strengthen
certain beliefs (Virtanen and Halmari 2005). But to utilise the notion of persua-
sion analytically, one has to adopt the very strong assumption by Juncker (1997)
that texts are persuasive if a persuasive intention can be assumed (Virtanen and
Halmari 2005: 7). The problem is therefore that persuasion in speech act theory
has a perlocutionary effect – it does not only depend on the ‘persuasiveness’ of
the text. Persuasiveness is difficult to verify. Consequently, I wish to use the terms
‘linguistic strategy’ and ‘discursive strategy’, and follow Perelman in not implying
any purely manipulative meaning.
We saw that discourse strategies capture the discourse-sensitivity and context-
sensitivity of language use: Political language is the semiotic medium in which
politicians compete with political ideas, and politicians use linguistic strategies to
win an argument, strategies which depend on contextual conditions. The relation-
ship between contextual conditions and language use is discussed in two major
theoretical approaches: the social semiotic or Systemic Functional Approach (Hal-
liday and Hasan 1985; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004; Leckie-Tarry 1995; Martin,
J. R. and Rose, D. 2008), and the Socio-Cognitive Model (van Dijk 2008, 2010).
SFL frames context as a semiotic rather than a mental phenomenon. Contexts
as semiotic systems contain patterns on the cultural level, which are realised in
the situation and in the text-in-context: ‘[…] speakers’ cultures are manifested
in each situation in which they interact, and […] each interactional situation is
manifested verbally as unfolding text, i.e. as text in context’ (Martin, J. R. and Rose,
D. 2008: 9–10). Halliday suggests a correlation between the three metafunctions
and context variables, which link the context to the social functions of language
(Martin, J. R. 1999, 27): the interpersonal metafunction is related to the social real-
ity of the discourse participants, which in SFL is analysed as the context-variable
‘tenor’. This variable represents the social role or status of the participants, which
influence the linguistic choices they make. The ‘field’ variable is related to the ide-
ational metafunction, construing reality in subject-specific language. The semiotic
reality, i.e. the role of language in discourse and the dialogue/monologue distinc-
tion, related to the textual metafunction, is represented by the ‘mode’ variable. In
SFL, the knowledge of text structures is analysed as ‘field’, the effects of media in
‘mode’, social relations in ‘tenor’.
Van Dijk (2010: 37–40) criticises the Systemic Functional Approach to the text-
context relation fiercely: he describes it as theoretically closed to interdisciplinary
influences. His own socio-cognitive approach assumes that contexts of discourse
influence discourse only indirectly. The mediating element between contexts and
discourse is cognition, as only cognitive elements, i.e. cognitive context models,
can influence the planning of discursive moves. The planning of discursive moves
is, after all, itself a cognitive operation (van Dijk 2008, 4; 2010, x).
From van Dijk’s position, the SFL approach to context is guilty of antimen-
talism, i.e. a lack of consideration for the mental processes behind language and
discourse. This leads to a lack of explanatory power concerning the question of the
influence of contexts on discourse production. This so-called ‘antimentalism’ is,
however, a form of complexity reduction which does not necessarily have to deny
the cognitive basis of language. SFL and social semiotics describe the functions
of language on a linguistic and social level without presenting a valid cognitive
theory of language as well as text and context. This is both possible and reasonable
in the same way that a sociological theory is possible without a detailed and valid
empirical theory of the connected cognitive functions of social actors.
To respond to van Dijk’s criticism, I need to point out that macro contexts
do not only have an individual cognitive existence, as van Dijk assumes. It is the
interaction between group beliefs and institutional settings that restricts what
people can say without being excluded: they restrict which arguments can be suc-
cessful (see for example, the effects of the semantics of ‘state’ in Chapter 3.3). One
can therefore assume that speakers and writers anticipate these contexts, as they
are acting within discourse systems which are acquired by socialisation (Scollon,
R., Scollon, S. B. K., and Jones 2012). Hence, the macro context will have had an
indirect influence on the text. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that many
genres in political discourse consist of texts mainly produced by teams of writers,
not by individuals. This is, as we will see, especially true for political speeches.
Thus, my analysis will not ask how the participants constructed the text and con-
text (this would in many cases be pure speculation), but whether I can argue that
there is a context-sensitivity of the discourse elements in the texts.
Analytically, the distinction of tenor, field, and mode needs to be comple-
mented by a hierarchy of contexts in order to distinguish more general contexts
such as the political system, from more specific influences such as the structure
of the speech event, for example the order of speeches at a party conference. Such
a multilevel approach to context has been adopted by the Discourse-Historical
approach, which assumes four levels of context (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 40–41;
Wodak 2004: 205–6):
– Immediate context or text internal co-text;
– Intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between utterances, texts, genres
and discourses;
– Extra-linguistic social/sociological variables and institutional frames (Middle-
Range Theories);
– The broader socio-political and historical contexts (Grand Theories).
Discussing and revising the distinction of tenor, field and mode, Leckie-Tarry
(1995: 17) suggests three-level classification of context: ‘context of culture (or
social institutions), context of situation and context of text’. The context of culture
contains ideational knowledge of processes and phenomena as well as ideological
assumptions, i.e. assumptions which have been naturalised and are now consid-
ered common sense. These assumptions legitimise social power (see Fairclough
1989: 2). Her context of situation captures the ideational knowledge about the
factual and institutional background and interpersonal knowledge. Textual
knowledge, on the other hand, consists of knowledge from texts as well as parts
of the current text, and includes knowledge about textual structures and genres.
2.3 The contexts of political discourses
Taking up Leckie-Tarry’s distinction between cultural and situational contexts,

I shall now examine the cultural contexts of political communication further.
The elements of situational contexts have been analysed in depth in publications
on speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) and on the linguistic analysis
of political discourse (van Dijk 2008, 2010; Chilton 2004). The main elements
of situational contexts are the situation of the speaker and listener, the mutual
constructions of roles and ranks, and the felicity conditions of speech acts.
I will refer to Leckie-Tarry’s notion of cultural contexts of (political) discourse
as macro contexts, and in the following discussion analytically divide it into insti-
tutional, cultural and ideological contexts.
2.3.1 The context of culture: Political institutions and political culture
If culture is a context of text and discourse, then a key question to ask is what do we
mean by culture? In his introduction into Cultural Linguistics, Kuße starts from
the classical definition by the cultural anthropologist and linguist Goodenough:
[… A] society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in
order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role
that they accept for any one of themselves. Culture […] does not consist of things,
people, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organisation of these things. It is the
forms of things that people have in mind, their models of perceiving, relating, and
otherwise interpreting them. (Goodenough 1964: 36)
Kuße (2012: 26) argues that this definition shows the complex interdependence
of cultural phenomena. This was later aptly captured by Geertz’s (1973: 5) fa-
mous metaphor of culture as web of significance, which we ourselves have spun.
Interpreting the concept of culture in a similar way from a semiotic perspective,

Posner (1992) aims to define culture as semiotic system by reconstructing the
basic terminology of anthropology in semiotic terms. He distinguishes between
three sub-disciplines of anthropology which in turn analyse three distinct cultural
systems (Posner 1992: 12–13), whilst social anthropology describes institutions
and rituals of society, material anthropology investigates artefacts of societies,
their production and their use. Cultural anthropology, as the third sub-discipline,
focuses on the mental culture of a society, which consists of systems of ideas and
values that Posner calls mentefacts. Posner (1992) argues that semiotics can inte-
grate these three systems by interpreting ‘society’ as a group of sign users, ‘mental
culture’ as a set of codes, and ‘civilization’ as a set of texts. Posner uses a broad
concept of ‘text’ as an artefact that is produced intentionally based on a code and
used according to conventions within a culture.
For an analysis of culture as the context of discourse, two questions need to
be answered: who are the carriers of culture? And; how do we define the relation
between the context of culture and discourse? Posner (1992: 17) distinguishes
between three carriers of culture: Firstly, individuals in a society own artefacts and
mentefacts, i.e. the material products as well as the ideas and values of a culture,
and are therefore carriers of culture. But this is also true for societies as a whole,
and for groups of individuals within societies or institutions, as far as they act
as independent users of signs and producers of text. Within society, culture as a
semiotic system is the synchronic dimension of it, the established code at a cer-
tain point in time. Posner (1992: 33) therefore only counts communication with
established codes as part of a culture. Within the discourses in society, culture is
therefore an element of inertia, which normally stops participants from breaking
the rules of communication, from communicating ideas that might be unaccept-
able within a culture. Discourse, on the other hand, can be understood as the
diachronic dimension or element of fluidity in a cultural semiotic system: while
the established codes of a culture influence discourse, discourse participants can
change culture by establishing new codes.6
Accepting that cultures can be understood as semiotic systems, we now need
to consider that modern societies are highly differentiated into subsystems that
develop their own codes to regulate discourses. Kuße (2012: 125) identifies regis-
ters along the subsystems that are generally assumed in general discourse, such as
politics, religion, law, economy and so on. Each of these social subsystems contain
elements of social, mental and material culture that form the general culture. These
semiotic structures of the general culture therefore limit the possible elements
6. For an elaborate theoretical approach to the relation of inertia and fluidity in political culture
see Welch (2013).
of subcultures in a specific general culture. The political culture of a society is

therefore partly determined by the general culture (Lehman 1972: 364).
Analysing discourse and discourses in politics, I will use the term ‘political
culture’ for the elements of social, mental and material culture in the political
subsystem. I am aware that this is a highly contested and ambiguous term and was
widely associated with positivist research of political attitudes (Almond and Verba
1963). Originally the term ‘political culture’ was used in the context of the political
attitudes research by Almond and Verba (1963). Their ground-breaking study on
‘The civic culture’ used sample survey methods to collect data on people’s ideas
about government and analysed how these attitudes are connected to the structure
of the political system. This approach has been criticised as capturing the wrong
categories, since surveys ask for attitudes of individuals rather than collective
belief systems. These belief system contain argumentative rules, especially about
the burden of proof, and can culturally suppress certain arguments (Rohe 1994: 4).
Almond and Verba’s (1963) idea of political culture has also been accused of being
reductionist because it explains cultures as emerging from individual personalities
or as part of the social system (Lehman 1972: 361; Dittmer 1977: 555).
Elkins and Simeon (1979, 127–30) define political culture as political as-
sumptions shared by a group or a mind-set, and point out that while individuals
have beliefs and attitudes, they do not have culture, since culture is a property of
a collective. They also warn that cultural explanations in politics are difficult to
distinguish from institutional and structural explanations, since these influence
each other. This is particularly important for beliefs about welfare systems, which
have historical origins materialised in institutions that in turn influence the belief
system. The analytical methods to interpret political cultures have since become
broader, more and more historical and hermeneutical, or even semiotic: Rohe
(1994: 4), for example, argues that political cultures can be studied like written
texts, and this is the context in which I will use the term.
In order to analyse and compare the linguistic strategies in politics of different
polities, it will not only be necessary to compare the political cultures, but also
the institutional contexts of these polities, because the political institutions are
carriers of culture: they take part in the political discourse but are at the same time
contexts of the discourse. The fact that institutional contexts influence discourses
in politics is a standard paradigm in social sciences. Turowski (2010: 46) dem-
onstrates that content and form mirror institutional contexts, since institutional
structures determine cognitive and normative interests of discourse participants.
He adds that the conditions of political discourse are also constrained by general
culturally specific notions (for example about ‘state’, ‘society’ or ‘welfare’) that in-
fluence politics as well as the structure of the specific polity (i.e. voting systems,
government systems). Political scientists use typologies of political systems to

compare them, and I will use their results as context variables.
The most influential typology of democratic political systems has been devel-
oped by Arend Lijphart (1999), who differentiates democracies mainly on a scale
between majoritarianism and consensus orientation. He uses two dimensions
to give a more differentiated picture: he studies the influence of parties over the
executive and distinguishes polities on a federal-unitary dimension. Although
Lijphart’s system is widely used, there is a more helpful way of distinguishing
political systems in order to analyse the influence of the context on linguistic
strategies: the veto player theory (Tsebelis 2002). This is a research programme
that has been categorised as rational choice institutionalism (Caramani 2011: 9) a
categorisation that has recently sparked an influential debate in political science
(Cox and McCubbins 2005; König, T., Tsebelis, and Debus 2010; Green-Pedersen
and Walgrave 2014).
Abromeit and Stoiber (2006) use an adapted veto player theory to analyse
power concentration and fragmentation in certain countries. This approach helps
analyse the influence of different actors within a particular political system. If
politicians want to implement a policy, a certain amount of agreement between
different actors within a certain institutional setting has to be reached, and key
players who have the right to veto a policy have to be persuaded. These key players
are often not individuals, but institutions.
By analysing who these key players are, we can differentiate between political
systems. Actors who can veto a policy are called veto players. Agenda-setters are
veto players in the discourse, who also have the power to propose a policy which
other veto players can only reject or accept. A policy can be implemented when
a set of ideas leads to an improvement in the eyes of all veto players; this is called
a win set. A win set is empty when veto players cannot agree on a policy. Unlike
Lijphart, Abromeit and Stoiber base their comparison on both an analysis of the
polity as a constitutional structure and a study of politics within that structure.
Their more complex approach allows a better evaluation of the real effectiveness
of veto players.
2.3.2 Context and subject of political discourse: Ideology and ideologies
The analysis of political language is often understood as the analysis of ideological

language. There are many controversies about the epistemological and political
meaning of ‘ideology’, which can be separated into two major categories, using the
term as a singular or plural word:
(1) Some social scientists analyse ‘ideology’ in the singular as a ‘general
phenomenon characterising the totality of a particular social or political system,
operated by every member or actor in that system’ (Blommaert 2005: 158, original
emphasis). Typically, in these theories, capitalism is seen as the ideology, more
generally defined as the dominant world view of a particular society in history
(Bourdieu 1990; Althusser 1971; Foucault 1977). These approaches are very valu-
able to the analysis of political discourse in showing how certain arguments be-
come naturalised and treated as unchangeable truths. Naturalisation of a discourse
results in political disputes becoming depoliticised. The blind spot of theories that
totalise ideology, however, lies in the competitive character of political discourses
in democracies: here, ideologies as belief systems compete for followers and voters.
We therefore need tools to analyse the discursive competition between political
concepts and the discursive strategies involved in that competition.
(2) ‘Ideologies’ in the plural are understood in the social sciences as specific
representations of the world, often linked to certain groups in society. Ideologies
in this sense are typically studied as ‘-isms’ (see for example Heywood 2007).
A possible pitfall of this theoretical approach lies in its tendency to subsume
ideologies under a name and to treat them as unified sets of ideas shared by all
members of a certain group. It is, however, the norm rather than the exception
that ideologies are not shared by everybody in the same way, but almost always
‘part-believed and part-rejected’ (Holborow 2012: 29); hence, part of the analysis
must concern the dynamics of ideologies in political discourses. Yet, how do
we distinguish these competing ideologies from mentalities, world views, and
political ideas? Following a Marxist approach, ideologies are often understood as
‘false consciousness’. Marx’s original analysis of ideologies points out that people
produce their ideas in an active life process engaging the world, but their ideas of
the world and society depend on their material circumstances (Marx and Engels
1959: 26). Historically, some social scientists have adopted this Marxist theory and
tend to use the term ‘ideology’ with a pejorative connotation of lying and deceit.
Epistemologically, this concept of ideology presupposes an objective and transpar-
ent concept of truth and reality. Philosophical reflection on truth, however, has
demonstrated that the human mind has no direct access to an objective reality, and
reality is always structured through mental and social processes. I therefore prefer
a broader concept of ideologies as world views in a social context. Because reality
cannot be a mirror image of the external world, such world views will necessarily
be wrong, albeit in part. Ideologies in this sense are also necessarily a part of social
relations and power struggles, since world views influence our political discourses
and decisions.
In order to understand the relation between belief systems, the social relations
they occur in, and the language used to express them, van Dijk (1998) offers a
complex multidisciplinary reconstruction of ‘ideology’. He argues that ideologies
are located in the conceptual and disciplinary triangle that relates cognition,
society and discourse (van Dijk 1998: 5). He assumes a multitude of ideologies,
which have to be distinguished from cultural knowledge or the cultural common
ground: cultural knowledge contains beliefs shared by virtually all competent
members of a culture. These beliefs consist of propositions that are presupposed
in discourse by almost all competent members of a culture. Group beliefs are a
system similar to cultural beliefs, and only shared by a certain group. They often
consist of cultural beliefs that are partly altered – e.g. have a looser or stricter
approach, or just different truth criteria (e.g. scientists versus religious believers).
The fact that ideologies are the foundation of the socially shared beliefs of a
group corresponds to the role of ideologies at a social level: they control or orga-
nise the more specific knowledge or opinions of a group, which are important for
the interaction, coordination and reproduction of the group. Furthermore, they
influence the reproduction of power and dominance within and between groups,
and provide legitimisation for domination. In order to analyse the social function
of ideologies, van Dijk introduces the concept of social power as a specific type of
social relation between groups: the exercise of control from members of one group
over members of their own or another group (van Dijk 1998: 162). Social power
can be consensual and beneficial, e.g. when groups elect their leaders, but it can
be abused as well, in the form of domination. Relations of domination between
groups are controlled by ideologies, which construct differences between ‘them’
and ‘us’, partly by exercising persuasive power through mass media.
In van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach, people’s minds are the interface be-
tween the social (situation) and the personal (models and communication moves).
His significant achievement is the detailed cognitive description of discursive
interaction. This approach is, however, faced with two major problems. Firstly,
it treats ideologies as static belief systems and does not take into account that in
reality they are not only full of contradictions but are also only very rarely com-
pletely shared by all members of a group. This leads to the second problem that a
cognitive approach causes by analysing the linguistic strategies of a discourse in an
unnecessarily complex way: the analysis of discursive strategies does not presup-
pose a detailed analysis of individual people’s beliefs, if a more general sociological
approach allows us to capture ideologies in discourse.
The ‘politics of knowledge’ concept of political ideologies (Edmondson and
Nullmeier 1997: 212–13) constitutes such a sociological-interpretative approach
to political discourse. It shares Karl Mannheim’s sociological ideas, assuming that
ideologies, here called ‘knowledge’, are produced in social and political interac-
tion. To capture the dynamics of political discourse, proponents of the ‘politics of
knowledge’ approach draw on Mannheim’s idea of knowledge as a market system
(Edmondson and Nullmeier 1997: 213–16; Nullmeier 1993: 183–86; Bleses and
Rose, E. 1998: 30). However, the metaphor of a ‘knowledge market’ is highly
problematic. The central criticism is the theoretical bias of this metaphor: to de-
scribe the market as prototypical for the open access to discourse completely ne-
glects the reality of markets and follows one particular ideology. It offers, nonethe-
less some important insights into ideologies in modern democracies. Knowledge
markets develop: if knowledge systems compete for validity, they can occur in all
types and sizes of organisations with a public audience, and the competing ideas
can be anything from common knowledge to scientific concepts and ideologies
(Edmondson and Nullmeier 1997: 214). The aim of a ‘knowledge market analysis’
is to scrutinise why some interpretive patterns are accepted and not others.
The main strategic moves in the knowledge market aim for the closing of
the knowledge market. In this case one interpretative pattern dominates the
knowledge system, underlies most decisions in society, and therefore constitutes a
substantial gain of power for one part of society. This type of hegemonic system is
commonly referred to as ‘ideology’ in the singular. On this basis, the occurrence of
certain linguistic features in political discourse can be predicted:
A main stratagem to close knowledge markets is the use of constructions of
necessity (Bleses and Rose, E. 1998: 46). They replace a normative argument with
a descriptive argument and are very difficult to counteract, because they put the
burden of proof on new ideas introduced into the knowledge market. Three fac-
tors contribute to successive constructions of necessity:
– the suggestion of a good assumption for a consensus;
– the claim that there is no alternative;
– the exaggeration of a crisis.
The discursive strategies of Chilton and Schäffner (1997) and Muntigl (2002) (see
Section 2.2) can all be understood as strategies relating to knowledge markets:
representation strategies capture how the world is constructed in discourse,
because the representation of the state of the world is a necessary part of persua-
sion. Legitimisation supports the validity of somebody’s claims in order to win
ideological hegemony in the knowledge market, while de-legitimisation aims to
disqualify political ideas or their proponents. Politicisation and de-politicisation
are strategies to open or close a knowledge market. Muntigl (2002: 48) defines
politicisation in his terminology as strategies that open the discursive space.
Since the interest of the analysis here is the language use of two political par-
ties in Germany and the UK, I will now focus on the relation between ideologies
and political parties. Although the term ‘ideologies’ does not only refer to party-
political positions alone, in representative democracies, parties are usually seen
as representing political ideologies. In a highly salient definition, Bale (2008: 158)
describes political parties as ‘information-economizing devices, providing distinc-
tive but manageably-packaged alternatives […] for voters who would otherwise
be confronted with a chaotic choice of alternatives and agents they could neither
conceivably hope to know nor trust’. Political ideologies represented by parties are
therefore the ‘manageable-packed alternatives’ on offer. They represent the group
belief systems van Dijk (1998) described, as parties are social organisations –
groups of people with shared beliefs on how to change society. A key question
therefore is how do parties manage to adapt to the electoral challenges without
losing their followers, who identify with certain core beliefs of the party?
Buckler and Dolowitz (2009) have developed a model to describe the ideo-
logical renewal of a party. This becomes necessary once a party has had a long
continuous time of electoral failure and finds itself in a situation of an entrenched
hegemonic disadvantage – exactly the situation that both the Labour Party and
the SPD found themselves in in the 1990s. This theoretical model from political
science is essential to understand party-political discourse in order to explain the
results of descriptive linguistic analyses of identity change such as L'Hôte (2014),
who describes the language of identity change in New Labour, but does not gener-
alise it to the level of political ideology.
Both Buckler and Dolowitz (2009) and L'Hôte (2014) use the term ‘identity’
to describe the self-identification of a party. As Brubaker and Cooper (2000) have
demonstrated, this is a highly problematic term which potentially includes so many
theoretical contradictions that it consequently loses a clear meaning. It also sup-
ports the reification of social categories such as ‘race’, ‘class’ and ‘gender’ instead of
analysing the process of reification. Instead of using ‘identity’, the authors suggest
alternative terms. Applied to the case of Buckler and Dolowitz’s (2009) model, we
can use the terms ‘identify/identification’ and ‘groupness’: Buckler and Dolowitz’
(2009) describe the ‘identity’ of a political party as characterised by the party as an
institution. Because the institutional structure of a party regulates power structures
within the party as a group and legitimises mandates to speak on behalf of the group,
this aspect of ‘identity’ can easily be translated as ‘groupness’. However, parties also
have an ideological ‘identity’: a belief system with core commitments, recognisable
values and core political concepts, which supporters and voters ‘identify’ with.
These are the shared group beliefs that van Dijk (1998) describes as ideologies.
Because the core ideological concepts are a matter of loyalty and mobilisation,
Buckler and Dolowitz’ (2009) argue that they influence the rhetoric of a party.
Thus, policy adaptations and rhetorical changes are normally in alignment with
an ideological core. If, however, the changes need to be more radical, ideologies
can be a constraint for a party. Consequently, more radical ideological changes
need a rhetoric that constructs ideological continuity in order to keep the support
of party members and voters who might not identify with the new policies. Buck-
ler and Dolowitz (2009, 13–15) described three possible argumentative moves
to achieve this:
i. in the history of the party, there will be strands that can be used as support for
the new position;
ii. explanation of failure in elections on an ideological level – ‘old’ position not
viable under changed circumstances;
iii. demonstrate to supporters how changes allow rhetorical advantage over op-
ponents.
The metaphor of ‘core beliefs’ in Buckler and Dolowitz’ (2009) is a central ana-
lytical term in the analysis of political ideologies and their changes over time in
Michael Freeden’s (1998) theory of the morphology of ideologies. I will employ
his approach to analyse the rhetoric of ideological change in New Labour and
the SPD, as his terminology captures ideological changes on a more general level
than Buckler and Dolowitz (2009). Freeden (1998) suggests that ideologies as
social constructions have an internal structure, and that a structural analysis al-
lows a comparison of ideological systems such as the political ideology of New
Labour and the SPD.
Freeden treats ideologies as ‘distinct configurations of political concepts’
(Freeden 1998: 4), using the biological metaphor of ‘morphology of ideologies’ to
grasp their structure as well as their changes (Bevir 2000: 280). He uses Saussure’s
synchronic view of languages as interconnected semiotic systems in which the
meaning of a sign depends on a network of relationships between signs as a model
to describe ideologies. While the paradigmatic dimension of political ideologies
produces meaning via the presence or absence of signs, the signs are also linked
into syntagmatic relations where the sequential or spatial relations between signs
and the rules of the combination of signs influence the meaning.
Ideologies are therefore conceptualised as combinations of single concepts
such as ‘liberty’, ‘justice’ and ‘equality’, but the exact meaning of these concepts
depends on their combination. To take a salient example from the discourse of
‘Die Neue Mitte’, the meaning of ‘freedom’ differs significantly whether one sees
‘solidarity’ as the precondition for ‘freedom’ (Lafontaine), or whether ‘freedom’ is
the precondition for ‘solidarity’, since ‘solidarity’ is based on individual initiative
(Schröder).7 Freeden (1998) describes the relation between the different concepts
employing core and periphery metaphor, as well as the term ‘adjacency’.
Core concepts are central to the political ideology, while marginal concepts
are less important. The change of an ideology can then be described as the move of
concepts from the core to the margin, or the other way around. This structure also
allows for the strategy described by Buckler and Dolowitz (2009): a policy change
7. This is analysed in detail Section 6.5.

can be justified by arguing that the value it is based on has always been part of the
party’s ideology, but only recently has it become more central.
The relations between political concepts in an ideology can also be described
as types of adjacencies: logically adjacent concepts belong together in a certain
ideology, because they explain each other – so in our example from above, ‘free-
dom’ and ‘solidarity’ are adjacent, but this adjacency is understood by Schröder
and Lafontaine in different ways. Nevertheless, although concepts can also be
culturally adjacent – certain adjacencies are more culturally acceptable in some
societies than in others because of institutional patterns, ethical systems or
influential theories and beliefs (Freeden 1998: 69–70). We will see that logical
adjacencies are central to the modernisation discourse of Labour and the SPD,
as they are employed strategically to legitimise the new position of the party.
Furthermore, cultural adjacencies can explain the differences in the strategies
between Labour and the SPD.
2.4 Conclusions: Methodological approaches to comparative political

discourse analysis
Comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis is an approach indebted to Po-

litico-Linguistics, Discourse Linguistics and the Discourse-Historical Approach.
Building on the idea of Linguistics as Cultural Studies, we saw that language use
must be analysed as both discourse and context sensitive, with discourse strategies
being the link between texts and context. Throughout the following analytical
chapters, I will now discuss and demonstrate how the suggested five macro strate-
gies of political discourse are realised in language use, using the discourses of the
Third Way in Germany and the UK as a case studies. The study will be structured
along the layers of a political discourse (genre, lexis, argumentation and meta-
phor), with each chapter introducing the methodology in more detail.
As we saw that a level of political culture needs to be assumed for a com-
parative analysis of political discourses in different polities, we will begin our case
study with a context analysis. This will be based on the idea that political culture
can be described as a semiotic rule system shaped by the specific discourse history
of a polity. Not only individuals but also institutions act as carriers of culture, and
in politics these can be understood using the veto-player theory.
Chapter 3
Contexts of the Third Way in Germany

and the UK
This chapter presents a context analysis of the discourses of the Third Way in
Germany and the UK. As it situates the discourses historically, it also details
the argumentative basis for the corpus definition. The context analysis is also an
essential part of comparative political discourse analysis as it makes it possible
to isolate the differences in the contexts which influenced the discourses, and is
therefore crucial to answer research question (5): If the Third Way discourses in
both countries differ, how can these differences be explained with references to
the political context?
3.1 The long end of the social democratic century: A brief comparative
history of Labour and the SPD
In the late 1980s, social democracy seemed to be in crisis. In Germany and the UK,
conservative parties had dominated the agenda for nearly a decade and no end of
conservative hegemony seemed to be in sight. Because of seemingly changed global
political circumstances, the liberal politician and sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf even
announced the ‘end of the social democratic century’ (Dahrendorf 1988: 116). In
1996, Borchert at al. (1996: 7) described the public perception of this situation
in Germany in comparison to Britain: whereas the end of the crisis of social de-
mocracy seemed to be in sight in the UK and a reformed Labour Party led by the
charismatic, yet controversial, Tony Blair, was predicted to enter government at
the next general election, the German SPD still seemed to be without clear pro-
grammatic orientation. However, both parties managed to end their long period
of opposition, the Labour Party after 18 years’ dominance by the Conservatives
(1979–1997), the SPD after 16 years of Helmut Kohl leading a CDU/CSU-FDP
coalition (1982–1998). In 1999, the successful leaders of these modernised social
democratic parties, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, published a programme for
a modern social democracy in Europe, praising the ‘Third Way’ as the solution for
the renewal of social democracy – and this crossover between the modernisation
discourses of two social democratic parties is the starting point of my analysis.
In the following paragraphs, I will analyse the discourse-historical circum-
stances of the crisis of social democracy, and the different modernisation dis-
courses in the Labour Party and the SPD. This is of course not a detailed analysis
of the history of both parties, which would require at least one separate volume,
rather than a short chapter.1
The origins of the British Labour Party and the SPD could not be more dif-
ferent. The German social democratic movement was established very early as a
result of the failed 1848 revolution which was largely supported by workers hoping
for social and political changes in Germany. In contrast to Britain, where trade
unions had a long tradition since the ban on freedom of association was lifted
in 1824, the labour movement in Germany was suppressed by this ban, which
in most German states remained officially in place until 1848. However, the sup-
pression of the workers’ movement in Germany also continued in the restoration
period following the failure of the 1848 revolution. Soon after this period, two
workers’ parties were founded that subsequently merged into the SPD: Lassalle’s
Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (ADAV) in 1863 in Leipzig and the Sozi-
aldemokratische Arbeiterpartei (SDAP) in 1869 in Eisenach. While the ADAV
hoped for social concessions from the state, the SDAP fought for a democratic
unification of Germany leading to a socialist Germany. The foundation of the
German Reich 1871 shattered the hopes of both parties, and state suppression
of the labour movement increased again. Therefore, a unified effort for political
change seemed necessary, and in 1875 both parties merged into the Sozialistische
Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD). Its programme was a compromise between
the more ‘state-affirming’ ADAV (Potthoff, Miller, and Kane 2006: 38) and the
more radical SDAP, and was subject to scathing criticism by Marx. Only in 1891
the party adopted a Marxist programme and renamed itself Sozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (SPD).
The development of the British Labour Party took an opposite direction: it was
founded in 1900 by well-established and free trade unions in order to represent
them in parliament. Traditionally, British trade unions were not revolutionary
socialists, but were mainly interested in being allowed to freely negotiate with em-
ployers. They also stood in a strong liberal individualist tradition in which the state
stood for the oppressive poor law and social coercion, so state interference was
not favoured by many workers. Rubinstein (2006, 17) points out that the function
1. For a detailed analysis of the social democratic modernisation discourse see (Nachtwey
2009), for the historic differences see (Potthoff, Miller, and Kane 2006), (Rubinstein 2006) or
(Sassoon 1996).
Chapter 3. Contexts of the Third Way in Germany and the UK 33
of the unions in Britain was very different from the socialist movement on the
continent – it was essentially defensive, and aimed to improve workers’ wages and
working conditions. In this role, they had to seek compromise and could not think
as social revolutionaries. Although socialists aimed to gain power in the Labour
Party, their influence remained weak to begin with, since different socialist groups
were arguing amongst each other and with the unions.
This comparison of the historical origins of the Labour Party and the SPD
demonstrates fundamental differences. Despite originating from similar motiva-
tions – to further the case of workers – both parties had different approaches to it:
The Labour Party, as the parliamentary arm of the unions, was more pragmatic and
less ideological, and influenced by a strong liberal tradition. The German social
democrats, in contrast, were social reformers from the beginning. Furthermore,
Marxism was far less influential in Britain than in Germany, especially as the
general political culture of Britain was based on political stability and a tradition
of gradualism, on reforms to parliament and the franchise.
The most striking difference between the Labour Party and the SPD in the
post-war period results from the asymmetry of the (West) German party system.
Between 1945 and 2013, the SPD managed only three times (out of eighteen) to
become the biggest parliamentary group: The Labour Party, however, manged to
achieve this seven out of seventeen times. Despite both parties developing dif-
ferently, both found themselves in the same situation in the late 1980s and early
1990s, when a long period of opposition was difficult to end and only a program-
matic renewal seemed to be the solution.
After 1945, the SPD had a strong Marxist orientation that appealed less and less
to the electorate, the more the strong economic recovery after the war unfolded.
The CDU, however, was united in its anti-communist and anti-socialist attitude
which appealed to the large West German Catholic community. In 1959, the SPD
renounced class-based politics and adopted the Godesberg Programme, which in
essence accepted the capitalist market as a sensible allocation mechanism in many
parts of society, with the slogan ‘Wettbewerb soweit wie möglich, Planung soweit
wie nötig’. Nationalisation of industry as a means of politics was given up, and the
SPD presented itself as a catch-all party.2 Only in 1966 did the SPD join the first
government, and after the election in 1969, an SPD politician became Chancellor
2. ‘Catch-all parties’ is a technical term for parties that lack a clearly defined social basis and
try to attract a wide range of supporters through a set of rather general policies. The term was
originally introduced into the analysis of party change by Kirchheimer (1966) as a translation
of ‘Volkspartei’, which is still used in Germany. I am using this term here without introducing
the debate on whether modern mass parties are catch-all parties or cartel parties (Katz and Mair
1995), since it is not relevant to the question of political discourse. For a detailed introduction
to this debate, see (Krouwel 2006).
for the first time in the history of the FRG. The successes of the SPD in government
were significant: although the welfare state is part of the German constitution, in
their first term in power the SPD strengthened it significantly (Potthoff, Miller, and
Kane 2006: 265). The SPD successfully worked for democratisation and an open
and more tolerant society. In foreign policy, Brandt’s ‘Ostpolitik’, which aimed for
a normalisation of relations with Eastern Europe, helped to diminish the impact of
the Cold War and made the FRG a more internationally significant player.
During World War II, Britain was governed by a ‘National Government’ – a
coalition of all major parties. At that time, the Labour Party’s share of the vote
rose from 38% in 1935 to over 48% in 1945. The collectivist approach to society
seemed to have grown through experience of the dire times of the war, resulting
in the publication of ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’, the Beveridge Report.
Beveridge analysed the social problems in Britain and suggested a universal
welfare state on the basis of a flat rate contribution to fight the five giant evils
in society: want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness (Abel-Smith 1992: 5).
This played a central role in the 1945 general election, and its implementation by
the subsequent Labour government was possibly the most successful restructuring
of British society in the twentieth century. Yet, the election was also won on the
promise of a major nationalisation of industries and of full employment. However,
the Labour Party was still divided as to the speed at which to aim for a socialist
society – a debate that would last through the electoral successes and defeats of
the Labour Party in the subsequent decades. There were strong Marxist voices,
but also reoccurring suggestions for a revisionist programme such as Anthony
Crosland’s ‘The Future of Socialism’ in 1956.
After a long time in government, both the Labour Party and the SPD lost
power in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This marked a crisis of social democracy
that has been widely discussed. Burnham (1996, 26) sees two problematic assump-
tions in the political theory of social democracy, which led to its crisis. Firstly,
the strategy to change society through participation in election and government,
and secondly reliance on a Keynesian approach to economic policy. The electoral
strategy was already problematic in the 1920s, when winning elections became
more difficult because workers turned to other parties. This made it necessary to
focus on other social groups, but led to the question how far a class-based party
can move away from its original electorate without losing it. The second question
was why a party which wanted to change the current political system should be
part of the political system, and what it could achieve there. The answer was later
found in the Keynesian economic approach that allowed governments to achieve
the aims of full employment, equality and economic efficiency at the same time.
However, the Keynesian class compromise was based on state intervention to
stabilise an unstable capitalist system by avoiding underconsumption through
state investment, and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state. This,
again, depended on the autonomy of national economies from the global economy
(Burnham 1996: 26–28).
These circumstances changed radically with the economic crisis of the 1960s
and the new capitalism of the late 1970s, with the globalisation of capital and
free trade, and with workers still bound to national borders. At the same time,
new social movements such as the Greens in Germany rose and threatened the
electoral success of social democratic parties. Furthermore, the social democratic
welfare state came under strong criticism from left and right: while the conserva-
tives attacked it as too big and too expensive for taxpayers, the left complained
that the welfare states degraded people through their bureaucracy and repressive
measures (see Gough 1979, Offe 1972). Because both the left and the right were
critical of the welfare state, its identification as the cause of the problem and its ac-
tive demolition by Thatcher and Reagan were barely opposed (Borchert 1996: 41).
The conservative revolution of the welfare state in the US and Britain soon became
hegemonic, and changes in welfare in the 1990s were perceived as a necessary
adaptation to the global economy. These factors seemed to question the Keynes-
ian class compromise, and led the social democratic parties into an electoral and
programmatic crisis.
Merkel (1996) and Borchert (1996) both reject a general theory of social
democratic decline. Merkel (1996) demonstrates that the development of social
democracy in the 1980 and 1990 very much depended on local economic, politi-
cal and social circumstances – whilst socialist parties in southern Europe could
not compensate for global changes, traditional social democratic societies such as
Sweden, Austria and Norway were very much able to continue with successful so-
cial democratic policies. Borchert (1996: 43) refutes the interpretation of a general
electoral crisis for the social democrats in the 1980, since there was no uniform
downward trend in their election results: while the results were problematic in
Britain, their sister parties in France and Spain celebrated electoral successes. This
shows that a discussion of the localised development of social democratic parties
is necessary.
The crisis of the Labour Party began after the lost general election of 1979,
when Labour moved to the left. This development had already begun in the early
1970s, as a severe economic crisis seemed to discredit revisionism. Strong inter-
nal division and heavy internal power battles distracted the party from focusing
on its political opposition (Jun 2004: 162–65; Rubinstein 2006: 148–56; Thorpe
2008: 209–29). The programmatic move to the left eventually resulted in a split
in the party: in 1981, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was founded. However,
most of the Labour Party’s right wing did not join and so the tension within the
Labour Party remained. For electoral success, the SDP formed an alliance with
the Liberal Party. This strengthened alternative to the Conservatives mainly took
votes away from the Labour Party and, because of the first-past-the-post system,
effectively strengthened the Conservative Party. At the same time, ‘Militant Ten-
dency’, a Trotskyist organisation, used ‘entryist’ action in order to radicalise the
Labour Party from within. A subsequent expulsion of Militant supporters caused
even more division, since the Labour left feared a general assault and initiated
reforms of the party’s structures to make leadership more accountable to the party
outside the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The PLP lost the exclusive right to
elect the party leader to an electoral college dominated by the unions and party
activists. Furthermore, the Constituency Labour Party (CLP) now had to approve
a candidate for parliament to run again.
After the 1983 election defeat the new leader, Neil Kinnock, tried to reunite the
party, reducing the influence of the left and the unions by strengthening individual
members. He introduced the one-member-one-vote system in order to contain
the power of activists who were normally more radical. From 1990, the unions’
share in the block vote at annual conferences was reduced from 90% to 70%, and
was finally abolished in 1993.
Kinnock also initiated the programmatic changes that would eventually result
in ‘New Labour’. His inner leadership circle was mainly formed of politicians who
wanted to change Labour’s values, a group internally known as ‘modernisers’. Kin-
nock especially promoted Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, who were seen as part of
the right wing (Shaw 1996: 186). After losing the 1987 election, Kinnock launched
a policy review: The Labour Party distanced itself further from the aim of the
nationalisation of industries, and focused on market discipline and a favourable
climate for businesses. It ruled out bigger tax increases, became less anti-European
Community, and gave up the commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.
The programmatic reforms did not bring about immediate electoral success;
however, by the time of the 1992 election, Margaret Thatcher had been replaced
by the less charismatic John Major. Although the Labour manifesto famously
announced that it would support businesses (‘A government which business can
do business with’ (The Labour Party 1992: 11)), the Conservatives focused on
Labour’s tax plans, which aimed to lower taxes on lower incomes while increasing
higher tax rates. The Conservative campaign convinced many in the electorate
that the average taxpayer would be £1,000 worse off.
Kinnocks’ resignation from the leadership after the lost election was followed
by a leadership interlude with John Smith, who tragically died aged only 55 after
less than two years in office. However, in his short interregnum he continued Kin-
nock’s reforms, reducing the influences of the unions further and implementing
the one-member-one-vote system.
The crisis of the SPD started after the fourth re-election of the SPD-FDP coali-
tion in 1980, when the economic situation became increasingly difficult, and cuts
to balance the budget were deemed necessary. This led to tensions in the coali-
tion. On 20th August 1981, the deputy chancellor and FDP leader Hans-Dietrich
Genscher published his Wendebrief, announcing that a change of political direc-
tion was necessary, and that the welfare state could not provide everything for
everybody. This was clearly a move to depict the FDP as the party of laissez-faire
and economic liberalism. In 1982, it finally became impossible to agree a budget
and Helmut Schmidt announced the end of the coalition. As a result, the CDU and
FDP brought a constructive vote of no confidence, instead of calling an election,
and elected the CDU politician Helmut Kohl as the new Chancellor. This was the
beginning of 16 long years in opposition for the SPD, which were marked by in-
ternal power struggles and the unexpected collapse of the GDR, which prolonged
Helmut Kohl’s chancellorship significantly.
After Schmidt’s resignation, Willy Brandt, still party chairman, became the
symbol of programmatic change between 1983 and 1985 (Walter 2009: 202–3):
the SPD wanted to be the party of ecology and the peace movement. It focused on
young people and on the regeneration of the party. This ethos of post-materialism
resulted in the new party programme of Berlin in 1989. After Brandt fell due to a
scandal, Hans-Jochen Vogel became party chairman. At the same time, the ‘Enkel-
generation’ – a term first used by Brandt for the young influential SPD politicians
Oskar Lafontaine, Gerhard Schröder and Björn Engholm – began to position
themselves as potential leaders. Brandt originally favoured Lafontaine, who was
perceived as a moderniser in the 1980s, attacking the trade unions and asking for
a reduction of working hours without compensatory wage adjustments (Potthoff,
Miller, and Kane 2006: 304). But Lafontaine failed to lead the SPD to success in
the 1990 election, despite the CDU being in an electoral crisis in 1988 and 1989.
Chancellor Kohl, however, regained strength through his management of re-
unification and managed to run a campaign based on the East Germans’ hope for
a better future. Lafontaine’s scepticism about a fast unification of Germany was
not acceptable to the public and his tactical action in the Bundestag and Bundesrat
about the currency union damaged his reputation, although his economic argu-
ments were strong. The result was a permanent crisis of leadership and constant
changes of leader in the SPD in the 1990s. But there was also a programmatic
dilemma: while the post-materialist Green party became increasingly stronger
and had to be fought programmatically, too much post-materialism frightened
core voters in troubled economic times (Walter 2009: 226–27).
To counter the loss of members, the SPD undertook a series of inner-party
reforms similar to those undertaken in the Labour Party. The reform discussion
originated in the 1980s and was implemented under the new leader, Björn Engholm,
from 1991. These reforms made a membership ballot for the new chancellor pos-
sible, and also aimed to introduce membership consultations – a rule change that
was blocked at the Wiesbaden Conference 1993 because the delegates saw it as an
attempt by the leadership to bypass them through calling for consultation (Jun
2004: 136–49). Jun (2004: 149) interprets the effects of these reforms as a change
in the power structures of the party in favour of the leadership. This is because
they gave more influence to members and outsiders as opposed to conference
delegates, and thus they strengthened the leadership, because the membership was
more fragmented and lacked the information necessary to oppose the leadership.
After Engholm had to step down because of a political scandal, the member-
ship ballot was first used in 1993 to elect a new leader. The choice was between
three candidates: Rudolf Scharping won with 40.3% of the votes, followed by Ger-
hard Schröder with 33.2% and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul with 26.5%. The use
of the membership ballot to elect the leader could be interpreted as an instrument
to block the ambitious Schröder – who in the end did not accept Scharping as a
leader and actively undermined Scharping’s leadership through strategic use of
the media (Walter 2009: 212). Although Scharping was relatively inexperienced,
with only two years’ experience as Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate, he
was perceived to manage the SPD well: In winter 1994, the chances looked positive
for the SPD to win the next election, but yet again, a far more experienced Helmut
Kohl managed to turn the mood round. With the election lost, the competition
between Scharping and Schröder became more intense, but led to a further fall of
the SPD in the opinion polls. At the Mannheim party conference in 1995, Oskar
Lafontaine gave a motivating speech, stood, surprisingly, for the party leadership
against Scharping – and won. As a skilled speaker and party organiser, who now
stood for a more traditional social democratic position, he managed to unite the
party behind him. For the first time in a decade, the party seemed to speak with
one voice. There was, however, another ‘grandson’ left who had his eye firmly
on the chancellor candidacy – the media-skilled Minister President of Lower
Saxony, Gerhard Schröder, who, supported by his close aide Bodo Hombach, fol-
lowed Blair’s successful modernisation of the British Labour Party closely, and
introduced elements of the Third Way discourse into the programmatic debate
within the SPD.
The most important difference between both parties for the purposes of the
present analysis is their different reactions to the crisis and their particular paths
to ‘modernisation’: the modernisation discourse in the Labour Party became
hegemonic before it entered government in 1997. It was particularly driven by
the new party leader Blair, and culminated in the rewriting of the Clause Four
of Labour’s constitution in 1995. I therefore call the time between 1994 and
1997 the ‘historical focal period’ of the modernisation of the Labour Party: the
modernisation had started slowly before, but came to its culmination in this pe-
riod. In the SPD, however, the modernisation discourse became hegemonic only
after the party chairman Lafontaine stepped down in 1999. As we will see later, the
signs of a battle for hegemony are certainly recognisable in the time around the
1998 election, which is therefore one focal period of the modernisation discourse
in the SPD. The culmination, however, is the announcement and implementation
of the welfare reforms known as ‘Hartz IV’ or ‘Agenda 2010’ – the second focal
period of the modernisation discourse in the SPD. Announced in 2003, the Hartz
reforms arguably constituted the ‘most ambitious German reform project in social
insurance policy since World War II’ (Kemmerling and Bruttel 2006: 90). In the
following outline, I will discuss both paths in more detail, as they form the histori-
cal context for the linguistic analysis of my corpus.
After a short leadership campaign, Blair was elected party leader by the
Electoral College on 21st July 1994. Blair made his mark almost immediately by
adopting a Third Way rhetoric, by branding the party as ‘new Labour’, and by
initiating the change to the famous Clause Four of Labour’s constitution. The
change of Clause Four, by which the nationalisation of industries was seen as a
core means of achieving socialism, was a symbolic act against a quasi-religious
symbol: The central part of the clause’s original text3 from 1918 was printed on
every membership card between 1918 and 1995 (Jun 2004: 225) and, in Fielding’s
words, echoed ‘through the ages like a secular version of the Ten Commandments’
(Fielding 2000: 371). However, its centrality for the Labour ideology was mainly
felt by party activists and trade unionists, who attended the conferences4 – and
these activists resisted the change since Gaitskell first attempted it in 1959.
The reform of Clause Four demonstrated Blair’s decisiveness as the new leader
(Faucher-King 2005: 133), and his desire to be recognised as different from his
predecessor John Smith. Smith had refrained from changing it in order to avoid
the controversy surrounding the decision. Blair took this decision for exactly the
opposite reasons: ‘… the whole point of revision was to cause a fuss’ (Fielding
2003: 75). The change was part of a strategy to attract voters who had not voted
for Kinnock in 1992 – the controversy around the redraft was intended to signal
that the party had changed. The left wing of the Labour Party opposed the change
strongly, since socialism was seen as impossible without common ownership, and
3. ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most
equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of
the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular
administration and control of each industry or service.’
4. In a survey in the 1960s in a safe Labour seat of Newcastle-under-Lyme, for example, only
46% of people asked had actually heard of Clause Four (Fielding 2000: 371).
the old Clause Four was seen as symbolic for a commitment to the working class
and redistribution of wealth. But the decision was reached by an electoral college
where individual members and individual trade unionists, instead of the unions’
leaders and party activists, were strongly represented, and 85% voted in favour of
the new Clause Four.
The symbolism of the new Clause Four was linked to profound programmatic
changes: while the market as a central part of policy was accepted under Kinnock,
it became understood as a positive force under Blair (Driver and Martell 1998: 40).
Even more, as Hall (2002: 47) points out:
In many cases, the Blair government has not simply accepted the role of the market
mechanisms in the allocation of resources, but reinforced their bite. It is apparent
that the character of the British economy has influenced the government.
It became a hegemonic belief that politics should not burden the market with tax
and regulation, but should instead strengthen its efficiency, while at the same time
supporting equality of opportunity – a position that was a means to fight Labour’s
image as the ‘tax and spend party’, which had damaged Labour so badly in the
previous election. The Conservative privatisations were kept, and the general eco-
nomic agenda of Thatcherism accepted (Hall 2002: 46); however, the charge that
New Labour is ‘Thatcherism continued’ (e.g. Hay 1999b) is not uncontroversial.
Driver and Martell (2002: 86) for example argue that ‘[t]hose who advocate the
Labour as Thatcherism view, downplay, or even ignore social democratic elements
to the Third Way’ – such as the minimum wage, and increased public spending on
health. But even Driver and Martell concede that the ideological profile of New
Labour is certainly influenced by changes in the political landscape brought about
through Thatcherism: the radical right-wing experience with fiscal conservatism,
trade-union legislation as well as privatisation and deregulation. This had not been
as radical in other European countries, and made Blair seem more to the left of the
political spectrum from a British perspective, but rather more to the right from an
external one (Driver and Martell 2002: 96).
Regarding the welfare state, New Labour moved away from unconditional
universal welfare and borrowed the welfare-to-work concept from US president
Clinton’s welfare reforms (King and Wickham-Jones 1999: 65): While Labour
traditionally saw unemployment as a problem of demand for labour, New Labour
saw it as a supply-side problem created through a lack of opportunities as well
as incentives. Originally, social welfare was based on social needs, which were
understood as rights of all members of society. New Labour saw this as passiv-
ity and claimed that there was a problem of a welfare dependency culture. Out
of this criticism the party developed the notion of a social investment state as a
viable alternative (Shaw 2007: 44–45), which included stronger means testing and
stronger penalties for not taking up (low-paid) work. This strategy was comple-
mented by new incentives to work, such as the minimum wage, tax credits and
training options. New Labour also turned to the use of private finance initiatives
(PFI) in order to fund necessary investments, and employed market mechanisms
to increase efficiency in the state sector.
Finally, New Labour can be interpreted as social democratic liberalism (Jun
2004: 247), and New Labour proponents wanted elements of a liberal political
philosophy strengthened, as they see liberalism as a part of the Labour tradition
which goes back to the lib-lab pacts of the early twentieth century (Fielding
2000: 375). From a traditional Labour position, however, New Labour was seen as
right-wing reformist: Roy Hattersley for example argued in the Observer that he
did not recognise it as ‘his party’ any more (Hattersley, 24th June 2001).
We saw how the Labour Party undertook significant changes in the structure
of the party as well as in the party’s ideology before the election in 1997. This
constitutes the most significant difference in comparison to the SPD, which went
into the election in 1998 still presenting a mixture of ‘modernised’ and ‘traditional’
positions. With Lafontaine, the party had a leader since 1995 who had returned to
more traditional neo-Keynesian approaches to economic and political problems.
This seemed suitable, as towards the end of 1996 there was a change in the general
mood in Germany: a renaissance of belief in the ‘social state’. Following a survey by
the conservative ‘Allensbach Institute’, a majority of Germans did not see the crisis
of society and economy in conservative terms such as flexibilisation and prudency,
but hoped for a strengthening of the welfare state. The socially unbalanced tax
reform bill introduced by the government therefore proved unpopular, and the
SPD capitalised on the unpopularity publicly by blocking the bill in the upper
house (Bundesrat) (Walter 2009: 233–34). By 1997, however, Lafontaine’s personal
ratings began to fall, while Schröder’s popularity grew. In March 1998, Schröder
won the Lower Saxony election with 47.9% of the vote – an election that he had
staged as US-style primaries (Wolfrum 2013: 31). Following this interpretation,
the SPD presented Schröder as Chancellor Candidate, since he had a better chance
of winning. However, there is an alternative interpretation: the double leadership
was employed as a strategic integration of different voter potentials. Lafontaine
and Schröder reflected the contradictions in the electorate, which saw the need for
change in the welfare system, but also feared the effects of these changes.
The discourse of the Third Way was in full swing in the US and the UK in 1997
and 1998, but whether it informed the SPD election campaign of 1998 is debatable.
Jun (2004: 249), for example, argues that there is no influence of this discourse
before the Schröder-Blair paper in 1999. However, I will later demonstrate that
there are clear signs of its reception in Hombach (1998), whose approach to the
‘Neue Mitte’ clearly influenced the 1998 SPD manifesto. Furthermore, the SPD
studied the election campaigns of Clinton and Blair systematically: its campaign
managers met the advisers of the Clinton campaign in seminars at the Friedrich-
Ebert-Stiftung (Wolfrum 2013: 27–28) and, following their advice, developed a
highly professionalised campaign centre: ‘Kampa 98’.
After the historic election victory in 1998 – only for the second time in its post-
war history had the SPD managed to become the biggest group in parliament – the
internal differences between Schröder and Lafontaine continued. Lafontaine had
strong ‘neo-Keynesian’ ideas (Hegelich, Knollmann, and Kuhlmann 2011: 36) and
loathed the dominant monetarist approach, which he regarded as failed because
it did not alleviate unemployment. He therefore aimed for an approach of redis-
tribution through taxation, and fought for a European harmonisation of taxes
as well as for central banks supporting economic policy through the monetary
policy. Moreover, he wanted to re-regulate the international capital flow. How-
ever, Lafontaine encountered intense opposition and was criticised by Gordon
Brown and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, as well as by bankers from the ECB and the
Bundesbank. Eventually, Lafontaine resigned from his position as finance minister
and party chairman on the 11th of March 1999, citing personal circumstances
and a lack of teamwork in government as reasons, but otherwise staying silent for
months until he gave a detailed account of his reasons in ‘Das Herz schlägt links’
(Lafontaine 1999). After Lafontaine’s resignation, the red–green coalition changed
its course decisively: the new key aims were austerity and the lowering of taxes.
Later in 1999, the Schröder-Blair paper was published as an affirmation of the
modernisers’ hegemony and an open adoption of ‘Third Way’ strategies.
The modernising politics of the SPD in Germany eventually culminated in
Agenda 2010 – a welfare reform, better known as ‘Hartz IV’, which was perceived
as radical and led to public outrage. ‘Agenda 2010’ was announced in a government
policy declaration that Schröder gave in parliament without the consultation of
the party membership or the wider public. The party seemed unprepared for these
rather radical reforms, and the announcement was followed by heated debates in
party and society. But was it really unexpected? And what were the central points
of the reform?
Hegelich et al. (2011) argue that central to the welfare reforms that had al-
ready started before the announcement of Agenda 2010 is a ‘re-commodification
of work’ through a welfare-to-work approach. Originally, most social democratic
parties aimed for a decommodification of work through the welfare state by reduc-
ing individuals’ dependence on the labour market. Modernised social democrats
such as New Labour and Schröder’s SPD, however, saw integration into the labour
market as central. Furthermore, an individualisation of life risks, as well as the
privatisation of parts of the welfare state, were also central from the beginning.
Hegelich et al. (2011) argue that since Lafontaine’s resignation, a phase of ‘Agenda
politics without Agenda 2010’ started. The party’s left was paralysed and without
a leader after that, and a part-privatisation of the pension system through the
‘Riester Reform’ remained almost unopposed. It is important to note that this was
a significant change for the German social democrats, as equally shared contribu-
tions by employers and employees into welfare insurances used to be a central
commitment of the SPD, a principle that was abandoned for the privatised parts of
pensions. The Labour market was initially re-regulated, as the modernisers under
Schröder retracted further on election promises after losing state elections, but
plans for these reforms had already been drafted. Indeed, the first steps towards
welfare-to-work were introduced in 2001 via the Job-AQTIV bill (Hegelich,
Knollmann, and Kuhlmann 2011: 36).
In 2002, the process of introducing the so-called Hartz reforms was initiated
after a scandal about inaccurate statistics in the ‘Agentur für Arbeit’ (the central
institution that cared for the unemployed) broke. The evidence, however, suggests
that the statistics were probably leaked strategically by the Kanzleramt (Streeck
2003: 8). As a reaction, an advisory committee on labour market reforms under
the chairmanship of the VW human resources executive Peter Hartz was asked to
submit suggestions which eventually resulted in the so-called ‘Hartz laws’. Most
significant was the suggested integration of unemployment assistance and social
benefits into a single system that henceforth became known as ‘Hartz IV’. To
understand the outrage these reforms caused, it is important to be aware that the
German welfare system was part of the Christian-democrat welfare regime, which
aimed at achieving social stability and cohesion by maintaining the individual’s
standard of living in cases of unemployment (Seeleib-Kaiser 2008: 236–40). This
regime consisted of a contribution-based unemployment insurance system which,
in case of unemployment, provided people with 60–67% of their last net earnings
for up to 32 months, and tax-funded unemployment assistance, which provided
the unemployed with 53–57% of their last net salary, after their unemployment
insurance payments stopped.
The Hartz reforms radically changed this system: after only 12 months of
unemployment insurance payments (18 months for people aged over 55), un-
employed people had to depend on much lower means-tested social benefits and
were under obligation to accept any legal job, or to expect to have their benefits
significantly reduced (Kemmerling and Bruttel 2006: 96–97). This was a stark
change towards a more liberal-communitarian approach to welfare, which was
typical also for Britain and the United States (Seeleib-Kaiser 2008: 249).
3.2 Discourses of the Third Way – a global phenomenon?
New Labour and the SPD of ‘Die Neue Mitte’ are usually described as Third Way
social democratic parties. I will now identify the main elements of the Third Way
discourse, and explore to what extent New Labour and ’Die Neue Mitte’ are both
part of the same Third Way discourse. The linguistic analysis of the present study
will be based on this discussion.
Bastow and Martin (2003) discuss the Third Way as a variety of ideologies of the
third way.5 They define the third-way discourse as a ‘mode of ideological reasoning
rather than a distinctive ideology in itself ’ (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 2). Typical
for Third-Way social democrats is in their eyes an attempt to unite opposing policy
choices – state and market, rights and responsibilities – since their central claim is
to move beyond ideology. This is also the reason for the apparent vagueness of the
Third Way: if it tries to dissolve ideologies and move on, where does it move to:
where are the criteria for the reliance on markets and states? Bastow and Martin
answer that ‘[…] the Third Way functions as a “discourse” that resets the horizons
of social objectivity by claiming to transcend received ideological perspectives.
In doing so, it resists easy classification along a left–right spectrum’ (Bastow and
Martin, J. 2003: 6). Bastow and Martin (2003) discovered five basic elements that
characterise all third-way discourses, and found elements of all of them realised in
New Labour’s Third Way:
(1) The idea that New Labour is situated on the political spectrum between
left and right is repeatedly used in the discourse of New Labour, and it has pro-
found influences on political language, as observed by Fairclough: he identified
an increased occurrence of equivalences that connect elements once ideologically
separated by ‘and’ instead of ‘or’ (Fairclough 2000: 9–12). Alternatively, both the
discourse of New Labour and the discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’ employ a topos
of post-ideology, arguing that political ideologies have led to adversary politics.
The Third Way is thus proposed as a political position that is not ideological,
but pragmatic.
(2) All third-way discourses contain an element of crisis (Bastow and Martin,
J. 2003: 50–52). For Blair, a crisis materialises in the challenges of ‘change’, which
include the internationalisation of trade and general globalisation, as well as a
rapid development of new technologies, which all have an effect on the labour
market. Therefore, Blair argues for a necessary rebalancing of responsibilities
between state and economy. Giddens analyses this on a more sociological basis
5. Bastow and Martin (2003) use the lower-case spelling to refer to the general phenomenon of
third- way ideologies, while the upper-case ‘Third Way’ refers to the particular discourse in and
around New Labour.
and sees the crisis emerging out of a series of social transformations: changes in
time and space because of globalisation diminish state influence on the economy.
He also observes a critical decline of traditional identities and an increase in in-
dividualism (Giddens 1998: 27). Traditional ideologies are in crisis, because they
see modernisation as a ‘linear’ process, where one institution is responsible for
delivering economic benefits: either the state (left) or the market (right). Instead,
Giddens wants globalisation to be seen as an opportunity to modernise while be-
ing aware of the risks of modernisation (Giddens 1998: 64–68).
(3) All third-way discourses define their objectives on the basis of a renewal of
ethical principles, and reject a materialist analysis of the political problems of their
time (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 40–41). New Labour sees equality of outcome
as an aim that does not match a pluralistic society. In this view, prejudice and
discrimination are the main causes of social problems, not material inequality, and
so New Labour aims for equal moral worth (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 52–54).
Giddens connects this to the rise of a new individualism (Giddens 1998: 34–37),
which he stresses is not egoistic individualism, but part of social change and the
liberation from traditional fixed social relations. Because of rising individual-
ism – although Giddens evaluates it positively – solidarity cannot be produced
by the state any more. New means of solidarity need to be found, and Giddens
argues for a renewal of a combination of individual rights and responsibilities
in the community.
(4) Basing a renewal of politics on the community is a further element of all
third-way discourses (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 41–42). The Third Way claims
that the state cannot replace civil society, and society is more than a collection
of self-interested individuals whose relationship is regulated by market forces.
Thus, New Labour campaigns for a partnership between the government and the
voluntary sector, as well as the ‘stakeholder society’, as a means to revive the civil
society (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 54–56).
(5) The fifth and last element of third-way discourses is a sense of agency
amongst their proponents:
Like other proponents of third ways, ‘new Labour’ sees itself as more than just a
party: it is the living symbol of the change it wishes to bring about. Few slogans
express this better than ‘New Labour, New Britain’. As an agency of modernisa-
tion, Labour’s newness was to become Britain’s newness.
(Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 57)
The defining difference between other third-way discourses (such as Italian Lib-
eral Socialism or parts of the Green movement) and the Third Way discourse of
New Labour is the necessity of modernisation due to globalisation. This discourse
of modernisation can be seen as part of the crisis element: globalisation causes
social and economic challenges, and when ‘globalisation […] is the symptom […],
modernisation is the cure’ (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 58). This objectivation
of globalisation would suggest that both the discourse of New Labour and the
discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’ rely on discursive strategies of depoliticisation.
Although Bastow and Martin do not use this term, they describe the effect of the
objectified globalisation in a similar way: ‘This encourages us to think of economic
and social change as non-political (that is, essentially incontestable) and therefore
enforces a closure on political discourse’ (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 68). This
has also been observed by Finlayson (2003), who points out that fundamental
decisions on how we want to live are kept out of politics in the discourse of New
Labour: ‘Instead the way we live is simply derived from the way things are.’ (Fin-
layson 2003: 136) He also notices a strategy to close the discourse: in the New
Labour discourse, its opponents are often misconstrued as opponents of progress
and justice in order to delegitimise them (Finlayson 2003: 80). As I have argued in
my discussion of ideology and the politics of knowledge, these discursive closures
or constructions of necessity are typical of political ideologies.
A further typical element of political ideologies can be found in the discourse
of the Third Way: contradictory elements. The neoliberal emphasis on individual
choice in New Labour’s approach counteracts the ideas of solidarity in community,
since the first creates well-known problems of solidarity (Bastow and Martin, J.
2003: 66). The demanded sense of community also contradicts the idea of a social
contract that is often used by New Labour, because the classical liberal idea of
a contract suggests a weak or purely commercial human relationship (Freeden
1999: 45). But even liberal values itself are not used without contradiction, as the
‘zero tolerance’ rhetoric of ‘new Labour’ directly negates the liberal core value of
tolerance (Freeden 1999: 45). Freeden (1999) also notices a clear reformulation
of socialist values in favour of the position of economic liberalism: He observes
that the ‘right to work’ becomes a puritanical ‘duty to work’ that sees humans as
a resource. The value of equality of distribution is substituted by equality of op-
portunity, which in New Labour’s terminology means opportunity to work rather
than to realisation of personal potential (Freeden 1999: 47). King and Wickham-
Jones (1999: 62–63) show how the traditional democratic socialist idea of welfare
and universal social benefits that was a central and uncontroversial commitment
of the Labour Party between 1945 and 1992, is redefined by New Labour: ‘welfare’
is not understood as the means to human wellbeing and human creativity any
more, neither is it part of a political effort to fight alienation, but becomes ‘a sup-
port service for the marginalised’.
The discussion of the literature on ideologies of the third way above dem-
onstrates that New Labour’s political ideology has generally been categorised as
an ideology of the third way. There has been, however, less analysis of ‘Die Neue
Mitte’ in this respect, which keeps the question open whether the discourse of
‘Die Neue Mitte’ and of New Labour are comparable and have more in common
than one policy paper published in 1999. We saw in the previous section that the
time lines are rather different. The establishment of New Labour is commonly
dated at Tony Blair’s most important internal victory: the change of Clause Four in
1995; while the start of the modernisation discourse is often located much earlier,
in Kinnock’s leadership (1983–1992). ‘Die Neue Mitte’ was taken on as a catch
term only for the 1998 election by Gerhard Schröder’s team. In this election, the
party supposedly tried to maintain a balance between modernising (Schröder)
and a more traditional approach (Lafontaine). The controversial extensive welfare
reforms of Agenda 2010 were only presented in 2003. It will therefore be necessary
to establish how the Third Way discourse has influenced the discourse of ’Die Neue
Mitte’ in the following chapters, where I will compare the discursive and linguistic
structures in ideological publications from New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’.
Hence, we will discuss how the elements of the Third Way discourse described
by Bastow and Martin (2003) were recontextualised in the German political dis-
course, and also consider whether they were adapted to the local political culture.
3.3 The political systems and political cultures of Germany and

the United Kingdom as discourse contexts
The British Westminster model is a democratic system with a very long tradition.
Its complex historical development can be represented as a series of evolutionary
changes building on the previous traditions of monarchy and parliament. This is
very different from the continental experience of various revolutions and wars that
have led to discontinued traditions and political systems that have been completely
restructured for a number of reasons.
The main characteristic of the British political system is the supremacy of
parliament, and this is unparalleled in other European political systems. The
Westminster parliament has plena potestas, the full power that is not bound by
anything: no written constitution or law, and no decision of a previous parliament.
Since 1949, the House of Commons has been the actual power centre of the British
Parliament because the upper house only has powers to delay the passing of a bill,
but not a final veto. The members of the House of Commons are elected in single-
seat constituencies by the first-past-the-post system. Historically, this has mostly
returned a strong majority for the government. Lijphart (1999: 10–12) therefore
sees the main features of the British political system in the principle of majority
rule and cabinet dominance. The principle of majority rule, according to Lijphart,
leads to a power concentration and to the exclusion of large majorities. The cabinet
is dominant, since it consists of influential members of a cohesive majority party.

Abromeit and Stoiber (2006: 81) go further and argue that the British system lacks
a separation of powers: the agenda setter is the Prime Minister, with a right to
hire and fire members of the government. Difficult members of parliament for
the governing party are often made parliamentary secretaries. They are therefore
part of the executive and in no position to oppose the government, if they want to
keep their position. But to what extent can the Prime Minister be seen as the only
veto player? Since the first-past-the-post system normally leads to a strong major-
ity, other parties are not veto players between elections. Furthermore, the second
chamber does not have veto powers, and because of the supremacy of parliament
there is no strong constitutional court. The only other possibly dangerous actor
in the system is the parliamentary party. It needs to be kept ‘on-side’, since it can
revolt against prime ministers, as happened to Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The
parliamentary party can therefore be treated as a conditional veto player. There-
fore, it will be revealing to see which linguistic strategies are used in the discourse
within New Labour to convince the more traditional parts of the Labour Party
who could potentially threaten the modernising party elite.
The German political system could not be more different from the British
system. Decision-making is generally more complex, since there are three general
veto players: The Bundeskanzler as the head of government, and the two chambers
of parliament, Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Bundestag, as the directly elected
chamber, elects the Bundeskanzler, which has the right to issue policy guidelines
and is therefore the agenda-setter. The electoral system has mixed-member
proportional representation, which mostly returns a coalition government. This
limits the power of the chancellor to discipline the parliamentary majority, and
his or her agenda-setting powers. These are also mostly limited by a formal coali-
tion agreement between the parties of government. German political parties are
therefore strong situative veto players, as their veto power depends on majorities
and coalitions. Their veto power becomes even stronger if the majorities in both
chambers are different: The Bundesrat, as the second chamber, is not directly
elected. It is a representation of the member states, and its representatives are sent
by their governments. The number of votes for each member state varies accord-
ing to its population. Although the Bundesrat is not equal to the Bundestag in
the power to legislate, it is a veto player, especially if the coalition government
does not have a majority there. This can easily be the case, since elections in the
member states mostly happen between general federal elections. If the governing
coalition does not have a majority in the Bundesrat, the opposition becomes a
powerful veto player that can block decisions. Abromeit and Stoiber (2006: 135)
argue that this makes Germany a type of consensus democracy, where the power
distribution changes with majorities. It can be surmised that the German system of
government makes the policy discourse generally more complex, since the parties
are stronger veto players than in Britain. There is rarely a single-party government,
and the possibility of power changes in the second chamber lead to a permanent
election campaign.
Despite their differences, both Britain and Germany have a parliamentary
system with a strong head of government, whose democratic legitimacy rests on
the support of a majority in the legislature. In comparison to presidential systems,
parliamentarism is characterised by a limited separation of powers, since the po-
litical executive emerges from the legislature and the executive collectively shares
responsibility for the decisions of government. In the last two decades, however, the
question has arisen as to whether there is an increasing leader focus in parliamen-
tary regimes because of the increasing dominance of the media in politics, but also
because of an erosion of the traditional social cleavages and an internationalisa-
tion of politics. This question is discussed in political science under the hypothesis
of presidentialisation (Poguntke and Webb 2005). ‘Presidentialisation’ is defined
as an increase in power of the head of government. This increase is divided into
three parts: the analysis of the executive face of presidentialisation describes the
increase of more formal power and power resources for the head of government.
The party face grasps the growing autonomy of the leader of a party from his or her
party, often via the use of plebiscitary elements that favour party members with
less argumentative resources, a mechanism we have seen in both Labour and the
SPD. And finally, with the electoral face, analyses of presidentialisation evaluate
the personalisation of electoral processes, i.e. the growing emphasis on the leader
in the campaign and a possibly increasing effect of the leader chosen by the party
on voters’ behaviour.
The process of presidentialisation in Germany and the UK differs. Regarding
the executive face in the UK, there has been a significant increase in the institu-
tional resources of the Prime Minister, which can be demonstrated for example
with the growth of special advisers to the Prime Minister from eight under Major
to twenty- seven under Blair. The executive face in Germany is characterised by
two constitutional privileges: the status of parties in what is commonly called a
‘Parteienstaat’, and the elevated position of the Chancellor as the head of govern-
ment (‘Kanzlerdemokratie’) (Poguntke 2005: 64). Both characteristics of the
German political system are part of the German constitution: Article 21 of the
Basic Law defines the freedom to form a political party; their structure has to
be democratic and is therefore strictly regulated by law (‘Parteiengesetz’). The
position of the chancellor as the leader of the government with the competence
to define the general direction of government policy (‘Richtlinienkompetenz’) is
defined in the Basic Law, article 65. This is balanced by the principle of ministerial
autonomy, which gives ministers the right to lead their department on their own
authority, so long as they do so within the guidelines set by the Bundeskanzler,

and by abiding to the cabinet principle, which calls for the democratically shared
responsibility of the cabinet in cases of disagreement between ministers. Poguntke
(2005) argues that the central principles of party state and chancellor democracy
mitigate a tendency towards increasing presidentialisation in the German political
system, since the electoral system produces a structural need for coalition govern-
ments and the Chancellor therefore depends on their coalition partner. However,
in his view, the Chancellor wins presidential attributes through his position as
the chief negotiator between the many veto players, a role that Gerhard Schröder
publicly acted out in the revival of tripartite talks in the ‘Bündnis für Arbeit’.
In terms of the party face of presidentialisation, both the Labour Party and the
SPD adopted reforms to increase the power of the party leadership. However, the
ill-fated experience with the directly elected leader Scharping mitigated the effects
of these reforms in Germany – the powers to use a membership ballot to elect
the leader have not been used since. Nonetheless, Schröder aimed for a popular
mandate by effectively framing the 1997 election in Lower Saxony as a primary
for the SPD chancellor’s candidacy. Still, the problems of the presidential way of
gaining a popular mandate in a strong party democracy such as Germany are
clearly apparent. Gerhard Schröder led his party presidentially, yet had difficulties
getting its approval for the Agenda 2010 reforms. Furthermore, despite claiming
the leadership on electoral appeal, he led his party into the worst election results at
state level since 1949 (Poguntke 2005: 73).
In terms of the ‘electoral face’, Britain (Heffernan and Webb 2005: 53) and
Germany (Poguntke 2005: 78) both had an increased leadership focus on election
since the 1980s. However, while studies in Britain have shown an increased leader-
ship effect since the 1970s (Mughan 2000), the results in Germany are inconclusive
(Poguntke 2005: 80). This leads to the question to what extent we can find the
leader focus reflected in the discourses under analysis.
The different electoral and governmental systems of Britain and Germany
have also had a significant impact on their party systems. The British system limits
the number of influential parties, since the first-past-the-post system disadvan-
tages smaller parties. The effective number of parliamentary parties (ENPP) in
comparison with the effective number of electoral parties (ENEP) shows this: both
are calculated by dividing one by the sum of squared shares of the relevant parties,
which are for ENEP all parties standing in elections, for ENPP all parties in parlia-
ment. While ENEP in Britain after 1945 has been between 2.1 and 3.5, ENPP has
rarely risen above 2.5. Therefore, the British party system is mostly seen as a two-
party system. The German party system also appeared to be a two-party system
for a long time, because the two largest parties, CDU and SPD, dominated politics
after 1945 with the surprisingly resilient FDP playing the deciding factor as to who
is in government. This has slowly changed with the rise of the Green party since
the 1980s. A significant change took place after 1990, when the post-communist
PDS won seats in the Bundestag. The change is reflected in the ENPP rising to 3.0
(Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 193).
The differences between the party systems of the United Kingdom and Ger-
many are reflected in the political discourse: in Britain the majority of pledges
in election manifestos are implemented (Rose, R. 1984: 65) and the manifestos
are very often referred to in political discourse. This is not as much the case in
Germany, where manifestos are often not precise enough to be binding, because
the electoral system regularly leads to coalition governments, which increases
the importance of coalition agreements and decreases the importance of election
manifestos (Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 188). These differences should also be
shown in the linguistic strategies used in election manifestos and political speeches.
More generally speaking, the system of proportional representation in Ger-
many made the German political culture centre-oriented rather than polarising,
since the two catch-all parties fight over the centre ground. Historically, both the
CDU and SPD had to be able to join a coalition with the FDP. Although this has
changed with the rise of the Green Party in the 1980s and the PDS/LINKE after
re-unification, it is still the case that no party can use a strong rhetoric of conflict
or of total opposition, since cooperation is necessary through the power division
between the federal and the state levels.
For the UK, the thesis of adversary politics as a result of the first-past-the-post
system, originally proposed by Finer (1975), has long been debated. Although
it seems likely that the single-party governments traditionally returned by the
electoral system might be part of a more radical rhetoric, the actual effects are
vigorously debated. The arguments for the phenomenon were developed as part of
a political discourse on the change of the UK electoral system and were based on
an analysis of elections between 1945 and 1970. These effects seemed to weaken in
1980 and 1990, as Cole (1999, 172) demonstrates. He also argues that this model
assumes rhetoric to equal reality and misses the point that politicians often exag-
gerate the differences between the parties in order to legitimise support.
A further important difference between the political systems of the UK and
Germany is the influence of parties on society caused by the internal structures
and traditions of the parties. Abromeit and Stoiber (2006, 188) call this effect ‘par-
tyness of society’ and argue that in the UK parties are less influential, since local
parties are not very powerful, inner party democracy is low, and national politics
is dominated by parliamentary parties.
The party systems in Britain and Germany have also led to ideologically very
different main competitors in the political discourse: not only do Labour and the
SPD have very different traditions, but the conservative parties, who are their main
opponents, are also very different in both countries. As Schmidt (2007, 102) points
out, the German party system lacks a secular-conservative free-market party simi-
lar to the British Conservatives, so both large parties in Germany group around
the centre. British conservatism is generally difficult to pin down ideologically. It
aims to be the party of all British people. Following Disraeli’s ideal of one-nation
conservatism, the Conservatives take a pragmatic approach to political ideology,
while strongly arguing for the importance of tradition in institutions (Kavanagh
et al. 2006: 71–72).
The CDU as the main party for conservatives in Germany was a newly
established party after World War II. It successfully integrated the different
liberal middle-class parties from the Weimar Republic as well as many local and
right-wing parties. This is partly the reason for the structural asymmetry of the
party system, which works to the disadvantage of the SPD. Despite integrating
the denominational split of the old party system (Lepsius 2009: 65), German
Christian democracy is more strongly based on Catholic social theory rather than
Protestantism. While Protestant social theory, as constituting the basis of British
Conservatives, traditionally relied on the idea of salvation through individual
effort, Catholic social theory has focused on social-group and organic harmony.
The CDU has therefore aimed for corporatism, social partnership and a social
market economy rather than a free market and economic liberalism (Heywood
2007: 85). They also favour a strong welfare state to mitigate the conflict between
rich and poor, and as part of the Christian duty to exercise compassion. Although
Christian democracy is based on a clear commitment to private property and a
market-based economy, it also advocates the necessity of state intervention and
market regulation from its Christian values. These interventions are, within limits,
justified to ‘prevent the exploitation of workers by their employers and the resul-
tant development of an antagonistic relationship between the forces of capital and
labour’ (Huntington and Bale 2002: 45–46).
Having focused on the political systems in Germany and the UK and their
major differences, I now turn to two important socio-cultural differences: the
perceived role of the state, and national discourses on the welfare state. These also
influenced the shape of political systems in Britain and Germany.
The role of the state is perceived differently in both countries. Dyson (1980)
distinguishes between state societies and stateless societies, basing his distinction
on ‘political world pictures’ resulting from historic developments. State societ-
ies see the state as an impersonal entity which is the source of public morality
and which is different from the government and the governed. These societies
generally prefer bureaucratic and legalistic conflict resolutions, and have strong
non-economic attitudes towards political relations. Stateless societies have an in-
strumental view of government and stress the private character of politics. Political
conflicts are resolved by following shared traditions and rituals rather than written
rules. The governing ideas of these societies are heritage and social practice rather
than rational principles and technology (Dyson 1980: 50–52).
Dyson sees Britain’s political culture as the European exception: although in
the Renaissance the concept of the state in Italian philosophy influenced English
thinkers and shaped the Tudor state, England did not develop the concept of the
state any further after the seventeenth century. Dyson shows that even the term
‘state’ was less and less used, and terms such as ‘kingdom’, ‘country’, ‘people’, ‘na-
tion’ and ‘government’ replaced it. He points out that the idea of the state exerting
executive power became impossible after the power struggles between the Crown
and Parliament in the seventeenth century, because it would have been a reminder
of the absolute monarchy of the past. As a result, there was also no concept of
the executive educating and mobilising people, unlike in the enlightened absolute
monarchies on the continent. Even English Common Law lacks the concept of
state that is so important to the continental Roman law: common law is remote
from politics, and therefore did not develop a concept of the state as legal entity.
Furthermore, English scholars of law did not embrace the reception of Roman
law and ‘the idea of the state as the public institution acting in the name of public
authority and general interest’ (Dyson 1980: 43).
Germany’s political culture can be seen as the opposite to Britain’s: Germany
is a typical state society. The rationalist idea of a centrally governed state setting
the framework for economy and society, and the concept of a unified professional
civil service administrating a country, originated in the German state of Prussia
in the eighteenth century. The Prussian King Frederick the Great saw himself as
the ‘first servant of the state’ and its chief bureaucrat. Industrialisation and mod-
ernisation in Germany only started in the nineteenth century, and required the
centrally organised state support of the Prussian state. Although it was autocratic,
it allowed a liberalisation and a strong local administration. The Prussian state
set a framework of stability of law and supported the growth of the work force
(Wehler 1987: 593).
Nineteenth-century German thinkers, who opposed the system of absolute
monarchy and aimed for a more democratic Germany, discussed the liberal ideas
advanced in eighteenth-century Britain. However, they adapted them significantly:
Rohe (1993, 221) talks about Germany having a ‘republican’ tradition,6 which
includes a strong belief in individual liberty and the rule of law, but is opposed to
the liberal utilitarianism of Britain. German liberal thinkers see political societies
not as based on individual interest alone, but on virtues – an inheritance of the
6. Rohe explicitly points out that this is not a native German term, but uses it because it captures
the German adaptation of liberalism best.
Prussian state tradition. The state in this concept is conceived as a precondition

of civil life, as larger societies need formal juridical rules rather than unwritten
traditions. This strong state tradition continued in West Germany after 1945.
Although the original move of the SPD and parts of the newly formed CDU for
nationalisation of the key industries has not become part of the constitution, the
first Bundestag voted with a majority for a ‘social market economy’ as the eco-
nomic system of West Germany. The idea of the ‘social market economy’ is based
on the economic theory of ordo-liberalism, which assumes complementarities
between the state setting the framework for the economy and social policy, while
the economy is governed by market laws.
This analysis of the ‘state’ tradition in Britain and Germany, drawing on the
history of political ideas, is also reflected in elements of the political discourses
in these countries. Dörner and Rohe (1991) have undertaken an analysis of pol-
semantics, i.e. word formations derived from the Greek word ‘polis’. They used a
corpus consisting of dictionaries, encyclopaedias and newspaper articles and stud-
ied the morphological structures of words, their collocations and their grammati-
cal and semantic roles. German dictionaries linked ‘Politik/ politisch’ to ‘Staat’ and
defined ‘Staat’ as ‘politisch’. Dörner and Rohe (1991) found that the definitions of
pol-lemmata contained nouns from the organisational-administrative field (Amt,
Rangordnung, Ministerium, Genossenschaft) in collocation to verbs of control
(ordnen, wählen, leiten, beherrschen etc.). Metaphorically, the state is interpreted
as the government. In British dictionaries, pol-lexemes are mainly connected to
‘government’. The authors also found verbs of control, which were, however, not
linked to organisational nouns, but to terms belonging to the field of ‘society’ and
‘community’. Dörner and Rohe’s (1991) analysis of a journalistic corpus of the
1960s shows the same results: in German, ‘Staat’ is often the logical or syntactical
subject, and in English texts this is the case for ‘government’. While ‘Staat’ is the
third most frequent political term in the political section of ’Die Welt’ in the 1960s,
in British newspapers it ranks only forty-fourth.
The second major difference between the political cultures of Britain and Ger-
many can be found in the national discourses about the ‘welfare state’, which are
particularly important to my project, since New Labour and the SPD of ‘Die Neue
Mitte’ introduced highly controversial welfare reforms. Kaufmann (2003: 33)
talks about the ‘idiosyncratic character’ of welfare systems caused by an interac-
tion between economic and technological progress, and normative discourses.
Therefore, nation states have different cultures of welfare. As we have seen above,
Germany’s political culture is deeply rooted in the idea of the state. The tradition
of German social policy started with the ‘Soziale Frage’ and the ‘Arbeiterfrage’. The
social question originated from people losing their means of subsistence when the
feudal structures in Prussia started to change and land ownership became capital
(Potthoff, Miller, and Kane 2006: 19–20; Kaufmann 2003: 259). The problems of
industrialisation and the beginning of mass industrial employment raised the
worker question: the work was often hazardous, and falling wages threatened the
livelihood of families. Germany’s social democratic movement, beginning with
the foundation of the ‘Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein’, therefore fought for
the protection of workers, and the legality and legitimacy of unions, as well as
for protection from financial problems following unemployment. The German
empire’s first reaction was Bismarck’s attempt to suppress a socialist opposition
with the ‘Sozialistengesetze 1878’. However, Bismarck also tried to win German
workers for the Empire by introducing social reforms that came to form the basis
of the modern German welfare state. He introduced laws to insure workers against
illnesses (1883), occupational hazards (1884) and poverty as the result of age
or infirmity (1889). These insurances were obligatory for all workers and were
funded by obligatory subscriptions from employers and employees, but without
state funding. With this insurance, workers for the first time had legal entitlement
to welfare payments. Kaufmann (2003, 272) points out that the social reforms did
not address the poor, and the system was only addressed to people in work or
looking for work, since the introduction of the social system under Bismarck hap-
pened completely on the back of the social democratic movement. After 1945, the
development of the German welfare state continued on this basis: benefits were in-
creased, and dynamic pensions introduced to secure peoples’ achieved standard of
life in retirement. Still, the system was completely based on employment, and only
in 1961 social benefits not based on employment (‘Sozialhilfe’) were introduced.
By comparison, the British welfare state originated with questions about pov-
erty. The 1601 Poor Law Act, tailored for an agrarian society with high sedentary
tendencies, tried to tackle poverty. From 1795 onwards, abolition of this act was
repeatedly discussed, since liberal thinkers feared the benefits were higher than
the income of workers and the act would therefore increase the cost of labour.
In 1834, reforms in this direction became a reality: a new poor law influenced by
Bentham tried to make poor relief unattractive by only giving benefits for work
in the poor house, and by causing a loss of civil rights for benefits claimants. The
inhumanity of this poor law became a cultural topos with Dickens’ Oliver Twist
(Kaufmann 2003: 140–41). However, only with the first National Insurance Act
in 1911 did Britain introduce public health insurance for workers. The motivation
for this was similar to that for Bismarck’s reforms in Germany. The governing
Liberal Party wanted to demonstrate its ability to represent workers’ interests in
response to the emergence of the Labour Party. The modern British welfare state
is based on the Beveridge Report of 1942, which was first implemented by the
Labour government under Clement Attlee after 1945. The measures include social
benefits to secure the subsistence level of all people, the foundation of the NHS,
and a Keynesian policy of full employment. Yet the Beveridge plan was in one
respect similar to the National Insurance Act of 1911: it was built on the flat rate
principle. While the German system tries to relate benefits to earnings, the British
welfare state follows the idea of the same premium and same benefits for all. Bev-
eridge explicitly wanted to maintain and increase the self-reliance of workers and
leave room for private insurance, and therefore upheld the typical British liberal
principle of a minimum of government interference.
Closely linked to the differences in discourses on welfare are more general
socio-economic differences and, returning to the political system, differences in
relations between government and interest groups in Germany and the UK. Socio-
economically, Britain can be described as a liberal economy, whereas Germany is
more of a coordinated market economy. These descriptions are formalised in the
comparative analyses of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach (Hall and Soskice
2001b). In this approach, liberal market economies such as the USA, Britain, and
Australia are characterised by a legal system that leads to more competitive mar-
kets. Their welfare states follow a liberal welfare regime with a low level of benefits
and restrictive approaches to eligibility, which force people into the work force and
sustain a fluid labour market complementing a low-wage economy.
Coordinated market economies such as Germany, Japan and Sweden, on the
other hand, have strong networks between firms via cross-shareholding, through
the maintenance of powerful business associations, as well as by having powerful
trade unions. Coordinated market economies often have either a social demo-
cratic welfare regime (e.g. Sweden) or a conservative welfare state (Germany).
Conservative welfare regimes have a high level of benefits which are dependent on
the status of the employee, which they are meant to maintain in unemployment
and sickness. According to Hall and Soskice (2001a), these welfare regimes lead to
a highly developed skills base since high benefits depending on status encourage
skills development. Furthermore, early retirement programmes in conservative
welfare regimes allow firms to renew the labour force more regularly without
damaging the cooperative spirit that high-quality production relies on.
The coordinated market economy in Germany is also linked to the corporat-
ist elements of the German political culture. (Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 236;
Schmidt 2007: 128–32). Its corporatist tradition is rooted in the beginnings of the
welfare state under Bismarck, which delegated regulation of welfare to interest
groups of insured employees and employers paying – a system which is still in
place in the German health and pensions insurance system. Since 1945, (West)
Germany has been dominated by highly concentrated unions with the DGB (Ger-
man Trade Union Association) constituting a strong umbrella organisation, and
its employers are also highly organised, although generally the proportion of or-
ganised employers and employees is falling (Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 234–38).
Furthermore, federal ministries are bound to consult interest groups when draft-
ing bills (Schmidt 2007: 126). Tripartite negotiations as a means of corporatist
negotiation, however, have been the exception: the ‘Konzertierte Aktion’ (‘con-
certed action’), the first tripartite negotiations between trade unions, employers’
associations and the government, organised by the SPD economic and finance
minister Karl Schiller in order to agree on main economic policies to stabilise the
German economy, only lasted from 1967 to 1976. However, these negotiations had
an impact on German political discourse, as demands for ‘Konzertierte Aktionen’
can still be found in the early 1990s (Wengeler 1995: 68). A renewal of the corpo-
ratist tradition of concerted action was attempted by the metal union chairman
Klaus Zwickel in 1995 under the headline ‘Bündnis für Arbeit’ and picked up by
Helmut Kohl, but failed, since the Kohl government had its own agenda in the
negotiations. Nevertheless, the corporatist tool of tripartite negotiations was then
picked up again by the SPD as one of their central pledges in the 1998 manifesto:
to reinstate the ‘Bündnis für Arbeit’.
In contrast to Germany, Britain is very close to being a pure pluralist system,
with its unions weakened after Thatcher’s regulation of their activity and the
reduction of influence on the Labour Party (Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 206–7).
Here, interest groups are often highly fragmented and are not invited to influence
government directly, but instead compete for influence.
3.4 Texts of the Third Way in Germany and the UK: Corpus justification
and description
Discourses are situated in historical and institutional contexts, and they are re-
alised as language use in texts. These texts are the basis of a discourse-linguistic
analysis. On the basis of the context analysis of the modernisation discourses in
the British Labour Party and the SPD, I will now define the corpus of texts that
this study is based on. The analysis of the historical context in Section 3.1 has
demonstrated that the modernisation discourse in the Labour Party and the SPD
started to become hegemonic in the mid-1990s. Therefore, my corpus has been
assembled for the analysis of the political language and the ideological discourse
in both parties between 1995 and 2002. The corpus consists of three parts:
1. Ideological publications of the Third Way, New Labour, and ’Die Neue Mitte’;
2. Party conference speeches of Blair, Schröder, and Lafontaine;
3. Election manifestos.
The first part of the corpus contains ideological publications – texts, which explic-
itly discuss and present the changing ideology of social democratic parties. The
idea for the present study originated in recognising the evidence of the intercon-
nection of the discourses of New Labour and Die Neue Mitte in the Schröder-Blair
paper (Blair and Schröder 1999; Schröder and Blair 1999), so the German and
English versions of this text belong to the first part of the corpus. This text needs
to be read in the context of an interdiscursive connection between three party-
political reform discourses in progressive parties in the United States, Britain and
Germany. One of the main reasons for these reform discourses was the long-term
electoral failure of these parties. The electoral success of the Democrats, the US
progressive party programmatically reformed by Bill Clinton, made them a role
model for European social democratic parties and initiated a chain of electoral
successes: ‘New’ Labour admired and emulated the ‘New’ Democrats, and the SPD
took inspiration from the ‘Modell Blair’ (Wolfrum 2013: 139) in order to win the
general election of 1998. However, each party created their own version of the
Third Way (Wolfrum 2013: 143): whilst the New Democrats followed policies of
extensive deregulation, a reduction of welfare transfers and therefore a transfer of
life risks to the individual citizen, New Labour focused on social justice as inclu-
sion, guaranteeing equality of opportunities, but not equality of outcome through
redistribution. By the time New Labour won their first general election in 1997,
this radical programmatic reform of the Labour party was well under way and the
leadership of the Labour party had studied Clinton’s path to success in great detail
(Seldon 2005: 368). The Labour Party was already united as ‘New Labour’, while
the German SPD was still unclear about its position.
By the time of the 1998 election campaign, the SPD had already begun using
its own version of Third Way rhetoric, but its double-leadership of Schröder and
Lafontaine was still sending different ideological messages. Only after Lafontaine
had stepped down from all positions did the modernising wing around Gerhard
Schröder begin the process of overhauling the SPD’s programmatic position. It
is in this context that the Schröder-Blair paper was conceived by the two parties’
most able communicators: Peter Mandelson and Bodo Hombach.
At the time of the paper’s publication, Hombach was Kanzleramtsminister – a
minister without portfolio who is the Chancellor’s chief of staff. He was a re-
nowned specialist on election campaigns, and well acquainted with influencing
public opinion. As a firm ‘moderniser’, he aimed to use his position in the Kan-
zleramt to drive the debate on modernisation against the party leader and finance
minister Oskar Lafontaine, whom he saw as an old-fashioned socialist. Hombach
wanted to reform the SPD in a top-down manner, in a similar fashion to New
Labour, and he established contacts with modernisers in other European social
democratic parties such as Peter Mandelson, his co-author for the Schröder-Blair
paper (Wolfrum 2013: 146).
Mandelson, almost as controversial as Hombach, was originally the media

skills mentor of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, and later Blair’s primary ‘spin doc-
tor’. He became the main media strategist of the Labour Party before 1997, and was
‘rightly given much of the credit for Labour’s presentation as well as policy being
so improved in the 1987 General Election’ (Seldon 2005: 159).
The initiative for the publication of the Schröder-Blair paper was taken by the
SPD. Schäffner (2003) quotes Mathias Bucksteeg, Head of the Political Analysis
Division in the German Chancellery, who reported that a joint policy paper was
originally suggested by Bodo Hombach. Since his election victory in 1998, Schröder
was seen as a new link in the Third-Way Movement (Wolfrum 2013: 146), and
therefore such a suggestion must have been welcomed as beneficial for both sides
by Mandelson. For the ‘modernisers’ in the SPD, it will also have been an attempt
to gain ideological hegemony by connecting to a successful sister party.
Whilst the paper was well received in Britain and commentators welcomed it
as a vision for the future of social democracy, both the German press and German
social democrats were extremely critical of it: Schröder’s first attempt to establish
a positive modernist reform agenda for the social democrats failed. Reinhard
Klimmt, for example, published an open letter to the SPD leadership, heavily criti-
cising the text. Klimmt was a close friend of Lafontaine whom he followed as the
leader of the SPD and premier in Saarland. At the time of the open letter, he was
fighting a general election, which he subsequently lost. He criticised the position
of Schröder and Blair, because it seemed to hold the SPD of the past responsible
for Germany’s problems, and therefore strengthened conservative presumptions
about social democracy (Klimmt 1999: 1137).
There are many reasons for the critical reception of the Schröder-Blair paper
in Germany. Wolfrum (2013: 146) sees it as constituting the wrong move at the
wrong time, and in the wrong place: to present a modernising policy paper so
soon after the so- called traditionalist Lafontaine had stepped down, and to do
so in London instead of Berlin could only be received as clumsy and provoca-
tive. In the German political culture with its coordinated social market economy
and its regulated job market, the positive mention of a low-paid sector and of an
end-of-life long, stable employment status quo was more difficult to accept than
in Britain, where the neo-liberal reforms of the Thatcher era had long become
accepted. Turowski (2010: 291) therefore calls the German discourse of a Third
Way a ‘borrowed discourse’.
The examination of a broader corpus of ideological texts will shed light on
the differences between the two discourses and will help to see whether both dis-
courses can indeed be treated as discourses of the Third Way. Three publications
lend themselves to this purpose:
– Giddens’ The Third Way (Giddens 1998) – 155 pages, approx. 31,000 words;7
– Mandelson and Liddle’s The Blair Revolution (Mandelson and Liddle 1996) –
261 pages, approx. 78,000 words;
– Hombach’s Aufbruch (Hombach 1998) – 255 pages, approx. 58,000 words.
Giddens is possibly the best-known proponent of The Third Way, grounding the
discourse in academic sociology. His ideas were the basis of seminars held by the
party leadership of the Labour Party in order to discuss which policies followed
from the modernised approach to social democracy (Seldon 2005: 371), and his
book is often treated as the programmatic statement of New Labour’s Third Way in
many academic analyses (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003; Finlayson 2003). It should
therefore be part of my corpus.
Published after the landslide victory of 1997, it justifies and evaluates the
Third Way politics of New Labour and argues for a European-wide renewal of
social democracy on the basis of insights from academic sociology. The text has
been described as that of a modern Machiavelli, ‘offering itself as a prescription for
a leader who wishes to understand how political society works and what should
be done to achieve certain aims’ (Finlayson 1999: 275). Despite discussing New
Labour as one outstanding example of this new orientation, the book should not
be read as a party political publication. Its aim is rather to be the academic foun-
dation of a supposedly necessary ideological reorientation of social democratic
parties in Europe.
A more party-political position is taken in both Mandelson and Liddle’s,
and in Hombach’s book. Mandelson and Liddle’s The Blair Revolution (1996) is
a promotional text presenting an argument for New Labour and its leader Tony
Blair in the run-up to the 1997 general election. The book is relevant to my cor-
pus, as it was widely read: it sold 13,000 copies within a month of publication.
Mandelson originally initiated the book project in order to show that he was not
only a spin doctor, ‘but a politician in his own right’ (Macintyre 2000: 353). His
main responsibility were the chapters on Blair, on Europe, and on New Labour
in government. The book was closely reviewed by the Labour leadership, most
thoroughly by David Miliband, at the time Head of the Policy Unit, and ‘… the
final version was so closely vetted by the New Labour high command that it was
bound to be seen as largely reflecting Blairite thinking’ (Macintyre 2000: 353). The
claim in the introduction that New Labour’s strategy was ‘to move forward from
where Margaret Thatcher left off, rather than to dismantle every single thing she
7. In this first step of my analysis, I did not use a corpus-assisted approach and therefore did
not use digitalised texts. In order to give an estimate of the corpus size, I have given the number
of pages of the text itself, excluding bibliography and indices. I have counted a sample of pages,
taken the average and calculated a word count, rounded to the nearest thousand words.
did’ (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 1) is even reported to have been proposed by
Blair himself. The book was read thoroughly by civil servants and is, according to
Macintyre (2000: 366), ‘the most accurate route map of what subsequently became
the course of the Blair government’.
Hombach’s Aufbruch argues for a modernised approach to social democracy
and must have been published at the end of the year in 1998, after the election had
been won, since both Hombach in the main text, and Schröder in the epilogue,
talk about the victory and the new momentum that comes from it. Hombach had
a successful career as an election campaigner and a media strategist, similar to
Mandelson’s. He had run many election campaigns, for example he had worked as
a consultant for Mandela’s election campaign in South Africa (Perger, 1998) before
becoming Schröder’s election manager in Lower Saxony. As Kanzleramtsminis-
ter, similarly to Mandelson, he proved to be a controversial figure (Knaup et al.,
1999: 30), and was certainly perceived as a ‘moderniser’ similar to Giddens (Vidal-
Beneyto, July 09, 1999).
Hombach’s book, although obviously written as a programmatic text for the
SPD, talks less about the party and more about the country. The central meta-
phorical scene is JOURNEY combined with BATTLE metaphors to justify the
necessity of political change. The analysis revolves around the crisis narrative of
‘Reform- und Problemstau’ (jam of overdue reforms) or a ‘blockierte Gesellschaft’
(blocked society), and calls for the blockades to be broken down. Hombach
implicitly argues against traditionalists such as Lafontaine, who is not named in
this context: ‘Die Sozialdemokraten stehen jetzt in einer Koalition. Sie muß eine
Koalition der Modernisierer sein, sie muß auf Ideologie verzichten, sonst wird
sie scheitern’ (Hombach 1998: 21) (The SPD is part of a coalition – a coalition of
modernizers that must dispense with ideology, otherwise it will fail. […] We must use
the hope for a modernisation of society that was linked with the victory of the SPD
in the 1998 election to undertake fundamental reform of the party. (Hombach 2000,
xli–xlii)). Following a long argument about the end of ideologies and the necessity
of pragmatism, Blair and New Labour are depicted as being ideal for the SPD:
‘Tony Blair und New Labour – Pragmatismus mit Vision’ (Hombach 1998: 106).
All three authors together allow a differentiated analysis of the ideological
language of party renewal, since they saw themselves, and were indeed seen by
both friends and opponents, as important modernising figures within European
social democracy. Even though I have described ideologies as belief systems of
groups, ideologies are expressed and promoted by such leading figures, who also
influence the political language of a political party by acting as speech writers or
working in writer collectives for programmatic party publications. Freeden (1998)
calls those leading figures nodal points in ideological discourses:
Ideologies are, after all, manifestations of group behaviour, supportive or sub-

versive of social structures and institutions. […] Ideology-producing groups will
reflect the impact of articulate and representative individuals, who may be the ef-
fective channels that give expression to more widely held beliefs, as well as adding
their own imprint on what they absorb and convey. Those individuals – serving
as nodal and eloquent points of ideological discourse – may offer an excellent
illustration of a particular ideological position […]. (Freeden 1998: 106)
The selection of texts in the second and third part of the corpus takes into account
that discourses are realised differently in specific genres. This is important for a
comparative analysis: the institutional and cultural contexts affect genres in differ-
ent ways, as genres in divergent cultures differ in their functions and have other
producers or intended audiences. To capture these interdependencies, the second
and third part of the corpus consists of texts from two clearly delineated genres:
party conference speeches and election manifestos.
(2) The second part of the corpus consists of party conference speeches
by Blair, Schröder and Lafontaine. We will see that a central function of party
conference speech is the construction of groupness: following van Dijk’s (1998)
understanding of ideologies as group-based belief systems, political parties can be
understood as groups of people that share central parts of political belief systems.
At the same time, they are institutions governed by complex internal structures
and led by individuals as leaders. We will see how party conferences legitimise
the core elements of the ideology of a party as well as the leader, and the role
the leader’s speech plays in this process. I will demonstrate how the ideologies
manifest themselves in the party conference speeches and show which linguistic
means the leaders employ to defend changes of ideology without damaging group
solidarity in the party.
As the focus of my analysis is the linguistic construction and communication
of the general ideological position of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’, I have cho-
sen speeches central to the formation of the new ideological outlook. As discussed
in the analysis of the discourse-historical context, there is one historical focal
period in the modernisation discourse in the British Labour Party between 1994
and 1997, when the ideology of the Labour party changed dramatically under the
leadership of Tony Blair. In Germany, however, there are two focal periods, as the
modernising wing of the SPD became stronger before the election in 1998 without
winning ideological hegemony. In the differences between their 1997 and 1998
speeches Lafontaine and Schröder represent competing positions within the party.
Only after Lafontaine stepped down did the Third Way agenda finally become
hegemonic, a process that culminated in the discourse on the ‘Agenda 2010’ in the
second focal period in 2003–2004.
The focal period of the modernisation discourse in the Labour party began
in October 1994, when Blair gave his first speech at a party conference as the
newly elected leader of the party. It launched Blair’s project of ‘party renewal’ by
culminating in the surprising announcement of a redraft of Clause Four in the
Labour Party’s constitution, which at the time committed the party to the common
ownership of the means of production. It can be argued that this revision of Clause
Four was nothing new, since Clause Four was widely regarded as irrelevant and
did not result in policies of nationalisation. Although the decision was reached by
the Electoral College, the Labour Party also held a special conference to debate the
change, and Blair’s speech at this conference is represented in the corpus. Both this
speech and his speech at the regular annual conference in 1995 defend the changes;
the speech at the regular conference in particular was received as an emotional and
motivational piece of political oratory by the commentators. Although I have cho-
sen Blair’s 1996 party conference speech to represent the pre-election party confer-
ence speeches, the 1995 speeches can also be read as part of an ongoing election
campaign, since the electoral system at the time did not allow a fixed parliament.
The ‘Parliament Act 1911’ required that parliament needed to be dissolved before
the fifth anniversary of its first sitting, so an election could be announced at any
given time during the parliament. At the 1996 party conference however, a general
election in the following year was certain, as the latest date for the dissolution of
parliament and a following election according to the law was 28 April 1997.
The pre- and post-election party conference speeches before and after the
general election in Germany 1998 represent the first focal period of the social
democratic reform discourse in Germany. At the time, Lafontaine was party leader
and represented a more critical position towards belief in the free market, while
Schröder as candidate for chancellor argued more in favour of a Third Way posi-
tion. Therefore, I have included both politicians’ speeches at the 1997 and 1998
conferences. At the 1997 conference, Schröder spoke as Prime Minister of Lower
Saxony and presented the motion ‘Innovationen für Deutschland’. At the time, the
discussion about Schröder becoming the next chancellor candidate was already
open, and this motion and speech were seen as Schröder trying to raise his profile
(Beste, 2nd December 1997).
A second focal period of the German reform discourse is the announcement
of the Agenda 2010 in 2003, which changed the German welfare state significantly
and resulted in deep cuts in welfare payments. Announced in parliament by Chan-
cellor Schröder, this reform project was not the result of a policy discourse within
the SPD and therefore needed considerable efforts to convince the party that it was
in line with the party’s ideology. This happened first in four regional conferences
in April 2003 and culminated in a special party conference on 1st June 2003, where
the reform was confirmed by 90% of the delegates. However, efforts to convince
the party of the new course did not end there, since in November 2003 the regular
biannual party conference with elections for the party leadership was still to come.
Schröder’s speech at this conference is therefore also part of the corpus.
In total, the sub-corpus of party conference speeches consists of 13 speeches
amounting to 67,296 words with an average length of 5,714 words:
– Blair, regular annual conference 1994 – 7,043 words;
– Blair, special conference 1995 – 2,684 words;
– Blair, regular annual conference 1995 – 6,915 words;
– Schröder, special conference ‘Agenda 2010’ 2003 – 5,803 words;
– Schröder, regular biannual conference 2003 – 7,800 words;
– Lafontaine, April 1998 – pre-election conference – 2,163 words;
– Schröder, April 1998 – pre-election conference – 9,537 words;
– Schröder, October 1998 – post-election conference – 2,252 words;
– Lafontaine, October 1998 – post-election conference – 4,840 words;
– Blair, 1996 – regular annual conference – ‘pre-election conference’ – 7,219
words;
– Blair, 1997 – regular annual conference – post-election conference – 5,970
words;
– Schröder, 1997 – speech as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony – presentation of
motion ‘Innovationen für Deutschland’ – 4,722 words;
– Lafontaine, 1997 – leader’s speech at regular biannual conference – 7,336
words.
I have deliberately excluded later party conference speeches which focus on for-
eign policy as Kosovo, the ‘war on terror’ and the war in Iraq, since they primarily
contain discourses on war and peace, which are not the focus of my analysis.
(3) The election manifesto genre will constitute the third part of the corpus,
as election manifestos are the result of party-internal discourses relevant for the
party’s repositioning. They represent the party to the electorate, and their analysis
will allow an insight into the ideological position of the party at the time: how is
the identity of the party portrayed, which central programme terms does it claim,
and what is the role of the party leader? This part of the corpus will cover a longer
period (1987–2002) in order to allow a diachronic comparison of the language of
New Labour and ’Die Neue Mitte’ to that of its predecessors. The manifestos of the
German CDU from 1998 and the British Conservatives in 1997 are included to
allow a comparison of linguistic features of the two main political competitors in
the general elections of those years:
– Labour 1987 – 9,153 words;
– SPD 1990 – 8,056 words;
– Labour 1992 – 12,459 words;

– SPD 1994 – 16,963 words;
– Labour 1997 – 17,444 words;
– SPD 1998 – 15,219 words;
– Labour 2001 – 30,477 words;
– SPD 2002 – 21,166 words;
– CDU 1998 – 8,807 words;
– Conservative Party 1997 – 21,262 words.
As this list demonstrates, election manifestos are substantial texts. I will therefore
employ a corpus-assisted methodology to capture discursive patterns in the mani-
festos.
A possible methodological objection against this corpus results from Spitz-
müller and Warnke’s (2011, 79–80) discussion of underspecified analyses, which
they define as an analysis that ‘discovers less of (a given) discourse than necessary
for understanding it and less than possible by linguistic means’. Admittedly, the
basis of this study is not a large-scale corpus as the corpus consists of not more
than about 385,000 words. However, the corpus is clearly defined in its topic, as
it concentrates on the linguistic means employed in the repositioning of social
democratic parties in Germany and the UK. Furthermore, my analysis aims to
be data-driven and textually oriented. The basis of a linguistic discourse analysis
needs to be a detailed textual analysis, which cannot solely rely on quantitative
analysis via electronic corpus tools. Such a text-based analysis needs a corpus size
manageable without electronic means. I will mainly rely on a detailed manual
analysis, but will add another approach in the Chapter 5.8, where I will analyse a
larger corpus of election manifestos and discuss methodological implications of
this method for a comparative analysis of discourses in different languages.
3.5 Conclusions: Research questions for a comparative politico-linguistic

discourse analysis of Third-Way discourses
The historical analysis in this chapter provides arguments that the discourses of
New Labour and Die Neue Mitte are parallel yet interconnected discourses, and al-
lowed me to define a corpus for analysis based on three focal periods of the social
democratic modernisation discourses that I carved out in the historical analysis. I
will now return to the research questions presented in the introduction in order to
review them according to the methodological discussion and the corpus definition.
Which theoretical elements and research methods are appropriate for a compara-
tive linguistic analysis of political discourses?
(1) In Chapter 2 I have developed a general theory of the text-context relation in
political discourse. This theoretical approach will be extended in Chapters 4–7,
which will all discuss linguistic approaches to the elements of political dis-
course (genre, lexis, argumentation and metaphor) discussed in the chapter.
This approach will then be applied to the discourses of the Third Way.
How do genres of political discourse differ in the Third Way discourses in Ger-
many and the UK?
(2) The basis of my analysis will be a thorough genre analysis, which needs to
include the role of genre in the institutional setting. I will, for example, ask
whether party conferences in Germany and the UK differ in their function
and structure and how this impacts on the genre characteristics of the leader’s
speech. I will also discuss whether election manifestos have different discursive
functions in Germany and the UK, and how they are linked to the political
culture as well as the political institutions.
How are changes in the social democratic party-political ideologies in Germany
and the UK represented and legitimised in the language use of the party?
(3) On the level of argumentation, I will ask whether the argumentative macro
topoi of the modernisation discourses in the two parties are similar. We know
from the Schröder-Blair paper that the conclusive topoi of New Labour and
‘Die Neue Mitte’ might be similar, but are they supported by the same data
topoi and values? Integrated into the analysis of argumentation will be the
exploration of the changes of ideology based on Freeden (1998). The question
will be to identify which of the argumentative macro topoi change and how
these changes are legitimised in order to protect the groupness of the party.8 I
will also ask which metaphorical scenarios are used to support this legitimisa-
tion and whether possible differences in the scenario can be attributed to the
discourse historical context.
Does the language use and the construction of the Third Way ideology differ in
Germany and the UK?
(4) On the level of political lexis, the question will be which central programme
and stigma terms are used, what their functions are, and whether they form
a similar semantic frame. An important question will be whether the main
8. See my discussion of Buckler and Dolowitz (2009) in Chapter 2.3.2.

differences are in the tokens, i.e. the individual catch terms and metaphors, or
whether the macro structures such as the semantic frame of catch terms and
the metaphorical scenarios also differ, and if they do, how this can be explained.
Analysing metaphor, I will ask which conceptual metaphors are dominant
and why. I will discuss which function these conceptual metaphors serve
and whether these metaphors form scenarios or narratives. If the Third Way
discourses in both countries differ, how can these differences be explained
with reference to the political context?
The context analysis in Chapter 3 provides the context knowledge in order to
answer the final research question:
If the Third Way discourses in both countries differ, how can these differences be
explained with references to the political context?
(5) The comparative element of this study will be answered in all of the following
analytical chapters where I will discuss which of the discursive differences
found can be attributed to differences in the party-political systems, which
to the specific roles of the Prime Minister and Chancellor and the particular
political culture.
Chapter 4
Texts in context
Register and genre in the discourses of the Third Way
4.1 Genre and the text-context relations in political discourse
Discourses are realised in genres, and both discourses and genres influence lan-
guage use in different ways. Conventions for types of texts are called genres. These
conventions influence the ways in which we structure texts and choose our words.
We all have, for example, expectations about the format of a newspaper article.
These expectations, however, vary culturally, which means genres are culturally
dependent. Martin and Rose (2008: 17) therefore describe genre analysis as ‘map-
ping cultures from a semiotic perspective’: ‘cultures seem to involve a large but
potentially definable set of genres, that are recognisable to members of a culture,
rather than an unpredictable jungle of social situations’. When defining their
Discourse-Historical Approach, Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 36) recommend that
discourse analysis always start with a genre analysis:
In order to be able to identify the idiosyncratic peculiarities of a specific singular
text, one has to know something about the general features and structures of the
semiotic type, that is to say, of the institutionalised, codified pattern of linguistic
(inter)action to which the concrete text belongs.
This is even more important for a comparative approach: As the aim of this study
is to establish the differences in language use in British and German social demo-
cratic discourse at the turn of the twentieth century and their root in differences
of the political cultures, we will also have to capture genre differences, an aim
captured in research question (3).
Within different linguistic traditions, the concept of genre varies
considerably.1Dorgeloh and Wanner (2010a, 7) situate it ‘somewhere in the in-
tersection of sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and literary or rhetorical theory’.
Virtanen (2010: 54) suggests differentiating between text types and genres along
1. For a succinct discussion of the different traditions of genre theory see, for example, Gruber
(2013).
the text–context distinction: while the category of text type should focus on
the textual structures themselves, genre includes the contextual elements in the
typology. Therefore, the analysis of text types uses text-internal criteria and is
grounded in ‘cognitively based, goal-oriented, form-function relationships, which
evolve through recursive and reiterative strategies and intertextual practices across
contexts that facilitate discourse production and interpretation’, whereas a study
of genre uses text-external criteria in terms of a relation between texts and their
situational and socio-cultural contexts. Virtanen (2010: 54) also points out that
the integration of text types and genres into one theory allows insights that are
not possible to gain from each of the approaches individually. A narrative type of
text can, for example, appear in the text type ‘press text/report’ as well as in ‘public
speech’. Following Virtanen’s argument, I will use the term genre rather than text
types in my analysis, since it is the text–context relation I am interested in. For the
analysis of genres in the Third Way discourse, I will draw on three main traditions
of genre analysis:
(1) In the German tradition of linguistics, a detailed discussion on text
typologies within the area of text linguistics has taken place that eventually led
to the emergence of a sub-discipline called Textsortenlinguistik (Adamzik 2001).
This tradition prefers the term ‘text type’. However, it does not only define them
text-internally, but also uses contextual criteria such as emitter and addressee, and
their text typologies can therefore be understood as genre typologies. The develop-
ment of Textsortenlinguistik also had an influence on the discipline of politico-
linguistics, which tried to establish a systematic overview of genres in political
discourse (Klein, J. 2000b; Girnth 1996, 2002). I will use these typologies as a basic
framework for my analysis. However, they will have to be revised in the light of
the results of my comparative analysis, as they are solely based on the analysis of
German political discourse.
(2) CDA in general, and DHA in particular, understand genre as ‘a conven-
tionalised and schematically structured language use connected to a particular
type of social activity’ (Fairclough 1995: 14) and define genre more from a con-
textual perspective. Genres are seen as realised in texts, and texts are not just
part of one genre but often hybrids of various genres. Hence ‘genre mixing is
an aspect of the interdiscursivity of texts, and analysing them allows us to locate
texts within processes of social change and to identify the potentially creative and
innovative work of social agents in texturing.’ (Fairclough 2003: 216, original em-
phasis) In their Discourse-Historical Approach, Wodak and Reisigl (2001: 35–37,
2009: 91–93) integrate this view of genre with Girnth’s (1996, 2002) analysis of
fields of action which produce certain genres or – in his terminology – text types.
These text types realise different discourses, which in the terminology of DHA are
essentially macro topics. Hence, genre analysis is a precondition of the analysis of
Chapter 4. Texts in context 71
interdiscursive relations – the analysis of the realisation of different discourses in

different genres – as well as intertextual relations – which involves the analysis of
sequence of texts, and the analysis of the embeddedness of texts into social prac-
tices, such as party conferences. The analysis of intertextuality also includes the in-
vestigation of references to topics or events and the transfer of arguments between
different social practices, called recontextualisation: If arguments or narratives are
taken out of a context and put into a new context they partly acquire new meaning.
(3) SFL developed its approach to genre in the context of education and school
genres in order to facilitate the literacy education of primary school children. The
main proponents of a systemic functional approach to genre, Martin and Rose,
analyse textual structures as a realisation of the metafunctions of language on the
stratum of discourse semantics (see Martin, J. R. and Rose, D. 2003; Martin, J. R.
and White, P. R. R. 2005; Martin, J. R. and Rose, D. 2008). In systemic functional
terms, a genre is a pattern of realisations of resources from the ideational, inter-
personal or textual metafunction. It is defined as ‘a configuration of meanings, re-
alised through language and attendant modalities of communication, is designed
to generalise across these distinguishing features’ (Martin, J. R. and Rose, D.
2008: 20). This approach complements the typological system developed in Ger-
man text linguistics, as it is integrated into an overarching theoretical framework
that analyses the linguistic semiosis as a system of text and context reaching from
the morphological domain into the textual and discourse domain. Hence, genres
are understood as configurations of the context variables of tenor, field, and mode
discussed in Section 2.2.
The following analysis focuses on the two clearly delineated genres in the cor-
pus: leaders’ speeches at party conferences and election manifestos. Both are core
genres in party-political discourse and well described in publications of German
politico-linguistics. The discussion about genre relations in political discourse has
been greatly influential in the discourse-historical approach. Reisigl and Wodak
(2001: 36), for example, argue that the basis of every text-oriented discourse analy-
sis is the knowledge of ‘the institutionalised, codified pattern of linguistic (inter)
action to which the concrete text belongs’. In order to give an overview of that
knowledge, they adapt Girnth’s (1996, 2002) concept of fields of actions, which
continues a strand of genre analysis in political discourse based on Wittgenstein’s
language games (Strauss 1986), and analysed political discourse as structured by
fields of action. A missing link in the literature is, however, the question of how
genres in different political discourse communities differ and how the differences
can be understood with reference to the political culture. This chapter will fill this
gap at least partly by analysing the genre differences for party conference speeches
and election manifestos in detail.
4.2 Uniting the party, uniting the nation: Party conference speeches as a
genre in the discourses of the Third Way
Party conferences serve the legitimisation of party ideologies, party policies and
the leadership, but they are also rituals that reconstitute group solidarity within
the party. What is more, they are media events that disseminate the message of a
political party. To all these functions, the leader’s speech is central. It lays out the
party’s position, establishes central symbols of the party’s ideology and, hopefully,
unites the party’s membership, as much as its followers, behind the leader.
Party conference speeches of party leaders belong to the genre of political
speeches. Speeches can be understood as structured chains of utterances emitted
on specific occasions by one speaker and addressed to a specific audience (Reisigl
2008a: 244; Beganović et al. 2013: 698). Classical rhetoricians distinguish three
forms of public speaking according to circumstances (Reisigl 2008b: 244–46;
Charteris-Black 2014: 6–15). The first, a deliberative speech (genus deliberativum)
is given in front of a decision-making body. The speaker aims to establish the best
course of action by considering different possible outcomes from different courses
of action. The speaker wants to influence policy decisions and the speech is there-
fore oriented towards the future. As a result of the speech, the audience is expected
to vote for the course of action suggested by the speaker. The second form, forensic
speeches or judicial oratory (genus iudicale) are addressed to a legal assembly in
order to accuse or defend a suspect by considering different types of evidence. The
genus iudicale therefore focuses on the past and aims to ensure justice. As a result
of the speech the audience is expected to pass a judgement. Thirdly, there are epi-
deictic oratory (genus demonstrativum) honours or commemorates individuals or
events. The speaker usually focuses on the present and aims to elicit the applause
of the audience to celebrate the successful event or individual.
Political speeches and party conference speeches more specifically are
typically hybrids of the deliberative and epideictic genre. In order to persuade the
audience to support the leadership, the speaker needs to employ what classical
rhetoricians refer to as ethos, logos and pathos. As a piece of deliberative oratory,
a party conference speech will of course focus on evidence to support a politi-
cal argument (logos) and the values underlying decisions (ethos), but it will also
contain epideictic elements: the leaders need to strengthen the ‘groupness’ of their
party by celebrating its values and successes in order to motivate members to rally
support for the party, and therefore will have to be able to arouse the emotions of
the audience (pathos).
Modern political speeches as a genre have far more complex production and
reception conditions than those imagined by classical rhetoricians – they are
usually multi-authored and multi-addressed. Party leaders are highly sought-after
speakers and speak at many different occasions. They speak on behalf of complex
networks of political institutions such as their party, their parliamentary group or
indeed the government, but they also have to construct and convey a clear image
of themselves as an individual politician. In order to master this complex task, they
employ researchers and speech writers; the resulting speech is thus a product of a
complex interaction of different writers.2 Finlayson and Martin (2008: 449) argue
that because speeches are multiauthored, they not only represent individual ideas,
but also represent compromises of ideas in a political organisation, and therefore
allow an insight into the evolution of political ideologies.
The reception conditions of modern political oratory are as complex as the
production process. Contemporary political speeches are almost always addressed
to multiple audiences, since all important political occasions are covered by the
media either directly through broadcasting or indirectly through reports and
comments in the media. Kühn (1992, 1995) demonstrates that multiple addressing
is the default case in modern political oratory, arguing that the addressee is not
defined by the speaker’s intention, but by the individuals or organisations who are
affected by the argument made, and their reaction. In a context analysis of political
speeches, Kühn shows that speakers are aware of this type of multi-addressing, and
that multi-addressing is systemic in modern political discourse. Public speeches of
politicians usually start a merry-go-round of replies and re-addressing: an utter-
ance may be intended as an advertising element within an election campaign, but
an opposing politician might understand it as an accusation she has to respond to,
while observers abroad interpret it as a provocation, and so on (Kühn 1992: 57). In
order to capture this complex system of addressees, Gruber (2013: 47–48) suggests
analysing ‘stakeholder groups’ in order to give a description of who is ‘identifiably
affected by the announced policies in the speech and who can therefore be seen as
its intended audience’.
In order to understand the reception conditions of leaders’ speeches at party
conferences in Germany and the UK, I will firstly compare the institutional role
of party conferences in both countries, and secondly analyse the functions of the
leader’s speech within this context. Party conferences are not only important for
the deliberation and communication of the ideological position of political parties.
They are also essential for identity-building within the party as a social institution,
as they are opportunities to ‘regenerate social bonds through shared intense emo-
tions’ (Faucher-King 2005: 72). The institution and ritual of party conferences in
Germany and the UK, however, differs.
2. Kammerer (1995), for example, describes the production process for the speeches of Helmut
Kohl in great detail.
In Britain, party conferences are highly ritualised annual events. I use ‘ritual’
here in the sense suggested by Kertzer (1988: 8–9), who defines ritual as formal
symbolic behaviour which is socially standardised, repetitive, and often redundant,
‘but these very factors serve as important means of channelling emotion, guiding
cognition, and organising social groups’. Rituals are used to form social bonds and
make an uncertain world more controllable. They often employ highly charged
symbols or myths that are ambiguous enough to unite people, and also allow them
to symbolically connect the past, present, and future of a group of people.
Party conferences in the UK are rituals in the sense that they reoccur annually
and are therefore anticipated by many actors within the political and the media
systems. The conferences of all major political parties in the UK are traditionally
held in the so-called ‘conference season’ in September/October, which is an integral
part of the political diary of Britain and is linked to the opening of parliament with
the Queen’s speech after the summer recess (Faucher-King 2005: 11). Faucher-
King (2005: 1) gives a vivid description of the ritualisation of party conferences in
the political culture of Britain from the position of an external observer:
When I arrived in Britain in the mid-1990s, I was struck by the peculiarity of
British political party conferences. These annual gatherings are familiar to any
observer of British politics. For over a century, they have temporarily diverted
attention away from Westminster and towards the seaside resorts of Britain. Every
autumn, media attention is focused for about a month on internal party politics.
But their ritualisation cannot only be recognised in their regular annual occur-
rence, which is observed by all major parties, but also in the individual structure
of the party conferences and in the role of the leader’s speech in them. In the
Labour Party, for example, the leader’s speech is officially called a ‘parliamentary
report’ and traditionally delivered on the Tuesday afternoon of the conference
week. Although the name suggests a verbal legitimisation and possible discussion
of parliamentary politics, it has developed into an emotional mass ritual that is
framed with entertainment and warming-up events (Faucher-King 2005: 83).
However, despite the symbolic importance of party conferences in the UK,
they have very little legal or democratic power. The institutional role of the party
conference in British parties is defined by the constitution of the individual par-
ties, and varies greatly. While the Conservatives’ party conference decisions are
not binding, the conferences of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are
seen as the sovereign body of the party. The leader of the Labour Party is, however,
not directly accountable to the party conference. Traditionally, the leader of the
Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is regarded as the leader of the whole party;
however, he or she is not elected by the party conference, but by an electoral col-
lege representing unions, MPs and MEPs, and, since 1993, the wider membership
(Peele 2004: 290–93). However, a leader’s performance at the party conference is

still essential to establish or confirm their legitimacy (Faucher-King 2005: 34).
In Germany, party conferences are a legal requirement and less ritualised in
the sense that they are not fixed elements of the political year and therefore attract
less media focus. They are, however, increasingly staged performances. The Ger-
man ‘Parteiengesetz’ from 1967, §9 subsection 1, defines the party conference as
the ultimate deciding body in a political party, which has authority over leadership
and policy (Rudzio 2003: 117–22). The law also requires regular party conferences
to be held biannually, but usually more conferences are held, often in order to
respond to recent political developments, and to legitimise election manifestos or
coalition agreements (Müller 2000, 2002).
Because of its legal status, the party conference holds substantial powers,
especially the power to elect the party chairman (‘Parteivorsitzende’). Within the
party, the party chairman has a similar status to the party leader in the UK, but is
not necessarily the candidate for the chancellorship, or does not necessarily hold
the position of the chancellor. However, the chancellor candidate of the party must
also be confirmed by the party conference. That the leader’s speech can be a deci-
sive factor for the leadership elections in the SPD has been demonstrated by the
successful challenge to Scharping as a leader in 1995 after a lost election. Scharp-
ing found himself suddenly, and to his great surprise, challenged and voted out
after a poorly received speech. Although this was exceptional, the leader’s speech
is still important to rally support, since the percentages of the election results are
regularly reported and interpreted in the press.3
In genre-analytical terms, party conference speeches are a subgenre of politi-
cal speeches, aiming at ‘party-internal formation of attitudes, formation and will’
(Reisigl 2008b: 248, see also Girnth (2002: 38)). It is, however, important to take
into account the multi-addressing of party conference speeches, which are under
scrutiny from the media. I therefore suggest distinguishing between internal
and external functions and will name primary and secondary stakeholders of
the leader’s speech, although some effects of it obviously contribute to both the
internal and the external function.
The leader’s speech is normally at the centre of the focus for party members
and the public: it is expected to present the leader as a visionary. Internally and
externally, the leader needs to gain approval for his political position by claiming
credit for the fulfilment of past ambitions, laying out the future programme, and
3. For example: ‘Schröder wurde mit 86,3 Prozent der Stimmen als Parteichef wiedergewählt.
Das waren zehn Prozentpunkte mehr als beim Parteitag im April. ’ (Schröder was elected party
leader with 86.3 percent oft he votes. This is a rise of ten percent compared to the party confer-
ence in April.) (Deupmann, December 08, 1999).
presenting themselves as a visionary (Gaffney 1990: 107; Klein, J. 2000b: 750).

Internally, one main function of the leader’s speech is to strengthen group solidar-
ity within the party. This is a feature it shares with political speeches in general,
which are always ‘interactional contributions to identity politics and accomplish
the two political purposes of inclusion and exclusion’ (Reisigl 2008b: 251). With
their speech, the leader needs to move the present primary audience emotionally
and allow them to find their individual idea of the party’s ideological position
in the speech: each member wants to be referred to by the exclusive and groups
forming ‘we’ (Faucher-King 2005: 86). The authors of the speech therefore need to
be aware that parties are broad coalitions of opinion, and therefore a breadth of
ideological positions need to be covered in the speech.
Externally, the leader’s speech is addressed to various secondary audiences
and has to be effective on a number of different levels. Firstly, it is often the anchor
point for media coverage for the party conference (Faucher-King 2005: 140–41).
Therefore, these speeches are also addressed to the general public, and speakers of-
ten suggest validity claims in the name of the party using the pronoun ‘we’. In this
case, the party acts as a collective speaker and the public as collective addressee.
Secondly, the leader’s speech is often employed as a tool for personalisation poli-
tics: it needs to stimulate the general audience’s imagination of power not as some-
thing remote or abstract, but rather impersonated by famous, heroic characters
that they can connect to. In her ethnographic study of British party conferences,
Faucher-King (2005: 88) describes how the leader’s speeches observed via televi-
sion give an impression of intimacy and transport this intimacy into the living
room, supported by a more intimate rhetorical style. In Blair’s speech at the 1996
conference, for example, he talks about his father as an inspirational figure, while
the television screens at home show close-ups of his wife Cherie Blair ‘holding
hands with her father-in-law’, followed by pictures of weeping delegates. A third
level is the effectiveness of the written documentation of the leader’s speech as a
source for media coverage: accredited journalists usually receive a printed ver-
sion of the speech in advance, which forms the basis of news reports, analysis and
comments. Therefore, the speech needs to be effective as a spoken performance to
the primary audience at the conference and to the secondary audience watching
the speech on TV, and also as a written document to form the basis of the media
discourse on party politics.
Which discourse linguistic questions follow from this analysis of the leader’s
party conference speech as a genre? Firstly, we saw that the construction of per-
sonal leadership and group identity is a core function of the leader’s speech as a
genre. Therefore, I demonstrated, how the different contextual conditions in Ger-
many and the UK influence this process. Secondly, party conference speeches have
both internal and external communicative functions. The internal and external
construction of the political position is partly served by symbol, programme and

stigma terms. These construe the differences between parties by legitimising a
party’s position while delegitimising the position of the political opponent. I will
therefore compare the use of these lexical items in the conference speeches to their
use in other texts of the corpus in the chapter on the lexis in the discourses of the
Third Way. Thirdly, similarly to Finlayson and Martin (2008), I argue that confer-
ence speeches are a valuable source for the reconstruction of discursive features
such as argumentative topoi and metaphorical ideation (see Chapter 6 and 7). And
finally, on all the levels of analysis I discuss whether the stronger ritualisation of
party conferences in the UK and their reduced decision-making power, compared
to Germany, influences the language of the conference speeches under analysis.
I will now turn to the construction of leadership and group solidarity in
the party conference speeches through the use of the first person singular and
plural pronouns, an analysis that I have presented in more detail in Kranert
(2017). Apparent differences in text and context will be used to demonstrate the
context-sensitivity of this discursive strategy. Fairclough (2000, 35) describes the
‘constant ambivalence and slippage between exclusive and inclusive “we”[…]’ as
a salient feature of the New Labour discourse. He argues that this slippage is used
to obfuscate differences in a divided society. In contrast to Fairclough, however, I
aim to demonstrate that in party conference speeches this mechanism is used to
construe leadership and group ideology as well as to handle multi-addressing. The
differences in the use of the self-referring pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ in the speeches
can be explained by local contexts such as the timing of the conference pre- or
post-election and the socio-historical context of the speech. The party-political
ideology and the political culture, however, do not seem to influence this linguistic
feature directly.
The intermittent use of ‘I’ and ‘We’ and the often ambiguous use of ‘we’ seems
to be a defining feature of leaders’ speeches at party conferences. Fetzer and Bull
(2012) argue that leaders use the self-referring pronoun ‘I’ in speeches in order to
‘do leadership’. Their argument builds on the notion from Conversation Analysis
that communicative action is ‘doubly contextual’, both ‘context-shaped’ and
‘context-renewing’ (Heritage 1984: 242): the understanding of utterances depends
on the context while each new utterance renews and changes the context.
In order to capture the construction of groupness and solidarity, we need to
distinguish the use of ‘I’ as well as inclusive and exclusive ‘we’. Because ‘we’ as
a pronoun usually refers to the speaker and at least one other, it can be used to
construct groupness. The use of ‘we’ represents the speaker as a central or defining
member of the group s/he speaks on behalf of (Wortham 1996: 333). Mühlhäusler
and Harré (1990: 92) see this effect based on the double indexicality of personal
pronouns which are spatial – temporally anchored in the here-and-now, and also
in the pragmatic domain of the speaker’s responsibilities for illocutionary force

and perlocutionary effects. According to Fetzer (2014: 336), ‘we’ is thus part of the
membership categorisation and signifies proximity and possibly solidarity with
the group ideology. Fetzer further argues that the use of ‘we’ aligns the speaker
with supporters of a political party irrespective of the party’s ideology (Fetzer
2014: 345–46). The basis of this effect is the ambiguity of the reference of ‘we’,
which can be categorised in the following way:
Exclusive we Inclusive we
Integrative use, referring to speaker, hearer
Refers to a group including the speaker but and others
excluding the hearer Expressive use referring to speaker, hearer
and expressing solidarity
Figure 1. Exclusive and inclusive ‘we’
Wilson (1990: 47) argues that the choice of pronouns can in most cases be in-
terpreted as a sociolinguistic fact, for example in the choice of you/yous for the
second person plural in spoken language. The use of inclusive or exclusive ‘we’ by
politicians is, however, a pragmatic manipulation and thus strategic. It exploits the
ambiguity of ‘we’ based on implicatures of the hearer. These interpretations can
always be denied by the speaker. Wilson (1990) also points out that ‘we’ distances
the speaker from a statement. This is supported by Mühlhäusler and Harré (1990,
175) who demonstrate that ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ construes the speaker as collaborating
with the hearer. This therefore diminishes the responsibility of the speaker for what
is being said. Du Bois (2009: 22) suggests a strong similarity of this mechanism
in German and English, as both languages hold an ambiguity in the first person
plural that can be pragmatically exploited.
As a final theoretical point, I would like to connect the use of ‘I’ and the
different forms of ‘we’ in party conference speeches to the multi-authored and
multi-addressing properties of this genre. The changing use of first person pro-
nouns in these speeches is an indicator of changes of footing, a concept developed
by Goffman (1981) in order to deconstruct the dyadic categories of hearer/ad-
dressee and speaker. Instead of the speaker being conceived as a single unit who
addresses hearers with deliberately chosen linguistic constructions to fulfil an
individual intention, Goffman (1981: 144–45) analyses the production format
of utterances instead:
– the principal: whose position is established in the words spoken;
– the author: selector of sentiments expressed and words encoding them;
– the animator: ‘talking machine’, producing the sound.
Following Wilson (1990: 65), I have argued that the use of personal pronouns in
pre-scripted speeches is most likely both strategic and also intended. The strategy
here is one of legitimisation by changing the footing in the sense of Goffman. The
shift from ‘we’ to ‘I’ or ‘I’ to ‘we’ indicates a change in footing in the production
format: while ‘I’ foregrounds the leader’s responsibility for a policy and therefore
the leader as a principal, the exclusive ‘we’ foregrounds the party as a principal
and construes or constructs group solidarity. The inclusive ‘we’ integrates the na-
tion into the ideology, construing all parts of the audience as principal. This can,
of course, not only be interpreted as a strategy of legitimisation, but also one of
depoliticisation by obfuscating political differences.
Table 1, taken from Kranert (2017), presents an overview of the use of pro-
nominal self-references in the party conference speeches analysed:
In the table, we can identify three distinct features: In Blair’s pre-election
speech of 1996 the use of ‘I’ is highest, while it is lowest in Schröder’s 2003 special
conference speech, which shows a particularly high use of exclusive ‘we’. Generally,
inclusive ‘we’ is highest in the pre-election speeches, and the ambiguous use of ‘we’
is highest in post-election speeches. The following discussion will demonstrate
how these genre variations can be explained by the particular contexts of the
speeches and why they can be understood as strategic.
In his 1996 pre-election speech, Blair foregrounds the construction of his per-
sonal leadership, using ‘I’ in 50.2% of all self-references, which can be interpreted
as typical for the leader-focus and the process of presidentialisation in the British
systems. The process of presidentialisation in the UK is much further advanced,
since there are restrictions within the German political institutions, but also in
the history of the SPD. The German political system consists of many more veto
players than the British, where the Prime Minister is almost the only veto player,
as long as he or she has the support of his parliamentary party. Furthermore, re-
forms within the Labour Party since 1983 have made the party leader much more
autonomous than in Germany: they have introduced complex policy development
procedures that are more under the control of the leadership, and integrated strong
plebiscitary elements in the party democracy that weaken the influence of party
activists. Although the SPD has also introduced reforms that allow plebiscitary
elements, they refrained from using them after the popular election of Scharping
as a party leader did not prove successful.
Despite the general leadership focus of Blair’s 1996 party conference speech,
its opening and closing are presented by the party as being principal: the use of
the first-person plural indicates that it is the party’s position that is established in
the utterance, the speaker itself is merely representing its position, and therefore
taking the role of author and animator:
Table 1. Self-references in party conference speeches (Kranert 2017: 192)

Speech Length Pronominal Pronominal self-references (%)
in words self-references in % I = speaker I = general Excl. We Incl. We Ambiguous We Other we
Blair 1994 Blair 7043 2.95 23.1 2.9 50 13.5 10.6 0
1995 Blair 1995 6915 2.73 37 2.1 30.7 16.4 7.4 6.3
(SC) Blair 1996 2684 1.97 35.8 0 45.3 5.7 13.2 0
Blair 1997 7219 2.99 51.9 0 28.2 13.4 6.5 0
Lafontaine 1997 5970 3.48 32.2 0 29.8 9.6 27.9 0.5
Lafontaine 04/98 7336 3.15 24.2 0 58.4 12.1 2.6 0
Lafontaine 10/98 2163 2.96 28.1 0 59.4 1.6 0 10.9
4840 3.22 42.3 0 42.9 1.9 3.8 9.0
Schröder 1997 4722 2.39 31.0 0 42.5 20.4 3.5 2.7
Schröder 04/98 9537 2.75 33.6 0.8 53.1 6.1 3.8 2.7
Schröder 10/98 2252 2.62 32.2 0 20.3 3.4 42.4 1.7
Schröder 2003 7800 4.03 15.9 0 70.4 5.4 5.4 2.9
Schr. 2003 (SC) 5803 4.53 13.7 0 75.3 3.4 6.8 0.8
AVERAGE 5714 3.06 30.85 0.45 46.64 8.86 10.3 2.88
SC = Special Conference
Diana, friends, colleagues, this year we meet as the opposition. Next year, the
British people willing, an end to 18 years of the Tories and we will meet as the new
Labour government of Britain. (Applause) It is exciting!
(Blair 1996a: 80, emphasis MK)
We have the programme. We have the people to make decent change in our
country. Let us call our nation now to its destiny. Let us lead it to our new age of
achievement and build for us, for our children, their children, a Britain – a Britain
united to win in the 21st century. (Blair 1996a: 87, emphasis MK)
Here, the pronoun ‘we’ is used to construe the solidarity of the group. The party
speaks through the leader and reasserts itself by saying ‘We have the programme’.
But of course, this is also addressed to the general public. When Blair speaks of
‘our country’, ‘our nation’ and ‘our children’, the general public is construed as be-
ing part of the event through entextualisation.
In other parts of the pre-election speeches, Schröder and Blair explicitly ad-
dress the secondary audience on behalf of the party as principal (‘Wir’):
Liebe Genossinnen! Liebe Genossen! Liebe Freundinnen! Liebe Freunde! Und
vor allen Dingen, lieber Helmut Schmidt! Wir wenden uns an die Bürgerinnen
und Bürger und sagen ihnen: Wir, die deutschen Sozialdemokraten, sind bereit,
die Verantwortung für Deutschland und die Verantwortung für Deutschland in
Europa zu übernehmen. (Schröder 1998a: 20, emphasis MK)
Dear comrades, dear friends! And first and foremost dear Helmut Schmidt. We turn
to the citizens and tell them: We, the German Social Democrats are ready to take
responsibility for Germany and the responsibility for Germany in Europe.
Today, I offer you, and we offer the country a new vision. If we are to build this
new age of achievement, you and I and all of us together must build first the
decent society to deliver it. (Blair 1996a: 84, emphasis MK)
While Schröder immediately construes the party as the principal (‘we’), Blair
changes footing from ‘I’ to ‘we’, stressing his position as a leader who offers the
party a vision. This very strong construction of leadership would be unsuitable for
Schröder as a chancellor candidate, because he is not the undisputed leader of the
party. The party conference of the SPD elects both leader and chancellor candidate,
and the leader or chancellor candidate needs to campaign for votes. The leader of
the Labour Party, however, speaks to the party conference as somebody already
elected through a different system. This also becomes clear at the end of Schröder’s
speech, where he asks the delegates directly to vote for him as the party’s candidate
for chancellor by asking for a mandate.
At their first post-election party conferences, both Schröder and Blair give
speeches that seem to be hybrids: Schröder’s speech is a hybrid between a leader’s
speeches and a government report, and Blair’s speech a hybrid of a leader’s speech
and a presidential inauguration speech where the leader, elected by the people,
addresses his people in a religious tone. Schröder’s post-election speech has the
lowest use of exclusive ‘we’ in all the speeches and the highest use of ambiguous
and other ‘we’, which mainly refers to the government, as the following example
from the end of the speech demonstrates:
Liebe Genossinnen und Genossen, wir wollen und wir werden einen neuen
Anfang in Deutschland machen: zuerst in Bonn und dann in Berlin. Wir bauen
dabei auf die Geschlossenheit und die Disziplin der SPD, wir bauen dabei auf eure
Unterstützung heute und morgen. Vielen Dank für die Aufmerksamkeit.
(1998b, 46, emphasis MK)
Dear Comrades. We want, and we will start afresh in Germany: first in Bonn, and
then in Berlin. For this, we count on the unanimity and discipline of the party, we
bank on your support, today and tomorrow. Thank you for your attention!
Here, the ‘we’ in ‘Wir bauen dabei auf ’ does not include the audience, who are
referred to as ‘eure’. It can therefore only mean the prospective government, and
Schröder asks here for the party’s support of the government. This is a necessary
question, since this party conference needs to approve the coalition agreement –
the aim of his speech as prospective chancellor is to gain support for the govern-
ment’s programme.
In contrast, Blair already speaks as Prime Minister, as the leader of the Brit-
ish people who is describing his programme (metaphorically as ‘course’) for the
country:
Today I want to set an ambitious course for this country. To be nothing less than
the model 21st-century nation, a beacon to the world. It means drawing deep into
the richness of the British character. Creative. Compassionate. Outward-looking.
Old British values, but a new British confidence. (Blair 1997: 68)
This is supported by the very high use of inclusive ‘we’. Blair speaks on behalf of the
country; he does not need approval from the party. He aims, in fact, to motivate
all his followers, to strengthen the party’s and the country’s group solidarity at the
same time. He does this by keeping the footing of the speech ambiguous at the end
of the speech, by mixing his addressing:
On May 1, the people entrusted me with the task of leading their

country into a new century. That was your challenge to me. Proudly,
humbly, I accepted it. Today, I issue a challenge to you. Help us make
Britain that beacon shining throughout the world. Unite behind our mission
5 to modernise our country. There is a place for all the people in New Britain,
and there is a role for all the people in its creation. Believe in us as much
as we believe in you. Give just as much to our country as we intend to give.

Give your all. Make this the giving age. (Applause)
‘By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more together
10 than we can alone.’ On 1st May 1997, it wasn’t just the Tories who were
defeated. Cynicism was defeated. Fear of change was defeated. Fear itself
was defeated. Did I not say it would be a battle of hope against fear? On
1st May 1997, fear lost. Hope won. The Giving Age began. (Applause)
Now make the good that is in the heart of each of us, serve the good of all
15 of us. Give to our country the gift of our energy, our ideas, our hopes, our
talents. Use them to build a country each of whose people will say that ‘I
care about Britain because I know that Britain cares about me.’ Britain,
head and heart, can be unbeatable. That is the Britain I offer you. That is
the Britain that together can be ours. (Standing ovation) (Blair 1997: 73)
In line 1 of the quotation, Blair separates the people and the addressee by using
the third person possessive pronoun ‘their’ in ‘their country’. He also depicts the
general election as a contest of leaders – parallel to a presidential election, inter-
preting the victory as a personal victory (‘the people entrusted me with the task of
leading their country into a new century’). In line 2, Blair switches to ‘you’, when
describing the task set as ‘your challenge’ – he is now addressing the people. In
lines 9 and 10, he quotes the Labour Party’s revised constitution, without chang-
ing the footing – he is thus still speaking to the British people. The intertextual
connection of the last paragraph, which resembles the Christian dismissal at the
end of a service, produces the religious tone of the speech that demonstrates the
influences of a presidential inauguration speech in the US, a genre that Campbell
and Jamieson (2008: 29) describe as follows:
Presidential inaugurals are a subspecies of the kind of discourse that Aristotle
called epideictic, a form of rhetoric that praises or blames on ceremonial occa-
sions, invites the audiences to evaluate the speaker’s performance, recalls the past
and speculates about the future while focusing on the present, employs a noble,
dignified literary style, and amplifies or rehearses admitted facts.
Although the speech has strong deliberative elements in presenting and legiti-
mating policies of the new government, the quoted ending of the speech clearly
focuses on the epideictic element: It addresses the nation and unites it through the
metaphor ‘Britain as a beacon to the world’, as well as through ceremonial words
that recontextualise the tone of the Christian dismissal.
The party conference speeches of Blair and Schröder at the special conferences
in 1995 (Labour, change of Clause Four) and 2003 (SPD, Agenda 2010) clearly
differ in the construction of leadership. Schröder’s special conference speech has
the highest proportion of exclusive ‘we’ and the lowest proportion of the use of ‘I’
in all conference speeches of the corpus, followed only by his speech at the regular
biannual party conference in the same year. This shows a clear focus on internal
affairs and on the rebuilding of group solidarity at the conference. At the same
time, Schröder’s special conference speech has a very high use of ‘exclusive we +
must + verb’. Schröder often repeats the construction ‘Wir müssen’ followed by
a subjectification verb (e.g. ‘anerkennen’) or event verb. The modal verb ‘must’
construes a high implicit subjective modality and presents the audience with
a closed discourse:
Wir müssen den Mut zeigen, anzuerkennen, dass die Zahl der Arbeitslosen
nicht nur aus konjunkturellen Gründen auf mehr als 4 Millionen angestiegen ist,
sondern dass es dafür auch strukturelle Ursachen gibt. Diese Ursachen müssen
wir erkennen und beseitigen. (Schröder 2003b: 14)
We must have the courage to recognise that the number of unemployed people has
not only risen to more than 4 million because of the economic situation, but there are
also structural reasons. These reasons we must recognise and eliminate.
Strategically, Schröder combines the building of group solidarity by using ‘we’,

with the closing of the discourse by using constructions of high obligation (‘must’)
in combination with mental processes. He includes himself in the group that is
forced to accept what he calls ‘reality’.
What does this analysis tell us about the language in the leader’s speeches at
the party conferences of New Labour and the German SPD? It has become clear
that the three speakers use the first person singular and plural pronouns strategi-
cally to change the footing of their speeches from the leader as principal (‘I’), to
the party as principal (exclusive ‘we’) and to the nation as principal (inclusive ‘we).
These changes help the speaker to construe notions of leadership and to facilitate
ideological in-group construction. The differences in the usage of this mechanism
in my corpus seem to be governed mainly by more localised context, i.e. the situa-
tion of the speech before or after an election, before or after a critical decision such
as the Clause Four revision or the Agenda 2010. There are, however, influences
of the political culture of the party: Blair can speak as a leader who is not directly
dependent on the votes of the party conference, whereas Schröder and Lafontaine
have to aim for legitimisation by the votes of the delegates and therefore adapt the
leadership construction and the construction of in-group solidarity accordingly.
4.3 Integrating and promoting the party: The genre election manifesto in
the discourses of the Third Way
Election manifestos represent the ideological position as well as the concrete

policies of a party as a choice for voters. Yet, a key question to ask is whether they
present these choices in the same way in political systems that differ as much as the
Westminster system in the UK, which is dominated by two parties usually forming
a single party government, and the proportional and federal system of Germany,
that is usually governed by coalitions.
In this section I will analyse the central features of election manifestos and
demonstrate how their structure and function differs in Germany and Britain.
Election manifestos as a genre have not been analysed in detail, but politico-
linguists have situated them in the system of genres in politics. Girnth (2002) and
Klein (2000b) both understand election manifestos as advertising materials aimed
at potential voters. Girnth (2002: 38) places them in the action field of ‘political
advertising’ and Klein (2000b: 743) analyses them as a genre emitted by parties
and aimed at the public. In Klein’s (2000b) view, election manifestos give party
campaigners and the party base an overview of the party’s policy. They can use the
text as a toolbox for political argumentation. Election manifestos are also a source
of information for journalists and interested voters.
As early as 1971, the political scientist Heino Kaack argued that programme
texts of political parties have internal and external audiences (Kaack 1971: 400–
403). Targeted at external audiences, programme texts have an advertising function
in order to win new members and voters. They present the party as being distinct
from political competitors (profile function) and support its ideological groupness
(agitating function). On the basis of manifestos, parties demand concrete politi-
cal action (operational basis). Internally, programme texts integrate the different
ideologies of the membership. They help the individual member to identify with
the party-political ideology. They are also a source of legitimisation, since the
party conferences have voted on their content. Finally, election manifestos help
the party leadership to control possible rebels, because they allow utterances such
as ‘This is not in the manifesto/we haven’t got a mandate’ as a closing move in an
argument on party policy.
The question I need to answer in this chapter is whether the importance of
these functions differ in the two countries. A first piece of evidence for a difference
in the genre can be found in Rose’s (1984: 65) argument that manifesto pledges in
the UK are highly relevant and often implemented, because the first-past-the-post
electoral system mostly returns a one-party government. The German system of
proportional representation almost always makes coalitions necessary in order
for a government to command a parliamentary majority. In contrast, UK govern-
ments are closely observed on how they keep the promises made in the manifestos
and cannot normally use a coalition partner as an excuse, as German governments
tend to do. Election manifestos are therefore discursively of less importance in
Germany, since many policy pledges are revised in the coalition- building process.
As discussed in the justification of the corpus, I chose to include election mani-

festos of the Labour Party and the SPD over a longer period (1987–2002) in order
to incorporate a diachronic element into the analysis. In the following parts of this
chapter, I will focus on two particular elements of the genre election manifesto and
their change over time: The preface or introduction, and multimodal structures.
The introductions or prefaces of the manifestos set the tone for the program-
matic remarks that follow. They are the first part that a reader might look at, es-
pecially in the UK, where they are aimed at a more general reader. The tone of the
German and English introductions is very different, since the Labour manifestos
are all introduced by the party leader, whereas the SPD manifestos are introduced
by the party in the first-person plural. The exception is, however, the 1994 mani-
festo, which seems to be an experiment in many ways, but one that has not been
repeated. This SPD manifesto has a preface by the party leader and chancellor
candidate of the SPD at the time, Rudolf Scharping, who also uses the first-person
pronoun ‘ich’ in the introduction. This isolated move towards a leader-focus is
consistent with the unusual leadership election in 1993: Scharping was elected by
a membership ballot and won with 40.3% against Gerhard Schröder and Heide-
marie Wieczorek-Zeul. This victory was, as Walter (2009: 221) points out, not
overwhelming – more than half of the membership voted against Scharping. More
importantly, Scharping had to defend his legitimacy against Schröder, who tried
hard to raise his public profile against Scharping by setting the agenda through the
media. Therefore, the stronger leader-focus of the manifesto can be understood as
a counter-strategy against this challenge.
The different tone is also set by different or missing sub-genre descriptors
in the headline. In the British Labour Party manifestos of 1987 and 1992 they
are called ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’, which seems to communicate a separation
from the main body of the manifesto. This distancing function is not present in
the first two New Labour manifestos. The 1990 and 2002 SPD manifestos use the
headline ‘Präambel’, which is normally understood as the introduction to a more
official genre such as contracts and charters, and are often written in a solemn tone
(Wilpert 1989: 703).
The voice of the introductions to the manifestos in the corpus varies. While
all British manifestos have an introduction by the party leader, the introductions
of the German manifestos, except for the 1994 manifesto, are written in the first-
person plural: it is the party’s voice setting the scene of the following programme
by presenting the general values of the party. In addition, although all the Labour
manifestos have an introduction by the party leader, the prefaces by Neil Kinnock
in 1987 and 1992 are also presented in the first-person plural, from the perspective
of the party. Blair breaks this tradition in the 1997 and 2001 manifestos: The intro-
ductions there present a personal message by Tony Blair without the genre-defining
headline ‘preface’. In 1997, Blair uses ‘I’ 20 times, mostly as participant sensor, and
in the middle part of the introduction ‘I’ is often intertwined with ‘we’ or ‘new
Labour’. This clearly marks an increase in the leadership focus on the textual side,
something already identified in the visual aspect of the manifestos.
Not all the manifestos use a combination of exclusive and inclusive ‘we’, or use
‘we’ with an unclear scope. There is, however, no example in the 1992 introduc-
tion, which suggests that the mixed use in the Labour introductions from 1997
and 2001, as well as in the SPD introduction from 1994 and 1998, is intentional
and strategic.
The strategic use of inclusiveness in the 1997/1998 manifestos becomes more
obvious when we turn to other linguistic means used inclusively. In the preamble
to the 1998 SPD manifesto, the inclusion is constructed by the regular use of the
metonymy ‘Deutschland’ (8 times + 4 times ‘unser Land’ in the first 500 words).
The lexeme ‘Deutschland’ needs to be read as a metonymy, because in a sentence
such as ‘Unser Land hat große Chancen […] Dafür braucht Deutschland eine neue
Politik und eine neue Regierung’ (SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 9), ‘Deutschland’
refers to the people of Germany. Combined with the use of ‘Unser Land’, the text
includes all possible readers in order to depict the SPD as a catch-all party as op-
posed to a clientele party. This strategy is even more marked in the 1997 manifesto
of the Labour Party: ‘Britain’/ ‘British’ is used 13 times in the first 500 words, ‘our
country’ twice. The strategy is supported by the use of programme terms such as
‘one nation’ and metaphoric constructions depicting the manifesto as a contract
with all people. The text construes ‘New Labour’ as a body-part of the nation
(‘New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole’
(The Labour Party 1997: 2) and together with the British people set in opposition
to the political system:
I want to renew faith in politics through a government that will govern in the
interest of the many, the broad majority of people who work hard, play by the
rules, pay their dues and feel let down by a political system that gives the breaks to
the few, to an elite at the top increasingly out of touch with the rest of us.
(The Labour Party 1997: 1)
This also depoliticises the Labour Party, as it characterises New Labour as outside
the political system, as part of the betrayed public. It backgrounds that the Labour
party had been part of the system for almost a hundred years and foregrounds the
Labour Party as a new political power emerging from the British people and a part
of the topos of ‘Third-way parties as special agents for change’.
I now turn to the multimodal elements in the election manifestos of the Third
Way in order to understand the role of the advertising function of the German
and British manifestos and its context-sensitivity. With the exception of the 1994
manifesto of the SPD, both SPD and CDU present their manifestos between 1990
and 2005 as text only. The German manifestos therefore use very few contact-
orientated strategies such as pictures, which means their external advertising
function is less strong. The Labour Party in contrast are visually increasingly com-
plex. In both the 1997 and 2001 manifesto, texts and visual elements are combined
into a semiotic strategy that focuses on the leader: Blair is depicted many times,
and the pictures clearly carry more than just the denotation, the photographic
message ‘without a code’. They convey structurally coded ideological messages
(Barthes 1987: 17–19) and are integrated into complex semiotic structures, as is
typical for advertising genres (Spillner 1982, Bateman 2014). Comparable to the
Labour manifestos is an SPD election campaign publication from 1998 (Vorstand
der SPD July 1998). A comparative analysis of both will demonstrate that the SPD
in 1998 used similar semiotic means to communicate its goals and its leader’s
qualities, and that the German election campaign seems to show a similarly
increased promotionalisation of the political culture, a process from which the
German election manifestos seem to be exempt. This comparative analysis of the
text–picture relation will also help in understanding the differences in the multi-
modal construction of political messages, as well as the construal of leadership in
British and German election materials. It will partly be based on Kress and van
Figure 2. Front cover of the 1987 Labour manifesto

Leeuwen (2006), who have developed a social-semiotic grammar of visual design

based on the three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Linguistics.
The Labour Manifesto of 1987 does not use any picture material in the body
of the text, but presents the leader on the front cover. Neil Kinnock is depicted in
a medium- range shot, smiling with excitement, gazing away from the reader and
raising his left hand, possibly waving (Figure 3).4 Kinnock is wearing a suit with
a red rose on the lapel – the symbol for the Labour Party at the time. This pose
communicates his leadership of the party as energetic and strong: the low-angle
depiction construes the power of the participant (Kress and Leeuwen 2006: 148)
and the waving and excited pose seem to communicate connection with the party.
The 1992 manifesto does not depict the leader on the front cover (Figure 3), but
instead shows him in a type of official portrait on the left hand side of the double
page that contains his foreword (Figure 4). Kinnock wears a formal suit without
party symbols. The picture itself also does not contain the context of the picture,
unlike the photograph on the front cover of the 1987 manifesto. The background
of the 1992 portrait is simply black and grey. In 1987, the picture shows Kinnock
being engaged with an audience that is not visible in the picture but clearly part
Figure 3. Front cover of the 1992 Labour manifesto
4. All pages from the Labour manifestos are reproduced with kind permission of the Labour
Party.
of the scene where the picture was taken, possibly at the party conference. The
portrait in 1992 does not evoke an external event as part of the picture. It is part
of the textual structure of the double page and Kinnock seems to be appealing to
the reader: the frontal angle of the shot and the direct gaze of Kinnock towards
the viewer realises demand (Kress and Leeuwen 2006: 148): Kinnock is demand-
ing the attention of the readers by looking into their eyes and addressing them
directly in the text:
Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Neil Kinnock

Leader of the Labour Party
This general election is a choice between a Conservative government peralysed by recession, and a Labour
government determined to get on with building recovery.
Gripped by the longest recession since the war, Britain needs a government with a clear sense of direction
and purpose. A government with the people and the policies to get Britain working again and to achieve
sustained recovery - strength with staying power.
Labour will be such a government.
But this election is not only a choice between policies, important though both are. It is also a choice between
values.
At the core of our convictions is belief in individual liberty.
We therefore believe;
First, that for liberty to have real meaning the standards of community provision must be high and access to
that provision must be wide.
Second, that those rights of the individual must, like all others in a free society, belong to all men and women
of every age, class and ethnic origin and be balanced by responsibilities of fair contribution and law-abiding
conduct.
Third, that for rights and responsibilities to be exercised fully and fairly, government in Britain, as in other
industrialised democracies, must work to build prosperity by properly supporting research, innovation, the
improvement of skills, the infrastructure and long-term industrial development.
Our vision for Britain is founded on these values. Guided by them, we will make our country more competitive,
creative, and just; more secure against crime, aggression and environmental danger. We want government to
serve the whole nation - using its power to realise this vision.
Labour will be such a government.
These are our convictions and we will work to fulfil them. They are also down-to-earth aims - essential
objectives in a country hit by recession, suffering run-down public services and facing the intensifying
pressures of European and global economic competition.
All of those realities require that the government provides; a stable economic environment; education and
training that fosters the abilities of all young people and adults; a firm emphasis on productive investment in
both the public and private sectors.
Labour will implement and maintain those policies. They are vital for prosperity, for consistently low
inflation and for continuous improvement in economic performance and living standards. They are also
fundamental to improving the quality and quantity of provision in health and social services, and to
combating poverty. We have absolute commitment to a high-quality National Health Service, free at time of
need and not fractured and weakened by underfunding and a commercialised contract system. We will get on
with fulfilling that commitment from the moment of our election - by strengthening and modernising the
NHS, by extending care in the community and by establishing the National Health initiative to prevent illness.
Our pledges to increase the income of pensioners and families with children will urgently be fulfilled. Our
undertakings to stop the perpetual experiments in schools and to raise standards of investment and
achievement in education will be kept in full.
These policies - like those to increase house-building, improve transport and protect the environment - are not
only important to the well-being of the British people now. They are vital preparations for the future. In that
future, we are determined that Britain will be a leader in the New Europe, setting higher standards and not
surrendering influence by opting out. We have confidence in our country and in the qualities and potential of its
people. We want to nourish their artistic, scientific, sporting and other abilities. And we want to enhance their
democratic power too. We shall therefore make constitutional and other changes that will give renewed vitality to
our democracy. We shall empower people as citizens and as consumers of public and private services. We
Figure 4. Pages 6 and 7 of the 1992 Labour manifesto
The New Labour manifesto of 1997 communicates a very different visual language.
Blair as the leader, who is depicted as less formal than Kinnock, dominates it; he
is shown nine times. The front cover shows him in a close-up, very intimate shot,
slightly from the left-hand side, the right part of the face in the shade, wearing a
casual blue shirt (Figure 5). He is presented as the ‘normal person’, a strategy that
also characterises his speeches. Only the following pictures show Blair dressed
more formally. On the first double page, he also relates to the reader directly, being
depicted in the top right-hand corner of the preface.
Figure 5. Front cover of the Labour 1997 manifesto
On pages 2–5, which contain the continuation of the preface, we see Blair together
with different people at the top left of the pages, taking up the space of the idea, as
has been described by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 186–87), who demonstrate
that in many different genres, the top of the text represents general ideas, for
example in headlines, while the bottom often contains concrete new information:
‘For something to be ideal means that it is presented as the idealised or generalised
essence of the information, hence also as its, ostensibly, most salient part. The real
is then opposed to this in that it presents more specific information (e.g. details).’
These structures are part of the textual metafunction of visual design.
The pictures in this part are all combined with a slogan that is printed in a
large, bold font in blue on the outside margins of the page. The slogan ‘The vision
is one of national renewal, a country with drive, purpose and energy’ is accompa-
nied by a picture of Blair and Mandela, presenting Blair as a renewing leader who
unites his nation. This pictorial strategy has the same effect as the lexical strategy
of denotational contextualisation: depicting the party leader with a legendary
politician leads to the properties of one also being associated with the other. The
following page shows Blair with John Prescott, the new deputy leader. He suppos-
edly represented the left of the party, although ‘views of him as a leftist owed more
to his working-class roots and the party’s shift to the right than they did to political
reality’ (Thorpe 2008: 245). Despite his image as a member of the party’s left wing,
Prescott was an active supporter of New Labour. The picture of Blair and Prescott
appears above the slogan ‘… a new and distinctive approach has been mapped out,
one that differs from the old left and the Conservative right’. The slogan presents
Labour as a party of the Third Way, a party that is new. The picture, however,
suggests continuity of Labour and New Labour: the leadership consists of a young,
supposedly radical reformer, and an ‘old labour’ supporter who turned to New
Labour. The last picture of that series shows Blair head to head with a young boy
(Figure 6). This supports New Labour’s message on education and enhances the
slogan ‘New Labour is a party of ideas and ideals, but not of outdated ideology’ by
depicting Blair as being in touch with people.
Figure 6. Detail from the top left corner of page 4 in Labour’s 1997 election manifesto
In the programmatic part of the 1997 manifesto, pictures of people from all walks
of life are used, such as students in a library and sales assistants selling food. But
towards the end, Blair appears again, communicating both his aptitude as leader
and his ‘normal person’ persona: We see him in the world of power with the world
leaders Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton at the beginning of the section on ‘leader-
ship in Europe’, but also in the world of ordinary people, talking to children at a
sports event, wearing a track suit.
‘Ambitions for Britain’, the Labour manifesto of 2001, shows Blair on the
front page in a medium-range shot talking to people. But in striking difference to
Kinnock in 1987 there is no reference to the party in the picture, no rose on the
lapel. Blair is yet again dressed slightly informally – in just a white shirt. In the
unfocused background, we see shapes of people in what looks like a relaxed audi-
ence. The first double page after the contents page contains the beginning of Tony
Blair’s preface to the manifesto (Figure 7). In a picture on the left-hand page, Blair
is sitting at a table, writing, with his mug of tea clearly visible. The right-hand page
contains his words. The text does not carry the headline ‘preface’ or ‘introduc-
tion’, in fact it has no headline at all. Instead, the whole double page is framed by
the underlined words ‘Fulfilling Britain’s great potential’ in the red colour of the
Labour party. Since in the textual structure of multimodal texts, the left of a double
page is often perceived as given/theme (Kress and Leeuwen 2006: 181), the reader
naturally inserts Tony Blair’s picture as the subject position of the clause, which is
also reserved for the theme. Here, Labour’s election campaign is focused on one
person, who is ‘fulfilling Britain’s great potential’.
This general election is in many ways even more important than the last. Since May 1997 we have laid
the foundations of a Britain whose economy is stronger, where investment is now pouring into public
services, where social division is being slowly healed and where influence abroad is being regained.
But these are only the foundations of larger change. by weaknesses of elitism and snobbery, vested interests and
Now is the chance to build the future properly, to make social division, complacency bred by harking back to the
the second term the basis for a radical programme of past. We achieved spurts of economic growth, but inflation
British renewal: to keep a firm grip on inflation, with low would then get out of control. Our welfare state was founded
interest rates and the public finances sound, and then to offer security, but its progress was stalled. We reached out
build the dynamic and productive economy of the to Europe, then drew back to become semi-detached.
future; to keep investment coming into public services It is as if a glass ceiling has stopped us fulfilling our
and then making the reforms so we use the money well; potential. In the 21st century, we have the opportunity to
to refashion the welfare state on the basis of rights and break through that glass ceiling, because our historic
responsibilities, with people helped to help themselves, strengths match the demands of the modern world.
not just given handouts; to ensure all families are safe in We can use our openness and entrepreneurial flair to
their communities by tackling crime and its causes; and become a global centre in the knowledge economy. We
to give Britain back its leadership role in the world. We can use our sense of fair play and mutual responsibility to
need the second term to do all this. That is the choice: to be a strong, dynamic, multiracial society held together by
make progress or to dismantle the foundations laid. And strong values. We can use our historic and geographical
with the state of today's Conservatives, the choice is position to link Europe and America, and help the
stark. developing world.
This choice will decide whether more people will be able The key to tapping our strengths, to breaking through
to realise their aspirations for themselves and their children - this glass ceiling, is contained in a simple but
to be able to rely on a stable economy where hard work is hard-to-achieve idea, set out at the heart of our party's
rewarded by rising living standards, to receive world-class constitution: the determination to put power, wealth and
education and healthcare, to enjoy a dignified old age, to opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few.
feel safe and secure in a strong community, and to be I know as well as anyone that we have just begun;
proud to be British. Or whether we will be held back by the millions of hard-working families want, need and
traditional British malaise of restricting life's great deserve more. That means more change in a second
opportunities and blessings to a minority. term, not less - to extend opportunity for all. We reject
There is much still to be done, but we have come a long the quiet life. We must secure a mandate for change.
way in four years. Britain stands more prosperous, more
equal, more respected. Our country is on a new course. Ten golals for 2010
My passion is to continue the modernisation of Britain • Long-term economic stability
in favour of hard-working families, so that all our children, • Rising living standards for all
wherever they live, whatever their background, have an • Expanded higher education as we raise standards
equal chance to benefit from the opportunities our in secondary schools
country has to offer and to share in its wealth. • A healtheir nation with fast treatment, free at the
point of use
The challenge for Britain • Full employment in every region
I am honoured to be Prime Minister. And I have a confident • Opportunity for all children, security for all pensioners
belief in our country. We are not boastful. But we have real • A modern criminal justice system
strengths. Great people. Strong values. A proud history. • Strong and accountable local government
The British people achieved magnificent things in the 20th • British ideas leading a reformed and enlarged Europe
century. But for too long, our strengths have been undermined • Global poverty and climatge change tackled
Figure 7. Second double page of Labour’s election manifesto 2001 (pp 2–3)
And Blair is yet again depicted as the ‘normal person’, with his formal jacket off, the
sleeves of his shirt rolled up. Finlayson (2002: 596–97) points out the importance
of the mug in the picture – a mug, not a cup with a saucer:
And then there is that mug […] A mug took a starring role in the 1997 election
broadcast focusing on the leader and the motif reappeared in the 2001 version. In
1997 he was in his kitchen, still a man with his own house and living at his own
expense in ‘middle-class’ England. In 2001 the mug had a ‘walk-on’ part as a cup of
tea was delivered to him while he sat on a stool being filmed for his broadcast. It is
a cliché to associate tea with the British (or, at least, the English), but it has a truth
to it. […] Now, as our cultural markers of class dissolve […] the mug of tea (taken
in Downing Street, no less) is an emblem of traditional values in a modern setting.
The programmatic text of the 2001 manifesto shows Blair numerous times in simi-
lar poses to 1997. Finlayson (2002: 597) points out that only three other politicians
are depicted in the 2001 manifesto: David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and Nelson
Mandela, who are all depicted together with Blair in order to communicate his
credentials as a leader. Conspicuously absent are any Labour MPs or Labour min-
isters. Finlayson concludes: ‘In the 2001 election campaign Blair, it is now clear,
was applying for a job. He was, almost literally, interviewed for it.’ However, this
is also true for the 1997 manifesto, which does not show any pictures of Labour
politicians except for Blair – and Prescott.
We can see how the advertising function of British election manifestos is of
much more importance than in the German manifestos. Indeed, it has become
more prominent since 1997. Part of the reason is a much higher importance placed
upon election manifestos in British political discourse. However, the British mani-
festos also show an increasing leadership focus in the text–picture relation. This
supports the presidentialisation thesis discussed in political science on a level of
political culture and political communication.
By comparison, the SPD manifestos could not be more different. With the
exception of 1994, they all rely solely on the written word and are presented in the
party voice (‘we’). A comparison of the CDU manifestos of the time reveals a simi-
lar picture. Despite the popularity of Helmut Kohl, they do not contain pictures
of the leader, nor do they feature prefaces in which Kohl personally addresses the
electorate directly.
I discussed already that the 1994 manifesto is the exception in the German
election manifestos analysed, as it has an introduction by the party leader and
introduces multimodality in the genre. It does not, however, reach the same mul-
timodal complexity as the New Labour manifestos of 1997 and 2001. The leader’s
picture, a plain passport-style head shot (Figure 8), is merely used once next to
his signature as an illustration, as it demands the attention of the reader much less
than, for example, Kinnock’s portrait in 1992, or Blair’s writer pose in 2001.
The double-page pictures that introduce the eight sections of the manifesto are
often mere illustrations of the topic covered, rather than construing Scharping’s
leadership. The picture introducing Section 1 ‘Arbeit schaffen’, for example, shows
two civil engineers presumably discussing a project, while the second section ‘Eine
soziale und ökologische Gesellschaft’ is introduced by a depiction of a luscious
freestanding tree on a meadow.
Between 1995 and the next federal election, Lafontaine managed to unite the
party, but seeing Schröder as potentially more successful with the electorate, he
allowed Schröder to lead the SPD in the election as chancellor candidate. This
double leadership of the party is reflected in an election manifesto that avoids a
leadership focus by returning to the more traditional German format that stresses
Figure 8. Pages 6 and 7 of the SPD manifesto 1994
the voice of the party and backgrounds the advertising function of the manifesto.
This format was also kept for the 2002 and 2005 manifestos. There are other pro-
grammatic publications, however, which foreground the advertising function and
employ more complex multimodal means. The brochure ‘Wir sind bereit’, pub-
lished by the SPD in July 1998 (Vorstand der SPD July 1998), is a good example.
Although I do not have the space to analyse the text of this brochure in detail,
I will explore the text–picture relation within the brochure and the construal of
Schröder’s leadership. We can then compare the use of pictures in the German
election campaign materials to the 1997 Labour election manifesto, which has a
clear advertising function.
As a first major difference, this SPD brochure only addresses the chancellor
candidacy indirectly. Whilst the Labour manifestos show a picture of Blair as a
leader on the front page, this brochure has a plain front page with the title ‘Wir sind
bereit’ and as author label ‘SPD’. The whole front-page mimics the SPD logo since
it is printed in the party’s logo colours of red and white, and uses the same sans
serif typeface. The title ‘Wir sind bereit’ and the construction of the text suggest it
is the party voice speaking, rather than the chancellor candidate. The participants
in the subject position are mainly construed using ‘wir’, often used inclusively. The
text is divided into seven major sections, followed by a reproduction of Gerhard
Schröder’s CV in a typewriter typeface and a summary of nine promises, again

phrased in the first-person plural.
Each major section of the text is framed by a double-page picture of Gerhard
Schröder, together with a slogan. The sections are all followed by a double page
section depicting a member of the public, whether self-employed, unemployed or
retired, and briefly sketching their life story. These short narratives show people
who have overcome difficulty or are in difficulty and stay positive, who express the
desire for change. All of them are also creative in their spare time: all have taken
up dancing in one form or the other, hence the sections are all entitled ‘tanzen’.
These interludes are a powerful multimodal metaphor for the change that the
brochure asks for:
Sichere Zeichen sind gesetzt. Am 27. September 1998 entscheiden Sie. Vollziehen
Sie den Wechsel auch in der Politik. Der Zeitpunkt ist da.
(Vorstand der SPD July 1998, 89)
The signs are there. On 27th September 1998, you will decide. Implement change in
politics as well. Now is time.
While the interludes focus on members of the public, each section is introduced
by a picture of Gerhard Schröder. The eight pictures show Schröder informally,
his hair natural and not carefully combed, his face not carefully shaved, without
any airbrushed attempt to hide his age (Figure 9). Most pictures are intimate
close-ups, aiming to show his personality: a thinker (head on hand), engaging
(gazing straight at the reader), caring (close-up of his hand), loving life (hold-
ing a cigar, but not foregrounded) and working hard (learning a speech outside
a venue). All pictures contain a verbal political statement of which only one is
explicitly attributed to Schröder, using the first person singular pronoun and a
projecting clause:
Ich will, daß wir die großen Chancen der Globalisierung betonen und nutzen und
uns nicht durch ständiges Lamento lähmen. (Vorstand der SPD July 1998, 56)
I want us to concentrate on the great opportunities of globalisation and use them,

instead of being paralysed by constant lamentation.
There is also only one quotation directly attributed to the party, using the first-
person plural pronoun in a similar projecting construction:
Wir wollen, daß die Menschen wieder gespannt sind auf morgen und neugierig
auf das, was die Zukunft bringt. (Vorstand der SPD July 1998, 71)
We want people to be excited about tomorrow and curious about the future.
Figure 9. Double page from ‘Wir sind bereit’ (Vorstand der SPD July 1998, 42–43)
All other statements, often those more controversial, are ambiguously projected, as
in Figure 9. They can either be attributed to Schröder individually, who is depicted
on the double page, or to Schröder representing the party in general. While more
traditional social democrats could read these statements as Schröder’s personal
comments (and disregard them), the target group of the ‘new centre ground’ could
understand them as the position of a changed social democratic party. 5
When compared with Labour’s 1997 manifesto, this brochure shows a number
of striking similarities. It employs complex multimodal semiosis to construe its
message, which is not surprising, since its primary function is advertising. It also
focuses in a similar way on the chancellor candidate: similarly to Blair, Schröder
is mainly shown informally as an ordinary person, and the pictures suggest
leadership qualities. The brochure can also be read as an application for the na-
tional leadership position in the same way that Finlayson (2002) described for
the Labour manifestos: Schröder is interviewed in the double pages following the
programmatic chapters. Even more directly, his CV is reproduced at the end of
the brochure. The chapters themselves, however, are dominated by the party voice
5. The inscription in the picture reads in English: ‘In our country, there is an infinite amount of
expertise waiting to be used. Sometimes we should trust society more the state.’
‘wir’. The direct personal voice ‘ich’ only appears once in the whole text. Even the
political statements embedded in the portraits of Schröder project ambiguously.
Although an analysis of a broader corpus of these election materials needs to be
undertaken in order to confirm this conclusion, I suggest that an open and direct
leadership focus in central programmatic texts was at the time still not acceptable
in the general German political culture. A reason can be found in a much higher
‘partyness of society’ (Abromeit and Stoiber 2006) and in the much greater depen-
dence of the party leader and chancellor candidate on the party. Parties are much
more powerful veto players in German politics. Despite the increasing dominance
of the chancellor candidates of the SPD and the CDU in the election campaigns
(Poguntke 2005: 77–78), the parties seem to reserve some genres such as the
election manifestos exclusively for the party voice. Even in campaign materials
such as the brochure analysed here, the leader focus is mitigated. This could, of
course, also be an effect of the dual leadership in the 1998 election campaign. An
analysis of similar material from later elections would help but is beyond the scope
of this project. Throughout the research for this project, I realised that compiling
a comparable corpus of election materials from the past in different countries
would prove difficult. No central archive in Germany or the UK has collected a
representative collection of these election materials. They are often spread through
several archives and, since the period of new Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’ is still
historically close, they are often not well catalogued.
4.4 Conclusions: Register and genre as reflections of political culture
There are systemic differences in the genres of political language in the UK and
Germany. Both leaders’ speeches at party conferences and election manifestos
differ in their function within the political system and these differences are clearly
reflected in the genre.
Party conference speeches by party leaders are a hybrid between deliberative
and epideictic oratory. They target logos and pathos in order to construct group-
ness and solidarity in party members and followers, but also to construct personal
leadership. The production conditions of party conference speeches are complex:
they are written by teams of speech writers, but more importantly need to present
the party as united, and the leader as in tune with party and country, as decisive
and responsive.
The complex production conditions of the speeches lead to distinct patterns
in the footing of the speech. The speeches switch between the party as principal
(exclusive ‘we’), the nation as principal (inclusive ‘we’), and the leader as principal
(‘I’). The speeches change footing strategically, depending on the role of the leader
at the party conference and on the aim of the speaker. However, there is also an
influence of political culture, as Blair’s speeches are far more leader-centred than
Schröder’s or Lafontaine’s – an effect than can be explained by the more advanced
process of presidentialisation in Britain.
Election manifestos also reveal how they are influenced by the differences
in political cultures. In Germany, election manifestos are legal requirements for
parties that take part in general elections. However, since the German electoral
system normally returns coalition governments which then renegotiate the pro-
gramme for the period of the government, they are less prominent in the German
political discourse in general. In British political discourse, election manifestos
are used by the media and the public to measure the success of government, which
since 1945 have mainly been single-party governments that did not have to seek
programmatic compromise with a coalition partner.
The analysis of the prefaces and of the advertising function reveals an increas-
ing personalisation of the manifestos in the British part of the corpus and a strong
party voice in the introductions to the German manifestos. These characteristics
correspond with contextual factors in the political culture, such as ‘partyness of
society’. Abromeit and Stoiber (2006: 158) argue that the ‘partyness of society’
in Britain is low. Originally, British parties were not authentic mass parties and
the parliamentary parties were dominant (see also Webb 2000: 192). The Labour
Party, for example, was historically founded as an organisation run by the unions
to organise workers’ representation in parliament. In post-war Germany, however,
the partyness of society has been traditionally high: the parties in parliament are
proportionally represented in many regulatory bodies such as the ‘Rundfunkräte’,
which govern the public broadcasters. All major political parties also have an af-
filiated foundation of political education. These foundations have a vital role in
funding political education and are major funders of postgraduate scholarships.
Although they are funded by the government, the political party they are affiliated
to influences their political values. Thus, German political parties influence civil
society much more directly, which has historically led to a stronger identification
of party followers in all parts of society.6 The stronger party voice in the German
manifestos can be interpreted as an influence of the German political culture
on this genre. The election manifestos of the Labour party, in contrast, show an
increasing focus on the party leader.
Institutional analysis in political science has debated whether personalisation
has increased in Britain, especially in the years of New Labour. Heffernan and
Webb (2005: 55–59) argue ‘that party leaders play an ever more prominent role
6. As in all Western democracies, loyal electoral support and stable identification with political
parties are also waning in Germany (Scarrow 2002).
in governing and electioneering’, especially in election campaigns. They are more

and more the centre of intra-party power and, as prime ministers, become more
presidential. However, Blair’s ‘net effect’ as the source of policy is not uncontrover-
sial (Fawcett and Rhodes 2007: 99–103). The election manifestos of the Blair years
certainly show an increased emphasis on the party leader and are almost framed
as applications for the position of Prime Minister. Although Poguntke (2005: 82)
argues that the German political system, especially with Kohl’s and Schröder’s
chancellorship, shows similar signs of presidentialisation, he also observes that
one should not underestimate the influence of German parties over their lead-
ers, which is based on their power to remove their leaders. This power shows in
the strong party voice of the German manifestos. Even in texts whose primary
function is advertising, such as election brochures, the leadership focus is still
mitigated. The characteristics attributed to the leader, however, are similar: strong
leadership on the one hand, but being a ‘normal person’ on the other.
Chapter 5
Lexical strategies in the discourses of

the Third Way
5.1 Political lexis: Politics as semantic struggle
In German politico-linguistics, the concept of ‘semantic struggle’1 was introduced

to discuss lexico-semantic strategies in political language (Dieckmann 1975;
Busse 1989, 1993). With this concept, linguistic theory in Germany reacted to a
meta-discourse on political language in politics that was famously part of Kurt
Biedenkopf’s speech at the CDU party conference in 1973:
Was sich heute in unserem Lande vollzieht, ist eine Revolution neuer Art. Statt
der Gebäude der Regierung werden die Begriffe besetzt, mit denen sie regiert, die
Begriffe, mit denen wir unsere staatliche Ordnung, unsere Rechte und Pflichten
und unsere Institutionen beschreiben. (Biedenkopf 1973: 61)
At the moment we are seeing a new type of revolution in our country. Instead of
taking over government buildings, the terminology of government is being taken
over. The terminology we use to describe our system of government our rights, our
responsibilities and our institutions.
Biedenkopf recognised that in a media society, political battles are not fought in
the streets but in semantics, and politicians need to fight this battle consciously.
This has been echoed by many other German politicians since, for example by
Wolfgang Thierse at the SPD Party conference in Hannover in 1997: ‘Nehmen wir
den Kampf um die Begriffe auf! […] Machen wir die Kombination von Innovation
und sozialer Gerechtigkeit zu unserem Markenzeichen!’ (Let’s fight for our terms
[…] Let’s make the combination of innovation and social justice our brand.) (quoted
in Girnth 2002: 62, transl. MK).
This demonstrates that politicians recognise that a central strategy of legitimi-
sation is to dominate the terminology of a discourse. The problem of terminology,
1. In German linguistic discourse, this is referred to as either ‘Semantische Kämpfe” (Busse

1989; Felder 2006) or ‘Kampf um Wörter” (Klein, J. 1989: 11; Girnth 2002: 62). I use Busse’s
(1993) English phrase for the concept here.
however, is that it has a double function: on the one hand, the syntactical noun
group has the ideational and textual function of reference and identification. On
the other hand, the terminology ties in with the appraisal system on the interper-
sonal level of discourse semantics. Busse calls this ‘covert predications’:
Covert predications are those words or phrases, which have, syntactically speak-
ing, the function of reference (nounphrases), but, in fact, semantically function
as predications. […] These covert predications have the purpose of insinuating
semantic definitions and interpretations of reality without revealing the fact that a
linguistic act of predication has taken place and that there are agents responsible
for these acts. (Busse 1993: 124)
Although the analysis of political lexis has long been a part of linguistics, the
semantic struggle concept in German politics has intensified the linguistic meta-
discourse about political terminology, and it has developed into a part of linguistic
discourse analysis: the research into political catch words (‘Schlagwörter’) and
symbol words (‘Symbolwörter’). Although the original terminology uses ‘word’, I
will use ‘catch terms’ and ‘symbol terms’, since these are quite often noun groups
including adjectives, rather than single lexical units. Catch terms are lexemes or
phrases which symbolise a political and programmatic content and have a strong
evaluative component as well as a high frequency. Their use is also commonly
typical for a certain political group and they are related to certain discourses and
also change with them (Schröter and Carius 2009: 24).
Girnth (2002: 53) distinguishes catch terms from symbol terms, which share
the evaluative component of catch terms, but are not typical for a political group.
Symbol terms are a more general point of orientation for the whole of a political
culture. In modern democracies, ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’ and ‘human rights’ are typical
positive symbol terms or miranda, while ‘communism’ and ‘racism’ are established
negative symbol terms or anti-miranda.2
Klein (1991) introduced tools to analyse lexical-semantic strategies linked to
the use of catch and symbol terms. I will modify his terminology here, since it has
not been published in English. Klein (1991) discusses four basic lexico-semantic
strategies. Firstly, political actors will coin terms and hence enter into terminologi-
cal competition: new terminology is a precondition for the existence of facts, since
it is language that helps us to understand the world in a certain way. The political
aim here is to produce facts by coining a term. Typically, there are three linguistic
processes involved:
2. The term was originally introduced by Dovring (1959: 41–42): ‘Miranda, as the term indi-
cates, consists of symbols for the sentiments which make the doctrine and the formula of the
community’s life and admired reality to all strata of population’. Political scientists talk about
essentially ‘contested concepts’: see Gallie (1955).
Chapter 5. Lexical strategies in the discourses of the Third Way 103
– new fixed collocation: (1) new Labour; 3

– derivation: (2) devolution;
– composition: (3) Chancengleichheit4 (equality of chances).
Strategically biased predication leads to a denotational competition and aims to
foreground an aspect important to the party’s own policy.
(4) ‘terrorist’/’freedom fighter’
This shows that catch terms can be used as deontically positive and claimed by a
political group as programme terms; as stigma terms they are used as deontically
negative terms in order to refer to and delegitimise the political competition. This
strategic use of stigmatising and programmatic terms is part of the delineation of
ideological groups as described by van Dijk (van Dijk 1998), and therefore typical
of the language of political parties (see also Section 2.3.2).
In a strategic re-evaluation of terms, politicians can induce competition of
deontic meaning: this strategy can help in establishing positively connotated
programme terms for one’s own position or negative terms as stigma terms for the
position of their opponents. As an example in most Western democracies, ‘social-
ism’ is a stigma term used by conservatives for a social democratic position (CDU
slogan 1976: ‘Freiheit statt Sozialismus’/ ‘Freedom instead of socialism’). To use a
more recent example, the British Conservatives tried to establish ‘the big society’
as a positive programme term for their classical liberal position of minimising the
scope of state and government.
Girnth (2002: 62–69) describes strategies used to take over positive symbol
terms or miranda as a symbol for a group’s own political position: firstly, modern
political communication uses the instrument of public opinion research to find
3. The title of the first New Labour manifesto in 1997 opens with a central motif of New La-
bour’s language: in the New Labour discourse, ‘new’ as an adjective has been used prominently
from the very beginning (Fairclough 2000: 18–19). It symbolises the Third-Way idea of a neces-
sary renewal of politics, because classical political ideologies supposedly led the country into
a crisis. In this context, ‘new Labour’ (note the lower-case spelling) is established as a brand,
although the official name of the party is still ‘The Labour Party’ (The Labour Party 2010: 8).
Publicly, ‘new Labour’ is certainly perceived as a name, as in most non-party publications it is
spelled ‘New Labour’. The alternative spelling emphasises the attributive use of ‘new’ in order
to establish the motif of ‘new’ and ‘renewal’ as a brand, at the same time, however, denying the
brand-name qualities. This spelling is certainly used strategically, since non-party publications
such as Mandelson and Liddle (1996) use ‘New Labour’ as a name. An online corpus search
with the web tool http://www.webcorp.org.uk on 16th April 2013, searching 60 web pages for
the case-sensitive phrases ‘new Labour’ and ‘New Labour’, turned up 13 concordances for ‘new
Labour’, but 611 concordances for ‘New Labour’, only 102 occurrences being after a full stop.
4. As this type is much more prevalent in German, I am using a German example here.
established miranda. The use of a mirandum to refer to the programme of one’s

own party is the first step to establish a programme term (Girnth 2002: 66). The
use of miranda in direct proximity to other terms can then lead to a denotational
contextualisation, where the miranda gain meaning related to other programme
terms of a party. The use close to other positive symbol terms can lead to an en-
hancement of the positive connotation. This strategy is called evaluative contextu-
alisation. A typical example from my corpus is the SPD slogan ‘Arbeit, Innovation
und Gerechtigkeit’/ ‘Work, Innovation and Justice’.
Political actors can also use a strategy of reinterpretation to induce a change of
the connotation of a term occupied by their competitors in order to be able to use
it for their own policy, especially if it is a term with a positive deontic connotation.
This means the competing political groups enter into a connotational competition
of meaning. Klein uses ‘Solidarität’ as an example. This is traditionally a term with
a connotation of solidarity in a class struggle and therefore ‘occupied’ by the SPD.
In 1979, the German conservative politician Heiner Geißler tried to reinterpret
this term, highly valued by voters from the working classes, and to reclaim it for
a conservative position: ‘Solidarität ist für uns nicht der Kampfaufruf, mit Glei-
chgesinnten die eigenen Interessen durchzusetzen, sondern die Aufforderung,
füreinander einzustehen’5 (quoted in Klein, J. 1998: 390). This strategy is also
known as meta-linguistic comment (‘Sprachthematisierung’), which is indicative
of a semantic struggle (Niehr 2002; Schröter 2008: 51).
For the purpose of analysing discourses as knowledge systems or ideolo-
gies, catch terms can also be analysed as forming semantic frames, based on the
cognitive frame theory. The term ‘frame’ was originally introduced into artificial
intelligence research by Minsky (1975) and adapted for linguistics by Fillmore (e.g.
Fillmore 1977). Frames capture how we imagine whole scenarios of connected
objects and actions even on a small database. The frame consists of a top-level
set of data that captures the general properties of a situation. This top-level frame
opens slots on a lower level which can be filled with specific facts about a specific
situation – the so-called fillers (Minsky 1975: 212–13). For example, if somebody
only mentions that he went to a party on a Saturday night, we can imagine a typical
party scene and ask relevant questions such as ‘What was the occasion?’, ‘Who did
you go with?’, ‘What did you drink?’, ‘Did you dance?’. The generalised knowledge
in this party-frame on the top level opens slots – here for example drinks and
visitors – while the concrete elements such as the individual drinks (whisky, beer)
at the specific party are called fillers.
5. For us, solidarity is not a call to arms to force your interests upon others together with like-
minded people. It is a need to help others.
From lexical semantics, the frame theory was also introduced into politico-
linguistics (Klein, J. 1999a, 2002a) and linguistic discourse analysis (Ziem 2008).
The two-level description of frame semantics (slots, fillers) is a tool that allows a
better comparison of different discourses and the discourse specific lexis than a
simple collection of catch terms, and illustrates their semantic connection (Klein,
J. 2002a: 174).
Both the analysis of the catch terms itself as well as the analysis of the frame
semantics is again a methodological swinging movement between theory and em-
pirical work. The analysis of catch terms involves a close reading of the texts in the
corpus and a collection of the central terms in headlines and slogans. Often, these
central terms are used frequently, but even less frequent terms such as ‘one nation’
in the discourse of New Labour can be central due to their cultural saliency, which
involves a broad knowledge of the political cultures involved. The categorisation
of the catch terms in a semantic frame will be based on the theoretical knowledge
of political ideologies as well as on observations of their co-texts and also involve
multiple revisions. The resulting frame is to be understood as a hermeneutical and
interpretative suggestion rather than an absolute and final categorisation.
To add an additional perspective to the triangulation of the discourses of the
Third Way, I am going to introduce a corpus assisted methodology to the analysis
of the political lexis, as this combination of qualitative approaches with quantita-
tive approaches can help to reveal non-obvious discourse structures (Partington
2008: 97). Partington (2008: 96) defines Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies
(CADS) as the ‘investigation, and comparison of features of particular discourse
types, integrating into the analysis where appropriate techniques and tools devel-
oped within corpus linguistics’.
For reasons of space, I will restrict this approach to the election manifestos,
as election manifestos are substantial texts in length and have been increasing in
length over the period under analysis. The use of quantitative tools developed in
corpus linguistics will help with exploring linguistic patterns that are relevant to
the manifestos as a whole but might be missed in a purely manual analysis. The aim
in my approach here is not, as often claimed, to make the analysis more ‘objective’
or to ‘avoid human bias in an analysis’ through quantification (McEnery, Xiao, and
Tono 2006: 6). Nor will the use of corpus tools bypass the intuition of the analyst.
Stewart (2010: 148) has shown that corpus searches always rely on intuition and
introspection. Concordances in particular can influence the reading to an extent
‘that we may perceive features, such as syntagmatic and paradigmatic cohesion,
which in reality are absent’ (Stewart 2010: 120–21). I would rather suggest support-
ing my manual analysis by using the software to present the sub-corpus of election
manifestos from a different perspective. I do not aim to objectify the results purely
on the basis of statistical significance, but use a combination of qualitative and
quantitative analysis, which also means that the results of my analysis should not
be distorted by the problem of statistical validity in my relatively small corpus.
Thus, I understand my approach here as a corpus-assisted, quantitatively informed
qualitative analysis6 (Bubenhofer 2013: 118).
This is, however, not a unified methodology, rather it is an application of a
selection of corpus linguistic tools. An appropriate starting point for a corpus
assisted approach is the calculation and analysis of simple word lists sorted by
relative frequency. This can give a first characterisation of a text or a discourse as
the choice of words reflects its ideological position (Baker 2006: 47–48). These
word lists tend to be sorted by relative frequency, which is the standardised mea-
surement in percentages or per million words and allows frequency comparison
of data sets that differ in size. A further tool is the comparison of these wordlists
with a reference corpus that represents general language use in British English and
German. Such a comparison can reveal statistical differences between the general
language use represented by the often very large reference corpus and the language
use in the corpus under analysis. One result of this method can be keyword lists.
Keywords are words that occur statistically more often in one wordlist compared
to another. It is also possible to produce a keyword list for two sub-corpora of a
bigger corpus – in my case the corpus of election manifestos. This could demon-
strate ideological differences between large texts. A third tool that supports the
analysis of the results of frequency lists and keyword lists is to form and analyse
concordances of a lexeme or lemma that was particularly frequent or statistically
key. Concordances are lists of all occurrences of a search term, including a defined
context left and right of this term. These lists can be sorted alphabetically on the
search term itself, or on terms left and right of the search term. Thus, they are very
helpful in an analysis and categorisation of the contexts in which the search term
is used, and can reveal subtleties of meaning.
When using corpus assisted methods, many important analytical decisions re-
garding the software have to be reached. The main decision relates to the software
and the reference corpora to be used. Both decisions are interdependent, as not
all reference corpora are available for all software. Furthermore, different software
often uses different mathematical approaches.
I have decided to approach my analysis with two software packages to com-
bine their advantages. Both Wordsmith tools 6 (Scott 2014) and the sketch engine
(Kilgarriff et al. 2014) are long established and widely used. Wordsmith has been
used in many publications for keyword analysis (most prominently Baker (2006)),
as it combines most statistical tests used in corpus linguistics. It is a software pack-
age to be downloaded on the researcher’s computer and can be used for a license
6. German original: ‘quantitativ informierte qualitative Analyse’

fee of £50. It supports multiple languages and allows the calculation of wordlists
with relative frequency in percentage of the total word count, the calculation of
keywords and collocations, and also includes a concordancer. The software pack-
age does not, however, include the function of part of speech tagging nor does it
include reference corpora. Sketch engine is an online tool that can be used for a
subscription fee. It contains the classical reference corpora such as the British Na-
tional Corpus, but also automatically produced web corpora such as EngTenTen
and DeTenTen.7 The researcher can upload their own corpora which the sketch
engine will automatically tag for part of speech and also lemmatise. It is then pos-
sible to calculate word lists, however, sketch engine only returns word lists with
absolute frequencies, which makes them difficult to compare.
It is important to note, however, that there are other significant differences.
First of all, Wordsmith tools 6 and the sketch engine use different mathematical ap-
proaches to calculate keywords. While Wordsmith uses established statistical mea-
sures such as chi-square and log-likelihood, which are used in most publications
on cultural keywords (e.g. Baker 2004, 2006: 121–52; McEnery, Xiao, and Tono
2006: 52–57; Jeffries and Walker 2012), the sketch engine uses a simple mathematics
approach (Kilgarriff 2009), as its author argues against the necessity of statistical
testing in corpus linguistics. Language, in Kilgariff ’s view, is never random (Kil-
garriff 2005). Both programmes also use different approaches to lemmatisation:
Wordsmith does not allow automatic part-of-speech tagging, and lemmatisation
is therefore limited. It can either be done manually – a very time-consuming task,
or automatically, which is simply based on lemma lists. These are not provided,
but need to be produced manually or through computer assisted approaches. For
English, the Wordsmith website suggests a lemma list based on the BNC (Someya
1998), and a similar list can be obtained for German (Naber and Měchura 2014).
The advantage of Wordsmith’s approach is that a manual correction of lemmatisa-
tion is possible. The sketch engine on the other hand, uses automatic part of speech
tagging and lemmatises based on the results of automatic tagging, but does not
allow to correct the lemmatisation manually, which represents a problem, as the
reliability of automatic part of speech tagging is still limited:
[T]agging is time-consuming when carried out by hand, and it is likely to be
error-prone when done automatically. In addition, such schemes may not be able
to show all of the subtleties of word meaning, which often will not be made appar-
ent until the word is analyzed via a concordance. (Baker 2004: 356)
Finally, the researcher has to decide on the reference corpus, and this decision
also influences the software employed. For the analysis of the election manifesto
7. See (Jakubíček et al. 2013) for the background of the TenTen web corpus family.
sub corpus, I used the British National Corpus (BNC) for the British English texts
and the web corpus DeTenTen 2010 for the German texts. The BNC has become
the standard reference corpus for corpus-assisted discourse analyses in British
English. It is suitable for my analysis, since it contains a representative collection
of texts between 1975 and 1994, roughly the same period as my corpus. The BNC
is also freely available for download and can be used in conjunction with indepen-
dent software such as Wordsmith. Choosing a German reference corpus proved
much more difficult: most contemporary German corpora such as the German
national corpus (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2014)
or the Deutsches Referenzkorpus Dereko (Institut für Deutsche Sprache 2015) are
not available for download, nor does their software package allow for any keyword
analysis. I therefore decided to use DeTenTen 2010, a large web corpus available
online via the sketch engine as a reference corpus for the comparison of the lan-
guage use. The question of course is, whether the comparison with such different
reference corpora will influence the results significantly. For two reasons, this
should not pose a problem: firstly, the quality of the reference corpus is not critical
for the analysis. Scott (2009) demonstrates that even a deliberately inappropriate
reference corpus such as Shakespeare’s plays can yield valid results in an analysis
of a corpus in modern English.
5.2 The conceptualisation of the Third Way as a lexico-semantic frame
A thorough search for programme and stigma terms in all texts forms the basis
of the lexico-semantic analysis of the semantic struggle in the ideological publica-
tions of the Third Way. The Schröder-Blair paper was excluded from this analysis
since it is more monoglossic in its textual structure and primarily aimed at party
supporters rather that at the general public. In order to infer a semantic frame for
the catch terms used in this discourse, I need to discuss three questions: firstly, I
will ask how the parties of the Third Way construe the field of political competi-
tion. I will therefore analyse the use of the names ‘Third Way’ and ‘Neue Mitte’
here in more detail. The second question will be: which slots could be expect to
occur in the semantic frame? And finally, I will analyse the fillers for the slots
and discuss, whether this semantic frame is also found in the party conference
speeches and the election manifestos.
(1) We will later see that the JOURNEY metaphors are dominant in the Third
Way discourses because of the prominent role in naming the new political ideol-
ogy as ‘Third Way’. But how are political ideologies more generally represented,
and what is the metaphorical scenario formed by this special type of JOURNEY
metaphor? Analysing this will help us to understand the differences in the naming
strategies of both parties (‘Third Way’/ ‘Neue Mitte’) as well as the use of pro-
gramme and stigma terms.
Both ‘The Third Way’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’ are essentially decontestations of
the political left–right spectrum and the place of social democracy in it. The left–
right metaphor as a cognitive structure to distinguish political ideologies is widely
established in Western democracies. It originates from the French revolution
and referred to the seating arrangement of the French Estates General where the
groups opposed to the King’s suspensive veto would gather on the left of the cham-
ber, the groups supporting it on the right. It was almost universally naturalised all
over Europe, although its exact meaning has always been vague and relative to a
political culture as well as to the historical frame of reference (White, J. 2012: 200).
The underlying spatial metaphors are cognitive and symbolic classifications that
simplify the complexities of national politics and that carry strong emotional con-
notations (Lukes 2003: 602). They have been understood as a dichotomy enclosing
a political space or a continuum (Lukes 2003: 605), as well as being based on the
necessarily adversarial nature of politics (Bobbio 1996: 31). The metaphorical
scenario is used as a means of self-categorisation or self-positioning, as well as for
the positioning of others, where it is often employed as derogatory.
In the ideological publications of the Third Way the metaphorical scenario
left–right is partly reinterpreted in keeping with the dominance of JOURNEY
metaphors. The reading of the ‘Third Way’ as the ‘happy medium’ between the
alternatives ‘Old left’ and ‘New right’ would suggest this. A combination of left and
right metaphors with JOURNEY metaphors can be found in Hombach (1998), as
well as in Mandelson and Liddle, who do not use the label ‘Third Way’ itself:
The polarisation politics between left and right has for too long obscured the way
forward for Britain. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 17)
The rhetorical function is mostly similar: they are part of the ‘post-ideology’ topos,
depicting ‘New Labour’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’ as non-ideological and using ‘left’ as
well as ‘right’ as a means of other-positioning.
In order to maintain the groupness of a ‘party of the left’, the term ‘left-of-centre’
is used in Mandelson and Liddle as well as Giddens, who argues social democrats
should not worry too much about distinguishing themselves from left and right
as this distinction tends to re-establish itself. It is, however, central that ‘a renewed
social democracy has to be left of centre, because social justice and emancipatory
politics remain at its core’ (Giddens 1998: 45). Giddens also finds the understand-
ing of ‘political centre’ as compromise between left and right problematic and
wants it to be read as cooperation across political fences. Because of the political
crisis, he argues, the solutions need to be ‘radical’. Here, Giddens adds yet another
catchword to the discursive element ‘non-ideological’ and tries to redefine ‘left-of
centre’, using ‘radical’ (five times in one paragraph!) to underline that ‘centre-left’
is not inevitably the same as ‘moderate left’. Mandelson and Liddle use a similar
naming strategy: they refer to the Labour party as ‘left-of-centre’ and consequently
use modified noun groups containing ‘left’ to distinguish between themselves and
others on the left: ‘hard left’, ‘far left’ and ‘left wing’ are used as stigma terms.
The German SPD uses the term ‘Neue Mitte’, instead of the label ‘Third
Way’, because it has both strong intradiscursive links within the German po-
litical discourse, and interdiscursive links into the discourses of the Third Way.
Interdiscursively, the name is linked to the renewal motif of ‘New Labour’. The
recontextualisation of the fashionable discursive construction of the ‘new’ from
the Anglo-American political discourse (‘New Democrats’/ ‘New Labour’) is an
attempt to profit from the positive image of the ‘New Labour’ Government with
the young and dynamic leader Blair.
The catch term ‘Neue Mitte’ has intradiscursive importance, as it had first
been used by Willy Brandt at the SPD party conference 1972 in order to legitimise
the social liberal coalition – an intertextual connection Hombach makes explicit
before he defines ‘Neue Mitte’ in his text (Hombach 1998: 26). The equivalent
to the English term ‘centre’ had to a strong catholic connotation to be used as
an inclusive catch term, because up to 1945 the term ‘Zentrum’ was used by the
‘Deutsche Zentrumspartei’, primarily a catholic political movement.
Since Willy Brandt first used it, the term ‘Mitte’ has been established as the
metaphorical centre of the left–right spectrum that the catch-all parties aim for. In
1994 for example, the CDU-FPD coalition used the slogan ‘politische Mitte oder
Linksbündnis’ in its election campaign (Stötzel and Eitz 2002: 288–93). Therefore,
the term ‘Neue Mitte’ strategically exploits the CENTRE IS GOOD metaphor, and
can be read as a counter-discursive and legitimising move against the conservative
claim that the SPD was a leftist clientele party.
In summary, we have seen that both naming terms, ‘The Third Way’ and ‘Die
Neue Mitte’ are based on the left–right spectrum of political ideologies. Proponents
of Third-Way social democracy aim to position themselves in the middle of this
assumed political spectrum using the CENTRE IS GOOD metaphor. They there-
fore construe their political competitors as positioned on the extremes. Hence, the
semantic frame of stigma and programme terms is structured in three ways: left
and right are stigmatised in different ways, while their own programmatic position
is construed as being able to overcome the left–right divide. The semantic frame
thus contains one group of programme terms, but two groups of stigma terms, one
for the ‘old left’, and one for ‘neoliberalism’.
(2) We now need to define slots for the semantic frame of lexico-semantic
competition between political ideologies. Parallel to the party example in the theo-
retical discussion, where the generalised structure of the party frame contained
drinks, music and guests etc., we need to ask what the general properties of political
ideologies in the twentieth century are. I suggest five general properties of party-
political competition, which, together with the three-way division of programme
and stigma terms, will form the slots of the semantic frame:
– Naming;
– Values;
– State activity;
– Principles of economy;
– Principles of wealth distribution.
Catch terms for the purpose of naming are widespread in political discourse, as
they easily allow covert biased predication, as discussed above using the example
of ‘terrorist’/ ‘freedom fighter’. Further important types of catch term are those
expressing values, as they form the basis of political argumentation and are heavily
contested in the discourses of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’.
The three categories of ‘state activity’, ‘principles of economy’ and ‘principles
of wealth distribution’ are derived from the main ideological battle grounds of the
twentieth century. The role of the state has always been a central question of politi-
cal ideologies. As a result of the historical breakdown of feudalism, a strong op-
position to government interference developed, because the interests of the rising
middle classes were no longer compatible with absolute monarchy and the interest
of landed aristocracy. However, the resulting ideology of liberalism occupies quite
a wide range in the spectrum between the opposition to state interference and the
suggestion of the necessity of having a strong state: classical liberalism wants to
minimise state interference, but still sees the state as a precondition for negative
freedoms. Modern (social) liberals, however, see a much stronger role for the state
as enabling individuals to live up to their potential: the state has to guarantee posi-
tive freedom. Only anarchists of various descriptions see the state as unnecessary
and completely inhumane. The extreme of a strong state was argued for by the
social democratic and labour movement in the early twentieth century, which be-
lieved in nationalisation and planning. Only towards the middle of the twentieth
century did they move towards a mixed economy. But the core belief was stable:
Keynesian economics as the basis of social democratic and labour ideology was
based on the necessity of market regulation by the state.
The ideological battleground over the ideal type of economy forms a further
semantic field of the frame. The extremes are radical free-market positions and
proponents of a totally planned economy. The laissez faire (‘let them act’) posi-
tion of classical market liberals is opposed to all forms of regulation of markets,
including the labour market. Social liberalism on the other hand sees the necessity
of regulation as a result of the Wall Street Crisis of 1929. Keynes rejected the belief
in the self-regulation of markets, since the level of employment is determined by

the aggregate demand of an economy, part of which is government spending as
well as government investment and taxation. Socialists take the other extreme
of the spectrum, arguing that welfare for the people can only be produced and
guaranteed by the state.
The final ideological dimension of the twentieth century considered here is the
type of wealth distribution seen as just. Whilst conservatives argue that inequality
is a natural state, liberals fight for equality of opportunity: the same chance to
win or lose. Since equality of opportunity does not seem to be the natural state
and unrestrained pursuit of profit leads to strong inequality, social liberals see the
welfare state as a necessary measure to guarantee equality of opportunities. This
meritocratic approach is opposed by socialists. In their view, it does not take into
account that wealth distribution in capitalist societies reflects the power differ-
ences in society. They also criticise meritocratic ideologies, because they lead to a
type of social Darwinism that infringes on individual liberties.
5.3 The Realisation of the Third Way frame in Germany and the UK
5.3.1 Ideological publications and party conference speeches
Table 2 provides an overview of the catch terms found in the ideological publi-
cations of the corpus. They are the fillers of the semantic frame which has been
developed. In the following analysis I will, for reasons of space, focus on the
most salient commonalities and differences in the semantic frame presented for
the ideological publications, to then discuss how it applies to party conference
speeches and election manifestos.
Firstly, all three ideological publications construe three competing ideologies
as I expected from the metaphorical term ‘Third Way’, picturing the preferred
political ideology as the middle way:
– Giddens: Old-style social democracy – Third Way – Neoliberalism;
– Mandelson: Old Labour – New Labour – New Right;
– Hombach: staatsgläubige Sozialdemokratie – Neue Mitte – unreflektierter
Marktliberalismus.
While Hombach uses names with a strong evaluative component (‘staatsgläubige
Sozialdemokratie’/ ‘statist social democracy’ – ‘oberflächlicher Vulgärsozialismus’/
‘superficial vulgar socialism’), Giddens chooses less clearly evaluative terms in
order to create a more academic style. He uses separate text boxes to summarise
his analyses in keywords.
Table 2. Semantic frame of programme and stigma terms in the discourses of the Third Way
Slots Fillers
Stigma terms for old labour/old social democracy Programme terms for the Third Way Stigma terms for neoliberalism (Giddens,
Hombach)/new right (Mandelson)
Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens
Naming altes Denken des (death of) socialism, Neue Mitte New Labour (Mandelson) oberflächlicher neoliberalism (Giddens),
Nachkriegsstaates; old-style social Vulgärliberalismus, New Right (Mandelson)
Staatssozialismus; democracy, classical Third Way (Giddens) unreflektierter
staatsgläubige social democracy, Marktliberalismus
Sozialdemokratie old Labour, Bennite Neoliberalismus
excesses Reiner
Ökonomismus Ideologie
Ideologie Ideale
Deregulierung um jeden
State Versorgungsstaat state intervention Aktivierender Staat; social inclusion, Preis minimal state (Giddens)
activity Umverteilungsstaat (Giddens) Soziale Marktwirtschaft one-nation politics social
Rund-um-sorglos-Staat Staat als Partner investment state laissez-faire,
Erzieher und Obrigkeit an overmighty and overly Konkurrenzföderalismus (Giddens), few before the many
Ökonomische high-spending state one-nation socialism, (Mandelson)
Gleichmacherei Starker Staat stakeholder economy,
Planung, Dirigismus active government
Umbau des Sozialstaates (Mandelson) Abbau des Sozialstaates
Values Absicherungs- und blind belief in state undogmatisch und equality, no rights Moral authoritarianism,
Mietermentalität, Marxism; state control unideologisch; Fairneß, without responsibilities, strong economic individu-
Subventionsmentalität (Mandelson) Arbeit, Innovation und radicalism alism (Giddens),
Gerechtigkeit; (Giddens), pessimistic, mean- spir-
Eigenverantwortung; mutuality, ited view of human nature
Rechte und Pflichten; social justice (Mandelson), xenophobia
Flexibilität Transparenz, ethical socialism (Mandelson and Giddens)
Wirtschaftlichkeit, equal opportunity
Effizienz (Mandelson)
(continued)
Table 2. (continued)
Slots Fillers
Stigma terms for old labour/old social democracy Programme terms for the Third Way Stigma terms for neoliberalism (Giddens,
Hombach)/new right (Mandelson)
Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens Hombach Mandelson/ Giddens
Principles etatistischer centralised planning, Soziale Marktwirtschaft new mixed economy Deregulierung market fundamentalism
and type of Wohlfahrts-staat; nationalisation (Giddens) reiner (Giddens),
economy Planung, Dirigismus (Mandelson) Angebotspolitik von links Ökonomismus boom and bust (Mandel-
supply-side socialism, Markliberalismus son)
Versöhnung von Ökono- one-nation socialism,
mie und Arbeitsmarkt socially productive
spending,
Innovation
stakeholder economy
Kultur der Selbständig- (Mandelson)
keit und gesellschaftliches
Klima für Existenzgrün-
dungen
Principles Tonnenideologie penal income tax rates Eigenverantwortung, investment in skill, waste, inefficiency
of wealth hohe Steuern, government-led job Gleichheit am Start, welfare to work,
distribution Gleich-macherei creation Chancengleichheit pay restraint, unjustified privilege,
(Mandelson) fair taxes for hard- deregulation,
working majority, cuts in benefits,
wise spending, greater inequality for
hard work higher employment, social
exclusion,
Reunited Kingdom divided Britain,
opting out of community
The keywords for the ‘Third Way programme’ contain many terms from the
political lexis used by New Labour as programme terms:
The third way programme
The radical centre
The new democratic state (the state without enemies)
Active civil society
The democratic family
The new mixed economy
Equality as inclusion
Positive welfare
The social investment state
The cosmopolitan nation
Cosmopolitan democracy
quoted from Giddens (1998: 70)
The text box quoted above contains some of the typical lexical elements of the New
Labour discourse. The political position is described as ‘radical’, which is central
in the introduction to the 1997 manifesto. It also uses ‘active’ as a qualifier for
the civil society, which can be found in both Hombach and Mandelson as ‘ak-
tivierender Staat’ and ‘active government’. ‘New mixed economy’ is intertextually
connected to the whole field of ‘new’ phrases in New Labour. Both ‘equality as
inclusion’ and ‘social investment state’ are keywords that are part of the redefini-
tion of social welfare.
While Mandelson and Giddens clearly situate the programme terms between
stigma terms for left and right as a ‘middle way’ for the ‘centre’ of society, Hom-
bach does not do so to the same extent. Although he establishes stigma names for
both competing positions, his analysis and criticism is more focused on the crisis
of the welfare state and the corporatist system with more stigma terms directed
against traditional social democratic positions, for example ‘Absicherungs- und
Mietermentalität’/ ‘Security and tenant mentality’ as values and ‘Tonnenideolo-
gie’/ ‘barrel ideology’ as a stigma term for the redistributive policies of the old SPD.
Another set of stigma terms in Hombach is not aimed against the ‘left’ or ‘right’
but instead connected to his crisis diagnosis for the ‘old corporatism’, and so aimed
at left and right at the same time: The stigma term ‘Klüngel-Korporatismus’/ ‘crony
corporatism’ is set against ‘Innovationsallianzen’ as a programm term. All posi-
tions Hombach argues against are qualified throughout the text as ‘ideologisch’/
‘ideological’ as opposed to ‘pragmatisch’/ ‘pragmatic’, which is part of his depoliti-
cising strategy.
One key lexical strategy that signifies the ideological change in the Labour
Party and the SPD is the appropriation of conservative terminology. First described
by L'Hôte (2014, 89) as a counter strategy of new Labour against the political
stereotypes used for the left, I argue that appropriation is used by both new Labour
and the SPD more generally to position the party as defending the true nature
of their nation: Both, for example, appropriate a central mirandum of political
discourse in their polities which were originally a conservative programme terms:
‘One nation’ for the Labour Party and ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’ for the SPD.
‘One nation’ has been a British mirandum since Disraeli’s fight against extreme
individualism within conservatism and his warning that Britain might end up
divided into two nations, into rich and poor (Heywood 2007: 83). Originally a
conservative programme term, it was abandoned by the Conservative Party under
Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. Giddens uses the term without any explanation
of its origin, clearly assuming his readers understand it as a positively connotated
cultural symbol; however, at the same time he contextualises it with his idea of the
cosmopolitan nation, thus avoiding any nationalist overtones:
Third way politics is one-nation politics. The cosmopolitan nation helps promote
social inclusion but also has a key role in fostering transnational systems of gover-
nance. (Giddens 1998: 69)
Mandelson goes even further in claiming the term for New Labour by using a
denotative contextualisation and calling New Labour’s approach ‘one nation
socialism’. He also sets it into the context of the stigma term ‘divided Britain’,
which summarises his analysis of the conservative’s legacy. In this context, ‘one
nation’ is clearly aimed at conservative voters who should be persuaded by the
negative evaluation of ‘divided Britain’, since ‘one nation’, although not used by the
Conservative Party as a whole, is certainly understood by many more progressive
Conservative Party supporters as a conservative value.
Parallel to the appropriation of the catch term ‘one nation’ from the Conser-
vatives by the Labour Party, the SPD introduces ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’ into
the party’s programme terminology. This catchphrase has been the label for the
economic policies of the CDU since 1949 (Stötzel and Eitz 2002: 381) and in the
1950s the CDU used it in its election campaigns as a programme term. The SPD
have used the term ‘Marktwirtschaft’ since 1953, using different attributes such as
‘geplante’ and ‘sozialistische’ to distinguish it from the conservatives’ use (Stötzel
and Eitz 2002: 382). However, it had become a symbolic phrase for the successful
system of the old BRD and the German welfare state since the mid-1990s. Tak-
ing it on as a programme term for the SPD, it was supposed to appeal to more
traditional voters, as it gave the SPD the chance to communicate clearly that it is
part of the liberal economic consensus. ‘Wir werden die Soziale Marktwirtschaft
erneuern: Wir setzen auf die Kräfte des Marktes und die Leistungsbereitschaft der
Menschen’ (‘We will renew social market democracy: We count on market forces and
the motivation of people.‘) (SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 11). The catchphrase is also
contextualised with the Third-Way topos of ‘renewal’ in the headline ‘Erneuerung

der sozialen Marktwirtschaft’. It is this extended phrase that the SPD tries to estab-
lish as a programme phrase, since it is used in the same way in the economic policy
section of the 1998 manifesto.
The party conference speeches we find similar programme terms we have seen
in the programmatic publications. It was to be expected that Oscar Lafontaine, who
did not argue for a Third Way, does not use any stigma terms against what New La-
bour deemed the ‘old left’ or ‘old Labour’. Instead, he focuses his delegitimisation
strategies against ‘conservatism’ and ‘neoliberalism’. However, Blair and Schröder
also use very few stigma terms against the traditional position of the Labour and
the SPD, and neither speaker actually names this ideology. While stigma terms are
slightly more prominent in the conference speeches at the special conferences, they
hardly feature in the pre-election conference speeches. In Schröder’s pre-election
speech, for example, the only stigma term for the ‘old left’ is ‘Verteilungsstaat’ / ‘dis-
tribution state’ as opposed to ‘aktivierender Staat’/’activating state’. This represents
the central change of the idea of the state in Schröder’s version of the ‘Third Way’
and therefore the stigma term is used more as a negative defining element than as
a delegitimising term. A similar pattern can be found in Blair’s pre-election speech
of 1996, where he contrasts ‘big government’ and ‘better government’. The stigma
term against the conservatives, however, form a connected argumentative frame
to blame the government for the apparent crisis – in Blair’s case ‘self-interest’ and
‘elitism’ as values result in a ‘divided society’.
This pattern of stigma and programme terms can be explained with the func-
tion of leader’s speeches at party conferences: its primary audience is still the
party, and the leaders need to unite the party behind their leadership, hence they
concentrate on the common ideological values of the party as well as the common
opponent, especially before a general election. This is even more important for
Schröder, who seeks votes from delegates to confirm him as chancellor candidate.
Dividing the party into new and old, and stigmatising old positions would not
have been helpful in this situation. In the programmatic texts, however, the propo-
nents of the ‘Third Way’ wanted to reposition the party between left and right and
therefore employed the semantic frame to its full extent.
5.3.2 The Third Way semantic frame in political competition:

Election manifestos
The following discussion of the lexis in the election manifestos will supply a
broader context to the analysis of political lexis presented so far: For the purpose
of a synchronic comparison, the manifestos of the largest competitor of the La-
bour Party and the SPD in 1997/98, as their terminology is of course shaped in
opposition to the political competition At the heart of the catch term analysis will
be the 1997/98 and 2001/2002 manifestos, since they fall historically into the core
time of the modernisation discourse. In this section, I will discuss whether the
three-way division of the semantic frame is applicable to the election manifestos
of the Labour Party and the SPD in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in order to
understand whether there are genre-specific differences in the use of programme
and stigma terms.
In the subsequent and more detailed analysis of some catch terms, the earlier
manifestos of Labour and the SPD will be used as a point of comparison in keeping
with the diachronic approach of this chapter. An analysis of the catch terms in the
1997/1998 manifestos of the Conservative Party/the CDU will capture how the
programme and stigma terms of Labour and the SPD are interconnected with the
terminology of the political competition.
The three-way division of the semantic frame is most apparent in the 1997 La-
bour manifesto and less so in the 2001 manifesto. The main motif of the 1997 La-
bour manifesto is ‘new politics’ and the ‘renewal of Britain’. The programme terms
‘new Labour’, ‘renewal’ and ‘new politics’ stand in opposition to the stigma terms
‘dogma’, ‘doctrine’ and ‘outdated ideology’. These semantic oppositions legitimise
the politics of the Third Way as being different from the old political ideologies,
even to the extent of being non-ideological and pragmatic: ‘New Labour is a party
of ideas and ideals but not of outdated ideology. What counts is what works’ (The
Labour Party 1997: 4). Here, the party-political discourse is depoliticised. The
text does not give political alternatives or open the discursive space, and there is
no political vision: ‘What counts is what works’ is a non-political phrase, uncon-
nected to political values. Another main ideational motif of this introduction,
which is strongly linked to the motif of ‘renewal’, is the motif of modernisation.
‘Modern’ is used ten times as a positive evaluative attribute for policy elements
without being established as a political value. Finlayson (2003: 76–80) describes
the use of ‘modern’ in Labour’s language as what I call a construction of necessity:
opponents of modernisation are opponents of progress and justice. Therefore, the
use of ‘modern’ as part of many programme terms in the manifestos is a clear de-
politicisation strategy. Similarly to Mandelson and Liddle (1996), the introduction
of 1997 also adopts an old Conservative programme term as its own programme
term: ‘one nation’.
How is this construal of the Labour Party situated in the field of the political
competition? In the 1997 Conservative manifesto, the Conservatives name La-
bour’s ideology the ‘socialist model’, using traditional stigma terms such as ‘state
action’, ‘red tape’, ‘radical reform’, ‘taxation’, ‘stagnation’ and ‘nationalised compas-
sion’. It is this discourse of radical alternatives that the Labour manifesto of 1997
aims to overcome by offering a ‘Third Way’ and by distancing themselves against
the interpretation of them as a statist and socialist party. Within their manifesto,
the Conservatives position themselves as economic liberals as clearly illustrated
by the programme terms ‘personal ownership’, ‘free market’, ‘free competition’ and
‘low tax economy’. There is also an attempt to reinterpret Labour’s programme
terms as Conservative stigma terms:
There is, of course, an alternative on offer: to load costs on business while calling
it ‘stakeholding’; to increase the role of the state, while calling it ‘the community’;
to succumb to a centralised Europe while calling it ‘not being isolated’; to break
up our country while calling it ‘devolution’. (Conservative Party 1997: 3)
The Labour manifesto, in contrast, claims ‘welfare into work’ as their programmat-
ic phrase, although the Conservative manifesto uses the same term. The Labour
manifesto names the Conservative suggestions ‘workfare’, arguing that ‘workfare’
does not offer ‘real opportunities’. On a lexical level, the repeated evaluation ‘real’
indicates a connotational competition, and the Conservatives ‘Welfare to Work’
programme is characterised as having failed. The evaluation ‘real’ entails that the
Conservatives do not offer opportunities, while Labour’s programme is described
as ‘ambitious’. The programme is funded by taxing illegitimate profits (‘excess’)
from ‘privatised’ utilities, delegitimising the Conservatives policies of privatisation.
One important difference between the New Labour manifestos of 1997 and
2001, and the manifestos of 1987 and 1992, is the use of ‘democratic socialism’
as a programme term in the 1987 manifestos. This symbol term has vanished
from New Labour’s manifestos, although it is still part of the definition of the
Labour party in Clause Four of its constitution. Blair himself still uses the term
‘socialism’ in his speeches, often reflecting upon its meaning in metalinguistic
comments and reinterpreting it. It is possible that the term was excluded from the
manifestos as it was found to be too negatively connotated by swing voters from
the Conservative Party.
The 1998 SPD manifesto opens with the title slogan ‘Arbeit, Innovation,
Gerechtigkeit’/ ‘Work, Innovation and Justice’, which uses the strategy of con-
textualisation in order to establish a new programme term for a modernised
party: ‘Innovation’. The term is normally connected to technology8 and is now
contextualised with the traditional positive catch terms of the SPD: ‘Arbeit’ and
‘Gerechtigkeit’. It also engages in a redefinition of ‘Gerechtigkeit’, as the almost
obligatory attribute ‘soziale’ is missing, a change that must have been significant
8. The ‘Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache’, an online corpus dictionary developed by
the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, shows ‘technisch’ und ‘technolo-
gisch’ as the most frequent attributes to ‘Innovation’.
for politically interested readers at the time.9 The collocation is therefore rein-
troduced later, to mitigate a negative effect amongst more traditional SPD sup-
porters. The term ‘Innovation’ can also be understood as a recontextualisation of
New Labour’s motif of renewal. However, while New Labour’s term ‘renewal’ has
a strong ethical connotation and the quasi-religious connection to a golden-age
myth (see discussion in Chapter 5.9), ‘Innovation’ evokes a technical approach to
the problems in society and is aimed at connecting with the image of Germany as
a high-tech country.
In the SPD manifestos in 1998 and 2002 the Third Way semantic frame is
less salient than in the new Labour manifestos, as only very few stigma terms are
used against ‘the old left’. In 1998, only the term ‘Bevormundung’ can be read
as a stigma term of ‘old social democracy’ values. This term is used to develop
the central programme term ‘Eigenverantwortung’ and to redefine the status of
the welfare state:
Ziel des modernen Sozialstaates ist Ermutigung zu Eigenverantwortung und
Eigeninitiative, nicht Bevormundung.
Wir müssen das Verhältnis von Solidarität und Individualität ständig neu bestim-
men. Neue Freiräume für die Menschen müssen das Ergebnis sein.
(SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 37)
The aim of the modern welfare state is to encourage personal responsibility and
personal initiative, rather than paternalism.
We must constantly redefine the relationship between solidarity and individualism.
The result must be new freedom.
Using ‘Eigenverantwortung’/ ‘personal responsibility’, the SPD claims a typical

Christian Democrat term, which has regularly appeared in the CDU in the 1980s
and 1990s and which was also central to the social policy of the CDU in 1998.
At this point, the 1998 manifesto construes the Third Way paradigm of situating
the SPD in the centre of the left–right spectrum. This is, however, is less salient
in the manifesto as a whole, as it represents a compromise position between the
Third-Way modernisers such as Schröder and Hombach, and the supporters of a
more traditional social democracy such as Lafontaine.
The central programme and stigma term oppositions in the 1998 manifesto
are turned against the external other: the CDU. Particularly important is the pair
‘Soziale Innovation’ vs. ‘Sozialabbau’ (‘Social innovation’ vs. ‘social cuts’), which
not only legitimises the new programme term ‘Innovation’, but also draws on an
established competition of denotation. Both parties use the opposition ‘Umbau’
9. See (Klein, J. 1996), who describes programme texts, especially ‘Parteiprogramme’, as insider
communication using technical terminology.
(alteration or conversion) and ‘Abbau’ (dismantling) which rely on the conceptual

metaphor STATE AS A BUILDING. While the SPD interprets the conservative
measures as ‘Abbau’, the CDU rejects this interpretation by using the more positive
term ‘Umbau’:
Die SPD-geführte Bundesregierung wird dafür sorgen, daß es bei den notwendi-
gen Veränderungen fair und gerecht zugeht. Wir wissen: Soziale Innovation, und
nicht Sozialabbau, das ist die Basis für wirtschaftlichen Erfolg.
(SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 11, emphasis MK)
An SPD-led government will make sure that the necessary changes are fair and just.
We know: Social innovation and not cuts are the basis for economic success.
Damit die Leistungsfähigkeit der sozialen Sicherungssysteme erhalten bleibt,

werden wir den Sozialstaat weiter umbauen. Daß Umbau nicht gleichbedeutend
mit Abbau ist, sondern Fortentwicklung bedeutet, haben wir mit der Einführung
der Pflegeversicherung, durch die sich die Situation von über 1,7 Millionen
Pflegebedürftigen und der Pflegekräfte durchgreifend verbessert hat, bewiesen.
(CDU-Bundesgeschäftsstelle and CSU Landesleitung 1998: 21, emphasis MK)
In order to maintain the function of our social security systems, we will transform
the welfare state. Transformation does not equal cuts, but development. We have
demonstrated this with the introduction of care insurance, which has improved the
situation of 1.7 million people in need of care and carers.
In his party conference speeches on the Agenda 2010, Schröder adopts the strat-
egy of the CDU. He names the cuts in the welfare budget ‘Umbau’ without using
the counter-term ‘Abbau’. The speech relies on the opposition ‘Abbau’-‘Umbau’
implicitly:
Die Agenda 2010 ist nicht einfach nur ein Programm, ein notwendiges Programm
zum Umbau des Sozialstaates. Nein, sie ist mehr: Die Agenda 2010 ist ein umfas-
sendes Modernisierungsprogramm.(SPD Parteivorstand 2003: 60, emphasis MK)
The Agenda 2010 is not just a programme, a necessary programme for the trans-
formation of the welfare state. No, it is more: Agenda 2010 is a programme of
comprehensive modernisation.
A further striking difference between the Labour and SPD manifestos in 1997/98
is the use of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’. In the Labour manifesto, ‘new La-
bour’ is used throughout the text (28 tokens) and developed as a brand name. The
core programme term ‘Neue Mitte’, however, rarely occurs in the SPD manifesto of
1998 (four instances). It is nevertheless central: the phrase is first used in the head-
line to the last section of the introduction, which functions as a type of conclusion:
although this conclusion contains an old social democratic catchphrase (‘Wir
wollen Arbeit und Wohlstand für alle’/ ‘We want work and prosperity for all’ (SPD
Parteivorstand 1998b: 12)), it redefines its political target group as ‘Neue Mitte’:
Wir setzen auf die Leistungsträgerinnen und Leistungsträger unserer Gesellschaft:
Auf die hoch qualifizierten und motivierten Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeit-
nehmer, auf die Frauen und Männer, die in Familien und Schulen Verantwortung
tragen für Erziehung und Bildung unserer Kinder, auf die vorausschauenden und
engagierten Manager und Unternehmer, auf die innovativen und flexiblen Mittel-
ständler, Handwerker und Freiberufler, auf die mutigen Existenzgründer, auf die
hervorragend ausgebildeten Informatikerinnen, Ärztinnen und Ingenieurinnen,
auf die erfindungsreichen Techniker und Wissenschaftler und auf die verant-
wortungsbewußten deutschen Gewerkschaften. Das sind Menschen, auf die wir
bauen. Zusammen mit diesen Leistungsträgern unserer Gesellschaft sind wir die
Neue Mitte Deutschlands. Zu dieser Neuen Mitte gehören auch die Menschen,
die ihren Platz in Beruf und Gesellschaft wollen, um ihren Leistungswillen zur
Geltung bringen zu können. Dazu gehören auch die Jugendlichen, die Ausbildung
und Arbeit suchen, und all die Menschen, die sich nicht abfinden mit Arbeitslo-
sigkeit und Ungerechtigkeit.’ (SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 13)
We rely on the key players of our society: The highly qualified and motivated em-
ployees, the men and women who take responsibility for education in schools and
families, the foresighted and committed managers and entrepreneurs, the innovative
and flexible SME, craftsmen and freelancers, the brave founders of new companies,
exceptionally well educated computer specialists, doctors and engineers, inventive
technicians and scientists and responsible German unions. These are the people we
rely on. Together with these hard working people in our society, we are the New
Centre of Germany. People who aim for a position professionally or in society, in
order to fulfil their potential, are also part of this New Centre, as well as young
people looking for an apprenticeship and work, and all people who do not just accept
unemployment and injustice.
The redefinition is only noticeable if we realise who is excluded from this list:
the unemployed, the low-qualified, single mothers, and many more disadvantaged
people. It is also in contrast to the 1994 manifesto, which states that ‘Leistung-
sträger’ are ‘[die] vielen Millionen Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer …
ebenso wie die verantwortungsbewussten Unternehmer’ (key players [are] the
many millions of employees, […] as well as the responsible entrepreneurs’) (SPD
Parteivorstand 1994: 5). Here, all employees are included: there are no restricting
adjectives such as ‘hoch qualifiziert’. Yet, the term ‘Unternehmer’ is restricted as
‘verantwortungsbewusst’.
5.4 Ideological decontestation – redefinitions and recontextualisation

of lexical elements
Political parties do not only coin new catch terms, they also try to claim miranda
(positive symbol terms) which are established in the political discourse of their
political culture, and reinterpret them in the context of their ideology. Both New
Labour and the SPD claim similar miranda because of their family resemblance as
parties born within and connected to the labour movement. The Schröder-Blair
paper claims these main catchwords right at the beginning as core values for social
democratic parties:
Fairness and social justice, liberty and equality of opportunity, solidarity and
responsibility to others – these values are timeless.
(Blair and Schröder 1999: 3, emphasis MK)
The recontextualisations and reinterpretations that occur in the Third Way

discourses can already be seen in this short quotation: All programme terms are
used with restrictions and qualifications – e.g. ‘equality’ is qualified as ‘equality of
opportunity’. Furthermore, ‘solidarity’ is contextualised with ‘responsibility’ – a
salient Third Way catch term that normally appears in the pair ‘rights and re-
sponsibilities’, where it binds ‘rights’ that have traditionally been understood as
universal and unconditional into a conditional construction.
In the Schröder-Blair paper, the reinterpretation of ‘social justice’ occurs
with a negative description of the past without naming it as old Labour/old social
democracy:
The promotion of social justice was sometimes confused with the imposition of
equality of outcome. The result was a neglect of the importance of rewarding ef-
fort and responsibility, and the association of social democracy with conformity
and mediocrity rather than the celebration of creativity, diversity and excellence.
Work was burdened with ever higher costs.
(Blair and Schröder 1999: 8, emphasis MK)
The explicit claim is that ‘equality of outcome’ was ‘imposed’. Implicitly, ‘effort’
and ‘responsibility’ are made new adjacent values to social justice: only matters of
importance can be neglected. At the same time the supposedly old meaning is dis-
qualified as ‘conformity’ and ‘mediocrity’, as opposed to the positive programme
terms of ‘creativity’, ‘diversity’ and ‘excellence’. These qualifications are made sub-
jectively (‘association with’), but the agent of these qualifications is deleted, because
‘neglect’ and ‘association’ are used as a grammatical metaphor – a nominalisation.
This is a strategy of mitigation: that Schröder and Blair as the writers of the paper
agree with the negative evaluation is an inference and can always be rejected, the
authors can therefore not be held responsible for that negative evaluation. That
the cost of work has risen because of the redistribution is metaphorically classified
as a problem: taxes are rendered as a ‘burden’, which foregrounds the problem of
labour costs in an international market and backgrounds the function of taxes as a
source of funding for a fairer society.
Whether the historical claim that ‘social justice’ was originally understood as
equality of outcome is historically accurate does not find agreement in the aca-
demic literature on the matter: Turowski (2010, 290), for example, argues that this
is historical fiction. However, at least for the SPD in 1998 the understanding that
social justice needs ‘more equality of distribution of income, property and power’
was still part of the party programme:
Gerechtigkeit erfordert mehr Gleichheit in der Verteilung von Einkommen,
Eigentum und Macht, aber auch im Zugang zu Bildung, Ausbildung und Kultur.
Gleiche Lebenschancen bedeuten nicht Gleichförmigkeit, sondern Entfaltung-
sraum für individuelle Neigungen und Fähigkeiten aller.
(SPD Parteivorstand 1998b: 12)
In order to have justice, we need greater equality in the distribution of income,

property and power but additionally equality in access to education, training and
culture. Equal opportunities do not always mean uniformity, but the space to develop
individual interests and skills for everybody.
The party programme here denies exactly the negative values that the Schröder-
Blair paper ascribes to ‘equality’. Here, ‘equality’ is quite explicitly not uniformity
(‘Gleichförmigkeit’), and equal outcome is qualified as relating to more equality
in distribution. This definition has to be read in the context of ‘Bedarfsgerechtig-
keit’: traditionally, social democracy used redistribution to produce equality
of opportunities, and the satisfaction of basic needs was deemed to be a right
(Hegelich, Knollmann, and Kuhlmann 2011: 47–48). In the Schröder-Blair paper
the contextualisation with the metaphor of ‘tax burden’ signifies a shift in the focus
towards the concept of ‘Leistungsgerechtigkeit’ or meritocracy, because it implies
that taxes have an unfair impact on work. In Hombach, this shift is phrased
much more openly:
Gerechtigkeit bedeutet, daß jeder den größten Teil dessen, was er durch eigene
Kraft verdient, in der Tasche behalten kann. (Hombach 1998: 84)
Justice means allowing every man to retain the lion’s share of what he has produced
by his own efforts. (Hombach 2000: 50)
In The Third Way, Giddens attempts a different reinterpretation of social justice

and equality: equality is redefined as ‘inclusion’, and inequality as ‘exclusion’
(Giddens 1998: 102). This redefinition became part of the New Labour repertoire;
Labour even created a Social Exclusion Unit. Fairclough (2000: 54–55) analyses the
language of social exclusion in detail and comments critically that in the language
of New Labour ‘social exclusion’ is mainly used as an ideational metaphor. In its
nominalised form, social exclusion is an outcome rather than a process; it is even
construed as a condition (‘suffer from’, ‘combat’, ‘reduce’). Levitas (1998: 7–28)
argues that three discourses are associated with the discourse on inclusion
and exclusion:
– a redistributionist discourse;
– a social integrationist discourse;
– a moral underclass discourse.
She also identifies a changing dominance from redistributionist discourse to
moral underclass discourse in New Labour. Referring to a speech by Harriet Har-
man (at this time minister for social security), Fairclough (2000: 57) demonstrates
how a social integrationist discourse of welfare to work is integrated with a moral
underclass discourse:
Work is central to the Government’s attack on social exclusion. Work is the
only route to sustained financial independence. But it is also much more. Work
[…] is not just about earning a living. It is a way of life. Work helps to fulfil our
aspirations – it is the key to independence, self-respect and opportunities for
advancement … Work brings a sense of order that is missing from the lives of
many unemployed young men. [… The socially excluded] and their families are
trapped in dependency. They inhabit a parallel world where income is derived
from benefits, not work; where school is an option not a key to opportunity; and
where the dominant influence on young people is the culture of the street, not the
values that bind families and communities together. There are some estates in my
constituency where the common currency is the giro; where the black economy
involves much more than moonlighting – it involves the twilight world of drugs;
and where relentless anti-social behaviour grinds people down.
(Harman 1997, quoted in Fairclough 2000: 57, emphasis MK)
By constructing parallel and incompatible worlds, argues Fairclough, Harman

uses an integrationist discourse as well as a moral underclass discourse. The moral
underclass discourse is also evident in the proposition ‘unemployed young men
lack regularity of life’ in the underlined clause.
Giddens’ redefinition of equality differs from the use of the exclusion discourse
by New Labour politicians. He rejects the model of equality of opportunity as be-
ing ‘neoliberal’: in his view, it is a radical meritocratic model which would create
deep inequalities of outcome and threaten social cohesion (Giddens 1998: 101).
It is also self-contradictory, since large inheritances would be the result of radical
meritocracy on the one hand, and would destroy it on the other. As an alternative
he introduces the ideas of inclusion and exclusion, analysing the problem of exclu-
sion as twofold: construing society metaphorically as a hierarchy, he distinguishes
‘exclusion at the bottom’ – the exclusion from opportunities in society – from
‘exclusion at the top’ – a voluntary withdrawal from society by the rich. Giddens
sees exclusion at the top and exclusion at the bottom as causally linked: ‘Limiting
the voluntary exclusion of the elites is central to creating a more inclusive society
at the bottom’ (Giddens 1998: 105). This is clearly part of a social integrationist
discourse, and Giddens’ approach is much broader than the focus on the exclusion
at the bottom by New Labour.
Although the keywords ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ are not used by Mandelson
and Liddle, the basis of an integrationist discourse is already established in the
narratives they use to demonstrate the problems of ‘divided Britain’. Under the
headline ‘reluctantly opting out’ (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 116) they tell the
story of the Hodgsons, a middle-class family who admire the NHS but opt for
private education because state education is so problematic in many ways: it avoids
‘any competitive spirit’ and ‘the facilities were poor and undermaintained’. As a
contrast, the authors present a narrative of ‘blighted prospects’ in the Cook family,
stifled by the inflexible bureaucracy of social services, schools not tackling truancy,
as well as drugs and crime on the streets. Mandelson and Liddle argue that both
stories show a divided Britain under the Conservatives, a Britain which would be
better off with a stronger public sector:
Eileen on the other hand, with her £100 a week take-home pay, counts as badly
off by most people’s standards. But she does have a job. And because her wages
are low she gets housing benefit to pay part of the rent, as do two thirds of council
tenants, particularly in deprived urban areas. When Eileen’s pay goes up, her
housing benefit is adjusted so it seems to make little difference at all. […] Many
people would agree that they deserve to be better off – and in a civilised society
they ought at the minimum to share in the country’s growing prosperity. But they
are caught in a trap where the world seems set against them.
(Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 121, emphasis MK)
Within this quotation from the narrative, two intra- and intertextual links are
established by the use of catch terms. The story is linked to the discourse of the
shareholder society on the one hand and the welfare discourse on the other. The
New Labour welfare discourse metaphorically constructs the welfare state as a trap
for the poor, which underlines the argument for a necessary welfare reform: ‘[…]
today’s welfare state too often traps people in long term dependency’ (Mandelson
and Liddle 1996: 73).
Giddens also connects his reinterpretation of equality to the welfare discourse
under the common headline ‘The Social Investment State’. He argues against
Beveridge’s negative welfare programme (war on Want, Disease, Ignorance,

Squalor and Idleness) for a positive concept of welfare ‘which is functional for
wealth creation’ (Giddens 1998: 117). Although Giddens stresses that welfare is
‘not in essence an economic concept’, his language clearly draws on an economic
discourse: The aim of the welfare state is ‘investment in human capital wherever
possible’ (Giddens 1998: 117). ‘Welfare expenditure […] should be switched to
human capital investment’ (Giddens 1998: 122), and the programme term for the
new concept is the ‘Social Investment State’. This is a recontextualisation of an eco-
nomic discourse into the welfare discourse and a metaphorical dehumanisation
of people into capital, a process which is typical of capitalist economic theories.10
The catch term ‘human capital’ also occurs in all publications under analysis here.
Although elements of an economic discourse have always been part of the political
discourse, they now seem to dominate it, not only concerning the topic of welfare.
The lexis used in the headlines of the Schröder-Blair paper for example are almost
all from this background:
– ‘Supply-side agenda for the left’;
– ‘Robust and competitive market framework’;
– ‘Sustainable growth’;
– ‘Adaptability, flexibility, knowledge-based economy’;
– ‘Active government/active labour market policy for the left’;
– ‘Modern social democrats’;
– ‘Sound public finances’.
In Hombach – and also in the SPD election campaign of 1998 for the German
Bundestag – a network of compositions with ‘Innovation’ dominate the language,
which are also part of an economic discourse:
– ‘Innovationssystem’/ ‘system of innovation’;
– ‘Innovationshemmnis’/ ‘barrier of innovation’;
– ‘zu geringe Innovationsgeschwindigkeit’/ ‘too low speed of innovation’;
– ‘Innovationsregime’/ ‘regime of innovation’;
– ‘Innovationsblockaden’/ ‘barrier of innovation’;
– ‘Innovationsallianzen’/ ‘alliances of innovation’;
– ‘Innovationsdruck’/ ‘pressure of innovation’.
However, even the ideological discourse itself shows lexical elements of an eco-
nomic discourse, rendering the ideological position as a brand or trademark:
10. For a historical analysis of ideological metaphors of capitalism, see (Goatly 2007: 335).
It is the other brand of socialism – the ethical approach – that has unsurprisingly
stood the test of time (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 30, emphasis MK)
The trademark of this approach is the New Centre in Germany and the Third Way
in the United Kingdom. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 2, emphasis MK)
The ‘redefinition of equality’ and ‘social justice’ as ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’, and
the recontextualisation of political discourses into economic discourses is also
evident in the German discourse of the new centre ground. Although the catch
term pair ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ does not appear in the German discourse,
the term ‘Teilhabegesellschaft’ includes a similar evaluation. While New Labour’s
language focuses on exclusion and on a moral discourse, ‘Teilhabegesellschaft’
foregrounds the positive attitudes. Whilst ‘social exclusion’ appears regularly in
the New Labour discourse, ‘Soziale Ausgrenzung’ is not an established catchword
in the German social democratic discourse. ‘Teilhabe’, however, appears regularly.
Hegelich et al. (2011: 49) argue that the term was chosen to obfuscate the market-
centred quality of the welfare reform discourse in Germany. This becomes clear
in the Schröder-Blair paper, which intertwines the British discourse elements of
inclusion and exclusion with the German ‘Teilhabe’:
[…] prolonged unemployment also damages individual life chances in other ways
and makes it more difficult for individuals to participate fully in society.
A welfare system that puts limits on an individual’s ability to find a job must be
reformed. Modern social democrats want to transform the safety net of entitle-
ments into a springboard to personal responsibility.
In the German version, the verb ‘participate’ is translated as ‘macht gesellschaftli-

che Teilhabe schwieriger’. The awareness of the established programme terms is
noticeable throughout the Schröder-Blair paper and is discussed in the next part
of this chapter. The redefining metaphor complex in the last paragraph of the quo-
tation is almost a literal citation from Hombach: ‘Wir müssen den Sozialstaat vom
Sicherheitsnetz zum Trampolin machen, von der Hängematte zum Sprungbrett’
(Hombach 1998: 18). Here, the traditional metaphor for the welfare state, ‘safety
net’, is replaced by a new metaphor, ‘springboard’. The reason is not as obvious in
the text of the Schröder-Blair paper as it is in Hombach’s text. Hombach reinter-
prets the ‘safety net’ as a ‘hammock’ (Hängematte) implying that the laziness of
welfare recipients to pick up work is caused by a welfare system that is constructed
as a ‘safety net’. This reading is also possible for the Schröder-Blair paper: the new
programme term and metaphor ‘springboard’ is extended into ‘springboard into
personal responsibility’. The presumption is therefore that a safety net does not
give people the chance to accept personal responsibility for their lives. Part of this
redefinition process is also the redefinition of fairness:
Das Merkmal linker Politik ist Fairneß – gegenüber denen, die Hilfe brauchen,
aber auch gegenüber denen, die Hilfe leisten sollen. (Hombach 1998: 198)
The catchword of left-wing politics is fairness, i.e. social justice for those who need
assistance but also for those who pay for it. (Hombach 2000, 135)
People rightly demand high-quality public services and solidarity for all who need
help – but also fairness towards those who pay for it. All social policy instruments
must improve life chances, encourage self-help and promote personal responsibil-
ity. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 85)
This meaning of fairness – recipients of social benefits have a responsibility to keep

the costs low – is presupposed in the evaluational contextualisation at the begin-
ning of the Schröder-Blair paper, where the core values of social justice, equality
and solidarity are quoted in pairs: ‘Fairness and social justice, liberty and equality
of opportunity, solidarity and responsibility to others – these values are timeless’
(Blair and Schröder 1999: 3). These pairs redefine the core values: ‘Social justice’
must be fair to the tax payer, and solidarity requires responsibility to society.
Although an explicit redefinition of ‘solidarity’ does not appear to be in the texts
in this part of my corpus, it is nevertheless clear in the broader discourse-historical
context: Lessenich (2003) argues that ‘solidarity’ in traditional social democracy
was understood as a promise of mutual help within a group. The mutuality of
solidarity in systems such as the state pension or the provision of universal health
care was deemed a necessity because of a common fate and common risks. The
knowledge that we will be old and in need of support one day legitimised a pub-
licly funded pension system. Nevertheless, even under conditions of uncertainty,
whether we personally will become seriously ill makes the need for solidarity to
provide help for the ill seem necessary. Furthermore, the long-term solidarity of
the welfare state was legitimate because poverty was seen as the result of social and
political circumstances. The new metaphor ‘Solidarität darf keine Einbahnstraße
sein’ is therefore a clear reinterpretation of the concept (Lessenich 2003: 1053).
5.5 Evidence of context-sensitivity of political lexis in the

Schröder-Blair paper
In the Schröder-Blair paper, the awareness of the lexical differences is made ex-
plicit for the names chosen to represent the new political movement:
The trademark of this approach is the New Centre in Germany and the Third Way
in the United Kingdom. Other social democrats choose other terms that suit their
own national cultures. But though the language and the institutions may differ,
the motivation is everywhere the same. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 2)
The Schröder-Blair paper is an ideal object for observations on the interdepen-

dence between political language and the political culture, since it has been
published in English and German, and both texts differ considerably at the lexical
level. Christina Schäffner (2003) has analysed the translation of the Schröder-Blair
paper from the perspective of translation studies in great detail, since the cultural
dependency of the wording is important for future translations of political and
ideological documents. In this section, I review Schäffner’s findings and elaborate
upon them in order to give a more detailed account of the text-context relation
in the discourse of the Third Way, as it can be inferred from the two versions
of this text. The differences between the two texts already begin with the title
of the publication:
Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte – Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder
(Blair and Schröder 1999)
Der Weg nach vorne für Europas Sozialdemokraten. Ein Vorschlag von Gerhard
Schröder und Tony Blair11 (Schröder and Blair 1999)
Schäffner (2003: 28) observes that the English title only gives the names of the
new approaches and the (official) authors, whereas the German title signals an
evaluation of the new approach, using a JOURNEY metaphor where ‘forward’ is
positively connotated. She also reads ‘ein Vorschlag’ as a ‘kind of genre descriptor’.
I would like to argue that in combination, this is quite a significant cultural adapta-
tion: whilst the English title does not signal any evaluation or deliberately set any
expectations, the German title starts the publication with a positive evaluation and
a strong hidden assumption. The genre descriptor suggests that the addressees of
this paper have yet to follow the suggested path. Of course, it could be argued that
this is aimed at other European social democrats. However, given the context of
the German social democrats just having lost their more traditionally positioned
leader Oskar Lafontaine, it can be inferred that the German SPD is included in the
group of social democratic parties that have yet to follow this new way forward.
Schäffner (2003: 38) also points out that major changes in the German text are
due to differences in the representation of interest groups in German corporate
society and the British liberal tradition, which is also reflected in the differences in
the ideologies of New Labour and the SPD of the New Centre.
Our countries have different traditions in dealings between state, industry, trade
unions and social groups, but we share a conviction that traditional conflicts at
the workplace must be overcome. This, above all, means rekindling a spirit of
11. Literally: ‘The way forward for Europe’s Social Democrats. A proposal by Gerhard Schröder
and Tony Blair’
community and solidarity, strengthening partnership and dialogue between all

groups in society and developing a new consensus for change and reform. We
want all groups in society to share our joint commitment to the new directions set
out in this Declaration [sic!]. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 32, emphasis MK)
Unsere Staaten haben unterschiedliche Traditionen im Umgang zwischen Staat,

Industrie, Gewerkschaften und gesellschaftlichen Gruppen, aber wir alle teilen
die Überzeugung, daß die traditionellen Konflikte am Arbeitsplatz überwunden
werden müssen.
Dazu gehört vor allem, die Bereitschaft und die Fähigkeit der Gesellschaft zum
Dialog und Konsens wieder neu zu gewinnen und zu stärken. Wir wollen allen
Gruppen ein Angebot unterbreiten, sich in die gemeinsame Verantwortung für
das Gemeinwohl einzubringen. (Schröder and Blair 1999: 33–34, emphasis MK)
Despite both versions highlighting the differences in political culture, they also
stress the united conviction to overcome conflicts between interest groups in the
economy. Schäffner (2003: 38) shows that the authors have adapted the second
part accordingly: in the English text, the programme term ‘spirit of community’ is
added, pointing to the communitarian tradition of New Labour. Individuals are, in
this tradition, created in a local network of relationships in families or the commu-
nity. Fairclough (2000, 38) points out that ‘community’ has changed meaning and
focuses on the responsibility of the individual within the community. Although
communitarist philosophy is critical of liberalism, it maintains its critical element
against state involvement in communities and the economy. It is important to
understand that the German tradition of a corporate society differs from the com-
munitarian approach: on a national level, tripartite negotiations between unions,
employers’ associations, and the government have been part of the political culture
since the 1960s (see Chapter 3.3). In this context, the programme terms ‘Dialog’
and ‘Konsens’, replace ‘the spirit of community’ and ‘partnership’ in the German
text. Schäffner (2003: 38) points out that the concept of ‘community’ (translated
as ‘Gemeinschaft’) would not have been familiar as a political keyword to German
readers. Nevertheless, a parallel discourse strand to the New Labour discourse of
community in the German discourse later, in spring 2000, under the headings
‘Zivilgesellschaft’ and ‘Bürgergesellschaft’.
The context of political culture is also important for the subsequent paragraph
of the text, where the programme terms ‘partnership’ and ‘Partnerschaft’ appear.
Schäffner (2003: 39) suggests that the two keywords need to be read in the context
of the New Labour concept of the stakeholder society and the German ‘Sozialpart-
nerschaft’. I will discuss this in more detail in order to establish the differences in
political culture and their influences on the discourse more clearly. In the German
political context, ‘Partnerschaft’ is a mirandum, an established symbol term with
a positive connotation. Originally, ‘Sozialpartnerschaft’ was a programme term of

employers’ associations in the 1950s, and as a concept was established to counter
the unions. The unions at the time aimed for ‘Mitbestimmung’, a much broader set
of rights to be involved in the control over big companies (Wengeler 1995: 59–62).
However, ‘Partnerschaft’ has later become part of the compound noun ‘Tarif-
partner’, which positively evaluates the German system of self-regulation of the
labour market between the employers’ associations and the unions which the
noun denotes. At the turn of the century, the term ‘Sozialpartnerschaft’ was even
romanticised as the ideal German system of corporatism, originating after the
two devastating world wars as a concerted effort to rebuild the country (Rüthers,
January 06, 2001). In the Britain of the 1990s, ‘partnership’ is a programme term
of New Labour that belongs to the ideological idea of a ‘stakeholder economy’,
a communitarian counter-concept against corporatism and for an individualist
society cooperating in a community:
New Labour has shed 1970s ideas of ‘corporatist government’, of taking decisions
with pressure groups and in alliance with certain vested interests, over the heads
of the public as a whole – a process akin more to bargaining than to governing.
The concept of a stakeholder economy addresses the needs and aspirations of
individuals, not interest groups acting for them.
(Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 25)
Fairclough (2000: 128) shows that the main collocations of ‘partnership’ in the
New Labour discourse, alongside its meaning in international relations, are
‘private-public partnerships’ and partnerships between government and business.
He argues that in this context, ‘partnership’ is developed as a positive programme
term for the practice of privatisation, whilst ‘privatisation’ is used to stigmatise the
same practice on the conservative side.
In the following paragraph of the Schröder-Blair paper, Schäffner observes a
change in the text that again can be attributed to the differences in political culture:
whilst the English version asserts that Third-Way social democrats ‘support mod-
ern trade unions’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 35), the German text reads differently:
Wir wollen, daß die Gewerkschaften in der Modernen [sic!] Welt verankert ble-
iben. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 37)
The English text restricts the support to ‘modern’ unions, using a New Labour
programme term as a restrictive attribute, while the German text construes this
as a metaphor (‘stay anchored in the modern world’) and presupposes that all
unions are anchored in the modern world: ‘Die Gewerkschaften’ is not restricted
to some of them, but generic, and ‘bleiben’ (stay) presupposes that a state is
already established. I would like to add that the capitalisation of the spelling of
‘Modern’ in ‘in der Modernen Welt’ is ironic. Although certainly an error, it could
be read as signifying a proper name and therefore indicating the use of ‘modern’
as a programme term that disqualifies other worlds or policies as ‘old fashioned’,
i.e. not suitable.12
The perception of state and government is also different in both versions of the
text. In Chapter 3.3 we saw that in German and British political discourse, ‘state’
and ‘government’ differ in connotation. In the Schröder-Blair paper, the German
lexeme ‘Staat’ is not translated consistently: it is rendered partly as ‘state’, and partly
as ‘government’. Whereas ‘government’ is often used in a positive context, ‘state’ is
more often used in a negative context:
‘government does all it can to support enterprise’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 4)
‘responsibility … can’t be offloaded to the state’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 11)
‘heavy-handed state intervention’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 38)
An indicator that the writers were aware of these differences is that ‘aktiver Staat’
is rendered as ‘active government’ in the headline before paragraph 64 (65 in
the German text), but within the text as ‘active state’. This might again simply
be an oversight, but the change in the headline can also be explained with the
greater importance of keywords in headlines, since headlines as realisations of the
macro propositions attract greater attention in the readers (van Dijk and Kintsch
1983: 101–3). Thus, it can be argued that in the editing process the headline was
deliberately changed into a more culturally appropriate term.
There are other important catch terms in the German and English text that
have been carefully placed according to the context of publication because they are
either important symbol terms in that political culture or have been established
as programme terms for New Labour and the SPD of the New Centre. This shows
how both sides tried to make the text relevant to their audience by connecting
it intertextually. The German text, for example, contains symbol terms such as
‘Mittelstand’, ‘Lohnnebenkosten’ and ‘Strukturwandel’, which are all part of the
German discourse on economic policy. The New Labour programme term ‘social
exclusion’, a main reinterpretation of ‘inequality’ by Giddens, is translated as
‘soziale Ausgrenzung’, which is not an intertextually established catchword in Ger-
many. The German text, on the other hand, uses the word ‘Aufbruchstimmung’,
which is intertextually connected to Hombach’s book ‘Aufbruch’ and the election
manifesto from 1998 which uses the term regularly within the metaphoric scene
of SPD politics as JOURNEY after a long standstill. The English translation of
12. For the use of ‘Modernisierer’ as a political catch term see (Klimmt 1999: 1137) or (Nach-
twey 2009: 191).
‘Aufbruchstimmung’ as ‘go-ahead mentality’ is not connected in the same way to

the discourse of New Labour.
5.6 Metalinguistic comments as indicators of an ongoing ideological

battle between Schröder and Lafontaine
In the German party conference speeches of Schröder and Lafontaine before 1999,
there are many prominent occurrences of the discursive strategy of metalinguistic
comments (‘Sprachthematisierung’), which can reveal differences between the
‘new Labour’ discourse and the discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’. In metalinguistic
comments, speakers focus on the controversial elements of catch terms. They are
therefore indicators of an awareness of semantic conflicts (Schröter 2008: 51) and
a strategy used by speakers to position themselves against a political competitor.
One central set of metalinguistic comments that occurs in both Lafontaine’s
and Schröder’s speeches is a reflection on the meaning of ‘modern’ and ‘reform’.
Blair uses the adjective ‘modern’ regularly, but without any clarification of its
meaning. Lafontaine and Schröder openly and strategically reflect on its meaning
in their speeches in the context of a prevalent press discourse about ‘Traditionali-
sten’ and ‘Modernisierer’ in the SPD. Lafontaine criticises the meaning of ‘mod-
ernisation’ implied by this distinction as being one that deems the reduction of the
welfare state as modern.13 Instead, he reminds the audience of the tradition that
connects modernity to the enlightenment and its idea of freedom and equality.
This leads him to a value topos that stresses the logical adjacency of freedom and
individual social rights. He reflects on the proposed change of meaning using the
metaphor THEFT OF WORDS.
Schröder takes up the distinction between modernisers and traditionalists in
the SPD in a different way:
Liebe Freunde, Innovation und Gerechtigkeit – viele meinen ja, das gehe nicht
zusammen. Sie wollen in Lagern denken, weil es dann so einfach ist, die Men-
schen gegeneinander auszuspielen. Die einen, das sind dann die Technokraten
und kalten Modernisierer. Die anderen, das sind dann die Traditionalisten und
die Verteidiger des bewährten Systems. Die einen, so wird gesagt, verwalten das
Wachstum und die anderen die Gerechtigkeit.
Das ist keine Politik für eine moderne Industriegesellschaft, liebe Genossinnen
und Genossen. Das ist spalterische Politik, die wir nicht wollen und nicht zulassen
dürfen. Innovation und Gerechtigkeit, das sind keine Gegensätze. Das bedingt
einander. Dies werden wir in Deutschland deutlich machen.
(Schröder 1998a: 19)
13. See quotation in 6.5.

Dear friends, innovation and justice – many think these are not compatible. They
want to think in distinct groups, because it is so easy to play people off against each
other. On the one hand, there are supposedly the technocrats and cold modernis-
ers, but on the other hand, there are the traditionalists and defenders of the proven
system. One group, they say, organises growth and the other justice.
That is not a policy for a modern industrial society, comrades. That is divisive
politics, which we don’t want and must not accept. Innovation and justice are not
opposites; they are mutually dependent. And we will prove that in Germany.
Schröder criticises the same distinction in connection with the election slogan
‘Arbeit, Innovation und Gerechtigkeit’, quoting unnamed voices who associate
‘innovation’ with modernisers who are characterised as cold, whilst simultane-
ously identifying the ‘Gerechtigkeit’ with traditionalists in the SPD. He argues that
these two concepts belong together if a policy is to be successful in a modern
industrial society – an argument of logical adjacency that has a very different focus
to that of Lafontaine.
These metalinguistic comments on ‘modern’ are connected to reflections on
the concept of ‘reform’, which precede the modernity question in Lafontaine’s
speech and follow it directly in Schröder’s speech:
Der Reformbegriff ist unser Begriff. Was ist denn Reform? Unter Reform haben
wir Sozialdemokraten in aller Welt und hier in Deutschland verstanden, daß
es den Menschen nach der Reform besser geht als vorher. Das ist der Inhalt
des Reformbegriffs. Es kann doch nicht so sein, daß Sozialabbau, Kürzung von
Arbeitslosengeld, Kürzung von Renten und Abbau von Lohnfortzahlung im
Krankheitsfall Reformen sind! (Lafontaine 1997: 56)
The word ‘reform’ is our word. What is reform? By ‘reform’, social democrats all over
the world and in Germany mean, that people are better off after a reform. That is the
meaning of ‘reform’. How can cuts in social security, cuts in unemployment benefits,
cuts in pensions and sick pay be reforms?
Wir werden klar machen, daß für uns eine Innovation erst dann wirklich taugt,
wenn sie Arbeit sicher macht oder neue schafft, und daß eine Reform vor allen
Dingen nur dann eine ist, wenn sie das Leben nicht erschwert, sondern wenn
sie es leichter macht. Das war der Reformbegriff von Willy Brandt und Helmut
Schmidt. Das ist unser Reformbegriff, liebe Genossinnen und Genossen.
We will demonstrate that innovation is only valid if it secures jobs or creates jobs and
that reforms are only valid, if they make life easier, and not more difficult. That was
the understanding of reform that Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt had, and that is
our understanding of reform, comrades.
Lafontaine claims ‘reform’ as the programme term of social democracy, and op-
poses an idea of ‘reform’ that results in social welfare cuts. On the surface, this
is directed against the Kohl government and their reforms which changed the
terms of unemployment benefits, sick pay and pensions – decisions that, in the
1998 election campaign, both Lafontaine and Schröder promised to reverse. Yet,
accompanying this surface impression and underlining its significance, is the fact
that this claim is directly followed by metalinguistic comments on ‘Moderne’,
which are interdiscursively linked to the discourse of New Labour. Therefore, it
can be argued, the thematisation of ‘Reform’ is also one that is aimed against an
understanding of modernisation that will eventually result in Schröder’s Agenda
2010. After Lafontaine’s withdrawal from front-bench politics in 1999, and as a
reaction to the publication of the Schröder-Blair paper, Lafontaine’s political
ally Reinhardt Klimmt added to the criticism of the rhetoric of ‘modern’ poli-
tics. He argued that it disqualifies and stigmatises the critics of the Third Way as
old-fashioned (Klimmt 1999: 1137). Klimmt’s criticism thematises the linguistic
strategy behind the regular use of the adjective ‘modern’ as a closing of the reform
discourse in the SPD and New Labour through stigmatisation.
In his pre-election conference speech, Schröder also thematises the concept of
‘reform’ and contextualises it with his programme term ‘Innovation’, arguing that a
good reform is one that makes life easier, and claiming that his ideas of reform and
modernity are in line with the tradition of the successful chancellors Willy Brandt
and Helmut Schmidt.
This interconnected thematisation of ‘Reform’ and ‘Modern’ in Schröder’s and
Lafontaine’s pre-election speeches demonstrates a significant difference between
the discourses of new Labour and the SPD directly before they win their first
general elections. While the party-internal discourse on ‘modernisation’ in the
Labour Party has reached a certain level of agreement and Blair’s position was he-
gemonic, the SPD was still openly battling its position, and two different positions
were represented by its two leaders. Both employed the strategy of metalinguistic
comments to position themselves in this respect.
Whereas Schröder and Lafontaine represented two different ideological posi-
tions and used metalinguistic comments to clarify these differences, Blair used
this strategy from the very beginning of his leadership to claim Conservative pro-
gramme terms as Labour values. The following is an example from his pre-election
speech in 1996:
Look at [the Tories, MK] – the tax-cutting party that gave us the biggest tax rises
in peacetime history; the law-and-order party that doubled crime and gave us a
Home Secretary in court more often than the people he is supposed to be locking
up; the farmer’s party that gave us BSE; the party that set up the Scott Report,
then, when it found ministerial deceit, tried to ignore it and would have got away
with it but for the brilliance of that man Robin Cook. … Time to change. The
Tories never did have the best vision for Britain. They just took the best words –
freedom, choice, opportunity, aspiration, ambition. (Blair 1996a: 81)
Blair begins by using supposed self-definitions of the Conservative party (‘tax-

cutting party’; ‘law-and-order party’) which describe their aims. He contrasts
them with the data topos of crisis as the result of the Conservative govern-
ment’s action in order to delegitimise the Conservatives. This is followed by a
delegitimisation of the Conservatives’ claim that ‘freedom’, ‘choice’, ‘opportunity’,
‘aspiration’ and ‘ambition’ are their programme terms. Later in this speech, Blair
claims ‘spirit of enterprise’ for New Labour by constructing a competition of con-
notation, delegitimising the meaning used by the Conservatives and redefining it
for the Labour Party:
When the Tories talk about the spirit of enterprise they mean a few self-made
millionaires. Well, best of luck to them. But there should be a spirit of enterprise
and achievement on the shop floor, in the office as well: in the 16- year-old who
starts as an office girl with the realistic chance of ending up as the office manager;
in the young graduate with the confidence to take initiatives; in the secretary who
takes time out to learn a new language and comes back to search for a new and
better job. These people have enterprise within them. (Blair 1996a: 83)
In his speech at the special conference in 1995, Blair uses this strategy combined
with metaphorical argumentation and with the reflection of the use of ‘democratic
socialism’ as a stigma term used by the Tories:
For far too long the Conservatives have defined what it is to be a democratic so-
cialist. I say it’s time we defined our socialism for ourselves. Reaching out does not
make us Tories. Speaking up for the majority does not make us Tories. We can win
new friends without losing old values. […] Please let us not fall for this nonsense
about stealing Tory clothes when we talk of crime or the family or of aspiration or
of duty and responsibility. […] We are reclaiming this ground, because it is right-
fully ours. It is they, the Tories, who are the intruders. It’s Labour that provides the
real thing. We are reoccupying ground that we should never ever have vacated.
(Blair 1995c: 291)
To sum up, the analysis of the of the metalinguistic comments in the speeches by
Schröder and Lafontaine suggested that in 1997/1998 the reform discourse was
still ongoing in the SPD, and the two leading figures, although publicly stressing
their united position, actually engaged in semantic battles with each other. Blair,
however, having already united the party ideologically, used this strategy against
the Conservatives.
5.7 The lexis of election manifestos – A corpus linguistic view
In this part I will introduce a corpus assisted methodology to the analysis of the
political lexis of election manifestos. This will add an additional perspective to the
triangulation of the discourses of the Third Way. Combining qualitative approaches
with quantitative approaches can help to uncover non-obvious discourse structures,
especially in large texts such as election manifestos. In Section 5.7.1, I will concen-
trate on actors and actions in the election manifestos. This focus results from an
analysis of relative frequency lists of the manifestos, which are a typical starting
point of a corpus assisted discourse analysis (Baker 2006: 47–48). I will quote all
relative frequencies as ‘a percent of the running words in the text(s) the word list was
made from’ (Scott 2015), following the established practice in Wordsmith. Manual
calculations and results from the sketch engine are also represented that way. Analys-
ing these wordlists, I found that among the expected grammatical words (articles,
prepositions, conjunctions), the first ten high-frequency items for all manifestos
included ‘we’/ ‘wir’ and ‘werden’/ ‘will’. This pattern did not occur in the frequency
lists of the reference corpora. I will therefore ask how election manifestos construe
actors, and consider who is the subject of processes, and how are they referred to. I
will also explore which actions or processes are construed most frequently and why.
Section 5.7.2 will then explore whether a keyword analysis can reveal the ideo-
logical differences between the two main contenders in the 1997/1998 election.
For this purpose, lists of positive and negative keywords between the Labour and
Conservative manifestos of 1997, as well as between the SPD and CDU manifes-
tos, are analysed. Positive keywords are words that occur statistically more often
in one wordlist compared to another, while negative keywords occur statistically
less often (Baker 2006: 125). Furthermore, changes in the programmatic lexis of
the manifestos between 1987/1990 and 1997/1998 are identified by comparing
keyword lists of the Labour and SPD manifestos of those years.
5.7.1 Actors and actions in the manifestos
The first questions in this corpus-assisted analysis are:

1. Who are the main actors in the manifestos?
2. How are the main actors construed?
Election manifestos construe the political programme of an in-group that refers
to itself in the first person plural, which explains the high frequency of this
pronoun compared to the reference corpora. The lowest frequency can be found
in the Labour manifesto of 1987 and the SPD manifesto of 1990, but both are
significantly salient:
– ‘We’ Labour 1987 compared to the BNC: Log-likelihood 297.45 (p < 0.0001)14
– ‘wir’ in SPD 1990 compared to DeTenTen: Log-likelihood 297.45 (p < 0.0001)
This result is similar in the analysis of the use of ‘we’/ ‘wir’ in party conference
speeches, which also focus on groupness. Party conferences construe groupness
also by emphasising differences from the political competitor and blaming them
for failed policies. They therefore use the pronouns ‘they’/ ‘Sie’ much more fre-
quently than the reference corpora:
– ‘they’ in Blair’s party conference speeches15 0.5% – compared to reference
corpus BNC: log-likelihood 88.20 (p < 0.0001)
– ‘Sie’ in Schröder’s party conference speeches16 6.5% – compared to reference
corpus log-likelihood 129.4 (p < 0.0001)
However, in both the German and the British manifesto corpus, ‘they’/ ‘Sie’ ap-
pears in the frequency expected from the reference corpora. This suggests that
election manifestos are less politicising than party conference speeches. Manifes-
tos construct collectivity less through blaming and distinction strategies against
the political opponent, and focus more on constructing the in-group’s ideology
using ‘we/our’ and ‘wir/unser’. The manifestos extend the inclusion also to the
electorate: parallel to the rising inclusiveness of ‘we/wir’ in the introductions, an
analysis of the whole text shows a high use of inclusive ‘our’, and an increasing use
of an inclusive ‘unser’ in Germany:
Table 3. ‘our’/ ‘uns’ in election manifestos

Our/uns* Inclusive ‘our/uns in Exclusive ‘our/uns’* in
(tokens) % of total number % of total number
relative frequency in %
Labour 1987 (68) 0.74 (50) 73.5 (18) 25.5
Labour 1992 (85) 0.68 (41) 48.2 (44) 51.8
Labour 1997 (144) 0.82 (76) 52.7 (68) 47.2
Labour 2001 (286) 0.93 (137) 47.9 (149) 52.1
Conservative 1998 (220) 1.04 (130) 59.1 (90) 40.9
(continued)
14. Since the sketch engine does not allow a keyword calculation using statistical measures and
DeTenTen cannot be downloaded, the log-likelihood and statistical significance was calculated
using the log-likelihood ratio calculator (Xu 2009).
15. Blair’s party conference speeches 1994–2003
16. Schröder’s party conference speeches 1997–1998 and 2003

Our/uns* Inclusive ‘our/uns in Exclusive ‘our/uns’* in
(tokens) % of total number % of total number
relative frequency in %
SPD 1990 (29) 0.31 (9) 31 (20) 69
SPD 1994 (93) 0.51 (54) 58.1 (39) 41.9
SPD 1998 (106) 0.62 (63) 59.4 (43) 40.6
SPD 2002 (147) 0.61 (102) 69.4 (45) 30.6
CDU 1990 (36) 0.5 (25) 69.4 (11) 30.6
CDU 1998 (95) 0.96 (74) 77.9 (21) 22.1
*The asterisk in ‘uns’* indicates that the search was lemmatised, i.e. included ‘uns’ with all different case
endings.
In the 1990 SPD Manifesto, ‘unser’ only has a frequency of 0.2%, a figure that
doubles in 1998 in the SPD manifesto, and almost quadruples in the CDU mani-
festo. Moreover, in 1990 there are significantly more occurrences of ‘unser’ refer-
ring to the party. Looking at the collocations of ‘unser’, there is evidence that the
SPD in 1990 avoids patriotic rhetoric: it contains only one instance of ‘unser Land’,
and even ‘unsere Gesellschaft’ does not appear, while in the 2001 SPD manifesto
they appear thirteen times and sixteen times respectively. The 1990 and 1998 CDU
manifestos even use ‘unser Vaterland’ in the same contexts, signalling a stronger
patriotic position, which is also communicated in the higher use of the metonymy
‘Deutschland’ in the CDU manifestos. Although there is no significant difference
in the use of ‘Deutschland’ and ‘Britain’ in the Labour and SPD manifestos, they
are not used as much in the central slogans.
One last difference in the construction of actors became visible through the
analysis of the word frequency lists. While the self- and other references ‘Labour’
and ‘Conservatives’ in the Labour manifestos have about the same frequency, the
1998 SPD manifesto uses ‘SPD’ significantly more frequently:
Table 4. Frequency of ‘CDU’, ‘SPD’ and ‘rot-grün’ in the election manifestos

(items) Frequency in % of total word count
SPD 1990 SPD 1994 SPD 1998 SPD 2002 CDU 1998
SPD (7) (16) (86) (8) (4)
0.09 0.1 0.56 0.04 0.05
CDU (2) (1) (10) (2) (45)
0.02 0.01 0.07 0.02 0.51
rot-grün 0 0 0 0 (7)
0.07
A closer look at the collocation of ‘SPD’ reveals that 52 out of the 86 items belong
to the noun-group ‘SPD-geführte Bundesregierung’. The use of this self-reference
can only be understood in the context of a referential competition taking place in
the election campaign of the time. Since 1994, at least in the election manifestos,
the CDU has used the term ‘rot-grün’ as a stigma term for the SPD and the Green
Party, for example in the context of ‘rot-grüner Ökodirigismus’. Both Schröder
and Lafontaine do not use ‘rot-grün’ in their pre-election speeches, although this
coalition was the aim of the election campaign. Conversely, in his speech before
his election as the chancellor candidate, Schröder strategically distanced himself
from some of the more radical demands of the Green party and rejected the
concept of ‘rot-grün’ used as a stigma term by the CDU/CSU and the FDP. In
the manifesto of 1998, which used the party’s voice (incl. ‘Wir’), the government
under Schröder’s leadership became ‘Die SPD-geführte Bundesregierung’ in order
to stress the SPD’s claim for the leadership in a future coalition and to counter the
stigmatisation as ‘rot-grün’. This leadership claim can be seen as a necessary part
of the semantic battle in a political system where coalition governments are the
norm. In Germany, this led traditionally to what is called a ‘Lagerwahlkampf ’: In
the four-party system of the late 1980s and the 1990s, the strategy of the CDU/
FDP coalition in the election was to promise a coalition with the FDP on the one
hand, and to demonise the other camp, using ‘rot-grün’, on the other.
The most frequent verbs in the corpus, denoting the processes, express inten-
tions (‘wollen’, ‘werden’, ‘will’, ‘want’), since the general mode of election manifestos
is evaluative, voluntative and commissive, but can often be interpreted as wishes,
intentions and promises (Klein, J. 2000b: 743). To understand the differences
between the verbs used, I have filtered the most frequent verbs from the relative
frequency lists produced by Wordsmith. A possible problem is that these word
lists are not lemmatised based on part of speech tagging and therefore might not
represent all forms of the verb correctly. Thus, I searched for the verb forms I
found in these frequency lists using the sketch engine. This programme allows a
lemmatised and part of speech tagged search and therefore only returns the verbs
including all finite forms. Table 5 shows the verbs that are most salient in the text.
I will, however, only comment on ‘continue’/ ‘fortsetzen’, ‘must’/ ‘müssen’, ‘help’/
‘helfen’ and ‘reform’/ ‘reformieren’, since they differ significantly in frequency
either within Britain/Germany, or in comparison.
Table 5. High-frequency verbs in Labour/SPD election manifestos between 1987 and 2002
(Sub-)corpus Labour Labour Labour Labour Conservative BNC
(corpus size in words) 1987 1992 1997 2001 1997 (96048950)
(9153) (12459) (17444) (30477) (21262)
(tokens)
Frequency in % of corpus size
will (237) (513) (409) (516) (375) (329392)
2.55 4.08 2.32 1.68 1.77 0.29
continue (2) (11) (6) (44) (87) (27720)
0.02 0.08 0.03 0.13 0.36 0.024
ensure (25) (31) (38) (62) (44) (14052)
0.25 0.22 0.2 0.18 0.18 0.012
should (7) (5) (47) (34) (30) (109156)
0.08 0.04 0.27 0.11 0.14 0.09
provide (28) (23) (24) (43) (46) (50239)
0.27 0.17 0.12 0.13 0.19 0.04
must (17) (32) (47) (27) (34) (69934)
0.19 0.25 0.27 0.09 0.16 0.06
encourage (15) (23) (19) (14) (41) (5053)
0.1 0.16 0.099 0.04 0.17 < 0.01
help (16) (26) (23) (93) (49) (36998)
0.15 0.18 0.12 0.27 0.21 0.04
reform 0 (14) (13) (37) (16) (11,190)
0.1 0.067 0.11 0.05 0.009
support (10) (8) (27) (56) (19) (18597)
0.09 0.06 0.14 0.16 0.08 0.016
want (7) (13) (25) (41) (33) (87784)
0.08 0.1 0.13 0.13 0.14 0.07
(Sub-)corpus SPD90 SPD94 SPD98 SPD02 CDU98 DeTenTen

(corpus size in words) (8056) (16963) (15219) (21166) (8832) (2338036362)
(tokens)
Frequency in % of corpus size
werden (155) (448) (391) (364) (145) (10095864)
1.66 2.4 2.3 1.5 1.46 0.95
wollen (82) (108) (137) (94) (90) (3129897)
0.88 0.59 0.8 0.39 0.91 0.11
müssen (30) (180) (109) (137) (52) (5102573)
0.37 0.98 0.64 0.57 0.53 0.18
fortsetzen 0 (3) (3) (10) (8) (77573)
0.016 0.02 0.04 0.08 0.003
(Sub-)corpus SPD90 SPD94 SPD98 SPD02 CDU98 DeTenTen

(corpus size in words) (8056) (16963) (15219) (21166) (8832) (2338036362)
fördern (17) (33) (25) (34) (11) (321151)
0.18 0.18 0.15 0.15 0.11 0.011
schaffen (12) (39) (19) (40) (18) (675546)
0.12 0.21 0.11 0.17 0.18 0.023
sorgen (6) (19) (45) (9) (7) (428132)
0.06 0.1 0.28 0.04 0.07 0.015
stärken (3) (14) (30) (48) (16) (135206)
0.03 0.08 0.18 0.2 0.16 0.004
brauchen (9) (34) (51) (51) (4) (752852)
0.096 0.18 0.3 0.21 0.04 0.026
setzen (6) (20) (15) (33) (17) (987120)
0.06 0.11 0.08 0.14 0.17 0.034
helfen (4) (6) (2) (9) (6) (672533)
0.04 0.03 0.01 0.03 0.06 0.02
The verb ‘to continue’ has a very high frequency in the British manifestos, which
suggests arguments for the re-election of an incumbent government. The verb
is used as a strategy of credit claim for policies in government, which the party
promises to keep following in the next parliament. Although the direct translation
of ‘continue’ – ‘fortsetzen’ – does not rank high in the frequency lists of German
re-election manifestos, they use the same strategy with the adverb ‘weiter’, which
is particularly frequent in SPD 2002 (0.23% of corpus size), and CDU 1998 (0.10%
of corpus size).
A further difference in the use of verbs is the frequency of ‘help/helfen’. In the
SPD German manifestos, there is no significant difference between the frequency
in the corpus (0.03%) when compared to DeTenTen (0.02%). In the British manifes-
tos however, the use is much higher in the manifestos than in the reference corpus,
peaking at 0.27% in the Labour manifesto of 2001, which is statistically significant
with LL 222.25 and p < 0.0009. An analysis of the co-occurrences shows that if
‘help’ is the finite verb, ‘we’ (exclusive) is the subject 28 times, ‘government’ three
times, ‘Labour’ once. There are four other subjects. Thus, the manifesto portrays
the party as supporting people – and a broad array of people: of all the manifestos,
Labour 2001 has the broadest variety of recipients for the verb ‘help’ (see table 6):
Table 6. Recipients of the verb ‘help’ in the 2001 Labour manifesto

People with disabilities (3) Hard-working families People (10)
developing world (3) unemployed people (1) the powerful (1)
anyone (1) adults without basic skills (3) parents
families (2) children (2) those who work and save
pensioners (3) businesses firms/companies (3)
post office key workers (2) tenants
regions industry 7 in 10 smokers
GPs young people (2) older people
local authorities you charities
refugees Britain
In keeping with the slogan ‘Fulfilling Britain’s great potential’, The Labour Party
in 2001 must have seen the need to construe the party as a help for people. This
is illustrated in the opening of the programmatic section ‘A single aim drives our
policy programme: to liberate people’s potential, by spreading power, wealth and
opportunity more widely, breaking down the barriers that hold people back’ (The
Labour Party 2001: 6). At the same time, this construes a liberal vision of govern-
ment and state as not being the central agent of society, but only a supporting
force for individual potential and success. This becomes particularly obvious in
the phrase ‘help people to help themselves’, which also occurs in the Conserva-
tive manifesto of 1997. The verb ‘help’ is also connected to a new programmatic
phrase of welfare into work: ‘help people back into work’ – another phrase from
the Conservative Manifesto – occurs seven times. This idea of ‘welfare into work’
presupposes the problem of unemployment to be one of individual shortcomings
rather than a systemic problem, and therefore the individuals need help from the
government in order to be able to help themselves. This idea is completely absent
from the 1987 and 1992 manifestos.
One last observation concerns the verb ‘reform’, which is not used in Labour
1987 at all, but in a significantly increased frequency in 2001: 0.11% in the mani-
festo, compared to 0.009% in the BNC, which gives a keyness value of LL 222.25,
p < 0.0001. The rise from the 1997 manifesto seems strategic, if we look at the
function of the verb in the 2001 manifesto: 13 occurrences are used to claim credit
for successful policies in the past, 4 as an argument for the continuation of success-
ful policies and 13 to present and legitimise future policies. The question is, why is
there not a similar phenomenon in the German manifestos? The verb ‘reformieren’
is only used very occasionally, even in the manifesto of 1994, which uses ‘reform’
as a programme term in the title. The differences between German and English
can offer an explanation: in English, the verb ‘to reform’ is more frequent than the
noun, while in German ‘reformieren’ is far less frequent than the noun ‘Reform’.
This general difference becomes even more significant if one takes into account
that this simple corpus search does not include the compound nouns with ‘reform’
in German, since the consistent orthographical representation of compounds in
German as a single lexeme excludes them from the standard search for ‘reform’,
while the inconsistent spelling of compound nouns in English17 includes many
compound nouns with ‘reform’. A more detailed search for the verbs and nouns
containing reform yields this result:
Table 7. The nominal and verbal use of ‘reform’ in the Labour and SPD manifestos
between 1987 and 2001
reform – v reform – n Compound nouns – ‘-reform’*
Labour 1987 0 (1) 0
0.009
Labour 1992 (14) (3) constitutional reform (2) (3)
0.1 0.024 law reform (1) 0.024
Labour 1997 (13) (16) tax reform, trade union reform (3)
0.067 0.091 welfare reform 0.017
Labour 2001 (37) (69) tax and benefit reform (3) (12)
0.11 0.226 education reform, armed forces 0.039
reform, law reform, Lords reform,
NHS reform, pension reform,
security sector reform, public
service reform, welfare reform
Conservative (16) (19) 0
1997 0.05 0.079
BNC (11,190) (7407)
0.009 0.0065
reformieren Reform Compound nouns – ‘-reform’*
SPD 1990 0 0 Gesundheitsreform (3) (8)
Steuerreform (3) 0.099
Unternehmenssteuerreform (1)
Bodenreform (1)
(continued)
17. Compound nouns can be spelled as one word (hairnet), hyphenated (driving-licence)
or spelled as two orthographic units (mosquito net) (see (Jackson and Zé Amvela 2007, 92;
Carstairs-McCarthy 2002: 62)).
reformieren reform Compound nouns – ‘-reform’*
SPD 1994 (1) (18) Steuerreform (7) (14)
0.00545 0.098 Strukturreform (2) 0.08
Gewerbesteuereform (2)
Bahnreform (1)
Bodenreform (1)
Rentenreform (1)
0.017 0.06473 SPD-Steuerreform (1) 0.24
Strukturreformen (4)
Rentenreform (3)
Hochschulreform (2)
Unternehmenssteuerreform (1)
Bildungreform (1)
Bodenreform (1)
0.0251 0.06281 Gemeindefinanzreform (4) 0.07
Rentenreform (1)
Studienstrukturreform (1)
Wohngeldreform (1)
Bahnreform (1)
CDU 1998 (3) (6) Steuerreform (3) (6)
0.03 0.067 Sozialhilfereform (1) 0.067
Rentenreform (1)
Gesundheitsreform (1)
DeTenTen (9897) (107504)
0.00035 0.00378
*(number of items) frequency in % of corpus size
This table provides three insights: firstly, we can see that compound nouns with
‘reform’ are only used sparsely in the UK manifestos. The odd one out is, again,
the Labour manifesto of 2001, which in total uses all forms of ‘reform’ significantly
more than the others, and we can therefore call ‘reform’ one of the programme
terms of this manifesto. Secondly, compound nouns with ‘reform’ are used by the
SPD 1998 as programme terms against the stigma term ‘Stillstand’, and the main
focus is on ‘Steuerreform’. This is a pattern which is difficult to grasp with corpus
linguistic methods alone for reasons discussed above: these words are treated as
different lexical items by the software, but are certainly strongly connected.
Finally, it is significant that the morphology of a language seems to influence
which form is more salient as a political catch term: in English, the verb and the
noun are of almost equal importance and seem to be equally used as programme
terms. The morphological process here is conversion (Jackson and Zé Amvela

2007: 100; Carstairs-McCarthy 2002: 48), yet synchronically at least, it is unclear
which form is the basic form. In German, however, ‘reformieren’ is clearly marked
as the derivation, and, moreover, one that usually marks words of foreign origin
(Fagan 2009: 95). It would be interesting to see if there are similar cases that allow
an argument for a general restriction, or whether German political discourse or
more specifically the genre of the election manifesto has a general tendency to
focus on nouns as programme terms. German election manifestos here follow
the general tendency towards a nominal style in German non-fiction prose (see
Braun 1993: 116–24).
5.7.2 Keywords – indicators for political culture, political competition and

ideological change?
In this section, I will analyse keyword lists produced by Wordsmith, which allow us
to see differences between two corpora more clearly. I will also shift the focus on
nouns as carriers of ideological meaning. Using Wordsmith, I created a keywords
list and filtered out the positive and negative key nouns with p < 0.01. The keyword
calculation used to produce the keyword lists compares the frequencies of words
in one corpus to the frequencies in another. I decided to use Wordsmith tools 6
for the calculation of keyword lists, as it uses established statistical measures such
as chi-square and log-likelihood that are used in most publications on cultural
keywords (e.g. Baker 2004, 2006: 121–52; McEnery, Xiao, and Tono 2006: 52–57;
Jeffries and Walker 2012). The cut-off points and statistical discussions in this
literature is used to make sense of the keyword lists calculated. The simple maths
approach of the sketch engine (Kilgarriff 2009) is not yet widely shared in the com-
munity of corpus assisted discourse studies, and the meaning of the quantitative
results are difficult to judge. Although I do not claim statistical significance of
the keyword lists, since my corpora are fairly small, the calculation of the log-
likelihood as an indicator of the difference in frequency and the calculation of the
probability value is an established method to distinguish the keyness of words in
the compared corpora. In the literature, a cut-off point of p < 0.01 is considered
high, so I will only consider as keywords those words for which Wordsmith returns
a probability value which is lower than that.
The decision to use Wordsmith tools 6 has had consequences for the question
of whether to use lemmatised keyword lists, which is particularly important for a
highly inflecting language such as German. Wordsmith only allows lemmatisation
based on lemma lists, but does not allow part of speech tagging. This increases
the problem that many authors see with automatic lemmatisation, which is often
prone to mistakes and has to be corrected manually (O'Keeffe, McCarthy, and
Carter 2007: 32–33; Baker 2004: 356), because homonym or homograph forms of
nouns and verbs, especially in English, cannot be separated. This distinction would
only be possible with the sketch engine, as it uses automatic part of speech tagging,
but the unusual approach to keywords and the lack of a manual correction of the
lemmatisation made sketch engine a less attractive solution. Despite the argument
that non-lemmatised keyword lists could be less reliable, and having compared
lemmatised and non-lemmatised keyword lists, I have decided to approach the
analysis similarly to Baker (2004: 355) who argues that ‘a lemma-based analysis
may not always be a useful strategy as particular word forms can contain specific
collocations or senses that would be lost when combining word forms together’.
Using Wordsmith 6, I produced 4 keyword lists. Two were produced to under-
take a synchronic analysis by comparing the 1997 Labour manifesto and the 1997
Conservative manifesto, as well as the 1998 SPD manifesto and the 1998 CDU
manifesto. A second set of keyword lists compares the Labour election manifestos
of 1987 and 1997, as well as the SPD manifestos of 1990 and 1998. These lists
allow a diachronic analysis of their political lexis. The decision to use texts from
only one genre is a result of the lexico-semantic analysis in the previous section
which demonstrated that political lexis is sensitive to genre. Therefore, the use of
a genre-mixed corpus, as for example in L'Hôte’s (2014) study on the discourse
of New Labour, could have had a negative impact on the reliability of the results.
The keyword calculation used to produce the keyword lists compares the fre-
quencies of words in one corpus to the frequencies in another. Since my corpora
are fairly small, it is difficult to claim statistical significance. The calculation of the
log-likelihood of the difference in frequency and the calculation of the probability
value should nevertheless allow a distinction of keyness of words in the compared
corpora, as the cut-off point of p < 0.01 is considered high. Thus, I will only con-
sider as keywords words for which Wordsmith returns a probability value which is
lower than that. Using these two different ways of comparison via keyword lists, I
will address three questions:
1. Does the frequency difference between 1987/90 and 1997/98 give an indica-
tion of a change of ideology in that period?
2. Does the keyword analysis of the manifestos of the two major contestants of
the 1997/98 general elections reveal anything about the lexical strategies in the
elections?
3. Do certain keywords behave differently in Germany and in the UK?
The third question arose out of the analysis of the first two. In the analysis, I used
the keywords as a starting point. In a second step, I analysed the concordances
of the keywords in detail, to understand the use of these keywords in context.
For some words, the use in one of the countries was unexpected, for example,
that Labour uses ‘politics’ partly as a stigma term. Hence, I started comparing
their use in the German and British manifestos. Since these comparisons also say
something about questions one and two, they are integrated in these analyses.
A first glance at the keyword list that compares the 1997 Labour and Conser-
vative manifesto (Table 8) confirms the conclusion from my analysis of election
manifestos as a genre, i.e. that the self-reference ‘Labour’ leads the list of keywords
of Labour manifestos is an effect of the general aim of manifestos – to define the
values and goals of a political organisation. The second most important keyword,
‘Conservatives’, however, is unexpected. Should it not be used as a self-reference
by the Conservative Party as well, and hence be used more frequently by the
Conservative Party? The keyness here has a grammatical and stylistic reason:
while ‘Labour’ can be used as a noun and an adjective, this is not possible for
‘Conservatives’. Therefore, all the noun groups such as ‘Labour Party’ and ‘Labour
government’ are counted, but not ‘Conservative party’ and ‘Conservative govern-
ment’. Wordsmith does not allow lemmatisation easily, so these keyword lists are
not lemmatised, and all forms of the words are counted as long as they are spelled
the same way, which in English often conflates verbs and nouns. But there is also
a stylistic difference: Labour uses its name far more than the Conservative Party.
Table 8. Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1997 Conser-
vative manifesto
Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1997 Conservative
manifesto
Keyword Freq. % RC. Freq. RC. % Keyness p
LABOUR 113 0.64 11 0.05 117.63 0.0000000000
CONSERVATIVES 33 0.19 10 0.05 17.55 0.0000279677
POLITICS 15 0.09 1 17.40 0.0000303040
QUALITY 32 0.18 10 0.05 16.51 0.0000484272
TORY 9 0.05 0 14.20 0.0001644054
GOVERNMENT 91 0.52 59 0.28 14.04 0.0001793979
GROWTH 15 0.09 2 13.78 0.0002059738
PARTY 17 0.10 3 0.01 13.55 0.0002322527
TRUST 8 0.05 0 12.62 0.0003813142
PURPOSE 8 0.05 0 12.62 0.0003813142
END 18 0.10 4 0.02 12.39 0.0004325735
PROVISION 18 0.10 4 0.02 12.39 0.0004325735
FAILURE 11 0.06 1 11.68 0.0006307609
ENERGY 10 0.06 1 10.29 0.0013397462
Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1997 Conservative
manifesto
Keyword Freq. % RC. Freq. RC. % Keyness p
CONVENTION 6 0.03 0 9.47 0.0020933552
RENEWAL 6 0.03 0 9.47 0.0020933552
TORIES 6 0.03 0 9.47 0.0020933552
INFRASTRUCTURE 6 0.03 0 9.47 0.0020933552
INSECURITY 6 0.03 0 9.47 0.0020933552
RESPONSIBILITY 16 0.09 5 0.02 8.25 0.0040753023
ENVIRONMENT 27 0.15 13 0.06 7.91 0.0049256911
POLICY 27 0.15 13 0.06 7.91 0.0049256911
PROMISES 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
DISORDER 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
FAITH 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
PEERS 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
SALES 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
LEAS 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
ARMS 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
AIMS 5 0.03 0 7.89 0.0049763047
ENTERPRISE 4 0.02 19 0.09 -8.09 0.0044630421
NATION 8 0.05 29 0.14 -9.14 0.0025050358
CHOICE 7 0.04 27 0.13 -9.19 0.0024277281
OWNERSHIP 2 0.01 16 0.08 -9.99 0.0015738239
SERVICES 19 0.11 69 0.33 -21.82 0.0000029956
The next high-ranking keyword, ‘politics’, indicates a particular feature of the Third
Way discourses identified by Bastow and Martin (2003: 57), also evident in the
other texts under analysis, and shows that third-way parties consider themselves
as more than just a party, they see themselves as a particular ‘agent’ for change. The
analysis of the concordance line of ‘politics’ in Figure 9 firstly reveals an unclear
reference of ‘politics’ – is it the political system (e.g. lines 2, 3, 5–7), policy (e.g.
lines 4, 11, 12) or possibly the politicians (e.g. lines 1, 3, 8)? But it is also clear that
‘politics’ here is considered a problem for the country (lines 1, 2, 10, 11, 13, 14),
and New Labour as its solution (lines 5, 6, 9, 13, 14). The manifesto distinguishes
between ‘old politics’, that has to be overcome, and the ‘new politics’, that Labour
has to offer. The significance of this pattern can be confirmed by looking at other
British manifestos: in the Conservative manifesto, ‘politics’ occurs only once – in

the meaning of ‘policy’ or ‘ideology’. In the Labour manifestos of 1987 and 1992 it
does not feature at all. Connected to this Third-Way topos are the keywords ‘party’,
which is naturally also used by the Conservatives, and ‘trust’, ‘faith’ and ‘renew/
renewal’ which are exclusive to the 1997 Labour Manifesto. Whilst it employs
‘trust’ and ‘faith’ as a counter-concept to ‘old politics’, ‘party’ and ‘renewal’/‘renew’
communicate the change of Labour to ‘New Labour’ – 13 out of 17 occurrences of
‘party’ are part of such propositions.
Line left_context kwic right_context

number
1 for the future. People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises.
2 Conservatives’ broken promises taint all politics . That is why we have made it our guiding
3 faith in the ability of its government and politics to deliver this new Britain. I want to
4 Programme: a new centre and centre-left politics In each area of policy a new and distinctive
5 covenant with you. I want to renew faith in politics by being honest about the last 18 years
6 dogmas by another. I want to renew faith in politics through a government that will govern in
7 we will repay that trust. Our mission in politics is to rebuild this bond of trust between
8 change; with a modern welfare state; its politics more accountable; and confident of its
9 my own children I want for yours. A new politics The reason for having created new Labour
10 success of their lives. I have no time for the politics of envy. We need more successful entrepreneurs
11 what we promise. What follows is not the politics of a 100 days that dazzles for a time,
12 a time, then fizzles out. It is not the politics of a revolution, but of a fresh start,
13 congestion and pollution 9 We will clean up politics , decentralise political power throughout
14 their own communities. We will clean up politics - End the hereditary principle in the House
15 build over time. That is one way in which politics in Britain will gain a new lease of life
Figure 10. Concordance ‘politics’ in the 1997 Labour manifesto
In the German manifestos of both the SPD and the CDU, ‘Politik’ is used positively
throughout, mainly as ‘Politik für’ in the meaning of ‘policy’. If the CDU evaluates
‘Politik’ negatively, it does so through adjectives such as ‘sozialistisch’ or ‘rot-grün’.
This is another indicator that this third-way topos of New Labour as an anti-
establishment agent for change is not realised in Germany in the same way. The
more complex political system in Germany produces a more consensus-oriented
political culture. It does also not allow one of the larger two parties to communi-
cate that they are ‘outside politics’ and therefore the solution for a total renewal.
The keyword ‘growth’ is mostly used to refer to something that the country is
lacking and that can only be achieved by Labour. It is part of the variety of legitimi-
sation topoi on economic competence found in the manifesto. In the manifesto of
the SPD in 1998, the German equivalent ‘Wachstum’ is almost exclusively locked
into the catchphrase ‘Wachstum und Beschäftigung/ Arbeitsplätze’. This expres-

sion can be found in all the other manifestos of the CDU and SPD between 1990
and 2005, but never as exclusively focused on this collocation, which suggests this
is a strategic focus on a catchphrase, and this catchphrase refers to the topos ‘If we
create more economic growth, we will have more jobs’.
‘Responsibility’ as a keyword is again not only relevant because of the differ-
ence in frequency, but because of the changing context. In all manifestos, Labour
and Conservative between 1987 and 2005, ‘responsibility’ is used to denote the
responsibility of certain political players for a field of policy:
It [the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh, MK] will take responsibility for changes
in the structure of Scottish local government. (The Labour Party 1987: 11)
We will give a single Transport Minister responsibility for services in London.

(Conservative Party 2000b: 406)
The discourse of the responsibilities of the unemployed enters the manifestos of

both parties only in 1997:
We will always help those in genuine need: in return, the unemployed have a
responsibility to look for work and accept a reasonable offer.
(Conservative Party 2000c: 426)
Rights and responsibilities must go hand in hand, without a fifth option of life on
full benefit [sic!]. (The Labour Party 1997: 19)
The distinctive catchphrase here was built through the connection to rights and
responsibilities or rights and opportunities, a change in ideology I have described
above for the party conference speeches and the ideological publications. This
discourse becomes even more important in the manifesto of 2001, where this
discourse becomes dominant (17 out of 28 occurrences of responsibility).
I now turn to the diachronic comparison of the Labour manifestos of 1997
and 1987, starting from the keyword list in Table 10. I will not analyse the keyword
‘reform’ again, as I have already done so in the previous part of this chapter.
Looking at the first keyword after reform, the non-occurrence of ‘business’ in
the Labour Manifesto of 1987 is surprising, since this is a fairly common word in
the BNC (38,796 tokens – 345.8 pmw). A search in the Conservative manifesto
of 1987 indicates that ‘business’, occurring with a frequency of 25 tokens/1255.6
pmw, is a keyword both in comparison with the BNC (LL 26.31, p < 0.0009 ) and
the Labour manifesto 1987 (LL 17.31, p < 0.0001). In this manifesto, the Con-
servative Party uses the conceptual metaphor BUSINESS IS A PLANT, arguing
for policies (‘climate’) in which business can ‘flourish’. This ‘climate’ includes the
Table 9. Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifesto compared to the 1987 Labour
manifesto
Keywords in the 1997 Labour election manifestos: Labour 1997 compared with the 1987
Labour manifesto
Keyword Freq. % RC. Freq. RC. % Keyness P

REFORM 26 0.15 0 21.79 0.0000030376
BUSINESS 23 0.13 0 19.28 0.0000113141
WELFARE 17 0.10 0 14.24 0.0001604956
SPENDING 29 0.16 2 0.02 13.76 0.0002075807
POLITICS 15 0.09 0 12.57 0.0003923191
REVIEW 14 0.08 0 11.73 0.0006149219
UK 14 0.08 0 11.73 0.0006149219
MARKET 17 0.10 1 0.01 8.66 0.0032447649
BENEFITS 10 0.06 0 8.38 0.0037979616
PARTNERSHIPS 10 0.06 0 8.38 0.0037979616
LOTTERY 10 0.06 0 8.38 0.0037979616
AREAS 9 0.05 15 0.16 -7.96 0.0047693411
WASTE 1 6 0.07 -7.97 0.0047620167
YEARS 17 0.10 22 0.24 -8.02 0.0046332134
PROGRAMME 16 0.09 22 0.24 -8.88 0.0028901286
HEALTH 18 0.10 25 0.27 -10.25 0.0013657503
WOMEN 9 0.05 17 0.19 -10.47 0.0012124314
COMMUNITY 10 0.06 18 0.20 -10.50 0.0011950037
RESEARCH 2 0.01 10 0.11 -12.32 0.0004489127
WORKERS 2 0.01 10 0.11 -12.32 0.0004489127
SERVICES 19 0.11 28 0.31 -12.57 0.0003911132
CUTS 1 9 0.10 -13.65 0.0002207768
FREEDOM 5 0.03 15 0.16 -13.88 0.0001949101
DEVELOPMENT 12 0.07 25 0.27 -17.07 0.0000359628
RESOURCES 7 0.04 22 0.24 -21.02 0.0000045394
NUCLEAR 4 0.02 20 0.22 -24.65 0.0000006863
Table 10. Keyness of ‘resource’ in Labour and Conservative manifestos

‘resource’ Labour 1987, N=20, Frequency 0.218
Freq in % LL p
Labour 1997, N= 5 0.028 21.87 < 0.0009
Conservative 1997, N= 10 0.047 17.00 < 0.0009
cutting of taxes (3 times) and ‘a nation…living within its means’ (Conservative

Party 2000a: 324).
The Labour manifesto 1987 uses the term ‘industry’ instead of ‘business’ and
establishes it as a programme term by using it in the slogan ‘New strength for
industry’ and in the crisis topoi that are employed to discredit the Conservative
government, for example:
We have to halt the decline in our manufacturing industry.
The Conservative manifesto of 1997 uses ‘industry’ as almost synonymous with

‘business’, including it with the conceptual metaphor of business as a plant and
claiming credit for its flourishing because of the positive climate of tax reduction,
privatisation and ‘popular capitalism’. The use of ‘industry’ in both Labour and
Conservative manifestos declines steadily, being replaced by the term ‘business’,
which reflects the changes in the economy in the 1990s and 2000s from an indus-
try to a service base.
In the Labour manifestos, the term ‘business’ appears for the first time in the
1992 manifesto, where it is almost as frequent as in the Conservative manifesto
of 1987 (19 tokens/1382.2 pmw) coining the catchphrase ‘A government which
business can do business with’ (The Labour Party 1992: 11). But neither the co-
text of ‘business’ nor the manifesto itself contains any tax is a burden metaphor
or the promise of tax cuts. This only starts in the Labour manifestos of 1997,
and increases in 2001.
Although we are discussing the keyword list comparing the Labour manifes-
tos of 1987 and 1997, it is appropriate at this point to include some data from
Germany to illustrate the parallels between the two discourses in Germany and
Britain, but at the same time point to the cultural specificity. In both keyword lists
produced for the purpose of analysis – the keywords between the spd and cdu
manifestos of 1997 and the keywords between the spd manifestos of 1990 and
1998 – ‘Unternehmen’ appears as a keyword for the spd of 1998.18 Furthermore,
the term ‘Mittelstand’, used for small and medium-sized businesses, is a keyword
in the comparison of the two spd manifestos. The keyword ‘Unternehmen’ in Ger-
many behaves similarly to the keyword ‘business’ in the UK in terms of the tax is
a burden metaphor, the demand for tax cuts and the increase in frequency in gen-
eral (from 751 pmw in spd 1990 to 3060.3 pmw in SPD 1998). Whilst in 1990, the
spd argued that they ruled out tax cuts for businesses (‘Für Steuersenkungen für
Unternehmen und Spitzenverdiener sehen wir keinen Raum’ (spd Parteivorstand
1990: 21), from 1994 on, with the demand for reducing taxes, the use of the tax
18. See Table 12 and Table 13 PAGEREF _Ref425512451 \p \h on page 65.

is a burden concept increases significantly. ‘Unternehmen’ are metaphorically

construed as ‘Motor für Innovationen und Arbeitsplätze’.
Parallel to the frequency increases of ‘Unternehmen’ the frequency of ‘Mit-
telstand’ also increases (0 in spd 1990, 272.7 pmw in spd 1994, 647.4 pmw in
spd 1998). This has been a political symbol word with the meaning of small and
medium-sized businesses since the 1950s. Since 1990, it has strongly collocated
with backbone (‘Rückgrat’) in DeReKo (LL 3700). The conceptual metaphor small
and medium-sized enterprises as backbone of the german economy has
since become a well-known topos in German politics and the media. Whilst the
term ‘Mittelstand’ in this sense is used in the CDU manifesto of 1987, it is absent
from the SPD manifestos of 1987 and 1990 and then increases in use. The SPD
manifesto of 1998 uses it in the context of the tax is a burden metaphor and also
construes it as backbone of the german economy.
This comparative analysis of the use of the terms ‘business’, ‘industry’, ‘Un-
ternehmen’ and ‘Mittelstand’ in the German and British manifestos between 1990
and 2002 has shown that Labour and the SPD underwent similar changes in their
ideology: they became more focused on the success of businesses, which was
formerly the domain of the Conservatives, and also use the metaphor of tax as a
burden, increasingly in connection with the question of industrial policy. At the
same time, there is a component of political culture in the use of the lexis, since
‘Mittelstand’ has become a symbol word in Germany. The parallel term ‘small and
medium-sized enterprises’ (‘sme’) or ‘small businesses’ is not used in the same way
in the UK, but both ‘Unternehmen’ and ‘Mittelstand’ behave in the same way as
‘business’ diachronically.
In the comparison of the 1997 and 1987 Labour manifestos, ‘welfare’ is the
keyword with the third highest keyness value. This term, which the reader in
the second decade of the twenty-first century certainly perceives as a political
catchword, does not enter the Labour manifestos before 1997. In the Conservative
manifestos before 1997, it is mainly used in the collocation ‘animal welfare’. The
headline ‘welfare to work’ is the first appearance of ‘welfare’ in the sense of the
welfare state in the 1997 Conservative manifesto, and under this headline the Con-
servative Party proposes ‘helping people off welfare and into work, and curbing
welfare fraud’ (Conservative Party 2000c: 432). It is possible that ‘welfare’ as a new
catchword for the old discourse over the size of the welfare state only started to
become salient with the welfare-to-work discourse that historically dates back to
Clinton’s workfare ideas and was then introduced into the British discourse (King
and Wickham-Jones 1999: 65). By 1994, however, there is a strong connotational
competition in terms of ‘welfare to work’ in the British political discourse, as the
following quotation from Tony Blair’s speech at the 1994 Labour party conference
demonstrates:
The Tories will cut benefits and make poverty worse. We will put welfare to work –
a nation at work not on benefit. (Blair 1995a: 104)
By 1997, the welfare-to-work idea is well established: it features six times as a

catchphrase in the Labour manifesto of that year.
The fourth most salient keyword in the keyword list is ‘spending’, which is
rarely used in the 1987 and 1992 Labour manifestos, but is clearly present in the
Conservative manifestos at the time. In 1997 and 2001, it is similarly frequent
in the Conservative and the Labour manifestos. The concordance lines do not
give a clear co-occurrence pattern, but reading whole paragraphs around the key-
word ‘spending’ together show a clear argumentative pattern in the New Labour
manifestos. Two contrary argumentative strands seem to dominate the texts. New
Labour argues that the conservative cuts are damaging to the country and have to
be reversed. However, they also point out that the Conservatives overspent and
wasted money. Labour’s conclusion is to be a ‘wise spender’ which will increase
the effectiveness on the one hand, and show prudence by sticking to the spending
limits set by the Conservative government on the other.
In Labour’s 1987 manifesto, there are two counter discourses to the Conserva-
tive low-taxation economy and low-spending government: one is reflected in the
negative keyword ‘cuts’, which is used as part of the stigma words for the conser-
vative policies: ‘Tory cuts’ for spending cuts and ‘tax cuts’ for the low taxation
policy. At the same time, government spending is construed as ‘resources’, another
negative keyword in the keyword list. This positive idea of government spending
as a necessary resource for many public services is only rudimentary in both the
Labour and the Conservative manifestos of 1997:
That ‘market’ and ‘partnership’ appear as keywords for the 1997 manifesto is
hardly surprising, since they are central values of New Labour. Their use, how-
ever, differs in the Labour and Conservative manifestos of 1997. The evaluation
of ‘market’ is clear in the Conservative manifestos, where ‘free market’, ‘opening
markets’, and ‘competitive markets’ are used as positive goals; three occurrences
are used in the context of ‘single market’ – the Conservatives’ central topos in the
EU discourse. The Labour manifestos employ ‘internal market’ four times – refer-
ring to the NHS reforms of the Conservatives and evaluating them negatively. The
traditional Third Way topos in terms of the state–market divide is captured in the
following quotation:
The old left would have sought state control of industry. The Conservative right
is content to leave all to the market. We reject both approaches. Government and
industry must work together to achieve key objectives aimed at enhancing the
dynamism of the market, not undermining it. (The Labour Party 1997: 3)
At first, the evaluation of the market seems neutral – only too much market is a
problem – but it then changes into a strong positive institution through its char-
acterisation as ‘dynamic’.
‘Community’ appears as a negative keyword in the comparison of the 1997 and
1987 manifesto, which means it is used less frequently in 1997. As it is a central
concept in third-way discourses (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 41), it was surprising
to see it as a negative keyword, which was more frequent in the 1987 manifesto.
Again, a lemmatised search that also includes the plural ‘communities’ can shed
light on the phenomenon: in 1987, the singular appears 18 times, the plural five
times – in 1997 both singular and plural appear 10 times. The central ideological
phrase in the 1987 manifesto is the self-reference ‘the democratic socialist philoso-
phy of community and caring’ (The Labour Party 1987: 3) and the repeated use of
the noun with the definite article suggests that ‘community’ here is used as a less
contested term for society or state. Williams’s (1983: 76) description of the cultural
keyword ‘community’ supports this analysis, as he argues the term is a ‘warmly
persuasive word’, stressing that ‘unlike all other terms of social organisation (state,
nation, society, etc.) it seems never to be used unfavourably, and never to be given
any positive opposing or distinguishing term’.
The increasing use of the plural ‘communities’ in the New Labour manifestos
seems to indicate the pluralisation, localisation and decentralisation of the com-
munitarist discourse that influenced New Labour (Fairclough 2000: 37–40), which
leads to the Third-Way critique of the individualist world view of neoliberalism, as
well as of the centralising aspects of Thatcherism. However the use of community
in the manifestos also indicates a neoliberal connotation of the term ‘community’
as described by Bennet et al. (2005: 53):
It comes as no surprise that by the mid-1980s, in a context of market-driven eco-
nomic and political liberalisation, the collapse of communism […] the discourse
of community is used to legitimate conservative private assistance and self-help
projects and liberal public–private partnerships that ‘empower’ communities to
govern and even police themselves.
As the frequency of ‘community’ increases from the 1997 to the 2001 manifesto,
the ideas of self-help and community power also become more frequent, and in
the 2001 manifesto the idea is described as core to Labour’s ideology:
Voluntary and community organisations are key to Labour’s vision for Britain.
The discourse history of ‘Gemeinschaft’ in German is very different from the Eng-
lish word ‘community’. Although it played an important role in the sociological
critique of the industrial society at the end of the nineteenth century,19 it became a
programme term of national-conservative and voelkisch-nationalist movements at
the same time (Riedel 1997: 859), and was finally part of the core programme term
‘Volksgemeinschaft’ in the National Socialist ideology. ‘Gemeinschaft’ therefore
belongs to a group of former national-socialist terms whose use in the political
discourse of post-war Germany is restricted. The differences in the frequencies in
the German and English manifestos reflect this fact:
Table 11. ‘Community’ and ‘Gemeinschaft’ in the election manifestos

Community Tokens Frequency per million
Conservative Manifestos 1987–2005 161 1593.6
Labour Manifestos 1987–2005 217 2090.7
GEMEINSCHAFT
CDU manifestos 1987–2005 29 398.9
SPD manifestos 1987–2005 23 239.4
As the communitarian discourse was also received and discussed in the SPD (Re-
ese-Schäfer 1999: 72–74) the question arises of how this element of the Third Way
discourse is represented in Germany. In the SPD manifestos between 1987 and
1994, the main collocation is indeed ‘Europäische Gemeinschaft’, which changes
in 1998, where ‘Gemeinschaft’ only appears twice, and once in the definition of
‘Die Neue Mitte’, and once in the context of the welfare discourse and the adoption
of the ‘rights and responsibilities’ and ‘welfare to work’ topos:
Wir verstehen uns als Gemeinschaft der Solidarität der Stärkeren mit den
Schwächeren. (SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 12–13)
We see ourselves as a community of solidarity of the strong with the weaker.
…werden wir dafür sorgen, daß Sozialhilfeempfänger angebotene Arbeitsplätze

auch annehmen. Sollten angebotene Arbeitsplätze ohne wichtigen Grund nicht
angenommen werden, so müssen die bestehenden gesetzlichen Vorschriften zur
Kürzung der Sozialhilfe angewandt werden. In einer Gemeinschaft gibt es nicht
nur Rechte, sondern auch Pflichten. (SPD Parteivorstand 1998a: 38)
…We will ensure that social benefits claimants will take jobs they are offered. Should
job offers not be accepted, the existing rules to cut benefits need to be enforced. In a
community, there are not only rights, but also responsibilities.
Although the use of ‘Gemeinschaft’ as a political programme word is restricted in

German political discourse, there is an attempt to recontextualise the ‘community’
19. The core text here is Tönnies (1887/1979).

element of the Third-Way discourse into the German discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’.
However, this recontextualisation, at least with the term ‘Gemeinschaft’, seems to
have failed, as in the 2002 manifesto; the term is again exclusively used in the
context of foreign policy. This does not mean the topos that it represents has not
been recontextualised – but a different term was necessary. In 2000, the Third-Way
topos of community was heavily debated under the labels ‘zivile Bürgergesellschaft’
or ‘Zivilgesellschaft’. Schröder invited a group of experts to discuss how this idea
could become the central idea of social democracy (Wolfrum 2013: 199–200).
He also published an article in Frankfurter Hefte in which he reproduces all the
traditional New Labour topoi and connects them to the new term ‘Zivilgesell-
schaft’. All these topoi are connected in the purposive topos of ‘Erneuerung der
Zivilgesellschaft’ in order to follow the central social democratic values of ‘soziale
Gerechtigkeit’:
Die Erneuerung der Zivilgesellschaft ist aber nicht bloß eine Option unter vielen.
Sie ist ein Gebot, wenn wir nicht nur die Prinzipien der sozialen Gerechtigkeit
beherzigen wollen, sondern auch den ersten, vornehmsten Artikel des Grundge-
setzes „Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar“. (Schröder 2000: 203)
The renewal of the civil society is not only one option amongst others. It is a require-
ment if we do not only want to follow the principle of social justice, but also the most
noble of all articles of the constitution: Human dignity is inviolable.
This shows that the new term is actually not a replacement of the Third-Way dis-
course, as Wolfrum (2013: 199) argues, but rather a new attempt to recontextualise
the community discourse. The new terminology is then also included in the elec-
tion manifesto of 2002.
The two keyword lists from the German corpus, comparing the SPD mani-
festo of 1998 to the CDU manifesto of the same year and to the SPD manifesto of
1990, point mainly towards discursive structures I have already analysed either
in this or the previous section. This is especially true for the synchronic keyword
list (Table 13), but a few words on the comparison with the SPD manifesto
from 1990 seem necessary. The central new keyword here is ‘Entlastung’, which
is part of the conceptual metaphor TAXES AS BURDEN, which, in the Third Way,
has become central to social democratic policies, together with forms of ‘senken’
(6 tokens/335.1 pmw in 1998) and ‘Senkung’ (13 tokens/765.1 pmw), neither of
which appear in 1990.
Table 12. Keywords in the 1998 SPD election manifesto compared to the 1998 CDU
manifesto
Keyword Freq. % RC. Freq. RRC. % Keyness P
BUNDESREGIERUNG 63 0.42 0 57.63 0.00
BÜRGERINNEN 30 0.20 0 27.42 0.00
FRAUEN 26 0.17 0 23.76 0.00
ARBEIT 60 0.40 10 0.11 17.49 0.00
UNTERNEHMEN 58 0.38 11 0.13 14.54 0.00
ARBEITNEHMERINNEN 13 0.09 0 11.88 0.00
BERUF 13 0.09 0 11.88 0.00
SICHERHEIT 24 0.16 2 0.02 11.84 0.00
BILDUNG 24 0.16 2 0.02 11.84 0.00
ARBEITSLOSIGKEIT 24 0.16 2 0.02 11.84 0.00
GERECHTIGKEIT 23 0.15 2 0.02 11.09 0.00
WEITERBILDUNG 12 0.08 0 10.96 0.00
WOHLSTAND 12 0.08 0 10.96 0.00
INNOVATION 16 0.11 1 0.01 9.02 0.00
MARK 16 0.11 1 0.01 9.02 0.00
STEUERREFORM 23 0.15 3 0.03 8.44 0.00
RECHTE 9 0.06 0 8.22 0.00
FDP 9 0.06 0 8.22 0.00
TEILHABE 9 0.06 0 8.22 0.00
INTEGRATION 3 0.02 10 0.11 −8.77 0.00
CDU 10 0.07 45 0.51 −47.41 0.00
CSU 9 0.06 45 0.51 −49.99 0.00
election manifesto
SPD-GEFÜHRTE 52 0.34 0 44.34 0.00
UNTERNEHMEN 58 0.38 7 0.09 19.84 0.00
GESELLSCHAFT 41 0.27 3 0.04 19.39 0.00
BUNDESREGIERUNG 63 0.42 10 0.12 16.55 0.00
OSTDEUTSCHLAND 19 0.13 0 16.19 0.00
INNOVATION 16 0.11 0 13.63 0.00
ARBEIT 60 0.40 11 0.14 13.20 0.00

ENTLASTUNG 13 0.09 0 11.07 0.00
KRIMINALITÄT 13 0.09 0 11.07 0.00
SENKUNG 13 0.09 0 11.07 0.00
JUGEND 13 0.09 0 11.07 0.00
STÄDTE 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
STABILITÄT 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
MITTELSTAND 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
JUGENDLICHEN 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
POLIZEI 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
ARBEITSMARKT 11 0.07 0 9.37 0.00
HOCHSCHULEN 10 0.07 0 8.52 0.00
ÄLTEREN 10 0.07 0 8.52 0.00
KERNENERGIE 1 7 0.09 −9.66 0.00
BUNDESREPUBLIK 1 8 0.10 −11.53 0.00
ENERGIE 1 8 0.10 −11.53 0.00
INVESTITIONEN 4 0.03 13 0.16 −12.41 0.00
LÄNDERN 10 0.07 25 0.31 −19.63 0.00
5.8 Political lexis and political myth: re-, rück- and wieder-derivations as
signifiers for a golden-age myth
Reading Mandelson and Liddle (1996), one lexical feature strikes the reader: the
amount of ‘re-’ derivations. Table 6 below shows examples from four publications.
In this section, I shall discuss the rhetorical function of these derivations in the
English text and explore whether a similar function exists in Hombach (1998).
A closer look at the table reveals that the German examples work slightly dif-
ferently, since ‘re-’ derivations do not cover the same semantic field or carry the
same meaning. From a linguistic point of view, re-derivations in English can be
distinguished in two groups (Carstairs-McCarthy 2002: 23–24):
1. ‘re-’ meaning again (‘rewrite, repaint, revisit’), phonetically [ri];
2. ‘re-’ meaning something like ‘back again’ (‘revive, return, restore, revise, re-
verse’), phonetically [rə];
Table 14. re- and rück- and wieder-derivations

Giddens Schröder-Blair
– political idealism revived (2) – renew its ideas/Zukunftsentwürfe erneuern
– the labour party as reconstructed by Tony (§1)
Blair (22) – rekindling a spirit of community (§32)/
– radical rethinking in relation to the changing Bereitschaft und die Fähigkeit zum Dialog und
nature of aging (46) Konses wieder neu zu gewinnen (§34)
– A renewed social democracy has to be left of – the burden of taxation should be rebalanced
centre (47) (§51)/neu ausbalanciert
– reconstruct state (70) – We invite all social democrats in Europe not to
– state legitimacy has to be renewed (72) let this opportunity for renewal pass by (§ 105)/
– renewal of public sphere (77) historische Chance der Erneuerung
– reinventing government
– renewal of civic culture (80)
– renewal of deprived local communities
– rebuilt public sphere (106)
– recapturing of public space (107)
– redistribution of possibilities
– not dismantle but reconstruct welfare state
(113)
Mandelson Hombach
– reinvention/reapplication/restatement of – Es gilt, zu den Prinzipien der sozialen
Labour Marktwirtschaft zurückzukehren (14)
– restatement of values – Der Kernbegriff ist die Rekonstruktion der
– Make Britain a young country again (15) – sozialen Marktwirtschaft (14)
Economic dynamism and vitality restored – Neubewertung von Rechten und Pflichten (23)
– The concept of community enables New – Das Modell Deutschland erneuern (25)
Labour to reclaim ground that should – Es ist die Zeit der Erneuerung (27)
never have been conceded to our political – Wir müssen die Politik wieder in Gang bringen
opponents (21) (46)
– He wants Labour to rediscover its identity by – Die soziale Marktwirtschaft hat nicht versagt.
building on its founding values, not on any Aber es gilt, zu ihren Prinzipien zurückzukeh-
rigid ideology … (31) ren (49)
– reinvention of labour (2,39) – Kernbegriff Rekonstruktion der sozialen
– Blair has reshaped Labour policy making (57) Marktwirtschaft (55)
– rebuilt manufacturing strength (85) – Eine Rückkehr zu diesen Eckwerten [Konsens
– (divided Kingdom) – a reunited Kingdom und Kooperation, positives Ordnungsden-
(124) ken statt Laissez-faire, Pragmatismus in der
– A strong society can be rebuilt only on firm Wirtschaftspolitik] erwarten heute alle (58)
foundations (124) – Drehbuch für sozialdemokratische Erneuer-
– restore the meaningfulness of the principle of ung – Erneuerung des sozialdemokratischen
individually based … social insurance (127) Politikmodells (62)
– New Labour reunites society (143) – Wiederentdeckung des Wertes von Konsens
– Rebuild a strong sense of community (155) und Kooperation
– Party’s health restored (212) – aktivierenden Staat wiederbeleben – Verständ-
– Revitalising the civil service nis von Erhard (117)
Both groups are not necessarily allomorphic, since they can construct different
lexical items with the same root, for example ‘return’ in the sense of ‘come back’
as opposed to ‘re-turn’ meaning ‘turn again’. In the German examples, these func-
tions are fulfilled by different prefixes: ‘(zu)rück-’, ‘er-’ and ‘wieder-’.
Three questions will guide the following analysis: Firstly, I will explore the rhe-
torical and ideological function of this constant use of re-derivations. The second
question will be whether a similar rhetorical structure can be found in Hombach’s
text, because the ‘re-’ morpheme in English is translated as ‘rück-’ and ‘wieder-’,
which do not have the same ambiguity.
In the Mandelson and Liddle text, the re-derivations seem to construe a sense
of ‘back to the original’ or back to the good old times, even when they just mean
‘again’ – blurring the differences here:
He wants Labour to rediscover its identity by building on its founding values, not
on any rigid ideology […]. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 31)
For Labour, modernisation is about far more than red roses […]. It is about a
fundamental reinvention of what Labour offers to the British people. […] How-
ever, the business of reinvention does not involve abandonment of Labour’s basic
principles and convictions. It means a sharper definition of those core aims and
values and their thorough reapplication to the circumstances of the modern
world. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 2, emphasis MK)
Blair has reshaped Labour policy making. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 57)
The first example is clearly a case of ‘back to the roots’ and construes an affirmation
of ideological groupness of the Labour Party, despite the disqualification of ‘ideol-
ogy’ as ‘rigid’. The second example, however, can be read as ‘new-invention’ – an
interpretation that is supported by the modifier ‘fundamental’ and the context of
‘modernisation’. The authors, however, stress that this does not mean to ‘abandon’ the
core values of the Labour Party, but to apply them again (‘reapplication’). The whole
‘re-’ rhetoric in this context therefore incorporates two contradictory topoi used in
the New Labour discourse: the focus on the Labour Party being ‘new’ and aiming
for a ‘new Britain’ on the one hand, and a ‘golden age’ on the other. This golden-age
myth can be understood as a narrative supporting the argument that there was an
original state of affairs that was good but which has now become dysfunctional.
Therefore, one must return to this original state of affairs. Tannock (1995: 454)
analyses this as a golden-age topos, which is part of a nostalgia rhetoric that
[…] turns to the past to find/construct sources of identity, agency, or community,
that are felt to be lacking, blocked, subverted, or threatened in the present. The
‘positively evaluated’ past is approached as a source for something now perceived
to be missing; but it need not be thought of as a time of general happiness, peace-
fulness, stability, or freedom.
In a discourse of party modernisation this topos or myth can be used to construct

ideological groupness. It can convince more traditional party supporters that at
its core the party is staying the same. This Janus-faced rhetoric implied in the re-
derivations speaks to modernisers and non-modernisers at the same time.
In the following section, I will refer to the golden-age invoked in this rhetoric
as a political myth, as we will see in the metaphor chapter that metaphor and nar-
rative are also used to construe this rhetoric. Strategically, the reference to myths
allows an emotional connection with the audience because the myths are deeply
embedded in our thinking:
In the process of growing up in society most people encounter hundreds of myths
that gradually slip into their subconscious thinking. For example, young children
are exposed to a battery of folk tales through school, parents, and the mass media.
(Bennett, W. Lance 1980: 168–69)
Since myths are so ingrained in our thinking, they allow speakers to link the
political reality they project to the private experiences of their audience. Although
political myths are narratives and can be unfolded in a speech in their entirety,
they can also just be alluded to: ‘Myth does not have to be retold as a narrative, but
can be evoked by conventional labels’ (Flood 2002: 125). Blair does this through
the use of metaphor.
In collocations with ‘Britain’, the golden-age myth is often foregrounded in
discussions of economic policy (e.g. ‘rebuilt manufacturing strength’, p. 84). It is
also connected to the programme term of ‘one nation’ in places where Mandelson
and Liddle open the opposition of a ‘divided Kingdom’ under the Conservatives
and a ‘reunited’ Kingdom as the aim of new Labour.
Although German does not have a similarly ambiguous and universal struc-
ture, once one is aware of the rhetoric from New Labour, a parallel but cultur-
ally adapted rhetoric can be found in Hombach’s text. Numerous times, he calls
‘Rekonstruktion der sozialen Marktwirtschaft’ a core concept (‘Kernbegriff ’) of
the SPD of the new centre. ‘Rekonstruieren’ in German is similar to the English
concept of ‘reconstruct’ as two definitions from dictionaries show:
To construct or put together again, esp. following damage or destruction, or by
way of renovation (OED Oxford English Dictionary online 2015d)
[…] etw. Zerstörtes oder nicht mehr Vorhandenes aus den Überresten oder mit
Hilfe indirekter Zeugnisse möglichst naturgetreu wieder aufbauen oder nach-
bilden. (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2014)
[…] to restore something destroyed or missing, or to reconstruct something supported

by indirect evidence
It can therefore be read as part of a golden-age topos as well. Hombach, however,

uses this topos much more directly, and connects it to the mirandum that became
the central programme term of the modernised SPD: ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’.
This is the golden age, the original state that all German parties have neglected
and that the SPD wants to ‘reconstruct’. This golden-age topos is the centre of
an argumentative network: the call for ‘Erneuerung’ (pp. 25 and 27) is followed
by crisis topoi (‘Zufriedenheitsfalle’, p. 28; ‘ein Teufelskreis aus apokalyptischer
Weltsicht und mentaler und struktureller Reformunfähigkeit’, p. 29; ‘Vier-Augen-
Gesellschaft’, pp. 29–30; ‘Jammergesellschaft’, p. 33; ‘Globalisierung’, pp. 33–43).
Hombach then calls on Ludwig Erhard, supposedly the father of the social market
economy, and connects his name to the golden-age topos as well as the topos
of the end of ideology. The founding father, so this metaphorical construction
says, has not mentioned the SPD in his will, but his actual family – the CDU –
has abandoned him:
Ich bin realistisch: Ludwig Erhard hat die deutschen Sozialdemokraten nicht in
seinem Testament bedacht. Aber seine Enkel haben sein Erbe verspielt, seine
Erkenntnisse sind heute herrenloses Gut. Es ist nur legitim, Ludwig Erhard für
eine moderne Politik der Sozialdemokraten zu entdecken und seine Erkenntnisse
zu nutzen. Er wird ein Stützpfeiler der Brücke sein, die liberale Prinzipien und die
Grundwerte der Sozialdemokratie zu einer vernünftigen und durchschlagkräfti-
gen Synthese verbindet. Der Kernbegriff dieser Synthese ist die Rekonstruktion
der sozialen Marktwirtschaft. (Hombach 1998: 54)
I am realistic about this. Ludwig Erhard did not leave the Social Democrats anything
is his will. But his heirs have frittered away his heritage and his ideas have been
abandoned. His name may fairly be invoked in connection with the contemporary
policies of the Social democrats, and his ideas be exploited. He will stand as one of
the pillars that carry the bridge which links liberal principles to the basic values of
the SPD, thereby forming a powerful ad rational synthesis of interest. At the centre of
this synthesis lies the reconstruction of the social market economy.
(Hombach 2000, 25)
This is also a good example for the legitimisation of adopting a conservative pro-
gramme term. The original ‘owner’ is disqualified, because it no longer does the
concept justice. In other parts of the text, ‘wieder-’ and ‘neu’- derivations are used
to gain the same effect: Hombach demands a ‘Neubewertung von Rechten und
Pflichten’, a ‘Wiederentdeckung des Wertes von Konsens und Kooperation’ and a
‘Wiederbeleben’ of the activating state. This shows again that Hombach uses the
same general rhetorical mechanisms as New Labour – here the re-derivations –
but adapts it to the German discourse by using the central German symbol term
‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’.
The re-/wieder-/new-derivations and their connection to a golden-age topos

can therefore be seen as a strategic rhetorical device of legitimisation (Kranert
2018) , but are used differently in the two discourses: New Labour uses it to reaf-
firm the ideological identity of Labour, whereas Hombach employs it to legitimise
the change of ideology in the SPD and the takeover of central concepts of the
Christian Democrats (Soziale Marktwirtschaft) as well as of the Third Way (aktiv-
ierender Sozialstaat).
5.9 Conclusions: Political lexis and political culture
In this chapter I have analysed the lexico-semantic strategies of the Third-Way

ideologues as well as in the election manifestos and party conference speeches of
the Labour Party and the SPD and discussed their dependency on genre as well
as on political culture. Five main conclusions can be drawn from the discussion:
(1) The semantic frame of the Third Way is genre dependent: The similarities
between the discourses of New Labour and the New Centre became clear in
the three-way conceptualisation of programme and stigma terms as well as
in the redefinitions and recontextualisations of core concepts such as social
justice, equality and solidarity. In both discourses, these concepts have been
reinterpreted as part of the hegemonic, more individualist and economic ide-
ology that could be defined as neoliberalism, despite Giddens’ and Hombach’s
construction of neoliberalism as a competing right-wing ideology.
In party conference speeches, the developed semantic frame is generally less
prominent, as they focus on the external competition rather than on internal
factions. This is also the case for the election manifestos. The 1998 SPD mani-
festo uses the three-way semantic frame only once, as it represents a compro-
mise between Third-Way modernisers and traditionalists: it introduces the
new programme term ‘Eigenverantwortung’ via an opposition to the stigma
term ‘Bevormundung’, which can be read as a term that stigmatises ‘the old
left’. In the 1997 Labour manifesto, in contrast, the three way semantic frame
is salient: This allows the Labour party to pre-empt the typical conservative
strategy that stigmatises Labour as socialist and radical, relying on the memory
of the radicalisation in the Labour Party in the 1980s.
(2) Political lexis and the semantic battle are part of the political culture: In the
theoretical discussion of elements of comparative political discourse analysis,
we saw that political culture needs to be understood as a semiotic system in
which forces of inertia and change compete. In the analysis of the political lexis
in the discourses of the Third Way in this chapter we saw similar mechanisms
of change at work: Redefinitions, recontextualisations and the adoption of

key symbol terms as programme terms. Both the Labour Party and the SPD
adopted and reinterpreted former conservative programme terms: Labour
used ‘one nation’ and the SPD ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’. The terms themselves
and their history, however, are part of the local political culture. This also
became evident in the comparative analysis of the German and English text
of the Schröder-Blair-paper. Here we saw how the two texts were adapted to
the political lexis of the country they were intended for – and the indication
that politicians themselves as language users are aware of the differences in the
lexis used in their political community.
(3) The strategy of metalinguistic comments points towards sites of semantic
struggle: It is one of the central insights of CDA that texts are ‘sites of struggle’
which inevitably ‘show traces of differing discourses and ideologies contending
and struggling for dominance’ (Wodak and Meyer, M. 2009a: 10). My analysis
of metalinguistic comments in the party conference speeches demonstrates
that these comments are indicators of such semantic struggle and point to the
differences in the discourses of the Third Way: While Schröder and Lafontaine
used them to negotiate differences within the SPD at the time, Blair, having
united the party, turned them against the external enemy – the Conservatives.
(4) Corpus assisted analysis can point to important differences in political lexis:
The corpus assisted analysis of the election manifestos demonstrated that such
an approach can help to guide the attention of the analyst to phenomena of
large texts that are otherwise difficult to see. It brought to light a particular
type of semantic competition which happened in the 1998 election in Ger-
many, which can be attributed to the context of political culture: the catch
term pair ‘rot-grün’ (stigma term used by the CDU) and ‘SPD-geführte
Bundesregierung’ (programme term used by the SPD) is part of what is called
‘Lagerwahlkampf ’ on the side of the CDU and a counter-attempt by the SPD.
We also were able to see that verbs such as ‘reform’ and ‘help’ seemed to be of
more strategic importance in the British texts, whilst the German semantic
battle seems to rely more on nouns and compound nouns, which could be an
effect of typological differences in word formation in English and German.
However, we also saw that a corpus assisted approach can pose challenges for
an analyst working with discourses in different languages, primarily because
of the difficulty of choosing the right reference corpus. The discussion also in-
dicated the importance of an analysis of both lemmatised and non-lemmatised
keyword lists, as some nouns are key in singular or plural only, a feature that
can be constitutive for a particular discourse.
(5) Political lexis and political myth: The final part of the lexical analysis in this
chapter systematically mapped the use of a striking lexical feature of discourse
of ‘New Labour’ in the ideological publications: the high frequency of ‘re’-

derivations. They seemed to point to the use of a golden age topos that, once
the reader is aware of it, can also be identified in Hombach’s (1998) ‘Aufbruch’.
We will see in the analysis of argumentation and metaphor how this is sys-
tematically used in the discourses of the Third Way but adapted to the local
political culture.
Chapter 6
The argumentative structure of

party-political discourse in the discourses
of ‘new Labour’ and ‘Die Neue Mitte’
6.1 Political deliberation and ideology: The argumentative structure

of politics
The analysis of argumentation is central to the analysis of political discourse in

democracies, since the basis of political discourse in democracies is, to put it sim-
ply, collective decision-making on the basis of valid arguments. An exchange of
arguments becomes necessary if there are doubts about the validity of facts, values
and decisions for action. Klein (1980: 19) therefore defines argumentation as a
method to transform a contested proposition into a socially accepted proposition
via another socially accepted proposition. Niehr (2014: 152) supports this descrip-
tion as a particularly helpful definition for politico-linguistics, since it accounts
for the ideal of decision-making in politics as being deliberative. As discussed
above, in terms of Chilton’s and Schäffner’s (1997) strategies in political discourse,
argumentation mainly belongs to the strategies of (de)legitimisation, but we will
see that we also have to take strategies of (de)politicisation into account.
Many analytical approaches to argumentation in discourse linguistics are
based on Toulmin’s model of argumentation (Toulmin 2003), originally published
in 1958. In this model, a statement always includes a validity claim that needs
to be backed up with arguments, if contested. The result of argumentation is a
justified conclusion. Toulmin uses the example of Harry, who claims to be a British
subject. It is assumed that Harry was born in Bermuda, and the rule applies that
people born in Bermuda are British citizens. This rule, the warrant, allows the
move from the data to the conclusion. An argument therefore consists of three
obligatory elements: data, warrant and conclusion. Elements that support the
warrant (backing), that concede restriction of the argument (rebuttal) or express
the speaker’s degree of certainty (qualifier) are optional. The whole structure is
reproduced in Figure 11.
Data Conclusion
Harry was So presumably
born in …
Bermuda Harry is a
British subject
Warrant
Since
a man born in
Bermuda will
be a British
subject
Rebuttal
Unless
both his
Backing parents were
On account of aliens/he has
the following become
statutes and a naturalised
other legal American/ …
provisions: …
Figure 11. Toulmin’s Model of Argumentation, my figure, original example from

Toulmin (2003: pp. 90–97)
Whilst Toulmin’s model is helpful for argumentative texts with clearly delineated
argumentative moves, most texts in public discourse are not structured in such a
way, and particular elements of it, especially the warrants, are often implicit, or
part of a metaphor. Discourse analysts have therefore focused on the warrants,
which they call ‘topoi’ in the tradition of Aristotle. Aristotle discusses topoi as part
of enthymemes or rhetorical syllogism, in which the conclusion is not logically
cogent but is nevertheless plausible (Wengeler 2003a). Kopperschmidt (1989), fol-
lowing Aristotle, distinguishes formal and material topoi: formal topoi are general
abstract warrants, and independent of the content of an argument. Material topoi,
by comparison, are specific to a field of discourse and therefore at a lower level of
abstraction than formal topoi – an example is the warrant in Toulmin’s original
example (‘A man born in Bermuda will be a British subject.’). Discourse-Historical
approaches of those such as Wengeler (2003b) or Reisigl and Wodak (2009) are
mainly interested in material topoi as patterns of thought or patterns of discourse,
and compare the changes in these patterns over time.
Yet, absent in the discourse-historical approaches is the question of complex
patterns of argumentation in the different discourse types. Analysing the pragmat-
ics of political argumentation in different topics and different genres of political
Chapter 6. The argumentative structure of party-political discourse 171
communication in Germany, Klein (2000a) shows that in political discourse, argu-

ments are integrated into reoccurring complex schemata, independent of genre
and topic. He shows that all political discourse calls for action, and supports the
call with reference to an evaluation of the situation, a definition of aims and a
reference to values of the political group or society as such. He then argues that
this macro structure corresponds to Austin’s (1956: 6) ‘machinery of acting’, which
aims to capture the process of individual action planning and justification. Austin
(1956) develops his hierarchy of action from the process of decision-making,
based on the analysis of failed actions and of the excuses we make. These excuses
contain arguments supporting the action, which Austin categorises. Figure 12
shows the parallels between Austin’s model of action and the argumentative pat-
terns in political discourse, deduced by Klein:
Model of action (Austin) Argumentative patterns in political discourse

Stage of receipt of intelligence DATA OF SITUATION
Stage of appreciation of situation EVALUATION OF SITUATION
Stage of invocation of principles VALUES
Stage of planning the action GOALS
Stage of decision CALL FOR ACTION
Executive and control
Figure 12. Austin’s stages of action and Klein’s argumentative macro topoi in political
discourse, translated and adapted from Klein (2000a, 34)
Call for action
Purposive topos (aims)
Value
Motivational topos topos
(evaluation of situation)
(Consequence topos)
Data topos
Figure 13. Macro topoi in political discourse, adapted and translated from Klein
(2000a: 638)
The stages of Austin’s machinery of action are conditions of action which form a
clear hierarchy. Klein (2000a: 335) shows that Austin’s stages of acting are argu-
mentative stages in practical reasoning, which must be introduced to understand
complex political arguments. Figure 12 shows the complex topological patterns as
suggested by Klein (2000a: 638).
In an analysis of the economic crisis of 2008, Kuck and Römer (2012) integrate
the analysis of material topoi as suggested by the discourse-historical school of
discourse linguistics in Germany with the description of political speech acts, and
Klein’s complex topos analysis, into a complex model as shown in Figure 14.
JUSTIFY/ JUSTIFY/
ESTABLISH LEGITIMISE
data topos decisions, actions
practical reasoning
EXPLAIN
causal topos
ACKNOWLEDGE/
APPEAL TO values, STATE/ DEMAND/
principles PROMISE goals
Values topos Purposive topos
Figure 14. Argumentative structure of political discourse, adapted from Kuck and Römer
(2012: 77)
Kuck and Römer (2012) then analysed the corpus for material topoi and sorted
them into the categories they had developed – therefore they combined an analysis
of a complex pattern of argumentation with an analysis of material topoi of the
financial crisis, to reveal a clearer picture of the reasoning within that specific
discourse. I followed their method in my analysis and marked the argumentative
steps in the various texts of the corpus manually, recorded them in spreadsheets
and, in the described swinging between theory and empirical work, decided on
categories of topoi. In the description of my results, will use their adapted model
of the macro topoi and adapt it according to my results.
In the analysis of the data, a few adaptations of this model appeared to be
necessary, which I will briefly introduce here to round up the theory discussion,
but will come back to in more detail in the actual analysis.
The first adaptation of the argumentation model became evident in the analy-
sis of the party conference speeches of my corpus: two argumentative strategies
occur regularly in the speeches and form a central mechanism: credit claiming
and blaming. This is a typical example of inductive influences of the empirical text
analysis back to the theory discussed. In his seminal article on the politics of blame-
avoidance, Weaver (1986) argues that policy makers are motivated by receiving
credit for successful policies and by minimising the risk of blame for unsuccessful
ones, since political competitors aim to blame each other for political failure. Both
credit claiming and blaming are central parts of the rhetorical structure of a party
conference speech. They fulfil two main functions: they support the policy conclu-
sions, and support the construction of group solidarity. Argumentatively, credit
claim and blame are part of the data topos as they explain positive developments
as well as problems. In claiming credit, the positive development is credited to the
party or its leader, allowing the conclusion of a continuation of the policies. At the
same time, a credit claim construes political competence and legitimises the claim
for political power or political leadership. By blaming political competitors for
negative developments, they are construed as the cause for the negative develop-
ments and their policies are delegitimised. The construction of group solidarity is
supported by credit claims and blames, as they help to accentuate the differences
between political competitors.
The second amendment of the model follows from our discussion of political
ideologies as part of the identity of a party in Chapter 2.3.2. We will see in the
analysis that the topos of values and principles is mainly concerned with the re-
construction of the ideological core principles and the discussion of change and
identity as described by Buckler and Dolowitz (2009). I will demonstrate that these
discourses of ideological change can best be described using Freeden’s (1998)
morphology of ideologies. We will see that spatial metaphor used by Freeden
(1998) to theorise political ideologies is also used in the ideological publications
by Hombach (1998), Mandelson/Liddle (1996) and Giddens (1998).
A final extension of the argumentative model concerns the connection of
argumentation and narrative. Although, theoretically, I assumed that argumenta-
tive schemes are the main structure of political discourse, narrative as a discourse
mode needs to be taken into account. I demonstrated already in the discussion
of the golden-age-myth invoked by the re-rhetoric how narrative is involved in
forming and maintaining group identity. This argument is supported by Lakoff
(2014: 17), who claims in his theory of framing in politics that ‘people do not nec-
essarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values.
They vote for who they identify with.’
In discourse-linguistic theory van Leeuwen (2008: 117–18) argues the case
for mythopoesis as a central strategy of legitimation and Flood (2002: 150) sees
the interdependence between narrative and ideological argument as typical for
mythopoietic discourse in politics. I will demonstrate how this is used strategically
by Blair in his conference speeches and by his strategist Mandelson in the ideologi-
cal publications to allow people to identify with Blair as a brand. I will also dem-
onstrate how this type of personalisation is mediated in Germany by the structure
of the political system – similarly to differences in personalisation we already saw
in the footing of the conference speeches and the multi-modal structure of the
election manifestos.
6.2 Legitimisation of ideological change in ideological publication
In this section, I present the results of my initial analysis of macro-argumentative

patterns in the ideological publications. Figure 15 gives an overview of the argu-
mentative structures found in the corpus. The elements of the conclusion – lower
taxes, welfare reforms and ‘supply- side’ economic policies as the means to a better
future – were similar in all the texts analysed and are well known as becoming
hegemonic amongst Third-Way social democrats, so were to be expected. The
question is, however, how these ideological conclusions are legitimised through
data and value topoi.
The data topoi of all four ideological publications are dominated by crisis
discourses which differ in their concrete realisation. The topoi of values and prin-
ciples show strong signs of a renegotiation: they are not simply APPEALED TO, as
the model of Kuck and Römer (2012) suggested for the discourse of the financial
crisis and as it logically follows from Klein (2000a), but the main speech acts in
the value topoi is JUSTIFY VALUES AND PRINCIPLES.1 Therefore, the data and
value topoi seem to be particularly relevant to the comparative analysis of the four
ideological publications and for the discussion, whether and to what extent we
can actually conceive of one Third-Way discourse. In the following sections, I will
therefore focus on the analysis of the data and value topoi. I will first discuss the
realisations of the data topoi. This will be followed by an analysis of the changes
of values in the topos of values and their discursive structure based on Freeden’s
(1998) morphology of ideologies.
The data topoi in this part of the corpus are similar in each publication except
for the Schröder-Blair paper. In Giddens, Hombach and Mandelson, the data
topoi contain three elements: crisis of the party, crisis of society, and a change in
the voter base. In these publications, the evaluation of the data topoi as crisis topoi
is clear in the choice of keywords and metaphors. The Schröder-Blair paper, how-
ever, uses a more positive tone and does not evaluate the data topoi as crisis topoi.
1. These justifications and renegotiations are complex and could not be included in the overview.
Data topos: ESTABLISH political Conclusion: JUSTIFY/

situation as reason for change of LEGITIMISE decisions,
ideology actions
– Crisis of SPD/Labour – Lower taxes
– Crisis of left and right – Welfare reform
– Crisis of British/German – Education
society – ‘Supply side
– (electoral success because agenda’ of the left
of modernisation –
Schröder-Blair paper only)
Causal topos: EXPLAIN

– Change of the world =
globalisation
– Mismanagement of
(previous) government
(only in Mandelson and
Hombach)
– Electoral success because
of party reform (only in
Schröder-Blair paper) Purposive topos:
STATE/DEMAND/
PROMISE goals
– Secure future for social
Topos of values and democracy
principles – Better future for
JUSTIFY/APPEAL TO Germany/UK, less
values, principles unemployment, better
economic standing
Figure 15. Macro topoi in the discourses of the Third Way
The first crisis topos concerns the changes in the electorate to the disadvantage
of social democratic parties. As we have seen in the discussion of the general features
of Third Way discourses in Chapter 3.2, crisis topoi are an essential part of all third
way discourses. However, crisis topoi must also be understood in the context of
Buckler and Dolowitz’s (2009) theory of ideological groupness. In order to change
the ideological groupness of a party, agents of change within the party need to argue
a change of circumstances as a reason for ideological change, an argumentative
pattern that belongs to the data topos. Giddens, Mandelson and Hombach all argue
that there is a crisis because social democratic parties did not react to the changes
of the electorate. In the Schröder-Blair paper, by contrast, the disintegration of the
voter base of traditional social democracy is turned into a credit claim: the electoral
victories, it is argued, are due to the modernisation of those winning social demo-
cratic parties. This adaptation of the data topos was strategically necessary, because
the paper was mainly aimed at non-modernisers who were unconvinced of the new
ideological course. It can also be seen in the context of the battle of different factions
in the SPD, where the election manifesto of 1998 already used modernising rhetoric,
but the two leaders served different audiences in their speeches – Schröder aimed
his rhetoric at the ‘Neue Mitte’, while Lafontaine mainly spoke to the traditional
social democrats. After Lafontaine had left the party, Hombach wanted to unite the
party behind modernisation, and the idea is already present in Aufbruch:
Die Sozialdemokraten stehen jetzt in einer Koalition. Sie muß eine Koalition der
Modernisierer sein, die auf Ideologie verzichten, sonst wird sie scheitern. […] Die
Hoffnung auf eine Modernisierung der Gesellschaft, die in der Bundestagswahl
1998 mit der SPD verknüpft wurde, muß für eine grundlegende Reform der Partei
genutzt werden. (Hombach 1998: 20–21)
The SPD is part of a coalition – a coalition of modernizers that must dispense with
ideology, otherwise it will fail. […] We must use the hope for a modernisation of
society that was linked with the victory of the SPD in the 1998 election to undertake
fundamental reform of the party. (Hombach 2000, xli–xlii)
The second type of crisis in the corpus is named ‘globalisation’ or ‘change’. In her
analysis of what she calls ‘discourses of change’ as an element of the New Labour
discourse, L'Hôte (2014: 121ff) argues that New Labour successfully employs dis-
courses of change, despite them being characterised as having become ineffectual
because of the repeated use since the French Revolution (Tournier 2002: 44).
The differences of the topos of change in the German and British corpus are
striking. Whilst both Giddens and Hombach speak in great depth about ‘globalisa-
tion’ as the main reason for a changed political approach, Mandelson and Liddle
(1996) and the Schröder-Blair paper (1999) avoid the term and talk about ‘change’
in general. Indeed, ‘globalisation’ is not listed in the index of Mandelson and Liddle,
and in the Schröder-Blair paper it is only used once in the whole text, while. By
contrast, nominal and verbal forms of ‘change’ occur 26 times. While in 1996 the
globalisation discourse might not have been dominant yet, in 1999 it was certainly
established. Not only is it used in the data topoi of Giddens’s and Hombach’s texts,
both published in 1998, but an analysis of the Google books corpus also shows
a significant increase in the use of the lexeme ‘globalisation’: it almost doubles,
indicating a growing prominence of the discourse of globalisation.2 Furthermore,
in a speech given in South Africa in January 1999, Tony Blair uses ‘globalisation’
and ‘change’ in combination:
2. Between 1996 and 1999, the Google ngram figures of its use doubled from 0.0003258644% to
0.0006896961% over all publications in Google books (Analysis from 13/05/2014 on:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=globalization&year_start=1990&year_en
d=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cglobalization%3B%2Cc0
The driving force behind the ideas associated with the third way is globalisation
because no country is immune from the massive change that globalisation brings
[…] what globalisation is doing is bringing in its wake profound economic and
social change, economic change rendering all jobs in industry, sometimes even
new jobs in new industries, redundant overnight and social change that is a
change to culture, to lifestyle, to the family, to established patterns of community
life.(Blair 1999, quoted in Driver and Martell 2000: 150, emphasis added by MK)
The absence of the term ‘globalisation’ in the Schröder-Blair paper could indicate
a strategic avoidance of a term that had come to have an increasingly negative
connotation on the left and that could have disturbed the positive tone of mod-
ernisation in the Schröder-Blair paper.
The results of the analysis show that the realisation of the crisis topoi varies
depending on the register of the publication and on the political culture: Giddens
produces a sociological case for ideological change and so his analysis is based
on elements of sociological discourses such as growing individualism, lifestyle
diversity and the crisis of democracy. However, Mandelson and Liddle, as well
as Hombach, use concepts from the local political discourse. Mandelson refers to
‘divided Britain’ as opposed to the symbolic phrase ‘one nation’, whereas Hombach
portrays the crisis as a ‘blocked society’, based on Germany’s culture of corporat-
ism. Through Hombach, the German crisis is depicted as a society in gridlock due
to the political actors in society such as unions and business associations, which
are self-serving rather than serving the public. Against this old corporatism, which
Hombach associates with Helmut Kohl’s government, he sets the programme term
‘activating state’, recontextualising a concept from the Third Way discourse into
the German discourse. The activating state in Hombach is not only set in opposi-
tion to the old social democracy but also in opposition to old corporatism:
Gerhard Schröder dagegen praktiziert offen eine Art “inszenierten Korporat-
ismus”: Die Politik setzt sich mit den jeweils innovativsten und entscheidungs-
freudigsten Unternehmen, Betriebsräten und Gewerkschaften zusammen, um ein
konkretes Problem zu lösen – nie aber mit den Zauderern und auch nicht immer
mit den Zuständigen. Mit diesem Politik- und Staatsverständnis eines aktivieren-
den Staates haben Spitzenfunktionäre ein Problem. (Hombach 1998: 116)
Gerhard Schröder, on the other hand, openly advocates a kind of ‘staged corporat-
ism’, in which politicians sit down with the most progressive and innovatory em-
ployers, unions and works committees to get to grips with a concrete problem. The
fainthearted are not invited, nor, necessarily, are official representatives on every
occasion. Leading functionaries on both employers’ and employees’ sides find it dif-
ficult to come to terms with such manifestations of a proactive state.
(Hombach 2000, 75)
This quotation shows how the activating state, originally a concept of welfare
reform, is recontextualised into a network of programme and stigma terms.
It becomes clear how the corporatist element of the German political culture
influences the way the crisis element of the Third-Way discourse is realised: the
main metaphorical scene of Hombach’s text is, as I will later show, POLITICS AS
A JOURNEY FORWARD. The data topos of crisis is now construed as the opposite
of a journey: as a standstill (‘Reformstau’, ‘blockierte Gesellschaft’) from which
German society has to get going (title: ‘Aufbruch’). The standstill is caused by the
‘Politikverflechtungsfalle’, which is effectively a metaphorical stigma term for the
old corporatism and difficult to translate: an interlocking trap in politics. ‘New
corporatism’, on the other hand, is referred to as ‘Innovationsallianzen’, which is
constructed by the ‘activating state’. This new programme term is a compound
with the main programme term of the election 1998, ‘Innovation’, here strategi-
cally used to achieve an evaluative contextualisation: the new corporatism gains
positive evaluation from the programme term ‘Innovation’, which in turn gains its
positive evaluation from the positive evaluation within the 1998 electoral slogan
‘Arbeit, Innovation und Gerechtigkeit’. The positive connotation of ‘Innovation’ is
even recognised by critics of the ‘Neue Mitte’, as we have seen in the discussion of
Klimmt’s reaction to the Schröder-Blair paper (Klimmt 1999: 1135).
A separate crisis in Hombach’s eyes is the crisis of party government (‘Par-
teienstaat’). This crisis dominates the argument of his book, since it is directly
connected to the value topos of post-ideology: ‘Leistungsträger’ were supposedly
no longer prepared to join political parties and to work in politics (Hombach
1998: 95–96). This is caused by the structural conservatism of political parties, and
by their insistence on ideological positions instead of pragmatic solutions. There-
fore, according to Hombach’s reasoning, politics needs to be non-ideological. This
is the path the SPD was travelling along with the modernising approach to ‘Die
Neue Mitte’, and the renewal of ‘soziale Marktwirtschaft’ at its core.
However, the data topoi are not only dominated by crisis topoi, they also con-
tain a number of direct constructions of necessity, which aim to cement hegemonic
notions: socialism is reported as ‘dead’ in Giddens and Hombach, and capitalism is
therefore the only alternative. If social democracy is to have any meaning, it needs
to change (Giddens 1998: 24).
The analysis of the situation in the Schröder-Blair paper partly uses the same
data topoi of change and high unemployment as the other publications; however,
the lexical realisations do not present it predominantly as a crisis, and the main data
topos is a positive assertion of electoral success because of the changes in the party.
So far, I have analysed the ideological legitimisation that is focused on chang-
ing social democratic ideologies to compete in a system of political ideologies.
However, looking at the argumentative structure from a different angle, we can
also understand crisis topoi as strategies of closing and depoliticising the dis-
course: a strategy to establish ideological hegemony. The crisis topos is common
in political discourse, and is an extremely effective device, because it ‘has an im-
mense lay, media and academic currency. It is rhetorically rich, attention-grasping
and broadly pejorative. […] Moreover, its use often implies a radical diagnostic or
even prognostic intention on the part of those who deploy it’ (Hay 1999a: 318).
Chalozin-Dovrat (2013: 87) points out that crisis is today mainly perceived as
critical change (see also Hay 1999a: 323; Koselleck 1988: 103–4), but without an
element of human decision or judgement. It therefore evokes natural necessity.
A further effect of the crisis topos is the loss of responsibility, causality and
agency, because ‘crisis’ is discursively constructed in a process of abstraction and
simplification Colin (Hay 1999a: 334). A strike, in his example, can be understood
as being part of the crisis of an ‘ “overextended” state’, instead of foregrounding
the direct action of union members. This can lead to a reinterpretation of very di-
verse events into ‘symptoms’ of a crisis. The crisis discourse can therefore obscure
responsibility and lead to depoliticisation, as Chalozin-Dovrat (2013: 92) rightly
points out. The depoliticising effects of the crisis topoi can all be found in these
texts from the Third-Way discourse, especially in their metaphorical construction,
which I will discuss in Chapter 7.
The topoi of values and principles show particularly distinctive features in the
Third Way discourses: We saw that Klein (2000a) sees them as supporting a deci-
sion, and Kuck and Römer (2012) connect this topos with the speech acts of invok-
ing and appealing to values. However, the main speech act in the value topoi of my
corpus is ‘JUSTIFY values’, i.e. values and principles are discussed and re-evaluated.
This re-evaluation follows Freeden’s (1998) morphology of ideologies.
Freeden uses a spatial metaphor to analyse structural differences between political
ideologies: political concepts within specific ideologies can be either in the core
(most important) or on the fringe (least important), and concepts can be seen
as adjacent, i.e. as logically belonging together. In keeping with this metaphor,
ideological changes are either reaffirmations of the ideological core, movements
from the fringe to the core and the core to the fringe, or changes in the adjacency
of concepts. I will later demonstrate that the authors of the ideological publica-
tions and the Schröder-Blair paper are fully aware of the effect that differences in
political cultures can have on political ideologies – a phenomenon that Freeden
calls cultural adjacency.
The wording of the re-evaluation in all texts uses the same core-fringe
metaphor Freeden employs to capture the morphology of political ideologies:
concepts of great importance within the political ideology of a party are located
as ‘core’ concepts. Here, I will consider four examples from my corpus, which
use this metaphor:
The term ‘centre left’ this isn’t an innocent label: A renewed social democracy has
to be left of centre, because social justice and emancipatory politics remain at its
core. (Giddens 1998: 45, emphasis MK)
Prior to this passage quoted here, Giddens analysed the changes in the left–right
spectrum because of the impact of globalisation and the fall of communism. In
the quotation, he reaffirms two core values of social democracy: ‘social justice’
and ‘emancipatory politics’. Giddens argues that these central values need to guide
welfare reform, but at the same time the fact that there is a more individualised so-
ciety needs to be taken into account: welfare reform must incorporate the diversity
of active lifestyle choices. The change of adjacent concepts to social justice, in this
case the means of achieving it, are legitimised by a change of circumstances, as well
as by reaffirming the ideological core.
Similarly to Giddens, Mandelson and Liddle assert the core belief of com-
munity and social justice, here with the metaphor of ‘at its heart’, after establishing
New Labour’s new governing approach: a ‘Third Way’ between the approaches of
the traditional left and the new right:
[New Labour’s] approach is a Labour approach because the party retains at its
heart a belief in a community where all citizens have a stake and where a sense
of social justice and fairness govern decision-making by those in power. It is a
new approach because it recognises that to present yesterday’s solutions to today’s
problems is not just negligent but facile.
(Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 21, emphasis MK)
This is again a reassurance that the core of the party’s belief system is maintained.
At the same time, the separation of formerly adjacent concepts is prepared in the
second sentence. A sub-chapter New Labour v. old Labour, fulfilling this function,
follows this reassurance in Mandelson’s book. In another example, Mandelson
and Liddle use the core metaphor to confirm that the central belief of Labour has
not changed, before outlining the historic problems of the universal welfare state,
which, in Mandelson and Liddle’s view, has never been fully established and has
also been diminished by the New Right. Once again, the argument is followed by
the discussion of new approaches to welfare through new adjacent concepts: the
old welfare state is construed as inflexible and uniform. This is strengthened by
the New Labour programme terms ‘individual freedom of choice’ and ‘individual
responsibility’ (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 141–43)
Hombach uses a similar strategy to affirm ‘core’ values, but adapts it to his
recontextualisation of the discourse. As discussed above, Hombach anchors the
discourse of modernisation of the SPD in the crisis of the party state and the old
corporatism. As a new component of the social democratic discourse in Germany
he introduces the ‘Erneuerung der sozialen Marktwirtschaft’ (p. 14) and declares
his notion of post-ideology at the core of it:
Aber gerade der pragmatische Konsens ist der Kern der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft.
(Hombach 1998: 15)
But pragmatic consensus is at the heart of the social market economy.

(Hombach 2000, xxxvi)
Somewhat less apparent than the affirmation of core values is the movement of
values within the core-fringe system, because it is not metaphorically realised in
the same way. However, if we assume Freeden’s categories have a function because
of the use of the core metaphor in the discourse, we can look for movements of
concepts into higher importance, which we can describe as movements to the core.
We also find reinterpretations of concepts as less important, and can interpret
them as movements to the fringe and as separations of formerly adjacent concepts.
There are many new concepts introduced into the core of the ideological
system of New Labour and the German SPD at the time, and again they are partly
culturally dependent. The most important new concepts in the Third-Way dis-
course are the belief in the ‘rigour of competitive markets’ (Mandelson and Liddle
1996: 22; Hombach 1998: 16), the combination of rights and responsibilities (Blair
and Schröder 1999: 10; Giddens 1998: 37), and the flexibility of the labour market
(Giddens 1998: 94; Hombach 1998: 64). These moves are legitimised using differ-
ent material topoi: Giddens argues that responsibility has always been part of the
ideology, using the metaphorical concept of IDEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS AS PEOPLE,
people who were asleep:
The theme of responsibility, or mutual obligation, was there in old-style social
democracy, but was largely dormant, since it was submerged within the concept
of collective provision. We have to find a new balance between individual and
collective responsibilities today. (Giddens 1998: 37)
The Schröder-Blair paper argues that the new values are important to citizens
and therefore need to become part of the ideology (Blair and Schröder 1999: 10).
Hombach uses another typical strategy: he reinterprets ‘Flexibilität’ and claims it
as a concept of the left by calling it ‘emancipatory politics’:
Für viele ist das die verteufelte Anpassung der Linken an den Marktliberal-
ismus, aber wenn man die ursprüngliche Bedeutung von Flexibilität wieder in
Erinnerung ruft, wird deutlich, daß dies im Grunde ein sehr emanzipatorisches
Politikverständnis ist: Die Fähigkeit, sich veränderten Bedingungen geschmeidig
anzupassen und dennoch Stabilität und halt zu bewahren, soll gestärkt werden.
(Hombach 1998: 63)
Many see this as the hated compromise of the left with the forces of the free market.
But if we recall the original meaning of flexibility, it becomes clear the this is basically
an emancipating conception of politics, in which the ability to adapt smoothly to
changed conditions, while at the same time maintaining security and stability, is to
be encouraged. (Hombach 2000, 32–33)
Another option of arguing for changing the belief system is to either separate
formerly adjacent values or principles, or to create new adjacencies between con-
cepts. One of the first arguments for a change in the social democratic approach to
politics in Giddens, for example, calls for the separation of the political values of
social democracy from its economic programme, which he describes as ‘discred-
ited’ (Giddens 1998: 2), whereas the Schröder-Blair paper calls for a combination
of social justice and ‘economic dynamism’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 1). Hombach
goes even further and outlines how he wants to combine the liberal principles of
Ludwig Erhard with social democratic core values:
Ludwig Erhard hat die Sozialdemokraten nicht in seinem Testament bedacht.
Aber seine Prinzipien von Pragmatismus und Anti-Dirigismus werden gebraucht,
wenn es gilt, liberale Prinzipien und die Grundwerte der Sozialdemokratie zu
einer schlagkräftigen Synthese zu verbinden. Der Kernbegriff ist die Rekonstruk-
tion der sozialen Marktwirtschaft.
Der SPD wird die Leistung zugetraut, die sie versprochen hat: die ökonomische
Belebung als Basis für soziale und ökologische Reformen und neue Beschäftigung.
(Hombach 1998: 14)
Erhard, Economics Minister in Adenauer’s CDU government, had no thought of

bequeathing his ideas to the Social Democrats. But we need to have recourse to his
values of pragmatism and anti-dirigisme if we are to create an effective synthesis of
liberal principles and the basic values of the SPD. And at the heart of this synthesis
lies the reconstruction of the social market economy.
The Social Democrats have now been entrusted with fulfilling what they promised,
namely to revive the economy in order to provide a basis for social and ecological
reforms and for creating new jobs. (Hombach 2000, xxxv)
Hombach’s main aim here is to claim the concept of ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’ for
the SPD and therefore make the SPD the true ‘heir’ of Ludwig Erhard, using the
metaphorical scene IDEOLOGY AS INHERITANCE.
After analysing moves to the core and changes of adjacency, we also need to
look at moves out of the core, i.e values and principles which were formerly Labour
or SPD but are now abandoned. In Mandelson and Liddle, this happens under
the headline of ‘old’ versus ‘new’: they reject the ideas of ‘nationalisation’, ‘control
by the unions’, ‘high spending’ and ‘statism’ as being ‘old Labour’. Interestingly,
however, they strategically reject these notions indirectly under the headline ‘New
Labour vs. old Labour’:
New Labour firmly rejects the notion that centralised planning and state control
are the route to economic success.
In practice, every past Labour government has wanted to see a thriving private
sector within a mixed economy. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 21)
As this example demonstrates, the reader perceives the stigma terms as ‘old La-
bour’, but at the same time the authors argue that Labour actually never followed
these values and hence they are obsolete. This double strategy allows a distancing
from old Labour in any reading, but at the same time a construction of continu-
ous ideological groupness of the Labour party, because the discarded values have
never had any practical effect.
In a somewhat different approach, Giddens legitimises the abandonment
of collectivism and the use of the adjacent concepts ‘rights and responsibilities’
instead. The old style has become problematic because of changed circumstances
(data topos): more individualism leads to more individual obligations. In other
contexts within Giddens’ and Hombach’s text, the movement of values to the
fringe happens under the headline of ‘Third Way’ combined with constructions
of necessity. This shows that the old left–right division is now perceived to have
become dysfunctional and that there is no alternative for the left but to abandon
some of the old principles.
In the topos of value and principles, hegemonic claims are made through the
material topoi of the end of the left–right structure of politics, as well as the topos
of post-ideology. L'Hôte’s (2014: 55) keyword analysis comparing a traditional
Labour corpus and a new Labour corpus clearly returned ‘ideology’ as a keyword
for the new Labour corpus, a result she interprets as ‘the parties positioning
against ideology rather than its relying on the concept itself in discourse’. This
interpretation can be differentiated through both the better understanding of
political lexis and the interpretation of post-ideology as a topos. In both my Ger-
man and the British corpus, ‘ideology/Ideologie’ and ‘ideological/ideologisch’ are
used as stigma terms which signal the topos of post-ideology. In Hombach this
is particularly salient because of multiple repetitions. The reader first encounters
the idea on page 11, the third page of the introduction, after the claim that a Third
Way must combine ‘real’ liberalism with social democratic values. The values of
liberalism and social democracy cannot be in contradiction, because ideologies
are fatal errors:
Wir leben in einer Welt, in der Ideale wichtig sind, in der es aber fatal ist, Ideolo-
gien anzuhängen. […] Die Menschen wollen von ihrer Regierung kein Dogma,
sondern einen starken Sinn für die Realität, in der sie leben.(Hombach 1998: 11)
We live in a world in which ideals are important but in which it is fatal to cling to
ideologies […] They [people, MK] are looking to their government not for dogma but
for a fundamental grasp of the realities of the situation in which they live.
(Hombach 2000, xxxii)
Here, ‘Ideologie’ is established as a stigma term through the connection with the
negative term ‘Dogma’ and its use in opposition to ‘Realität’. The ‘Neue Mitte’
instead is ‘undogmatisch’, ‘unideologisch’ und ‘pragmatisch’ (Hombach 1998: 26).
‘Ideologie’ and ‘ideologisch’ are used throughout the text to disqualify ideas and
close the discourse before arguments on policy are exchanged. We find the topos
also combined with the crisis topos: the other parties are in crisis because they are
embroiled in ideological battles, only the SPD is post-ideological and pragmatic.
In Mandelson and Giddens, the same topos is expressed in the variation
‘the Third way as the end of the left–right continuum’. I analysed the linguistic
realisation of this topos in Chapter 5.2, where I focused on the conceptual
metaphor behind this topos and described the lexico-semantic frame it structures
in this discourse.
In my analysis of the data topoi I have demonstrated that the realisation of
the crisis topos is context-sensitive and culturally dependent. This sensitivity to
the context of political culture also affects the topoi of values and principles. In
Freeden’s concept of the morphology of ideologies, this type of recontextualisation
is called cultural adjacency, whereby certain political concepts are adjacent in a
local version of an ideology because of the local political culture. In my corpus,
the authors themselves are aware of this type of adjacency. In his discussion of the
‘Model and Myth America’ for example, Hombach notices that ‘… die Flexibilität
am unteren Ende des Arbeitsmarktes [in den USA, MK] wurde zumindest teil-
weise zu sozialen und ökonomischen Kosten erkauft, die wir uns in Deutschland
definitiv nicht leisten können’ (Hombach 1998: 145). He then argues against a total
deregulation of the labour market, but for a consideration of the welfare to work
scheme as an example of the active welfare state. He notes again that this welfare to
work policy needs to be adapted for the German political culture:
Dieser Druck über soziale und materielle Not (in den USA) ist aus deutscher
Sicht gewiß inhuman. Es ist aber nicht zielführend, sich einer Diskussion über
die amerikanische Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik zu verweigern, denn die
Maßnahmen, die der amerikanische Staat seinerseits den Pflichten des einzelnen
gegenüberstellt, in Form von Rechten gegenüber der Gemeinschaft, weisen zum
Teil erstaunliche Parallelen zur deutschen Diskussion auf. (Hombach 1998: 151)
From a German point of view such economic and social pressure is no doubt re-
garded as inhuman. But it is not in our interests to refuse to discuss the American
policies, for the measures taken in America to set the rights of the individual in
society against the individual’s obligations to that society reveal remarkable parallels
to what is being discussed in Germany. (Hombach 2000: 101)
A similar remark with the aim of defending New Labour’s active labour mar-
ket policies can be found in Giddens, who argues that New Labour only uses
American- style labels such as welfare to work, but is actually more inspired by
the Scandinavian example of active labour market policy Giddens 1998: viii). This
awareness of differences in the political cultures is also evident in the translation
of the Schröder-Blair paper as I demonstrated in Chapter 5.6.
6.3 The construction of ideology in the pre-election speeches of

Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder
The pre-election speeches by the Labour leader Tony Blair and the nominee for
the Chancellor candidacy Gerhard Schröder are situated in very different contexts.
Blair’s speech at the annual party conference in 1996 signals his opening of the
election campaign for 1997, and he clearly marks it as such: ‘…this year we meet
as the opposition. Next year, the British people willing … we will meet as the new
Labour government of Britain’ (Blair 1996a: 80). However, there is no choice to be
made at the conference as Blair is the leader of the party, and he will lead the party
into the general election. In contrast, the party conference of the SPD in April
1998 is not only the party’s official opening of their election campaign, but also
a special conference to nominate Schröder as the party’s candidate for chancel-
lor. In his speech, he positions himself officially as the candidate of the SPD and
aims to secure the votes of the delegates. Although the risk of being rejected was
negligible, it was nevertheless important to gain as much approval as possible so
as to present the party as being united. In the following analysis, I will show that
Blair and Schröder use comparable data topoi and in a similar fashion argue for
a change of ideology, but legitimise them in different ways that are culturally and
situationally sensitive.
Blair opens his speech by evoking the excitement of a prospective election
victory; he presents himself as the leader of the party and the prospective leader of
the nation, addressing the nation:
As a father, as a leader, as a member of the human family, I ask this question of
Britain’s future. We live in an era of extraordinary, revolutionary change at work,
at home, through technology, through the million marvels of modern science. The
possibilities are exciting. But its challenge is clear. How do we create in Britain a
new age of achievement in which all of the people – not just a few but all of the
people – can share? For all the people or for a few? That is the difference between
us and the Conservative Party that governs Britain today. That is the choice before
us. That is the challenge of the 21st century. (Blair 1996a: 80)
Here, he connects his self-definition as a leader (‘as a father, as a leader, as a member

of the human family’) to the central purposive topos (the definition of the political
goal), expressed in the catchphrase ‘age of achievement’. He depicts the abstract

‘change’, that Mandelson, Giddens and Hombach partly saw as a moment of crisis,
in a positive light (‘extraordinary, revolutionary …. marvels of modern science
… exciting’) and opens a binary choice – ‘For all people or for a few’. The central
conclusion of his speech is for investment into and the focus on education to give
every person a chance. Yet, before Blair reaches this conclusion, he develops the
crisis topos as the foundation for the necessity of a new government. He describes
Britain as a country in crisis, and blames the current government in that the crisis
is caused by hefty tax rises, a doubling in crime and a lack of leadership by John
Major. In the following parts of the speech, Blair develops the policy suggestions
of the Labour Party for almost all political fields – education, healthcare, constitu-
tional reform, defence and so on, and legitimises each of them partly through new
blame topoi, focusing on the shortcomings of the Conservatives.
Very differently from Blair, Schröder opens his speech addressing the country
in the name of the party:
Wir wenden uns an die Bürgerinnen und Bürger und sagen ihnen: Wir, die
deutschen Sozialdemokraten, sind bereit, die Verantwortung für Deutschland
und die Verantwortung für Deutschland in Europa zu übernehmen.
We are turning to the citizens and tell them: We, the German Social Democrats, are
ready to take responsibility for Germany and responsibility for Germany in Europe.
Soon after opening his speech, Schröder quotes the slogan of the party conference,
which was also presented on the big screen on both the podium and the platform
stand: ‘Wir bündeln die Kraft des Neuen’ (Schröder 1998a: 19). This slogan meta-
phorically represents the optimism the SPD wanted to communicate after 16 years
of CDU–FDP governments. It is also intertextually linked to the ‘new’ rhetoric of
New Labour. Schröder uses metaphors at the outset to legitimise the SPD’s quest
for power and to delegitimise the government with the same slogan:
[…] mein zentraler Vorwurf an Kohl und seine Leute lautet: Ihr seid nicht in
der Lage, die schöpferischen Kräfte, die es in Deutschland gibt, zu bündeln und
in das nächste Jahrhundert, das zugleich das nächste Jahrtausend ist, zu führen.
Das ist der Vorwurf, den wir euch machen. Deshalb müßt ihr abgelöst werden.
[…] my main challenge to Kohl and his people is: You are unable to focus the creative
forces in Germany and to lead them into the next century, moreover into the next
millennium. This is our accusation. This is why we have to replace you.
Using this slogan, Schröder claims that only new forces can free Germany from
its current standstill, and that only the SPD can activate and ‘bundle’ these forces.
This can be read as a diluted version of the Third Way topos ‘The party as a special
agency for change’. However, this is not in any way as salient as it is in Blair’s
speeches, where he adopts a much more religious tone and equates the values of
Labour with national values. In Schröder’s version, it can simply be understood
as an old–new opposition that uses the conceptual metaphor NEW IS GOOD,
because a political myth of the SPD as a special agency for the renewal of the
nation is not easy to establish in the German political culture for both historical
reasons, and also because of the complex power-sharing between the two biggest
parties within the federal system.
The data topoi in Schröder’s speech are similar to the topoi in Blair’s speech:
Schröder combines the description of a crisis with blame for the governing coali-
tion, but uses a different metaphorical scenario: within POLITICS IS A JOURNEY,
Schröder construes the governing coalition as the cause of a standstill (‘Erstar-
rung’, ‘Stagnation’, ‘Stillstand’, ‘Blockade’). I have demonstrated this adaptation of
a general crisis topos in my analysis of Hombach’s argumentation. Schröder now
uses this crisis topos of the ‘blocked society’ (e.g. in ‘Stillstand’) and the topos of
the divided society. In addition, at the same time, he argues that the new values
of the SPD have already been adopted by many actors in the corporate world,
and that in his state of Lower Saxony, Volkswagen has shown that employers and
employees can cooperate to realise innovation and flexibility: Schröder combines
this credit claim for himself with the blame of those conservative corporate actors,
such as the industrial employers’ association BDI, who do not realise that these
values have already been adopted by the unions. The conclusion of his analysis is
the suggestion of a ‘Bündnis für Arbeit’ to overcome a corporate gridlock. This can
be read as the Third Way idea of ‘partnership’, but at the same time, as discussed in
Chapter 3.3, it is also a suggestion typical of the corporatism of the German politi-
cal system. Similarly to Blair, who turns the ‘crisis of change’ described in Man-
delson and Liddle into a positive chance, Schröder turns the crisis of globalisation
into a positive: ‘wir werden nicht Opfer der Globalisierung werden, sondern mit
neuer Politik ihre Chancen nutzen’ (Schröder 1998a: 23).
The value topoi in Blair’s speech introduce new values and new adjacencies
into the Labour ideology, such as choice and opportunity, but simultaneously, Blair
also insists that this new position is still essentially socialist, but non-ideological:
Yes, we are a democratic socialist party. Indeed, it says so in the words of Clause
IV, the new Clause IV, the one I drafted and the party overwhelmingly supported.
(Applause) But it stands in a tradition bigger than that – bigger than European
social democracy, bigger than any ‘ism’, bigger than any of us. It stands in a tradi-
tion whose flame was alive in human hearts long before the Labour Party was ever
thought of; a tradition far above ideology but not beyond ideals.(Blair 1996a: 86)
This post-ideological topos is then construed as historical; as a line of succession

from the Old Testament via Wilberforce, Jack Jones and the fight against Hitler:
the ‘broad movement of human progresses’, and ‘the marriage of ambition with
justice’. Seamlessly, Blair changes the subject here: he changes from Labour’s
democratic socialism to British values, from Labour history to British history, to
end in intertextual borrowing – ‘Labour is coming home’:
If you believe in what I believe, then join our team. Labour has come home to
you, so come home to us. Labour’s coming home! Seventeen years of hurt never
stopped us dreaming. Labour’s coming home! As we did in 1945 and 1964, I know
that was then, but it could be again – Labour’s coming home. (Applause) Labour’s
coming home. The people are coming home. Because Britain is their team and
they are part of it, and they know that if we unleash the potential of our people
Britain comes alive with the new energy, the new ideas, the new leadership, and
Britain can take on the world and win. We will be envied throughout the world,
not just because of our castles and our palaces and our glorious history, but be-
cause we gave back that heritage of hope to the generations, we turned round this
country by the will of the people in unity with the party of the people, and we built
this age of achievement in our lifetime. (Blair 1996a: 86)
This is again a portrayal of Labour values as being British values, and in combina-
tion with a golden-age topos, the reimaging of the Labour party of the Third Way
as post-ideological and as a special agency of change. The intertextual allusion
‘Labour is coming home’ strengthens this golden-age myth and the topos of the
special status of Labour. The lines quoted in the speech are from the pop-song
‘Three Lions’,3 the official 1996 anthem of the England football team in the Euro-
pean Championship, which was held in England. Here, Blair picks up on a central
pop-cultural discourse in Britain at the time by construing Labour’s years in oppo-
sition as being parallel to the experience of the England team, which had not won
a World Championship since 1966. The core of the song is, however, representative
of the great optimism that England will win this time, an optimism which Blair
recontextualises into his speech.
This recontextualisation supports other typical discursive structures in Blair’s
speeches: it firstly supports the notion of Blair as the ordinary person, a leader in
touch with the mood of his country – since the song was connected to the British
national sport of football, and also dominated the charts for most of the summer
in 1996. Secondly, the parallelism of football in both the song and Labour before
the coming election also construes the Third-Way topos of New Labour represent-
ing essential British values. Whilst the song focuses on football as a game of British
3. The original line of the song by Ian Broudie and David Baddiel, which Blair adapts here, goes
‘Thirty years of hurt/ Never stopped me dreaming/ … Football’s coming home (repeat)’
origin (‘football’s coming home’), New Labour’s values are a return of Labour to
the values of the country.
The allusion to this song can also be read as a recontextualisation of a cultural
discourse in Britain of the late 1990s that aimed to strengthen the British national
identity construing British traditions in music and football as a golden age. Car-
rington (1998, 110) points out it was generally appropriated by both sides of the
political spectrum in order to talk about a ‘rebirth’ of British cultural identity. I
therefore argue that the golden-age myth employed in the discourse of New Labour
relies on other discursive strands in British political culture at the time – a further
reason why it was not possible to recontextualise it into the German discourse of
‘Die Neue Mitte’.
The discussion of social democratic values in Schröder’s and Blair’s pre-
election is also broadly similar. Schröder develops the same changes of social
democratic values in his speech that Hombach (1998) later describes. Hombach’s
book contains whole elements of the speech almost word by word, which is not
surprising, since he was in charge of Schröder’s election campaign and therefore
possibly part of the team of writers for that speech. The important parallel of the
value topoi in Blair’s and Schröder’s speeches lies, however, in the argument that
the changes are necessary because this is what supposedly ‘normal’ people want.
This is part of the topos of post-ideology.
I demonstrated that Blair connects the depiction of Britain in crisis with his
blame of the current government. Similarly to Blair, Schröder blames the current
government using the topos of a divided society. However, Schröder’s blame strat-
egies are generally more diverse than Blair’s: he directs blame against Christian
Democrats (CDU), against their Bavarian sister party CSU, and against the FDP
separately. The CDU is blamed for running a campaign of fear, the CSU for being
misogynist, and the FDP for attempting deregulation only if it concerns the rights
of employees, but not if it is about reducing bureaucracy in general. Furthermore,
Schröder also establishes a clear distinction between the SPD and the Green Party
(Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), despite fighting for a majority of a red–green coalition.
This distancing element is mitigated, because Schröder embeds it in the accusation
that the governing CDU/CSU-FDP coalition was scaremongering against a red–
green coalition by exaggerating the possible impact of party conference decisions
of the Green Party. At their party conference, the more radical wing of the Green
Party managed to achieve agreement to a pledge for a high price of petrol (5 DM)
into the election manifesto, and also discussed whether Germany should leave
NATO. Schröder now blames the CDU for exaggerating these more radical ideas
of the Green Party and thereby running a campaign of fear. He counteracts this
campaign by claiming that the SPD, as the larger partner in the coalition (‘eine
von mir geführte Bundesregierung’), will speak on behalf of ordinary people and
not implement any radical green policies. Schröder positions the SPD against this
prospective coalition partner, but mitigates the positioning at the same time as a
delegitimisation of an accusation by the CDU. This type of positioning does not
happen in Blair’s speeches, since it is unnecessary in a party-political system that
at the time was closer to a two-party system than to a three-party system. Blair also
completely ignores the Liberal Democrats, since they are neither a prospective
coalition partner, nor serious competition.
One further important parallel element in Blair’s and Schröder’s pre-election
speeches is the presentation of economic competence. In Britain, Labour is usually
portrayed negatively by the Conservatives as a ‘tax and spend party’. Blair uses the
data topos of international competition to argue that Britain needs to compete
on quality. He delegitimises the Conservatives by blaming them for Britain’s
economic crisis: the loss of Britain’s manufacturing base, recessions, and record
debt. He then deconstructs their claim of economic competence: ‘It is sometimes
said, you know, that the Tories are cruel but they are efficient. In fact, they are
the most feckless, irresponsible, incompetent managers of the British economy
in this country’s history’ (Blair 1996a: 81). By comparison, he claims economic
competence for Labour by calling Gordon Brown an ‘Iron Chancellor’, by fram-
ing taxes metaphorically as a burden, and by declaring Labour the party of small
business on the basis of new Labour’s value of partnership of government and
industry. Schröder’s economic discourse is similar to Blair’s: taxes are construed
as a burden for companies facing international competition, hence they need to be
lowered. Similarly to Blair, Schröder uses the economic discourse to delegitimise
the current government and, by blaming them for the current crisis, to depict
the SPD as economically competent. Furthermore, Schröder aims to increase the
party’s economic credibility by highlighting that all policy suggestions are made
under the condition of a full ‘cash-check’ (Kassensturz), as his new government
will not continue the problematic accounting strategies of the current government
(Schröder 1998a: 23).
6.4 Personal Stories: Mythopoetic legitimation of a leader
Despite the argumentative and deliberative nature of party-political discourse,

narrative elements must not be neglected, and are often integrated into the ar-
gumentative legitimation. A typical feature of new Labour discourse is the use of
narrative to discursively construct the party leader as a presidential figure. This
happens in Mandelson and Liddle’s (1996) The Blair Revolution in a biographical
chapter, and also in Blair’s party conference speeches in personal mini narratives,
but is hardly present in the German part of the corpus.
The Blair Revolution was a widely read ideological publication in the run-up
to the general election 1997. The text consists of eleven chapters that are partly
argumentative in their structure and language, but also use a narrative structure
and therefore follow a mythopoetical strategy of legitimisation. After an opening
chapter that presents New Labour as a ‘renewed’ party, Mandelson and Liddle give
a biographical account of its leader that is clearly reminiscent of a hagiographic
account of a religious leader: The chapter ‘Labour’s Leader’ is divided into the
subchapters ‘Discovering values’ (p. 31), ‘Earliest analysis’ (p. 33), ‘A modern
voice’ (p. 36), and ‘An agent of change’ (p. 50). These describe Tony Blair as an
ecclesiastical leader whose fate was determined from the beginning: it is a nar-
rative of his ‘political awakenings’ (p. 33), his early experiences as forming the
base of his values, and his early ideas ‘full twelve years before he set out the full
“modernising” of his leadership bid’ (p. 34). The religious connotations can also be
found in metaphors and lexical items such as ‘Labour’s traditional broad church’
(p. 36) and Blair’s ‘crusade for change’ (p. 53). Within this hagiographic account,
many ideological topoi discussed in other chapters of the text are recontextualised.
This biographical narrative can be understood as a recontextualisation of the
genre biography of a religious leader into political discourse. Fairclough (2003: 222)
defines recontextualisation as ‘a relationship between different (networks of) so-
cial practices – a matter of how elements of one social practice are appropriated by,
relocated in the context of, another’. Recontextualisation is – certainly in this case,
if not in all cases – a strategic element of legitimisation. Here, it helps construing
the leader as someone predestined to undertake the renewal of the country and
is part of the discursive construction of presidentialisation. It is not the party the
book foregrounds, but the leader. Moreover, the recontextualisation of religious
discourse is not limited to this one publication, it was also present in Blair’s party
conference speeches and I will return to it in the analysis of metaphors.
Not only are the religious narratives strong within the New Labour discourse,
but other small narratives legitimizing Blair’s leadership are also prevalent. In his
pre-election speech alone, Blair (1996a) includes six mini-narratives about people
he has met and learned from. I will demonstrate that this legitimisation strategy
is very leader-focused as it links central topoi of the speech to Blair’s personal
experience. This pattern can also be interpreted as being part of a more general
legitimation strategy. Fairclough (2000: 97–105) demonstrated in other speeches
how Blair aims to depict himself as a ‘normal person’ by using lexical and phonetic
elements of a more casual register – in my corpus, this is also realised through the
use of personal narratives.
In his pre-election speech, Blair employs a personal mini narrative to intro-
duce the central summary of Labour’s pledges (Blair 1996a: 85–86). This summary
of the pledges – a collection of conclusive topoi – is metaphorically presented as
a ‘performance contract’. Blair introduces this idea with a narrative linked to the
metaphorical scenario of top management: a story about a meeting with a success-
ful top-manager who challenged him to use the managerial tool of a performance
contract, and how he now wishes to meet this challenge. This narrative and the
following performance contract (‘I vow that we will …’) has two functions. It both
introduces the managerial idea of clearly measurable success into the discourse
of New Labour but it is also used to construe Blair’s personal competency and
responsibility as a leader: he is depicted as comparable to an industry leader, and
he personally takes responsibility for the success of the party, and when he speaks
it is on behalf of the party.
A further narrative follows the performance contract and engages in a dis-
course on the values of New Labour. In this, Blair describes how he became a
Labour politician, legitimising his change from class-based socialism (‘I was not
born Labour … I do not pretend to you that I had a deprived childhood) to a brand
of what Mandelson and Liddle (1996) call ‘ethical socialism’ (‘I became Labour.
… I learned a sense of values in my childhood’). Whilst Mandelson and Liddle
legitimise the new position by arguing that this was Labour’s original position,
Blair uses his personal experience to legitimise these values.
Blair also uses a narrative to reclaim central values from the Conservatives.
After he argues that the Conservatives just used the ‘best words – freedom, choice,
opportunity, aspiration, ambition’ in their 1992 election campaign, he tells the
audience about a self-employed electrician he met, who felt that Labour would
prevent him from ‘getting on in life’. Blair concludes that Labour needs to commu-
nicate its values more effectively and instil hope (Blair 1996a: 81). This narrative
element uses a Third-Way topos that can also be found in Schröder’s speeches: in
order to be successful, the party needs to listen to ordinary people, to their values.
At the same time, again, the legitimatory function of this topos embedded in this
narrative links it directly to the leader, and presents the leader as a responsible
entity who is up for election – not only the party.
Whilst Blair heavily relies on personal narratives as legitimisation in his pre-
election conference speech, Schröder cannot use this line of argumentation in the
same way. This is because Blair is the elected leader of the party who presents his
claim for the leadership of the country whereas Schröder, however, needs to be
formally elected as the chancellor candidate first and is also not the undisputed
leader of the party; this is still Oskar Lafontaine. The narrative elements in the
text are therefore far less frequent and far less salient. However, there is a different
line of legitimacy open to Schröder that was closed to Blair; Schröder can claim
personal credit for his successes as the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, and for his
party as an organisation, he can claim credit for initiatives in Germany’s second
chamber, the Bundesrat, which was dominated by the SPD at the time. On the
basis of his personal success as a political leader, he can ask the SPD to support
him as a competent candidate for chancellor, and he asks this question twice. In
the first instance, he wants the party to support him in reaching out for ‘Die Neue
Mitte’, and in the second to give him the freedom to govern the country in the
interests of the whole country.
6.5 Counter-discourses in the SPD 1998: Lafontaine’s speeches as party

leader
Lafontaine became chairman at the party conference in November 1995, winning

the vote after a surprise candidacy. Lafontaine’s leadership was strong, and he
managed to unite the party behind himself. Under his leadership, the SPD was
once again recognised as a strong political force. Until 1997, he was expected to
lead the SPD into the next general election. However, when the media started
commenting on Lafontaine’s small lead in the opinion polls, and on the greater
chances of a victory of the SPD with Gerhard Schröder, Lafontaine and the SPD
leadership reconsidered the situation, and it became clear that Lafontaine as the
chancellor candidate was more easily prone to be attacked as ‘socialist’, a strategy
that the CDU had used successfully in earlier election campaigns. Schröder, by
contrast, was perceived to be able to attract voters who were more on the con-
servative fringe of the SPD. Walter (2009, 236–37) interprets the nomination of
Schröder as chancellor candidate and the campaign that presented Schröder and
Lafontaine as united against the crisis in Germany as a strategic move of a co-
leadership (‘Doppelspitze’) in order to integrate disparate voter clienteles via two
front men with different positions.
In the analysis of the argumentative structure of Lafontaine’s speeches I will
ask whether this is a valid interpretation. If this is the case, one would not only
expect differences in the focus of the argumentation, but also a strong attempt to
communicate a connection between the positions and to conceal possible contra-
dictions. I will demonstrate that Lafontaine’s position in the 1997 speech is much
more radical than in the two speeches in 1998. The 1997 speech provides a counter
position to Schröder’s speech at the 1997 conference, in which Schröder presents
a programme of economic modernisation summarised by the programme term
‘innovation’, which later became part of the electoral slogan. Lafontaine argues for
a global perspective, demands a regulation of international finance markets and
aggressively attacks the global finance industry as a causal factor of the crisis in
Germany. In addition, he also tries to present a different interpretation of moder-
nity from Schröder, directly attacking the use of ‘modern’ for its connotation with
deregulation. Lafontaine repeats these arguments in his 1998 speeches; however,
he mitigates them and presents them as the united position of Gerhard Schröder
and himself.
The main part of the 1997 speech, after many congratulations and thanks,
opens with an affirmation of party unity as a result of the hard work since the
1995 conference. Lafontaine stresses social justice (‘soziale Gerechtigkeit’) as the
central social democratic value. As a direct result of the policies of the current
government, social justice is lost and Germany in a fundamental crisis. Lafontaine
stresses that social justice cannot only be the responsibility of the government, but
also of companies whose first responsibility must be towards society as a whole
instead of towards shareholder value. He illustrates this point by blaming the
companies for there being a lack of apprenticeships.
Lafontaine then takes the central value of ‘solidarity’ as a starting point to
argue for an international campaign against neoliberalism. In this context, Lafon-
taine draws on the concept of globalisation, which has been used by conservatives
and by Third-Way social democrats as a data topos to argue for the necessity of
‘modernisation’. While he agrees with the general characterisation of globalisa-
tion as being responsible for economic problems, Lafontaine draws different
conclusions: Cooperation within the G7 enable governments to enforce economic
regulation again – a process that Lafontaine metaphorically depicts as CONTAIN-
MENT OF A FLOOD (Lafontaine 1997: 36). A unified regulation of taxation and
the labour market within Europe would avoid competition that creates a negative
result for the majority of average employees who cannot use international tax
avoidance schemes. He supports his argument by depicting the welfare state as the
‘civilising inheritance of Europe’, and something which social democrats have to
defend (Lafontaine 1997: 39). The obstruction of such a solution in Europe by the
Kohl government is delegitimised through the metaphorical frame of crime: ‘Die
öffentlichen Kassen werden geplündert. Alle Staatskassen haben immer weniger
Einnahmen’ (‘The public purse is being looted. All treasuries have less and less in-
come’) (Lafontaine 1997: 44).
In his focus on economic policy, Lafontaine also reinforces the adjacency of
the terms supply and demand, arguing that only both terms together describe a
stable economy. Purely supply-orientated policies have led to high levels of state
debt, high unemployment, and high taxes for ordinary employees. He criticises a
pure focus on financial savings, and on ‘the slim state’, which he describes as being
a programme term of market liberals, which Lafontaine then reinterprets as the
‘poor state’. By comparison, the metaphor of ‘the slim state’ does not appear in
Schröder’s speeches until the party conference in autumn 2003, where the alterna-
tive to the ‘slim state’ is depicted as the ‘proliferating state’. Therefore, by the time
of Agenda 2010, Schröder has accepted the market-liberal criticism of the state
as being overpowering, while Lafontaine in 1997 still identifies the conservative
free market thinkers with this idea. It is therefore unlikely that his criticism of the
‘slim state’ metaphor is already a criticism of modernisers in the SPD. Following
his criticism of the conservative ‘Angebotspolitik’, Lafontaine also reinterprets the
term for the Social Democrats in order to reunite the adjacent pair ‘Angebot und
Nachfrage’ – he understands supply-side politics also as a supply of education
and research.
In this overview of Lafontaine’s core arguments, the differences between
Lafontaine and Schröder are obvious: Lafontaine concentrates much more on a
general criticism of the international finance markets and demands international
cooperation to regulate finance speculation, and a unified European system of
welfare and finance. He is also more radical in his criticism of the government,
describing their tax policy as criminal, and their economic policy as being one-
sided. Lafontaine uses more traditional social democratic values such as ‘solidar-
ity’ and ‘social justice’ as the central starting points of his argumentation. However,
one particular value topos can also be understood as a semantic struggle against
the so-called modernisers surrounding Schröder. In the following quotation, La-
fontaine thematises the distinction between traditionalists and modernisers that
was used in media commentaries on the situation of the SPD at the time, which
often argued that the SPD should learn from Blair as an exemplary moderniser
of the left:4
Ich lese da immer etwas von Traditionalisten und Modernisierern. Was ist denn
das für ein Begriff der Moderne, der in manchen Kommentaren durchschimmert,
so als sei Modernität auch ein Wettlauf darum, soziale Leistungen und Arbeitneh-
merrechte abzubauen?
Nein, die Moderne knüpft an die Tradition, der Aufklärung, an die Idee der
Weltgesellschaft, der Freien und Gleichen an. Die Moderne ist ein Begriff, der
Freiheit des einzelnen meint. Freiheit ohne Rechte und soziale Sicherheit ist nicht
möglich! Das ist die Moderne! Lassen wir uns doch nicht die Begriffe klauen!
(Lafontaine 1997: 57)
I am always reading something about traditionalists and modernisers. But I ask

myself, what is this concept of modernity that is behind these comments, it is as if as
if modernity is a race to cut social provision and the rights of employees.
On the contrary, modernity is directly linked to the tradition of enlightenment, to the
idea of a world society of free and equal citizens. Modernity is a meaning that entails
freedom of the individual. Freedom without rights and social security, however, is
impossible. That is modernity. Let’s not get our words pinched.
4. See, for example, in a critical fashion: Hofmann (May 09, 1997).

Lafontaine claims the term ‘modern’ for his position, but opens a connotational
competition, where ‘modern’ for him implies the logical adjacency of the values
of freedom of the individual, individual rights, and social security. This is radi-
cally different from the connection of rights and responsibilities and the focus on
freedom and individual responsibility in Blair’s speeches, and can therefore be
understood as an attack on Schröder.
Although Lafontaine’s speech of 1997 suggests an alternative to the Third Way
and also engages in a semantic battle against the modernisers, in his speeches in
1998 he mitigates this position and focuses his speeches on the unity of the party
position. His speech at the pre-election conference is a short epilogue to the speech
of the candidate. Lafontaine again discusses the international and European aspect
of his notion of ‘political economy’ and argues that the European social democrats
actually follow a common goal: employment. Lafontaine also stresses that this is
the common goal which he and Schröder share. At the same time, he underlines
once again that ‘social justice’ is the central value of social democracy, whereas
Schröder avoids this collocation. The purposive topos of Lafontaine’s speech
illustrates: he changes the central slogan ‘Arbeit, Innovation und Gerechtigkeit’:
‘… wir [wollen] tatsächlich ein anderes Deutschland […], ein Deutschland, das
Modernität und Innovation will, aber auch soziale Gerechtigkeit wieder größer
schreibt’ (‘Indeed, we are aiming for a different Germany […], a Germany, that
aspires to modernity and innovation, but also attaches more importance to social
justice again’) (Lafontaine 1998a: 78). Although this is certainly not constitutive
of a direct attack on Schröder and the modernisers, it is nevertheless a correction
of the central slogan by the elected party leader. This can be interpreted in the
sense of Walter’s (2009) ‘Doppelspitze’, where Lafontaine positions himself as a
party leader more to the left, whilst Schröder aims more for the centre ground.
This becomes even more noticeable in Lafontaine’s post-election speech. Whereas
Schröder’s post-election speech is closer to a government policy statement (‘Re-
gierungserklärung’), Lafontaine speaks as a party leader celebrating the success
of the party. He concentrates on credit claiming, arguing that his friendship with
Schröder was successful, that the coalition agreement contains the promised poli-
cies, and that the reform of the tax system (‘ökologische Steuerreform’) criticised
by the press is the reform wanted by the whole party. He even gives Schröder credit
for pushing these reforms in the coalition negotiations.
In his speech, Lafontaine repeats the discourse on the meaning of ‘modernity’
and ‘reform’, this time stressing that his position is one he shares with Schröder. In
this context, he also re-appropriates the conservative metaphor ‘Ruck’, originally
used in a speech by the German Federal President Roman Herzog in April 1997
entitled ‘Aufbruch ins 21. Jahrhundert’. In this speech, in which Herzog criticised
the German state as too inflexible and over-regulated, Herzog says:
Durch Deutschland muß ein Ruck gehen. Wir müssen Abschied nehmen von
liebgewordenen Besitzständen. Alle sind angesprochen, alle müssen Opfer brin-
gen, alle müssen mitmachen. (Herzog 1997)
But it is not yet too late. Germany must give itself a shake. We must give up cherished
entitlements. Everyone is involved, everyone must make sacrifices, everyone has a
role to play. (Herzog 1997b: p. 97)
The first sentence of the quotation quickly became a fixed expression in German
political discourse and ‘Ruck’ became a symbol term for political change, often
understood as deregulation. This notion is criticised by Lafontaine in his thema-
tisation of ‘Moderne’, and the symbol term is then reinterpreted in order to claim
credit for himself and Schröder, and to demonstrate their unanimity:
Aber, liebe Genossinnen und Genossen, mit Modernisierungsangeboten nach
dem Motto „es muß sich endlich mal was ändern“, „Es muß endlich einmal ein
Ruck durch die Gesellschaft gehen“, „Wir müssen die Besitzstände überwinden“ –
dabei denkt der eine oder andere an die Rentnerin mit 900 DM – […] kann ich
leider nichts anfangen. Das ist hohles Geschwafel, das nicht weiterführt. Wir sind
gerne bereit, in die konkrete Auseinandersetzung zu gehen. Es hat sich ja viel
geändert, liebe Genossinnen und Genossen. Es hat sich nach der Wahl am 27.
September sehr viel geändert. Es ist ein Ruck durch die Bevölkerung gegangen,
und wir sollten stolz darauf sein, daß wir alle diesen Ruck in. unserem Lande
bewirkt haben, an erster Stelle Gerhard Schröder. (Lafontaine 1998b: 26–27)
However, comrades, I can’t make anything of modernising ideas such us ‘finally

something needs to change’, ‘Society must give itself a shake’ ‘we must give up the
sense of entitlement’ – some think of the pensioner with 900 Deutschmark – that is
empty talk that leads to nothing. We are happy to have a discussion about it. Com-
rades, much has changed. After the election on 27th September, much has changed.
The people have given themselves a jolt, and we should be proud that we have caused
this shake up of our country, led by Gerhard Schröder.
This is again a twofold strategy: Lafontaine criticises the rhetoric of modernisation,

which he indirectly attributes to the Christian Democrats by quoting Herzog’s
phrase. He also re-appropriates this phrase for himself and Schröder. Nevertheless,
the quotations he presents are also strikingly similar to the language of modernisa-
tion in Hombach and in the Schröder-Blair paper. Although both publications
came out later than Lafontaine’s speech, it is likely that he was aware of that type of
rhetoric from more conservative social democrats and the quotation can therefore
be read as an implicit and mitigated criticism of that rhetoric. Thus, not only do
Lafontaine's speeches play a part in the duet of two politicians serving different
audiences, as is argued by Walter (2009), but also in an alternative position to ‘Die
Neue Mitte’ and ‘The Third Way’ in its own right.
6.6 Rhetoric in times of change: Blair’s Clause Four and Schröder’s

Agenda 2010
The contexts of Schröder’s and Blair’s special conference speeches could not be
more different. Whereas the decision about the change of Clause Four was reached
by the party before the special conference through an electoral college, Schröder
had announced the reforms of the Agenda 2010 as an executive decision in parlia-
ment and then needed to gain the approval of the party. In this section, I will
demonstrate how the different approaches to ideological change led to the use of
different legitimisation strategies in the speeches, but at the same time show how
it was nevertheless the case that core topoi such as the separation of values and
means remained similar.
In order to understand fully how Blair legitimised the change of Clause Four
as a symbol for the ‘renewal’ and ‘change’, I will contextualise my analysis with his
first conference speech as a Labour leader in 1994, because the plan to rewrite
Clause Four was announced in this speech. Blair opens his speech in 1994 by
setting the tone with ‘we meet in a spirit of hope’, and by pointing out positive
developments such as by-elections and local elections won, as well as a growing
membership. The speech then continues with the typical argumentative patterns
for a party conference speech of an opposition leader; blaming the government
for failures, arguing for new policies, stressing the values of the party. The end of
the speech, however, was very unexpected and provocative as Blair announced
a rewriting of the highly symbolic Clause Four of the party’s constitution. How
was this announcement perceived at the time? For her anthropological analysis
of party conferences in Britain, Faucher-King (2005) followed Blair’s speech as
a visitor to the conference: ‘The announcement was so unexpected that many in
the hall did not pick up immediately its implications. Rewriting Clause 4 was a
clear assertion of authority by the young leader’ (Faucher-King 2005: 133). Seldon
(2005: 222) also describes the great surprise of many party members, quoting
from an interview he conducted with Peter Hain:
The party was taken completely by shock. […] I was commenting live on Channel
4 and Elinor Goodman, the political editor, said the last page of Blair’s speech was
missing and there’s a rumour that he’s going to ditch Clause IV. I said on air, ‘You
must be joking’.
Blair carefully prepared his audience for this announcement. First of all, he
presented his version of ‘socialism’ as opposing the free-market ideology of the
Conservatives:
The Tories […] believe in a world where […] the free market builds business, trains
employees, controls inflation, preserves demand, ensures everlasting growth […]
Market forces cannot educate us or equip us for this world of rapid technologi-
cal and economic change. We must do it together. We cannot buy our way to a
safe society. We must work for it together. And we cannot purchase an option
on whether we grow old. We must plan for it together. We cannot protect the
ordinary against the abuse of power by leaving them to it; we must protect each
other. That is our insight, a belief in society, working together, solidarity, coopera-
tion, partnership. These are our words. This is my socialism, and we should stop
apologising for using the word. (Applause) It is not the socialism of Marx or state
control. It is rooted in a straightforward view of society, in the understanding
that the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with
principles and standards and common aims and values. We are the party of the
individual because we are the party of community. It is social-ism, and our task is
to apply those values to the modern world. (Blair 1995a: 99)
Blair portrays the data topos ‘rapid technological and economic change’ as a
problem – and cooperation as its general solution. This central Labour value of
cooperation is construed by the repeated use of ‘INCLUSIVE WE + ACTION
VERB’ as the conclusion, which is presented as an alternative to ‘the market’ as
the subject of political action. Blair claims the values ‘solidarity, cooperation,
partnership’ as central concepts of Labour’s ideology (‘These are our words’) and
personally calls it ‘socialism’ (‘This is my socialism’). He also excludes the ideas of
‘state control’ and ‘Marxism’ from his ideological concept of ‘socialism’. Later in
the speech, he stresses the values of ‘responsibility’ and ‘enterprise’ as representing
core Labour values that have simply been misrepresented by the Conservatives
because they were not applied to all people equally (Blair 1995a: 103). In total,
Blair uses the word ‘responsibility’ 17 times, making it a central value topos of the
speech. Blair also uses the Third-Way topos of post-ideology (‘The British people
are tired of dogma’).
A further central preparatory argument for his announcement is the necessity
of ‘change’: the party is construed as a living being that needs to change or will
die. In this context, ‘change’ is used as a noun, as a grammatical metaphor that
construes an abstract fact rather than a process with participants responsible for
the change, a construction that has a depoliticising effect.
Blair ends his 1994 speech using the golden-age myth, describing the change
of the Labour party as a project of ‘national renewal’ with nothing else than a ‘new
Britain’ as a goal. The use of a millenarist topos5 (‘A thousand days to prepare for
a thousand years’) and the construal of New Labour policy as the ‘destiny’ of the
nation gives this ending a messianic tone.
5. For more details on the millenarist topos see Chapter 7.9.

Blair’s special conference speech in 1995 adopts a similar tone, again using
metaphors as central arguments to support the same core element of New Labour’s
ideology of ethical socialism based on values. The speech is short and focuses on
mitigation of the changes to Clause Four. Strongly metaphorical arguments are
used to move the audience and construe a group solidarity. In line with Charteris-
Black (2006: 13–14), I argue that this focus on metaphorical arguments here is a
legitimisation strategy. Blair opens his speech with a body metaphor (PARTY AS
A HUMAN BODY) that is used to legitimise his leadership and to delegitimise
conservative accusations about a lack of unity in the party:
I asked you to be with me head and heart, and I believe that you are. Those ballots
were the answer to the Tory charge that Labour’s head is separate from Labour’s
body. This is a leader in step with his party and this is a party in step with the
British people. (Blair 1995c: 289)
He continues with the Third Way topos of the party as special agency for renewal
of the nation, using a three-step structure that is typical of Blair’s speeches whereby
his values are the values of the party, and the values of the party are the values of
the nation. He calls his values ‘socialism’, but has redefined socialism as being a
value-based communitarianism. The repeated use of the programme term ‘social-
ism’ is itself a mitigation of the effects of a change in the values. Blair effectively
argues that he has returned to the values of Labour’s democratic ethical socialism.
In a further complex metaphorical argumentation to legitimise the values of
New Labour, Blair uses the topos of separation of values and means that L'Hôte
(2014: 68) has described as being typical for new Labour. Using this topos, Blair
refutes the accusation that Labour is ‘stealing Tory clothes when we talk of crime
or the family or of aspiration …’ (values as material objects). The party had
historically only ignored these topics, because they ‘confused means with ends’.
This confusion had many negative effects, which Blair depicts metaphorically,
using three different metaphors in a short piece of his speech. First the Labour
Party had lost their way (politics is a journey forward), secondly, it allowed
the Tories to be ‘intruders’ on their ‘ground’ and now has to reclaim this ground
(politics is a battle) and thirdly they have allowed ‘the structure and organisa-
tion of our party to fall into disrepair’ (party as a building). The argument is yet
again in a golden-age topos, and Blair asks the party to return to its original way.
Clause Four is then interpreted as a symbol for a further central Third-Way
topos and part of the end of ideologies. This topos is carried through the whole
speech by using new–old oppositions and the new programme term ‘one nation’
that will also appear in the 1997 manifesto. At the same time, Blair mitigates the
deletion of ‘public ownership’ as a value from Clause Four by insisting it is still a
value, only not dogmatic:
No one disputed the need for some public ownership. That’s why we fought off the
privatisation of the Post Office. That is why we will fight to keep our railways as a
proper public service, publicly owned, public [sic; publically] accountable to the
people. (Blair 1995c: 290)
Furthermore, Blair talks about ‘renationalisation’ in the context of keeping the

NHS public. In terms of the morphology of the new Labour ideology, this can be
interpreted as a move of values from the centre to the periphery. Blair finally closes
his speech using the metaphor of rebirth – of the party and the nation, using the
golden-age topos just as he had done in his 1994 speech.
In comparison with Blair’s speeches on Clause Four between 1994 and 1996,
Schröder’s speeches on the Agenda 2010 in 2003 are less positive, not at all mes-
sianic, and less focused on pathos through metaphor. At the time of the announce-
ment of the Agenda 2010, Schröder had been Chancellor for five years but had not
prepared his party or the electorate for radical reforms of the job market or the
welfare state. The election campaign and Schröder’s government policy declaration
two months prior to the announcement had been entirely optimistic and positive
(Wolfrum 2013: 542). Schröder revealed the reform plans in parliament without
having an in-depth reform debate within the party; this debate actually followed
the publication of the reform plans. Schröder therefore construes the policies of
the Agenda 2010 in his speeches as being without any alternative; however, he
employs similar topoi to those Blair had employed in his speeches on Clause Four,
such as constructions of necessity and the separation between values and means.
Schröder’s special conference speech opens with a historical topos to establish
an unbroken historical identity of the SPD, a strategy that we have already seen in
Blair’s conference speeches. He does this by mentioning the 140th anniversary of
the SPD, and Schröder combines this topos with an assertion of the core values
of the SPD: ‘Freiheit, Solidarität und Gerechtigkeit’ (Schröder 2003b: 13). These
‘hard’, i.e. unchangeable, core values, as well as the ability to ‘renew society’ and
the willingness to face ‘necessary changes’ (‘Die Bereitschaft, sich notwendigen
Veränderungen zu stellen’) are presented as being the pride of the party. The ‘neces-
sary changes’ are here presented as a data topos, because they are reified using
a grammatical metaphor as object of ‘sich stellen’/ ‘to face’. This is also a topos
used by Blair; however, the high obligation ‘notwendig’ points towards the crisis
topoi that Schröder construes later. In addition, Schröder uses the construction
‘veränderten ökonomische und demographische Wirklichkeit’ in variations six
times, asking the party to accept this ‘changed’ reality, arguing metaphorically
that ‘wer versucht die Realität zu verdängen, den drängt die Realität beiseite’ (‘If
you try to push reality aside, it will push you aside’) (Schröder 2003b: 15). In this
‘changed reality’, ‘change’ is again a grammatical metaphor. The adjectival use of
this participle closes the discourse on who or what caused the changes, and the
changes needed are construed as facts. In the second metaphor, ‘reality’ is also
reified as a given that cannot be challenged. This is in line with the repeated use
of the construction ‘Wir müssen’ + mental process that relate to the data topoi of
structurally high unemployment, high taxes, debt, and demographic problems in
the welfare state as being undebatable truths:
Wir müssen den Mut zeigen, anzuerkennen, dass die Zahl der Arbeitslosen
nicht nur aus konjunkturellen Gründen auf mehr als 4 Millionen angestiegen ist,
sondern dass es dafür auch strukturelle Ursachen gibt. Diese Ursachen müssen
wir erkennen und beseitigen. (Schröder 2003b: 13)
We must have the courage to recognise that the number of unemployed people is not
only risen to more than 4 Million because of the economic situation, but there are
structural reasons. These reasons we must recognise and eliminate. This is the type
of responsibility I am talking about, dear friends.
The strong obligation (‘must recognise) in this speech serves as a construction

of necessity. This is supported by the depiction of alternative interpretations as
illusions when Schröder says ‘niemand darf sich etwas vormachen’ (‘We should
not fool ourselves’). The combination of these strategies also increases the urgency
of the crisis topoi. In her analysis of meetings in business and politics, Wodak
(2013: 211) has shown that a sense of urgency is ‘an essential outcome in the co-
construction of actionable consensus’, and in his speech, Schröder also seems to
employ this strategy.
Schröder also turns to a negative and exclusive rhetoric to delegitimise critics,
describing them as pessimists, lazy thinkers, and of being inconsiderate of the
chances of future generations – characteristics which are not social democratic
in nature:
Unsere schärfsten Gegner sind manchmal nicht unsere politischen Konkur-
renten, nein, unsere Gegner sind gelegentlich Resignation, Pessimismus, auch
Trägheit im Denken, liebe Genossinnen und Genossen. […] Wer meint – das ist
auch klar, es werde ohnehin alles schlechter, deswegen sollten ruhig die anderen
die notwendigen Entscheidungen verantworten, der – das sage ich an dieser Stelle
sehr bewusst – vergeht sich nun wirklich an den Zukunftschancen künftiger
Generationen. (Schröder 2003b: 20–21)
Sometimes, our hardest enemies are not our political competitors, no, our enemies
are at times resignation, pessimism and laziness in thinking, comrades. […] It is
clear that those who think everything is getting worse no matter what we do, and
therefore somebody else should take responsibility for the necessary decisions, those,
and I say this clearly, really damage the prospects of future generations to come.
This is an opposite strategy to Blair’s one of all-inclusiveness. Whereas Blair argues

that changes in values and the presentation of the values in Clause Four are neces-
sary because they are the values of the British people, and the renewal of the party
will lead to a renewal of the nation, Schröder delegitimises critics in this part of
his speech. There are, however, also positive turns in the data topoi. The main
positive approach to the situation is the credit claim for the positive results of the
politics of ‘innovation’. This was an attempt to connect the new unpopular policies
to an established positive programme term, and was part of a wider promotional
strategy whereby the SPD proclaimed the year 2004 as the ‘Year of Innovation’
and Schröder asked the SPD MPs to use the terms ‘Agenda 2010’ and ‘Innovation’
synonymously (Wolfrum 2013: 542).
The central value topoi of Schröder’s speech are already called upon at the
introduction of the speech – freedom, solidarity and justice. These values are
indeed traditional SPD values that are described as the ‘Grundwerte des Sozialis-
mus’ in the ‘Godesberger Programm’ from 1959 (SPD Parteivorstand 1959: 3), as
‘Grundwerte des demokratischen Sozialismus’ in the ‘Berliner Programm’ (SPD
Parteivorstand 1998b: 12), valid at the time of Schröder’s speech, and which was
also used Lafontaine’s speeches in 1997 and 1998. Schröder, however, reinterprets
the logical adjacency between the three values. Whereas Lafontaine stresses
that freedom is not possible without solidarity and social security (Lafontaine
1997: 53), Schröder argues that there is no freedom without justice, but also no
solidarity without freedom, because ‘real’ solidarity is based on freedom and
individual initiative (‘Eigeninitiative’) (Schröder 2003b: 18). Furthermore, similar
to Giddens and Blair, Schröder reinterprets ‘justice’, focusing on integration in the
labour market and justice for future generations, whilst the Berliner Programme
still asks for more equality in income, power and property (SPD Parteivorstand
1998b: 12).
A much stronger similarity in Blair’s and Schröder’s crisis-speeches is in the
topos of separation of values and means. It is central to Schröder’s speech since he
uses it twice. He introduces it as an argument that the SPD has to have the cour-
age to change (‘Mut zur Veränderung’), and returns to it towards the end of the
speech. There, Schröder points out that the changes to SPD policy in Agenda 2010
are necessary to continue following the values of freedom, solidarity and justice.
As an example of the necessary separation of values and means, Schröder argues
that the equal contribution of employers and employees to social welfare – which
has been the basis of the German welfare state since its foundation – is only a
means to produce a fairer society. It must be changed under ‘radically changed
circumstances’. Schröder does not, however, apply the value ‘justice’ to the policy
which leads to lower contributions by employers and to higher contributions by
employees. He does not ask whether this is a just policy; rather, he argues that
these changes to the means are economically necessary, but do not alter the aim
for justice. This argument is followed by another central topos of the Agenda 2010
discourse that can be read as a construction of necessity, which is that the welfare
state can only be sustained for the future if it is reformed, otherwise it will be lost.
Schröder’s conference speech at the regular biannual party conference was
still dominated by the debate about Agenda 2010; however, the speech has a
more positive approach, and aims to strengthen the positive self-image of the
SPD. The main reason for the more positive tone of this speech is the reduced
usage of high- obligation constructions such as ‘we must’ to close the discourse.
Negative and excluding rhetoric in the crisis topoi is also only used once: ‘Wer in
dieser Situation nicht mitzieht, der stellt Parteitaktik über das Wohl des Landes,
ja der versündigt sich an unserem Land’ (‘If people don’t pull their weight in this
situation, and favour party politics over country, they sin against our country’ )
(Schröder 2003a: 51).
Schröder opens his speech by defining the overall topic of his speech, which
is not Agenda 2010, but Germany 2010 as a social-democratic country. This
main theme is repeated towards the end of the speech, where Schröder interprets
the title of his reform agenda as a final topos. He describes his personal vision
of Germany in 2010:
Deutschland 2010, das ist ein Land, das Spitze ist in Wirtschaft, weil es Spitze ist in
Bildung und Forschung. Deutschland 2010, das muss ein Land für Familien sein,
ein Land, in dem Ältere und Jüngere füreinander da sind, in dem Frauen Familie
und Beruf miteinander verbinden können. (Schröder 2003a: 65–66)
Germany in 2010 is a leading economy, because it is leading in education and

research. Germany in 2010 needs to be a country for families, a country, in which
older and younger generations care for each other and in which women can combine
family and work.
Repeating ‘Deutschland 2010’ five times, Schröder uses the technique Blair
employed from the very beginning in his party conference speeches, the depic-
tion of a positive national future. This is an attempt to connect the programme
term ‘Agenda 2010’ to positive connotations, supported by the above-mentioned
strategy to connect the keywords ‘Agenda 2010’ and ‘Innovation’. In this speech,
Schröder uses terms containing ‘innova-’ eleven times, compared to three times in
the special conference speech. He also connects the programme term ‘Innovation’
to the programme term ‘Demokratischer Sozialismus’, but does not vouch for it
personally in the same way as Blair did in his speeches in 1994 to 1996, and even
rejects the necessity for a debate on terminology. Although ‘Deutschland 2010’ is
the main motive of the speech, it is not its purposive topos: it does not define the
goals of Agenda 2010. The purposive topos of Schröder’s policy appears in the
middle of the speech (Schröder 2003a: 54), marked by the phrase ‘Ziel muss es
doch sein …’: the reduction of the ‘burden’ of taxes on work, so people do not have
to live on hand-outs (‘Almosen’). This is a double delegitimisation of the traditional
German welfare state, in which taxes are metaphorically construed as a burden
that need to be lowered, and the welfare state is implicitly evaluated negatively as
‘Almosen’, a word Schröder already used in his special conference speech.
In the value topoi of the speech, four important topoi stand out: He repeat-
edly uses ‘Innovation’ and the topos of the separation of means and values from
the speech at the special conference. Schröder also rephrases his redefinition of
‘solidarity’, this time closer to the values of opportunities and responsibilities
used by Blair: ‘Solidarität ist immer beides: die Verantwortung der Gemeinschaft
für den Einzelnen, aber auch die Verpflichtung des Einzelnen der Gemeinschaft
gegenüber’ (‘Solidarity always means both: resposibility of the community for the
individual, but also responsibility of the individual for the community’) (Schröder
2003a: 56). However, the similarity does not end there, and Schröder also uses a
type of populist topos Blair employed in his 1994 speech when he introduced the
adjacency of opportunity and responsibility. Both Schröder and Blair point out
that there is a lack of responsibility among the rich, using words such as ‘company
bosses’ (Blair) and ‘Dreistigkeit’ (Schröder). Schröder also opens the discourse
on the meaning of ‘Staat’ again by using metaphorical oppositions: asking for a
‘slim state’ instead of a ‘proliferating state’, for a strong state that supports respon-
sibility (‘Eigenverantwortung’) instead of a state of handouts (‘Verteilungsstaat’).
While Lafontaine, in 1997, used ‘slim state’ still as a marked-liberal stigma term,
Schröder now uses it as a positive metaphor that he presents in an argumentative
structure of a ‘third way’ by arguing that instead of ‘privatisation’ (new right) and
a ‘bureaucratic monster’, the SPD supports a strong but ‘slim’ state.
6.7 Conclusions: Legitimation of ideological change in political context
In the analysis of the complex topical structure in the ideological publications of

the Third Way in Britain and Germany, I have shown that the data topoi and the
topoi of values and principles are of particular interest. We have seen in the data
topos that crisis topoi are prevalent in all publications, but are realised differently
depending on the political culture. Within value topoi, a reorientation of social
democratic values takes place, which can be analysed using Freeden’s (1998)
morphology of political ideologies
These general structures of the Third Way discourse are adapted according to
the political culture of Germany or the UK. Hombach, for example, recontextu-
alises the discourse element of ‘active state’ from the welfare reform discourse in
the UK and the USA into the context of the crisis of the old corporatism and the
party state in Germany. In Freeden’s (1998) terms this is called cultural adjacency,
and I have argued that Hombach and Giddens are aware of this.
A particular feature of Blair’s pre-election speeches is the extensive use of
personal narratives as a legitimisation strategy by New Labour, concentrating on
Blair as a leader, and discursively increasing the process of presidentialisation. In
Schröder’s speeches, this would probably have been inappropriate as he was shar-
ing the leadership of the party with Lafontaine. He was also not presenting himself
to the party conference as the elected leader talking about a personal vision, but
rather as a candidate for the chancellorship who had to demonstrate that he could
represent the position of the party. He therefore tried to present his ideological
position as the position of the party, whilst Blair started from his own personal
political position, arguing that this was also the traditional position of Labour.
Schröder, in contrast, legitimises his personal position through credit claims for
successes as Minister President, a strategy not open to Blair.
Lafontaine, as a party leader in 1997 and 1998, presented an alternative to the
Third Way, asking for a European harmonisation of taxes and social standards, as
well as for a strict regulation of the financial markets. He also criticised the use of
the term ‘modernisation’ and ‘reform’ by the so-called modernisers. However, he
mitigated his position in 1998 in order to present a united front with Schröder,
whilst simultaneously representing more left-wing positions to broaden the appeal
of the SPD. It is therefore possible to interpret the different presentation as the
electoral strategy of a ‘Doppelspitze’.
The analysis of Blair’s and Schröder’s speeches at a crisis point – the change
to Clause Four and the defence of the Agenda 2010 – has demonstrated that both
leaders base their speeches on very similar argumentative structures in that they
use generally similar data topoi, and the value topos of a separation of means
and values is employed in order to argue that the values of their party have not
changed. However, both speakers use different linguistic strategies to handle the
crisis. Whereas Blair provoked the crisis around Clause Four in order to reshape
the ideology of his party and used a very emotionally charged rhetoric, rich of
metaphors, Schröder, in contrast, had to defend a leadership decision and gain
legitimisation ex post, so he argued that there was no alternative for his position,
reifying processes of change in the data topoi and creating a sense of urgency by
using phrases of high obligation.
Chapter 7
New politics, new metaphor?
7.1 Metaphor in political discourse
Metaphors are often used to talk about complex, vague or controversial po-
litical circumstances, because they use familiar concepts to illustrate difficult
or confusing topics. Psychological research shows that metaphors have a strong
persuasive effect (Mio 1996). They enable politicians to simplify matters and help
influence the attitudes people have towards political decisions because they are
deeply rooted in the human conceptual system (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 3).
If mental representation is at least partly metaphorical as Cognitive Metaphor
theory (CMT) suggests, it becomes clearer why the persuasive power of successful
political leaders is to a certain extent grounded in their mastery of metaphori-
cal language (Charteris-Black 2006: 13–15; Goatly 2007: 25–30). However, three
major extensions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) are needed to integrate it
into discourse linguistics:
Firstly, Musolff (2006) argues that conceptual domains and image schemata
are not always sufficient to explain the use of metaphors. He suggests the organi-
sation of source concepts into mini-narratives called scenarios. These scenarios
carry evaluative and attitudinal biases related to particular political dispositions
of national discourse communities. Musolff illustrates this problem with Lakoff ’s
(2002) basic mapping nation is a family, which has two opposing subsets of
its basic concept, the parents–children relationship: the strict father and
the nurturant parent. For some time now it has been common ground that
conceptual unity is an essential prerequisite for imposing semantic coherence on
an utterance, so how two opposing subsets can be of the same basic mapping is an
important question to consider. Musolff (2006: 24) suggests that scenarios capture
subdomain levels of conceptual configurations. These scenarios are a set of nar-
rative and normative assumptions made by competent members of a discourse
community about typical aspects of the source domain, and the source-based
assumptions are mapped onto the target situation.
A second necessary adaptation of CMT is the broader discourse linguistic un-

derstanding of metaphor. Whilst for CMT, conceptual metaphors are the primary
concern, the linguistic analysis of discourse needs to take textual or discursive
manifestations of metaphors and their functions into account. Metaphors have
textual functions such as summarising ideas and drawing attention to a key point
or argument (Semino 2008: 31). Pielenz (1993: 119–59) demonstrates that meta-
phors are integral to argumentation as they express material topoi. In political
discourse, metaphors are central to the strategic functions and their argumentative
character, demonstrated by Pielenz (1993), links them to (de-)legitimisation. The
strategy of (mis-)representation appropriates the ideational property of metaphors
to help foreground and background specific aspects of the target domain. Their
potential for strategic (de-)politicisation was first noticed by Muntigl (2002), who
demonstrated that journey metaphors are used in the discourse on EU social
and employment policy to naturalise these policies, i.e. construe them as existing
without alternative.
Finally, the lexical analysis of metaphors needs to be complemented with an
analysis of metaphors at a grammatical level. This has been developed in systemic
functional linguistics, which captures the options for meaning-making in network
analyses and describes in detail the meaning potentials of sentences in the different
metafunctions. This approach enables us to see metaphorical language in a differ-
ent light. Halliday (1985: 321) describes the traditional approach to metaphor as an
analysis from a lexico-grammatical point of view. Metaphor is a variation in the use
of words, whereas grammatical metaphor is understood by Halliday as being varia-
tion in the expression of meaning. These variations are distinguishable by degrees
of congruence, i.e. the typicality or markedness of an expression. The congruent
form is unmarked; for example, processes are construed by verbs, but in a marked
case they can be construed as a noun (Halliday 1985: 321; Taverniers 2003: 7).
There are three types of grammatical metaphors linked to the metafunctions
of language: Ideational experiential metaphors construe elements of incongru-
ent categories (e.g. nominalisations or certain process types as different types of
clause as representation), ideational-logical metaphors are marked constructs of
sequences, e.g. indirect realisation of conjunction, and interpersonal metaphors
are an incongruent use of modality and mood. As the analysis of my corpus
mainly showed processes of nominalisation as a strategy, I will introduce only
the ideational experiential metaphor in more detail. The following example dem-
onstrates how elements are construed as an incongruent lexical category, in this
case a nominalisation:
i. The government terminated the contract for many public sector workers.
ii. The termination of many public sector contracts …
Chapter 7. New politics, new metaphor? 209
Whereas in the first example, a process is congruently construed as a verb phrase

with participants, the second is marked as a process which is grammatically con-
strued as a noun and semantically as an entity. This means the participant role
actor is not obligatory any more, which constitutes a loss of ideational meaning.
Hence, nominalisation as a grammatical metaphor can be used to obfuscate re-
sponsibility. Experiential metaphors have textual as well as interpersonal effects,
and nominalised processes are mapped into the transitivity pattern and fall under
the domain of thematic and informational structure of the sentence. They can be
modalised, doubted and argued.
Simon-Vandenbergen (2003) shows that the lexical phenomenon metaphor
described by CMT and the grammatical metaphor discussed in SFL needs to be
understood as one, and that metaphors are a lexico-grammatical phenomenon.
Grammatical metaphors are, as we have seen, defined by interstratal tension; they
are a type of meaning-creation through the remapping of meaning onto form. This
means that grammatical metaphor and lexical metaphor have much in common, in
that grammatical metaphors are incongruent realisations on the level of clause as
exchange and clause as representation, whilst lexical metaphors are an incongruent
mapping of a semantic concept onto a lexical unit. Grammatical metaphors and
lexical metaphors are not simply rewording, but constitute ‘re-meaning’ which in
turn leads to a different concept of the world. This ‘re-meaning’ can have consider-
able effects on our understanding of the world as we have seen above, especially
since both types of metaphor have a tendency to be conventionalised and become
systemic (Simon-Vandenbergen 2003: 224–26). This view is compatible with the
cognitive explanation of metaphorical language, which defines metaphorical
thinking as a general cognitive competence, and this metaphorical competence
explains the conceptual basis of all metaphors in language. The functional per-
spective, on the other hand, is the basis of the ideational, interpersonal and textual
functions of metaphors in discourses. The common denominator of lexical and
grammatical metaphors is the foreground/background function of metaphors. For
example, grammatical metaphors can help to foreground or background either
participants or processes in the ideation.
Methodologically, I base my analysis of metaphor on the widely accepted
standard for the metaphor identification defined by the Pragglejaz Group:1
1. Pragglejaz Group: Group of linguistic scholars who ‘attempted to create an explicit, reliable,
and flexible method for identifying metaphorically used words in spoken and written lan-
guage’ (Pragglejaz Group 2007: 2). The group consists of Peter Crisp, Ray Gibbs, Alan Cienki,
Gerard Steen, Graham Low, Lynne Cameron, Elena Semino, Joseph Grady, Alice Deignan,
Zoltan Kövecses.
1. Read the entire text-discourse to establish a general understanding of the

meaning.
2. Determine the lexical units in the text-discourse.
3. (a) For each lexical unit in the text, establish its meaning in context, that is,
how it applies to an entity, relation or attribute in the situation evoked by
the text (contextual meaning). Take into account what comes before and
after the lexical unit.
(b) For each lexical unit, determine if it has a more basic contemporary mean-
ing in other contexts than the one in the given context. For our purposes,
basic meanings tend to be
– More concrete (what they evoke is easier to imagine, see, hear, feel,
smell and taste);
– Related to bodily action;
– More precise (as opposed to vague);
– Historically older.
Basic meanings are not necessarily the most frequent meanings of the lexical unit.
(c) If the lexical unit has a more basic current-contemporary meaning
in other contexts than the given context, decide whether the contex-
tual meaning contrasts with the basic meaning but can be understood in
comparison with it.
4. If yes, mark the lexical unit as metaphorical. (Pragglejaz Group 2007: 3)
I have, however, excluded highly conventionalised spatial metaphors such as ‘the
number of … has gone up’ deliberately, since most of them are not significant for
my analysis of political discourse, but kept good is up metaphors which seemed
relevant to the ideological argumentation of the analysed text, for example ‘ladder
of opportunities’.
The following tables give an overview of the quantitative results of the analysis
for Party Conference speeches and Election manifestos. I have not produced a
similarly detailed overview for the ideological publications, as they were not avail-
able electronically and could not be analysed quantitatively in a computer-assisted
manner. However, the details of a manual metaphor analysis of these texts have
influenced the following discussion.
The tables represent the first ten most used target and source domains, their
total number, and their percentage of all metaphors in that part of the corpus. All
other domains have been collected under the category ‘OTHER’. The metaphor
frequency states the number of metaphors per hundred words. In all three parts of
the corpus, journey, building, and battle metaphors are dominant, and I will focus
on their functions first.
Table 15. Metaphors in party conference speeches

Blair Schröder Lafontaine
Corpus in words 19831 Corpus in words 30114 Corpus in words 14339
Number of metaphors 223 Number of metaphors 231 Number of metaphors 93
*
Metaphor frequency 1.125 Metaphor frequency 0.767 Metaphor frequency 0.649
Target domain N % Source domain N % Target domain N % Source domain N % Target domain N % Source domain N %
politics 89 39.9 building 48 21.5 politics 112 48.5 journey 65 28.1 politics 46 49.5 journey 26 28.0
nation 37 16.6 journey 38 17.0 society 21 9.1 building 22 9.5 economy 10 10.8 battle 10 10.8
ideology 19 8.5 battle 21 9.4 ideology 12 5.2 battle 11 20 8.7 ideology 10 10.8 building 7 7.5
Labour Party 12 5.4 life form 19 8.5 state 4.8 person 11 13 5.6 society 6 6.5 burden 6 6.5
society 11 4.9 person 16 7.2 tax 4.8 life form 8 3.5 tax 4 4.3 sport 6 6.5
economy 6 2.7 business 8 3.6 economy 9 3.9 burden 7 3.0 SPD 3 3.2 person 4 4.3
money 5 2.2 prison 4 7 3.1 globalis. 6 2.6 centre –perip. 7 3.0 state 2 2.2 business 3 3.2
education 1.8 sport 6 2.7 welfare 5 2.2 space 4 1.7 welfare 2 2.2 crime 2 2.1
argument 3 1.3 left centre right 5 2.2 SPD 4 1.7 container 4 1.7 election victory 1 1.1 water 2 2.1
history 3 1.3 matter 4 1.8 change 3 1.3 prison 4 1.7 injustice 1 1.1 centre –perip. 2 2.1
OTHER 34 15.2 OTHER 51 22.9 OTHER 37 16.0 OTHER 77 33.3 OTHER 8 8.6 OTHER 25 26.9
*Metaphor frequency = (Number of metaphors/Corpus in words) *100
Table 16. Metaphors in the SPD and Labour manifestos 1990–2002

Labour 1987 Labour 1992
Total in words 9153 Total in words 12459
Total metaphors 95 Total metaphors 80
Metaphor frequency 1.037911067 Metaphor frequency 0.642106108
Target domain N % Source domain N % Target domain N % Source domain N %
politics 65 68.4 battle 18 18.9 politics economy 37 46.3 building 18 22.5
nation 4 4.2 journey 18 18.9 education 19 23.8 journey 18 22.5
ideology 3 3.2 building 17 17.9 ideology 4 5.0 battle 9 11.3
cities 2 2.1 health 7 7.4 civil service local 3 3.8 health 8 10.0
NHS 2 2.1 burden 5 5.3 government 2 2.5 religion 4 5.0
poverty 2 2.1 life form 5 5.3 policy 2 2.5 centre periphery 3 3.8
services 2 2.1 parenthood 4 4.2 tax 2 2.5 container 2 2.5
tax 2 2.1 waste 4 4.2 benefits OTHER 2 2.5 engine 2 2.5
unemployment 2 2.1 container 3 3.2 1 1.3 life form 2 2.5
OTHER 11 10.4 OTHER 3 3.2 9 11.3 OTHER 2 2.5
Labour 1997 Labour 2001

politics 70 41.9 journey 30 18.0 politics 96 51.3 building 55 29.4
policy 15 9.0 building 29 17.4 work 23 12.3 journey 39 20.9
economy 13 7.8 battle 21 12.6 economy 10 5.3 battle 34 18.2
society 11 6.6 religion 16 9.6 policy 7 3.7 person 7 3.7
education 8 4.8 person 8 4.8 society 7 3.7 burden 5 2.7
welfare state 5 3.0 business 6 3.6 education 6 3.2 container 5 2.7
value 4 2.4 engine 6 3.6 nation 4 2.1 health 5 2.7
market 3 1.8 plant 6 3.6 regulation 4 2.1 business 4 2.1
work 3 1.8 health 5 3.0 tax 4 2.1 engine 4 2.1
OTHER 35 21.0 OTHER 5 3.0 OTHER 26 13.9 OTHER 29 15.5
SPD 1990 SPD 1994

politics 23 39.0 building 16 27.1 politics 45 43.3 journey 19 18.3
economy 6 10.2 journey 14 23.7 tax 10 9.6 battle 18 17.3
policy 6 10.2 battle 7 11.9 economy 4 3.8 building 14 13.5
ideology 4 6.8 nature 3 5.1 policy 4 3.8 burden 14 13.5
education 3 5.1 burden 2 3.4 debt 3 2.9 nature 4 3.8
society 3 5.1 centreperi-phery 2 3.4 life 3 2.9 fluid 3 2.9
welfare 3 5.1 health 2 3.4 nation 3 2.9 space 3 2.9
environ-ment 2 3.4 music 2 3.4 society 3 2.9 engine 2 1.9
life 2 3.4 safety net 2 3.4 crime 2 1.9 life form 2 1.9
SPD 1998 SPD 2002

politics 59 39.6 building 28 18.8 politics 96 60.8 journey 62 39.2
tax 19 12.8 burden 24 16.1 economy 15 9.5 battle 30 19.0
pension 12 8.1 journey 24 16.1 tax 8 5.1 building 15 9.5
welfare state 6 4.0 battle 22 14.8 education 7 4.4 burden 8 5.1
education 6 4.0 engine 9 6.0 society 7 4.4 engine 6 3.8
economy 6 4.0 centre periphery 4 2.7 state 4 2.5 barrier 3 1.9
society 5 3.4 container 4 2.7 ideology 2 1.3 fluid 3 1.9
ideology 5 3.4 person 4 2.7 welfare 2 1.3 person 3 1.9
policy 4 2.7 anchor 2 1.3 crime 1 0.6 agriculture 2 1.3
For the party-conference speeches, the metaphor frequency shows that Blair
uses significantly more metaphors in his speeches than Schröder or Lafontaine.
In Section 7.9, I will show how the use of metaphorical keywords makes Blair’s
speeches highly emotionally charged and ceremonial, and the proportionally high
use of metaphors plays a part in this.
In the metaphorical language in the speeches, I will concentrate in particular
on two distinct features the analysis brought to light. These features were the use
of metaphor to construct a political myth, and the use of metaphorical keywords
to structure a party conference speech.
7.2 The conceptual metaphor politics is a journey
It is perhaps unsurprising that metaphors of journey and movement form the

biggest proportion of all metaphors in the discourses of New Labour and ‘Die
Neue Mitte’. Journey metaphors have traditionally been used in politics to depict
positive change, as Klein (2002b) shows in a study examining a corpus from 1999
that consists of six randomly chosen speeches from the German parliament, and
of fourteen German newspaper articles. He also argues that the use of this meta-
phoric frame is culturally determined and not universal, and that although ancient
Greek knows journey metaphors as categories in theories of action (telos = goal,
methodos = path), these metaphors are not often used in political speeches. The
use of journey metaphors in politics is connected to the development of the idea
of progress in the period of enlightenment in Germany and France, which resulted
in a general use of ‘Fortschritt’ as a political catchword in the nineteenth century
(Klein, J. 2002b: 228–29). Charteris-Black (2006) and Semino (2008: 81) confirm
that journey metaphors are also very frequent in British political discourse and
highly conventionalised. Thus, the coherent use of journey metaphors in both
German and English political discourse might go back to common roots of both
political cultures in the enlightenment.
In the ideological publications of the Third Way, the journey metaphors form
a variety of metaphorical scenarios such as competing policies as barriers to
progress, politics as a race and policies as a path to a better future.
Although these are all highly conventional metaphorical patterns in Western
political cultures, they are ideologically relevant, since their established nature
causes them to be treated as common knowledge and makes them less likely to be
critically questioned (Goatly 2007: 27). In the discussion of the semantic frame of
the Third Way in Chapter 5.2 we have already see that journey metaphors are of
particular importance within the discourses of the Third Way in that the choice of
programmatic names and titles of the publications all rely on them. The ideological
label ‘Third Way’, also used as the title for Giddens’ book and as the English title for
the Schröder-Blair paper, depicts a political ideology as a middle way between two
alternatives, a kind of compromise. The German title adds forward is good to
the metaphorical scene, using the forward is good element of the metaphorical
scenario. Hombach integrates his title ‘Aufbruch’ into a metaphorical scenario of
‘Reformstau’ and ‘Reformblockade’, which is the core rhetorical element of his data
topos, and also includes the element of forward is good.
The metaphorical token ‘Reformstau’ is at the core of the scenario of a failed
Christian democratic government that Hombach and the SPD established in the
election campaign of 1998. In the election manifesto of that year it is used as a
stigma term, together with the motivational programme term ‘Aufbruch’, which
is part of the same metaphorical scenario. Moreover, the use of ‘Aufbruch’ is also
a strategic recontextualisation of the title of an influential speech by President
Roman Herzog in 1997 (Herzog 1997), in which Herzog analyses Germany’s
economic problems, its legislative gridlock, as well as its negative mentality, and
famously demanded that there needs to be radical change: ‘Durch Deutschland
muß ein Ruck gehen’.
In Hombach’s book, ‘Reformstau’, as a catch term, is part of the crisis topos
which also contains journey metaphors of the subclass competing policies as
barriers. They are, in this context and others, strategically used to depoliticise
and to close political discourse by construing policies as necessities, and compet-
ing policies or established political structures as obstacles or barriers to the way
forward (Muntigl 2002). The argumentative topos entailed by the metaphor ‘Re-
formblockade’, for example, can be rephrased as ‘Policies and structures that block
reforms as ways forward must be removed’. The structures that must be removed
are, for example, rights of workers, here qualified as ‘inflexible’:
Abgebaut werden müßten dafür allerdings Barrieren, wie sie uns aus der deutschen
Diskussion vertraut vorkommen: zu langsame Genehmigungs-verfahren,
Wettbewerbsrückstände in Wachstumsbranchen, unflexibles Arbeitsrecht und
Kompensationsregelungen, Anpassungsschwächen bei der Unternehmensorgani-
sation. (Hombach 1998: 136, emphasis MK)
In return, barrier of the kind which we have become familiar in Germany must
be broken down – long-drawn-out procedures for granting permissions, inadequate
competitive opportunities in growth industries, inflexible labour laws and com-
pensation regulations, an inability to adjust to new circumstances on the part of
employers’ organisations. (Hombach 2000: 90)
The narrative constructed through this metaphorical scenario also suggests that
the path is clear for ‘real’ tax breaks, if barriers are removed (Hombach 1998: 43).
Hombach also connects this scenario to the main social democratic programme
term at the time, ‘Innovation’, when he talks about ‘Innovationsblockaden’, which

need to be broken down.
barrier metaphors can also be found in the other publications, but con-
nected differently to local discourses. Rules and regulations are generally depicted
as barriers to the success of a society, foregrounding their negative consequences
and hiding any of their positive effects. Employment law and the welfare state,
for example, are depicted as barriers to the job market that have to be eliminated
for a society to be successful. Mandelson and Liddle also quote Blair who uses
the barrier metaphor in connection with the past to argue the case for change
by claiming that the party must not ‘chain [itself] to the past’ (Mandelson and
Liddle 1996: 34).
However, it is not only barrier metaphors that represent constructions of
necessity. The construction of a party’s own policies as ways forward and of
alternative policies as ways backwards, or as setbacks, are also depoliticising. They
do not argue a political case for a policy, but simply evaluate it covertly through
this metaphorical structure. Hombach, for example, stresses ‘Zur traditionellen
Politik der Verteilung führt doch kein Weg zurück’ (‘There is no return to the
traditional politics of wealth distribution’), because voters do not want a ‘Rückkehr
zur staatsgläubigen Sozialdemokratie’ (‘Return to statist social democracy’) (Hom-
bach 1998: 62). Right at the beginning of Mandelson and Liddle’s book, there is
an especially interesting example, as it constructs a direct line from Thatcherism
to New Labour:
[New Labour’s] mission is to create, not to destroy. Its strategy is to move forward
from where Margaret Thatcher left off, rather than to dismantle every single thing
she did. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 1)
Here, two metaphorical concepts overlap, the scenario politics as journey

forward and society as a building. With the journey metaphor, Thatcher’s
policies are positively evaluated as achievements because Mandelson and Liddle
promise to move forward from the endpoint of her journey. To completely change
the measures implemented by Thatcher is characterised as destructive and not in
line with New Labour policy. This is a local British discursive strategy aimed at po-
tential voters with a more conservative inclination and signalling of moderation,
because the Labour Party of the 1980s was perceived to be too radically left wing.
Journey metaphors are also dominant in the party conference speeches of Blair,
Lafontaine and Schröder, and this pattern is repeated in the election manifestos.
The question now is whether this dominance can also be found diachronically in
the election manifestos. If there is no change in the metaphor use, does changing
ideology not influence the metaphors after all? The change might not be visible
in the domain of metaphorical concepts as such, but, as Musolff (2003: 264–65)
argues, it ought to be found in the individual argumentative use and the meta-
phorical scenario construed by the individual elements.
In the SPD manifestos, journey metaphors are always under the first three
most frequent source domains, but are most dominant in 2002. In 1990, the meta-
phorical scenario of the change of times through German Re-unification (‘Wir
stehen an der Schwelle einer neuen Epoche’ (‘We are on the threshold to a new
era’) (SPD Parteivorstand 1990: 5) warrants a change of politics in the title ‘Der
neue Weg’ (‘The new path’). In 1994, journey metaphors are less dominant than in
1990, and are mainly an artefact of stylistic choice, for example the repetition of
the verb ‘voranbringen’/’advance’. Their rising dominance in the discourse of ‘Die
Neue Mitte’ relates to the metaphorical crisis scenario around the stigma term
‘Stillstand’, which was already apparent in Hombach (1998). This demonstrates
once again the strong influence of Bodo Hombach on policy and the language of
the manifesto. The core argument is the crisis topos of Germany being at a ‘stand-
still’, portrayed by the stigma terms ‘Talfahrt’ and ‘Lähmung’. The repeated use of
the programme terms ‘Aufbruch’ and ‘Aufbruchstimmung’ suggest that the SPD
would bring a fresh start. Part of this scenario is also the metaphor of decisions
as railway points (‘Weichenstellung’), which implies choice, but also stresses the
importance of a decision that could decide all other future developments, in that
once a decision about the way forward is made, there is no return.
In the 2002 manifesto, journey metaphors are generally even more dominant
(39.9% of all metaphors) and are used in the same metaphorical scenario as that of
1998, but now are used to claim credit for successful reforms:
Diese vier Jahre haben sich gelohnt für unser Land. Der Reformstau ist aufgelöst.
Deutschland ist in Bewegung gekommen. Unser Land ist wirtschaftlich robuster,
moderner, gerechter und weltoffener geworden. Der Stillstand ist überwunden.
(SPD Parteivorstand 2002: 7)
These four years were worthwhile for our country. The backlog of reforms has been
resolved. Germany is moving forward again. Our country is economically more
robust, more modern, more just and more cosmopolitan. The standstill is over.
The metaphorical catch term ‘Reformstau’ (the literal translation of the metaphor
would be: a traffic jam of reforms) was an antimirandum of the final years of
Helmut Kohl’s government and voted word of the year in 1997, but was not part
of the SPD Manifesto in 1998. However, the metaphor ‘Reformstau auflösen’ was
interpreted as being Schröder’s central promise in hindsight, as the following
quotation from Der Spiegel of 2002 demonstrates:
Schröders Versprechen, den Reformstau zu lösen, frischen Wind ins Land zu

bringen und eine neue gesellschaftliche Dynamik zu entfalten, scheint in den
Augen vieler Wähler gebrochen […]. (Mohr 2002: 190)
In the eyes of many voters, Schröder’s promise to resolve the backlog of reforms, to
breathe fresh life into the country and introduce a new social dynamic, seems to be
broken […].
This is a case of legitimisation and credit claiming through use of an established

metaphor. Critically, it can also be read as a depoliticising move because the meta-
phor backgrounds the reasons for the lack of political action before 1998, which
were systemic in the federal system, and the SPD was part of it by blocking reforms
in the Bundesrat. Similarly, journey metaphors are used to argue for the continu-
ation of the red–green government especially for East Germany (‘Die Hälfte des
Weges ist zurückgelegt’-‘we are half way there’ (SPD Parteivorstand 2002: 43))
and as a strategy for blame avoidance (‘Mit der Bekämpfung der Arbeitslosigkeit
sind wir vorangekommen […] Außeneinwirkungen bremsten die anfangs zügigen
Fortschritte’-‘We have made progress fighting unemployment […] external causes
slowed us down after a good start’ (SPD Parteivorstand 2002: 9)).
Yet, the journey metaphors are not only used as a legitimising and depoliti-
cising strategy, they are also employed as representation strategies. For example,
the statement ‘Der Marsch in den Schuldenstaat ist beendet’ (SPD Parteivorstand
2002: 8) uses a journey metaphor that is simultaneously ideationally metaphoric
in the systemic functional sense, in that the process of incurring government debt
is constructed as an abstract metaphoric process of marching into an indebted
state that above all is nominalised. Similarly, the material sentence ‘41 Mrd. € mehr
[bleiben] auf den privaten Konten, wandern nicht zu Finanzamt’ (‘41 Billion €
stay in private accounts and don’t go to the treasury’) (SPD Parteivorstand 2002: 8)
construes ‘money’ as actor, and depicts taxes as money that actively moves to the
finance authorities. This metaphor clearly backgrounds the political function of
taxes to fund investments for the common good and to counteract social inequali-
ties by construing taxes as actors of an active clause. On a theoretical level, this
example strengthens the case for an integrated approach to metaphor analysis that
involves the functional structure of a clause in the interpretation of the metaphor:
Only the understanding the functional structure of the clause allows the decon-
struction of this metaphor.
If we compare the use of the metaphor politics is a journey in the New
Labour and Neue Mitte manifestos, we see clearly that both are dominated by it,
but use it in different ways. The German manifestos, construing a metaphorical
scenario of ‘the standstill of the nation’, recontextualise a theme that dominated
public discourse at the time. The strength of this scenario in the German discourse
becomes apparent through the repetition of this scenario in the credit claim topoi
of the 2002 manifesto.
Charteris-Black (2004: 76) subsumes burden metaphors under the source
domain journey, since burdens ‘obstruct movement towards a predetermined
destination’. I will follow his categorisation here for the purpose of comparing both
of our results. Charteris-Black (2004: 76) shows that in Labour manifestos from
1945 onwards, the burdens are mainly ‘unemployment, low pay, poverty, Third
World debt, fear of the future, defence, Trident etc.’, while in the Conservative
manifestos ‘it is invariably income tax that is represented as a source of obstruc-
tion because of the “burden” of taxation on the taxpayer’. In my corpus, this is only
true up to 1992. In the 1997 Labour manifesto, tax suddenly appears as a burden,
together with market regulation. This is a clear change of metaphorical use in New
Labour. The SPD manifestos in the corpus use burden metaphors more frequently
than the Labour manifestos, often with the verb ‘entlasten’ which presupposes the
metaphor ‘X is a burden’. The tax is a burden metaphor already features 9 times
in 1994 and in the 1998 manifesto 18 times. This metaphorical concept is also
much more dominant in both Schröder’s and Lafontaine’s speeches in 1998 than
in Blair’s party conference speeches.
7.3 The conceptual metaphor politics is building
Metaphors with the source domain ‘building’ are the second most frequent
metaphors in the manifestos. We have seen how the journey metaphors formed
a coherent complex metaphorical scenario in the SPD election manifestos from
1998, based on a discourse pattern that was prevalent at the time. This was not the
case for the Labour manifestos, however. In this section, I analyse how building
metaphors form such a pattern in the New Labour manifestos from 1997.
In the Labour manifesto of 1987, building metaphors are the third most fre-
quent metaphors. A typical pattern from the 1987 manifesto becomes more salient
in 1997; that of structures using the verb ‘rebuild’. These metaphors are part of a
crisis topos, since the rebuilding presupposes damage or destruction blamed on
the Conservative government.
In 1992, building metaphors share first place with metaphors of journey and
movement. A metaphorical blend of health and building metaphors is regularly
used to delegitimise the incumbent government as being ill, and also to construe a
crisis of the country for which Labour’s policies are the medicine:
This general election is a choice between a Conservative government paralysed by

recession, and a Labour government determined to get on with building recovery.
(The Labour Party 1992: 7, emphasis MK)
These metaphors also contain a second layer; they are encapsulated in a building
metaphor: the recovery is depicted as a building which needs to be systematically
erected ‘for the future’ to be stable.
In ‘new Labour’s’ 1997 manifesto, building metaphors are also in second place,
but form the scenario of politics as building a better nation. Charteris-Black
(2006: 156–61) observes that when ‘build’ is used in his Blair corpus, the direct
object is almost always an item of the ‘new Labour’ policy. This is also true for the
1997 election manifesto, as the concordance in Table 17 shows, where these policy
objects, often New Labour programme terms, are marked in bold. The metaphori-
cal scenario here is reforming the country is building, with the Labour Party
as the actor, and the policy as the goal.
Table 17. Concordance ‘build’ in the 1997 Labour manifesto

better ways of tackling crime, of building a modern welfare state, of equipping ourselves
have the courage to change and use it to build a better Britain. To accomplish this means
revolution, but of a fresh start, the patient rebuilding and renewing of this country – renewal that
country – renewal that can take root and build over time. That is one way in which politics
work together to achieve them. How we build the industry and employment opportunities
that trust. Our mission in politics is to rebuild this bond of trust between government and
off benefit and into work 5. We will rebuild the NHS, reducing spending on administration
to come to court 7. We will help build strong families and strong communities,
distinctive religious ethos. We wish to build bridges wherever we can across education
recognise the three ‘r’s for what they are: building blocks of all learning that must be taught
the nation. Britain can do better. We must build on the British qualities of inventiveness
and skilled employees. We will build a new partnership with business to improve
economic growth. Prosperity needs to be built from the bottom up. We will establish one-stop
provision. In making this change, we will build on the existing collaborative schemes which
for pensions and long-term care will be to build consensus among all interested parties.
co-ordinated regional voice. Labour will build on these developments through the establishment
support of both. Labour will help build trust and confidence among both Nationalist
A new Labour government will build a strong defence against these threats.
and economic co-operation and will also build alliances with our Commonwealth partners
better Britain. If you would like to help us build that better Britain, join us by calling
In the Labour manifesto of 2001, this scenario is repeated, and the proportion
of building metaphors is the highest here of all of the manifestos. Similar to the
2002 SPD manifesto, which repeats the metaphorical scenario used in the previous
manifesto to legitimise the claim of power, the metaphorical scenario reforming
is building from the 1997 manifesto is repeated in the 2001 manifesto for the
purpose of credit claiming. The main metaphorical keyword here is ‘foundation’,
which is repeated 23 times. This particular metaphor is used to legitimise the sug-
gested continuation of Labour policies: ‘We laid the foundations of a Britain whose
economy is stronger’ (The Labour Party 2001: 3). The legitimisation is hidden in
the metaphor, but intuitively understood to be the house is not finished, please let
us continue. The use of this metaphor allows two further strategic moves: firstly,
to implicitly accuse the opposition of planning to ‘dismantle the foundations laid’,
and secondly to mitigate the possible political allegation not to have fulfilled the
high-flying promises: the achievements are depicted as only the beginnings, and
more time is needed to finish the political renewal.
Charteris-Black (2006: 156–61) interprets certain building metaphors as being
particularly vague ‘in terms of actual reference: it seems at times as if “building a
framework” or “laying foundations” simply refers to positively evaluated intentions
rather than actual political achievements’ (Charteris-Black 2006: 157, original ital-
ics). This is especially true for their use in the 2001 manifesto introduction, where
the foundations metaphor is used as a rather intuitive legitimisation strategy, as
I have shown above.
7.4 The conceptual metaphor politics is battle
Klein (2002b: 222) argues that the metaphorical conceptual frame politics
is battle is one of the most commonly used concepts to construe the field of
politics. Although it is the case that Third-Way politicians usually employ the
material topos of post-ideology by arguing for a pragmatic approach to politics
that reconciles opposing ideologies, at the same time ideologies and politics are
often construed as battles in the corpus.
At first glance this might seem contradictory to the topos of post-ideology;
however, it is compatible with Bobbio’s (1996) assumption that politics is necessar-
ily adversarial, and that the left–right continuum will, despite being pronounced
dead numerous times, re-establish itself over time. This argument is also sup-
ported by the fact that all authors use and modify the left–right distinction, despite
claiming it was superfluous. On a more conceptual level, Goatly (2007: 72–83)
shows in a corpus analysis that this adversarial structure of activity is battle
is deeply rooted in the metaphorical description of argument, politics and law in
English, and might therefore be similarly persistent. This seems to correspond to

the German part of my corpus.
In his analysis of metaphors in British election manifestos, Charteris-Black
(2004: 69) suggests using the overarching concept politics is conflict instead
of politics is battle. This wider category also includes, for example, the meta-
phoric use of the keyword ‘protect’. In his British Manifesto Corpus, which con-
sists of the manifestos of Labour and the Conservatives between 1945 and 1997,
Charteris-Black (2004) finds that over 40% of all metaphors belong to this group.
This broader category is, however, problematic. I cannot see, for instance, how
the following example of the keyword ‘protect’, which the author quotes from the
Conservative manifesto of 1983, can be classified as being metaphorical:
We have more than carried out our pledges to protect pensioners against price
rises and to maintain standards in the National Health Service.
(Charteris-Black 2004: 82, original emphasis)
This certainly fails to satisfy Charteris-Black’s (2004: 21) criterion of semantic

shift or the Pragglejaz criterion of contrast with the ‘basic meaning’ (Pragglejaz
Group 2007: 3). The basic meaning of the verb ‘protect’ is, according to the Oxford
English dictionary:
a. To defend or guard from danger or injury; to support or assist against hostile
or inimical action; to preserve from attack, persecution, harassment, etc.; to keep
safe, take care of; to extend patronage to; to shield from attack or damage.
(“protect, v.” OED Oxford English Dictionary online 2015d)
The use of ‘protect’ in the example is clearly within the primary meaning: pen-
sioners are supposed to be shielded from potential damage caused by price rises.
However, the lower proportion of building metaphors in my analysis compared
Charteris-Black (2004) to is also an effect of Charteris-Black’s (2004) methodol-
ogy. His numbers partly differ, as he employs a corpus-assisted approach, which is
based on a pilot analysis of samples from the corpus in order to identify keywords
for certain conceptual metaphors. The quantitative analysis is then established via
a keyword search. Two problems occur here: firstly, by not analysing the whole
corpus manually, rarer metaphors that might not be found in the sample texts are
excluded from the quantification. This has certainly led to a higher proportion in
his analysis. Secondly, Charteris-Black (2004) does also not supply and discuss
examples of tokens he found via a keyword search that were not included, because
they were deemed not to be metaphoric. The discussion of this example of diverg-
ing quantitative results underlines that metaphor analysis is a hermeneutic method
that cannot purely rely on quantification, as different interpretations of a single
token can easily lead to different quantitative results. Similar to the corpus-assisted
analysis of political lexis, the quantification is a method to support the qualitative

analysis by pointing out clusters of certain phenomena or the lack of them thereof,
which can then be analysed in detail. Only the detailed qualitative analysis reveals
the underlying mechanisms, in this case the metaphorical scenarios.
In the election manifestos, battle metaphors are of comparatively less impor-
tance than in the ideological publications analysed, but are always amongst the first
three most frequent source domains. They are mainly used to construe a problem
that needs to be solved through political action, problems that range from un-
employment and poverty to weak education. In the Labour manifestos, they also
describe problems that people suffer from (‘privatisation hits everyone’, ‘country
hit by recession’), and this is a use that is missing in the German manifestos.
In the 1987 Labour manifesto, the dominant metaphorical keyword for the
conceptual metaphor politics is a battle is ‘combat’. The use of this verb de-
creases in the next four manifestos (10 tokens in 1987, 3 in 1992, 4 in 1997, 3 in
2001) whereas the use of ‘fight’ increases (3-5-4-12). In the New Labour manifes-
tos, ‘combat’ is increasingly reserved for the goals ‘illnesses’ and ‘terrorism’, which
was a pattern typical for the Conservative manifestos between 1987 and 2001. It
is possible to infer that ‘combat’ has a stronger militant connotation, which was
deliberately avoided by New Labour.
In the 1997 manifesto, a new metaphorical cluster involving battle meta-
phors is part of the Third-Way topos of overcoming the former political division:
It is not the politics of a revolution … We aim to put behind us the bitter political
struggles of left and right that have torn our country apart for too many decades.
Many of these conflicts have no relevance whatsoever to the modern world – pub-
lic versus private, bosses versus workers, middle class versus working class.
(The Labour Party 1997: 2, emphasis MK)
This metaphorical cluster appears under the definition of ‘new politics’ in the pref-
ace of the manifesto, and is framed by a picture of Tony Blair together with Nelson
Mandela. Here again this is a salient example of the complex integration of the
different discourse modes in the manifesto and also of the strong promotionalisa-
tion of the manifestos.
A further new metaphorical token appears in the 2001 manifesto: ‘frontline
staff ’ is used no fewer than 20 times. Ten years after the publication of this mani-
festo, the reader might not find this surprising – neither did I, until I realised that
this metaphor only appears once in the 1997 manifesto (‘The key is to root out un-
necessary administrative cost, and to spend money on the right things – frontline
care’). It does not feature in any other German or British manifesto of that time,
nor in the British National Corpus, which was collected between 1991 and 1994
(Burnard 2009). It hits, however, 1,162 tokens in EnTenTen 2012, a web corpus
collected in 2012. Most of them are collocated to staff in the public services: teach-
ers, nurses, doctors. It seems as though the writers of the 2001 manifesto of the
Labour Party have successfully established a new legitimisation strategy for either
an increase to, or for cuts in, public services, as the metaphor suggests a distinction
between essential and productive ‘frontline staff ’ and unproductive, superfluous
‘faceless bureaucrats’.
In the German manifestos, we find that a typical and very productive battle
metaphor is represented by composite nouns with ‘-offensive’. This metaphor
stresses the strength of the effort going into the proposed policy, but is possibly not
used in the British manifestos because such composite nouns are less commonly
used in English.
7.5 Religious metaphors in the introduction to Labour’s manifesto

in 1997
Mandelson and Liddle (1996) frame Blair’s life as a hagiographical account of a

religious leader. A similar phenomenon can be found in some of Blair’s party con-
ference speeches. I interpreted this as a recontextualisation of a religious discourse
into political discourse to drive forward the development of politicisation. When
I first attempted an analysis of the metaphor use in the election manifestos, to my
surprise my results did not include many religious metaphors, and I was surprised
by what I found when I consulted Charteris-Black (2004) for comparison. Char-
teris-Black (2004) proposes the metaphorical concept politics is religion and
can demonstrate occurrences in Blair’s speeches as well as in inaugural addresses
by US presidents; for example the idea of ‘rebirth’, or of policy as ‘crusade’. He also
finds religious metaphors in the election manifestos represented by keywords such
as ‘faith’ and ‘covenant’.
I originally did not identify these as being metaphorical, but I can certainly
understand the interpretation, and have therefore adapted my analysis. How-
ever, Charteris-Black (2004) also identifies the keywords ‘renew’, mission’, ‘believe’,
‘dogma’, ‘doctrine’ and ‘vision’ as tokens of the proposed conceptual metaphor, and
the metaphorical interpretation of some of those keywords seems counterintuitive
to me. Indeed, consulting the Oxford English Dictionary seems to support this.
The core meaning of ‘renew’ in the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED),
for instance, is non-religious (‘to make (something) new’), and so are 28 out of 30
definitions of the meaning of the verb. Only the second meaning has a religious
denotation (‘to cause to be spiritually reborn’), and one more definition which is
described as rare (OED Oxford English Dictionary online 2015e). In a similar
fashion, the primary meaning of ‘believe’ can be religious; however, the core
meaning according to the OED is ‘trust in a person or idea’, and only one out of
11 definitions explicitly involves religious belief (OED Oxford English Dictionary
online 2015a). The situation is comparable for the terms ‘dogma’ (OED Oxford
English Dictionary online 2015b) and ‘faith’ (OED Oxford English Dictionary
online 2015c).
How do we, nevertheless, seem to recognise a quasi-religious tone in the New
Labour manifestos, for example in the opening of manifesto 1997 by Tony Blair?
I believe in Britain. It is a great country with a great history. The British people are
a great people. But I believe Britain can and must be better: better schools, better
hospitals, better ways of tackling crime, of building a modern welfare state, of
equipping ourselves for a new world economy.
I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose, where merit
comes before privilege, run for the many not the few, strong and sure of itself at
home and abroad.
I want a Britain that does not shuffle into the new millennium afraid of the future,
but strides into it with confidence.
I want to renew our country’s faith in the ability of its government and politics
to deliver this new Britain. I want to do it by making a limited set of important
promises and achieving them. This is the purpose of the bond of trust I set out
at the end of this introduction, in which ten specific commitments are put before
you. Hold us to them.
They are our covenant with you.
I want to renew faith in politics by being honest about the last 18 years. Some
things the Conservatives got right. We will not change them. It is where they got
things wrong that we will make change. We have no intention or desire to replace
one set of dogmas by another.
I want to renew faith in politics through a government that will govern in the
interest of the many. ( The Labour Party 1997: 1, emphasis MK)
I argue that this is a phenomenon of connotation or of non-core aspects of the

lexemes, where their religious use is clearly marked as secondary. For reasons of
space, I am unable to discuss the varying criticisms of the terms ‘non-core’ and
‘connotational’ at this point, but would simply refer to the general use of the term
amongst linguists, as might be represented in the following definition by Jackson
and Zé Amvela (2007: 67):
…denotative meaning refers to the relationship between a linguistic sign and its
denotatum or referent. However, connotations constitute additional properties
of lexemes, e.g. poetic, slang, baby language, biblical, casual, colloquial, formal,
humorous, legal, rhetorical.
In the chosen example the religious connotations of the keywords used seem to
foreground the religious connotations of other terms in close proximity, and are
presumably chosen for that reason; since most of the choices would have had
alternatives they do not have a secondary religious meaning of connotation. The
text could, for example, read like this:
I believe in Britain. It is a great country with a great history. The British people are
a great people. But I think Britain can and must be better: better schools, better
hospitals, better ways of tackling crime, of building a modern welfare state, of
equipping ourselves for a new world economy.
I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose, where merit
comes before privilege, run for the many not the few, strong and sure of itself at
home and abroad.
I want a Britain that does not shuffle into the new decade afraid of the future,
but strides into it with confidence.
I want to restore our country’s trust in the ability of its government and
politics to deliver this new Britain. I want to do it by making a limited set of
important promises and achieving them. This is the purpose of the promises I set
out at the end of this introduction, in which specific commitments are put before
you. Hold us to them.
They are our contract with you.
I want to revive trust in politics by being honest about the last 18 years. Some
things the Conservatives got right. We will not change them. It is where they got
things wrong that we will make change. We have no intention or desire to replace
one set of ideologies by another.
I want to reaffirm trust in politics through a government that will govern in
the interest of the many.
After the substitution of ‘believe’ with ‘think’, of ‘renew’ with various other verbs,
of ‘faith’ with ‘trust’, of ‘covenant’ with ‘contract’ and ‘dogma’ with ‘ideology’, the
religious tone has vanished. The question remains, whether this is a metaphorical
use of the individual lexemes, as defined in the criteria of the Pragglejaz group. I
would certainly argue that this is evidence of the metaphorical concept politics is
religion, but also insist that the individual lexemes are not used metaphorically.
The metaphorical understanding seems to emerge out of the combined use of lex-
emes with religious connotations. This shows the potential pitfalls of an approach
that is based on individual keywords and also demonstrates, again, that metaphor
analysis is a hermeneutic approach that relies on an integrated interpretation
of the context.
To return to the example analysed, it also means that not every individual
reader will notice the religious tone, but the lexical items can also be understood as
part of a strong political myth. I have argued before that the ‘renewal of politics’ is
part of a Third-Way topos of the Labour Party as a special agent of change for the
nation and of a golden-age myth, which is also visible in the German discourse, but
has much less emphasis. The recontextualisation of a religious discourse through
the quasi-religious language of this opening of the New Labour manifesto can also
be interpreted as a vehicle to convey this special status of ‘new Labour’.
7.6 The Target domains state, society and welfare
One main focus of ideological conflict between conservatives and social democrats
is the role of government and state, the scope and function of the welfare state, and
the question of taxation. Thus, it is not surprising that welfare reform and the role
of the state are part of the ideological renewal of the Labour Party and the SPD,
and are also metaphorically construed.
A main programme term in social policy in both the German and the British
discourse of the Third Way is, ‘active government’ and the ‘aktivierende Staat’. The
corresponding metaphorical stigma concept is the state as a barrier, and in
both the English and the German texts this scenario is part of the overarching
politics as journey concept and is realised in different ways: the state in general
is described as a barrier to success because it is often overspending and over-
regulating. An alternative to this general barrier metaphor is the metaphorical
interpretation of the state as suffocating its people. This signifies the same negative
connotation of the state and supports the material topos that the individual should
solely be in charge of his or her life.
The state is a barrier concept is more frequently used in connection with
the welfare state, which is depicted as a barrier to work because it ‘weakens in-
centives’ (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 72). In both Mandelson and Liddle and
Hombach, a subtype of this concept is used where the welfare state is construed as
a trap for people – because welfare payments are too high, so there is too low an
incentive to work, and the unemployed do not get back into work. This idea is also
expressed in a regularly used metaphorical reinterpretation from welfare as being
a ‘safety net’ into welfare as constituting a ‘springboard’, which also metaphori-
cally underpins the idea of ‘active government’. In Hombach, this reinterpretation
goes even further using the term ‘Hängematte’ (hammock) as a re-interpretative
step: The ‘safety net’ is a ‘hammock’, making people lazy, so it needs to be changed
into a ‘springboard’.
Integrated into this metaphorical scenario of the state as a barrier is the

repeated use of the collocation ‘tax burden’. Taxes2 are conceptualised as a ‘burden’
that keep people from succeeding. This conceptualisation foregrounds only the
cost aspect of taxes however, and keeps the necessity of a healthy tax revenue for a
society out of the discourse. It therefore forms a construction of necessity, since it
has become a political catchword and a dominant collocation.
In the same context, the Schröder-Blair paper construes a statement that
objectifies the ideology of low taxes by using a deeply embedded grammatical
metaphor to legitimise policies of lower taxes and lower welfare costs:
Public expenditure as a proportion of national income has more or less reached
the limits of acceptability. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 19)
The grammatical metaphor here is ‘acceptability’, a noun produced through two

derivations:
V A N
accept abil ity
The resulting noun from this process has lost all properties of transitivity, and
therefore the participant sensor of the mental process is not accessible any more.
Again, the conservative belief that taxes and public expenditure have to be low is
naturalised, here into an objective ‘limit of acceptability’.
In addition to the construction of state and government as barriers to suc-
cess, and the welfare state as barrier to the job market, metaphorical ideation is
used to reinterpret the role of the state in general. Hombach wants the state as a
‘Partner’ instead of ‘Erzieher’, ‘Obrigkeit’ (p. 79) or ‘Gouvernante’ (p. 57), linking
the metaphorical reinterpretation in with the programme term ‘partnership’. Gid-
dens similarly stipulates that ‘[s]tate and civil society should act in partnership’
(Giddens 1998: 79). In the Schröder-Blair paper, an original metaphor is used to
communicate the change in the understanding of the state:
The state should not row, but steer: not so much control, as challenge. Solutions to
problems must be joined up. (Blair and Schröder 1999: 24)
2. In German texts, this is also true for and ‘Lohnnebenkosten’, a German word for compulsory
non-tax contributions such as health and unemployment insurance that are deducted from the
income.
Another reinterpretation happens when in all publications state and society or

politics and society are seen in a contractual relationship:
Nur ein neuer Sozialvertrag, der auf Leistung und Gegenleistung basiert, kann aus
dieser Sicht arbeitslose Erwachsene wieder in die Gesellschaft integrieren, deren
Selbstverständnis so stark von Arbeit geprägt sei. (Hombach 1998: 150)
Only a new social contract with the state, based on the principle of reciprocal service,
this argument concludes, can integrate unemployed adults into a society whose ethos
is dominated by the work ethic. (Hombach 2000: 99)
In the positive welfare society, the contract between individual and government
shifts, since autonomy and the development of the self – the medium of expand-
ing individual responsibility – become the prime focus. (Giddens 1998: 128)
This is a very classical metaphor within political theory. Its history goes back to
Hobbes and Rousseau and the contractual metaphor is now a core element of
liberal political theory, which has become dominant.
7.7 Constructions of necessity in the metaphorical ideation

in ideological publications
The analysis of the argumentative structures in the discourses of New Labour and
‘Die Neue Mitte’ showed that the data topos is dominated by crisis topoi. Major
causes of the crisis are ‘globalisation’ and ‘change’, which are used interchangeably.
These topoi are construed metaphorically in a complex way.
Firstly, ‘globalisation’ is always, and ‘change’ is mainly, used as a nominalisa-
tion. In systemic functional terms, this can be interpreted as a grammatical meta-
phor, because the nouns are derived from verbs. Both nouns encode processes in
time with participants, but the nominalisation construes them as an abstract entity
lacking transitivity and the involvement of participants. While the noun ‘change’
is clearly derived from the verb ‘change’, it might be debatable whether ‘globali-
sation’ is indeed a grammatical metaphor derived from ‘to globalise’, since this
verb does not seem to be frequent. Google ngram shows that ‘globalisation’ was
about 80 times more frequent in the year 2000 than ‘globalise’. The fact, however,
that ‘globalise’ is used in the context of globalisation, and the argument that the
nominalisation here is identifiable because of the morpheme ‘-ion’, suggest that
the interpretation as a grammatical metaphor is valid. In my corpus, these abstract
nouns are not only grammatical metaphors, but at the same time they are used as
personifications, since they are used in the position of actor:
Change inevitably destroys some jobs, but creates others.

Doch heute prüft die Globalisierung alle Institutionen der nationalen Gesell-
schaften und Politik gnadenlos auf ihre Funktionalität im internationalen Wet-
tbewerb. (Hombach 1998: 12)
But today the process of globalization is relentlessly putting all national social and
political institutions to the test of whether they can survive in the world of interna-
tional competition. (Hombach 2000: xxxii–xxxiv)
Globalization together with the disintegration of communism have altered the

contours of left and right. (Giddens 1998: 42)
These structures can be understood as misrepresentations and as having a depoliti-

cising function, since they exclude the social actors of globalisation from the text
(see van Leeuwen 1996: 39). With the use of ‘globalisation’ and ‘change’ as actors,
the responsibility for the pressure to modernise is obfuscated, and the analysis is
incomplete.3 Both abstract entities are treated as forces of nature that politics can
only react to. ‘Globalisation’ and ‘change’, when used as grammatical metaphors,
have become assumptions of the discourses of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’,
and any dialogue on the matter seems to be closed. This is not only problematic
because it might mislead the audience, it also becomes a hegemonic and ideologi-
cal structure that guides policy decisions, as Hay (2007: 151–52) points out:
[G]lobalization continues to exert a powerful influence on policy making au-
tonomy and the capacity for democratic deliberation at the national level. That is
through the idea of globalization. Quite simply, if policy makers believe that their
autonomy is greatly diminished and that, in an era of globalization, their policy
choices must be driven by the perceived imperatives of competitiveness, they will
deny themselves the political autonomy they might otherwise enjoy. The resulting
loss of the capacity for democratic political deliberation is no less significant – nor
is the depoliticization that ensues.
Interestingly, two authors of the corpus aim to demythologise ‘globalisation’ at one

point in their texts:
3. Von Polenz (1985: 188–89) calls this ‘Subjektschub’ and also notices its metaphorical mecha-
nism: ‘Wo der Subjektschub aber noch nicht als lexikalisiert gelten kann, haben wir es, ähnlich
wie bei Wortmetaphern und -metonymien, mit semantischen Schwebe- und Spannungsbezie-
hungen, manchmal mit sprachkritischen Problemen zu tun.‘ (‘Where the ‘Subjektschub’ is not
yet lexicalised, we find, similar to lexical metaphors and metonymies, either semantic tensions, or
problems of linguistic criticism.’)
Der Verweis auf die Globalisierung ist billig. Intelligenter und ehrlicher ist es, die
Menschen fit zu machen für den Innovations- und Standortwettlauf. Wenn wir
Innovationsblockaden brechen wollen, müssen wir denjenigen Risikokapital in
die Hand geben, die sich trauen, etwas zu erfinden und die für ihre Träume die
eigene Existenz einsetzen. (Hombach 1998: 70)
It is easy just to refer to the consequences of globalization. More sensible would be to

prepare people for the competition that innovation is going to bring with it. If we are
to break down the obstacles that have been raised against innovation, we must offer
venture capital to those with a gift for invention and a willingness to put their careers
on the line. (Hombach 2000: 38)
Globalization is quite often spoken of as if it were a force of nature, but it is not.

States, business corporations and other groups have actively promoted its advance.
(Giddens 1998: 33)
These two cases are, however, quite different. Hombach, the politician, reinterprets
globalisation in this one part of the text as a stigma term and sets it against the
programme terms ‘Innovations- und Standortwettlauf ’. ‘Standort Deutschland’
was a well-established conservative programme term in the 1980s and 1990s, but
was substituted with ‘globalisation’ after 1998. Both terms signify the topos of the
pressure of international competition on production costs and the costs of the
welfare state. (Stötzel and Eitz 2002: 387–89) The combination in the phrase ‘Inno-
vations- und Standortwettlauf ’ seems to be an attempt to contextualise the catch
term ‘Standort Deutschland’ with the positive programme term ‘Innovation’, and
to substitute the problematic term ‘Globalisierung’. However, in other parts of the
text, Hombach uses the term ‘globalisation’ positively and without any mitigation.
The sociologist Giddens provides a longer critical appraisal of the term, re-
flecting its metaphoric nature (‘spoken of as if it were a force of nature’). This partly
even influences his language, because he marks the metaphoric use in quotation
marks to begin with, but omits this marking over time (my emphasis):
Globalization ‘pulls away’ from the nation state (p. 31)
Globalization ‘pushes down’ – it creates new demands and also new possibilities
for regenerating local identities’ (p. 31)
Globalization also squeezes sideways creating new economic and cultural regions
(p. 32)
The three way movement of globalization is affecting the position and power of
states all over the world. (p. 32)
Globalization is transforming the institutions of the societies in which we live.

(p 33)
The first two quotations mark the metaphor using quotations marks, the use after
that does not, nor is it marked in the remaining text. Here we can actually observe
how the use of the noun becomes naturalised. In Mandelson and Liddle (1996),
there is no trace of any discourse about globalisation, and the authors use the term
‘change’ instead. The word is consistently used either as a grammatical metaphor –
nominalised – or in constructions that do exclude the participant ‘Actor’:
People feel increasingly insecure […] This is caused by rapid economic and tech-
nological change throughout the world (p. 3)
Britain is badly equipped to meet the challenge of change (p. 3)
The make-up of the labour market is changing (p. 5)
What are we doing to prepare for inevitable change? Are we going to gain from
it and create a sense of social order alongside it, as New Labour wants, or are we
going to let change wash over us, with the result that we slip further backwards
economically and disintegrate further socially (p. 7)
In an economy of rapid change, skill requirements change too (p. 89)
The first two examples, and the last example, all exclude the participant actor
through nominalisation. The third example, however, is a middle construction, a
material construction without an external causer or agent (Halliday and Matthies-
sen 2004: 295–302). The fourth example shows a complex metaphorical scene:
change is a force of nature. Not only is change a grammatical metaphor here,
but it is also reinterpreted metaphorically as an inevitable and natural phenom-
enon that politics can only adapt to. As the actors who change the world and the
causes of their behaviour are excluded from the discourse via the metaphorical
construction, politics and politicians cannot be understood as actively regulat-
ing, actively changing society. This can be understood as a self-denial of political
autonomy (Hay 2007: 150–52).
There are other metaphorical constructions that fulfil the same function as
‘globalisation’ and ‘change’, such as ‘new international economy’:
The new international economy has greatly reduced the ability of any single gov-
ernment to use the traditional levers of economic policy in order to maintain high
employment. (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 6)
Die Unternehmen sind dem internationalen Wettbewerb ausgesetzt und müssen

nach seinen Regeln spielen. (Hombach 1998: 67)
Companies are exposed to international competition and have to play by its rule.
(Hombach 2000: 36)
Here, ‘new international economy’ can be analysed as a metonymical structure

that obfuscates the responsibility of actors, since the system stands for the actors
in the system. Although this can be seen as a necessary reduction of complexity in
the political discourse, this discourse reduction of complexity through the use of
metonymies also reduces the insight into mechanisms and causalities. It therefore
excludes the possibility of political influence on processes of globalisation, for
example through new legislation or international contracts. The second example
underlines this: ‘Internationaler Wettbewerb’ is seen as an entity with its own rules
that have to be followed. This naturalisation of free market rules in the metaphor of
market rules as rules of a game is clearly in line with the dominant ideology
of ‘neoliberalism’. In the following example, the level of abstraction is even more
increased, because ‘Strukturwandel’ (as a synonym for ‘change’) is metaphorically
encoded as a machine, but is only used as the circumstance of a passive clause in
which the actor is deleted:
Was in der Mühle des Strukturwandels gnadenlos zerbrochen wird, das sind die
Normalitätsannahmen der Sozial- und Arbeitsmarktpolitik.
(Hombach 1998: 184)
What is being totally destroyed by this radical development is the concept of normal-
ity that underlies the exercise of our entire social and employment policy.
(Hombach 2000: 126)4
The causes of the process therefore remain unclear and it is depicted as inevitable.
7.8 The metaphorical construction of political myths in the party

conference speeches
Party conference speeches are a mix of deliberative oratory, which focuses on

logos, i.e. argumentation, and epideictic oratory, which focuses on the groupness
of the party. Charteris-Black (2006: 13) argues that these functions are fulfilled
through elements of ideology, myth and metaphor. In combination, they allow the
speaker to engage the audience cognitively as well as emotionally. Whilst ideol-
ogy and argumentation aim to persuade by appealing to people’s conscious world
views, myths legitimise through appealing to unconscious beliefs. Metaphors,
however, have a special status since they ‘mediat[e] between the conscious and
unconscious means of persuasion – between cognitions and emotion – to create a
4. This translation, taken from the English version which appeared in polity press, does not
maintain the original metaphor. Hombach talks about ‘the mill of structural change that radi-
cally breaks down the normality’.
moral perspective on life (or ethos). It is therefore a central strategy for legitimisa-
tion in political speeches’ (Charteris-Black 2006: 13).
In his speeches, it is arguably clear that Blair uses metaphor to evoke a golden-
age myth. This is an extension of the argument made in Chapter 5.9, where I
interpreted the repeated use of re-derivations as the construction of a golden age
myth which suggests that there was an original state of affairs which worked well,
but has become dysfunctional and needs to be revived. Blair’s speeches draw on
the metaphorical concepts nation as a life form and party as a life form. The
use of the golden age myth therefore seems to go much deeper, because it depicts
a golden age of both the nation and the party.
In the analysis of the metaphors used in Blair’s party conference speeches, ‘na-
tion’ appeared as the second strongest target domain with 16.6% of all metaphors,
a striking difference from the other speakers. A closer look at the metaphors used
in this target domain reveals that the construction of a national political goal is
particularly strong amongst the examples. ‘Nation’ is not only construed in build-
ing metaphors, but also in metaphors of life forms or persons (see Table 18).
Table 18. ‘Nation’ metaphors in Blair’s party conference speeches

Metaphorical ideation of ‘nation’ in Tony Blair’s party conference speeches
Source Domain Number
Building 17
Person 11
life form 7
Bridge 1
Journey 1
Both conceptual metaphors, nation as building and nation as life form can
be found regularly in Blair’s conference speeches, and are less dominant in the
German speeches. Blair seems to construct a political myth of the British nation as
being in need of a new leadership because the country is in crisis. In the speeches
between 1995 and 1997, he uses the repetition of central keywords to construe his
purposive topoi and to connect all the parts of his argumentation, a technique that
I will further analyse in the next section. These central keywords are metaphors
that contribute to the political myth of the British Nation that needs to find its
soul again. Blair talks about Britain that needs to be ‘a young country again’ (Blair
1995b), about a ‘new age of achievement’ (Blair 1996a) and about Britain as ‘a
beacon to the world’ (Blair 1997). These constructions form a complex pattern
together with the conceptual metaphor of labour party as a life form, because
both the nation and the party are described as being ‘reborn’:
Today a new Labour Party is being born. Our task now is nothing less than the
rebirth of our nation – a new Britain, national renewal, economic renewal, so that
wealth may be in the hands of the many and not the few; democratic renewal,
labour in office, the people in power; social renewal, so that the evils of poverty
and squalor are banished for good. (Blair 1995c: 292)
Today I place before you my vision of a new Britain – a nation reborn, prosperous,
secure, united – one Britain. (Blair 1995a: 94–95)
I believe in Britain. I believe in the British people. One cross on the ballot paper.
One nation was reborn. (Blair 1997: 68)
The metaphorical scene of the rebirth of the nation and the party fulfils a cen-
tral function in Blair’s speeches and is connected to the ‘re-’ rhetoric discussed
in Chapter 5.8. In his analysis of the golden-age myth in narratives of national
renewal, Anthony Smith (1997: 50) points out that ‘rebirth of a nation’ is a meta-
phorical argument that nationalists use to claim the authenticity of a nation and
to evoke the idea that a nation has always been in existence, and very much needs
to be recovered. In Blair’s speeches, the argumentation follows similar lines in
arguing that the British nation that was once united by values and achievements,
but is in crisis, and was damaged or lost under the leadership of the Conservatives.
However, the reborn Labour Party, ‘New Labour’, can revive the nation, and is the
special agent that can save the British people, because New Labour’s values are
the values of the nation. This metaphorical argumentation has two functions: the
metaphor of the reborn Labour Party construes continuity of values within the
party, depicting New Labour’s values as the traditional values of the Labour Party.
At the same time, the parallel rebirth of Labour and the nation is part of a wider
strategy to address the public and legitimise the party’s claim to power.
In Schröder’s speeches the golden-age topos is used in a much more con-
strained version that does not evoke the idea of the SPD as a special agent for
change. In his pre-election speech, he portrays August Bebel, Willy Brandt and
Helmut Schmidt as models for a modern SPD, portraying their leadership as a
golden age. Only in a brief comment is Schmidt’s ‘Modell Deutschland’ alluded
to as a political golden age of Germany. Here, Schröder integrates the history of
the party and the golden age of Germany in the person of Helmut Schmidt, who
was probably one of the best known and liked SPD elder statesman at the time.
Similarly to Hombach, he uses the new programme term ‘Erneuerung der sozialen
Marktwirtschaft’ to delegitimise the Kohl government by metaphorically claiming
that they have destroyed the social market economy and that the SPD needs to
rebuild it. Yet, these elements are not, as in Blair’s speeches, connected to a central
myth of renewal of the party and renewal of the country.
The question arises as to why the strong version of the golden-age myth that
leads to the topos ‘the values of the party are the values of the nation’ is not used in
Schröder’s speeches, since, like Blair, he also tried to establish a Third Way ideology
in the SPD. One possible interpretation is the lack of a political myth of Germany
as an old unified nation on the one hand, and the difference in the political system
on the other. A strong golden-age myth of the ideal nation is lacking in Germany
for obvious reasons, as historically, Germany had not been a nation state before
1871 and is therefore a young nation. However, even more importantly, Germany
has been at the centre of the catastrophe of nationalism, of two world wars, and as
a consequence has been a divided nation. The use of a golden-age myth to argue
for the SPD as a special agent of the renewal of a golden age of Germany would
therefore be problematic and could not be rooted in German political culture. This
demonstrates how the use of metaphorical scenes is part of individual political
cultures – similar to political myths, as Schöpflin (1997: 27) argues:
… what the analysis of myth suggests is that politics is an aspect of the overall
cultural system. Every political action is embedded in a wider cultural context.
Cultural presuppositions and values may not be seen as narrowly political – influ-
encing political action – and symbolic action is not perceived as a central means of
interaction between political elites and public opinion, yet they do have this role.
Yet, not only the historical dimension of the political culture influences this par-
ticular metaphorical scenario, but realisation of this political myth is sensitive to
the political system itself: the construction of one political party as the agent for
renewal would not be convincing in a political system that normally returns coali-
tion governments in general elections and that does not have a clear distinction
between parties out of power and parties in power. While it was mostly clear in
the UK of the 1990s and 2000s who carried the responsibility for government, in
Germany both bigger parties always shared power at different levels, because the
state governments are elected separately and opposition parties at the federal level
can reach a majority in the Bundesrat, which was the case in the 1990s.
7.9 The art of aestheticisation and promotionalisation through

metaphorical programme terms in Blair’s conference speeches
In his party conference speeches, Blair consistently uses a single metaphorical

catchphrase repeatedly in order to give his performance a persuasive edge. Here
Blair developed a particular type of promotionalisation and aestheticisation of
politics, which the SPD did not emulate. In an article in The Times from November
1987, Blair reflects on the effect the media has on political language. He describes
the situation as ‘depressing’, but points out that Labour politicians, not being as
cynical as Conservatives, need to learn the lesson:
Our news today is instant, hostile to subtlety or qualification. If you can’t sum
it up in a sentence or even a phrase, forget it. Combine two ideas or sentiments
together and mass communication will not repeat them, it will choose between
them. To avoid misinterpretation, strip down a policy or opinion to one key clear
line before the media does it for you. Think in headlines.
(Blair, 24th November 1987)
The language of his party conference speeches certainly shows that Blair learned
this lesson. In his analysis of Blair’s rhetoric, Charteris-Black (2006: 144) argues
that the Labour leader’s ability to persuade is not only his ability to produce
soundbites, but to integrate ethos and pathos, a technique Blair had learned from
Margaret Thatcher. He describes Blair as a preacher-politician, and his rhetoric as
‘conviction rhetoric’. To demonstrate Blair’s ability to focus on pathos, Charteris-
Black (2014: 155–59) analyses Blair’s use of ‘beacon to the world’ as a central meta-
phor, which ‘contribute[s] to its coherence by providing a theme for his speech’
(Charteris-Black 2014: 159). I argue that this is a more general technique in Blair’s
party conference speeches. In each of the three speeches between 1995 and 1997
he uses one central metaphorical programme phrase (1995 ‘young country’, 1996
‘age of achievement’, 1997 ‘beacon to the world’), which in all three cases has a
complex rhetorical function. Primarily, it integrates the arguments of the speeches
and condenses them to a central catchphrase. This is then used to tackle the
problem of multiple addressees by presenting the British nation metaphorically
as a community of values, and the New Labour values as being the values of the
nation. This is also a powerful method to unite the participants of this annual
ritual, using a central metaphor as a symbol. These symbols are, as Faucher-King
(2005: 45) puts it,
inherently ambiguous and polyvalent, symbols can mean different things to
different people and constitute powerful markers of identity across individual
boundaries. They create an impression of consensus and therefore facilitate the
act of imagining community.
The use of these metaphorical catchphrases, which are chosen for their emotional
connotation, can also be interpreted as part of promotional culture, resulting
in the aestheticisation of politics. Wernick (1991: 182) argues that promotional
signification has become hegemonic in modern society. In his view, promotional
signification blurs the boundary between sign and object and the promotional
signifier has a representing, advocating and anticipating function. In Fairclough’s
(2003) words, promotional messages obscure the distinction between statements
of facts and predictions (Fairclough 2003: 113). Promotionalisation is closely con-

nected to aestheticisation, because it aims to transfer meanings from the outside
of a product onto the product by using a particular image repeatedly (Wernick
1991: 15). This certainly happens with the repeated use of metaphorical catch-
phrases, and even more so, when these catch phases are used in other contexts.
Blair, for example, uses ‘young country’ shortly after the speech as a title of a book:
New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (Blair 1996b). The catchphrase ‘young
country’ can therefore be read as a promotional signifier for the Labour leader, and
its repeated use of the phrase in the party conference speech can be understood
as self-promotion. Yet, aestheticisation of politics has a further function, which
Harvey (1989: 108–9) describes as a legitimisation strategy for the state as a coer-
cive unifying system that struggles to construct a sense of community in times of
individualism and social change.
While Fairclough (2000, 2003) sees Blair’s aesthetic as mainly based on his
personality, and Charteris-Black (2006, 2014) analysis his use of metaphor use as
conviction rhetoric, I suggest that Blair uses metaphorical programme terms as
a multifunctional tool for multi-addressing, connecting arguments as well as for
‘thinking in headlines’. It is arguably surprising that no such effect can be observed
in the German party conference speeches by Schröder and Lafontaine. They do
use catch terms repeatedly, if not with such a high frequency as Blair. However,
they employ less emotionally charged abstract political programme terms such
as ‘Solidarität’ or ‘Innovation und Gerechtigkeit’. They do not seem to have taken
the same interest in the promotionality of their speeches, possibly because the
party conferences are much less a regular political ritual and not as much part
of the regular annual political dairy. Therefore, they usually receive less media
attention, apart from the pre-election conference in 1998, which was designed
as a media event.
In order to demonstrate the mechanism described in more detail, I will first
turn to Blair’s 1997 conference speech and the beacon metaphor. This metaphor is
introduced at the beginning of the speech and appears a total of 8 times. Charteris-
Black (2014: 157–58) interprets the metaphor as evoking cognitive frames of fire,
light and ‘up’, and therefore conceptual metaphors such as good is up, god is
light and enthusiasm is fire. He also points out that this metaphor has strong
intertextual connections to famous American speeches, having been used by
Martin Luther King, and later by Reagan and Clinton.
When Blair introduces the catch phrase, he explicitly introduces it as the pur-
posive topos of the speech – the topos that defines the aim of Blair’s government:
‘Today I want to set an ambitious course for this country. To be nothing less than
the model 21st-century nation, a beacon to the world’ (Blair 1997: 68). He takes
up the phrase later in order to summarise his credit claim for already achieving the
fulfilment of the 10-point contract from the election campaign. Further repeated
use connects it to the central conclusions of a reform of education, welfare, and
the NHS. In addition, he uses it in connection to the value topos of ‘equality’ and
the positive catchword ‘enlightened patriotism’. At the close of the speech, it is at
the centre of a complex metaphorical scene depicting the nation as a unified group
that supports New Labour’s policies and has defeated the evil of conservatism:
But great rewards for all of us if we rise to them as we can. As one nation. Held
together by our values and by the strength of our character. We are a giving
people. In the face of crisis or challenge we pull together, strengthened by unity.
It says nothing about our politics. It speaks volumes about our character. You
remember how your parents, like mine, used to say to you: Just do your best. Well,
let’s do our best.
On May 1, the people entrusted me with the task of leading their country into a
new century. That was your challenge to me. Proudly, humbly, I accepted it.
Today, I issue a challenge to you. Help us make Britain that beacon shining
throughout the world. Unite behind our mission to modernise our country. There
is a place for all the people in New Britain, and there is a role for all the people
in its creation. Believe in us as much as we believe in you. Give just as much to
our country as we intend to give. Give your all. Make this the giving age. ‘By the
strength of our common endeavour we achieve more together than we can alone.’
On 1st May 1997, it wasn’t just the Tories who were defeated. Cynicism was
defeated. Fear of change was defeated. Fear itself was defeated. Did I not say it
would be a battle of hope against fear? On 1st May 1997, fear lost. Hope won. The
Giving Age began.
Now make the good that is in the heart of each of us, serve the good of all of
us. Give to our country the gift of our energy, our ideas, our hopes, our talents.
Use them to build a country each of whose people will say that ‘I care about
Britain because I know that Britain cares about me.’ Britain, head and heart, can
be unbeatable. That is the Britain I offer you. That is the Britain that together can
be ours. (Blair 1997: 73)
The effect here is firstly based on a chain of familiar programme terms interlinked
with new thematic catchwords: ‘one nation’ and ‘New Britain’ as signifiers of the
unified nation, as opposed to the ‘divided society’ of conservatism, are linked to
the central metaphor ‘beacon shining to the world’ and to the new programme
term of ‘giving age’. These open two intertextual links whereby the use of the tradi-
tional light metaphor for hope is made explicit, and battle metaphors are used to
construe the political choice between Labour and the Conservatives as the battle
between good and evil. The ‘giving age’ is introduced with ‘Give just as much to
our country as we intend to give’, which is an intertextual variation on the famous
phrase from Kennedy’s inauguration speech from 20th January 1961: ‘And so, my
fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can
do for your country.’
At the same time, Blair quotes the beginning of Clause Four, which symbolises
the success of his leadership, but also contributes to the ceremonial tone of the
ending that results in the phrase ‘Now make the good that is in the heart of each
of us, serve the good of all of us …’ – resembling the Christian dismissal at the end
of a service (‘Ite ad Evangelium Domini nuntiandum’). The combination of these
elements – the quasi-religious metaphors of light and darkness, the mythological
depiction of politics as a battle between good and evil, and the allusions to reli-
gious ceremonies – cast Blair as a preacher-politician (Charteris-Black 2006: 143).
Moreover, the central beacon metaphor plays its part in the multi-addressing
nature and inclusiveness of the speech, since it is used to ask the British people to
support the modernisation of Britain.
In his 1995 party conference speech, Blair uses ‘young country’ as the central
metaphoric catchphrase. Blair establishes the programme phrase after about a
third of the speech, and uses it 17 times in total. Metaphorically, the phrase can be
understood as country as a life form. The phrase is directly connected to the
rhetoric of renewal and is part of the golden-age topos. Blair uses it in opposition
to the Britain of the Conservatives, to the old country, ‘resting on past glories,
fighting old battles and sitting back, hand on mouth, concealing a yawn of cyni-
cism’ (Blair 1995b: 97). He also defines the ‘young country’ in terms of the Third
Way, uniting opposing political ideologies of the past: ‘A young country: no more
bosses versus workers – partnership at the workplace …’ (Blair 1995b: 97).
Yet again, the catchphrase is connected to all parts of the argumentative
structure. It is part of the data topos describing a country in crisis. It also appears
connected to all conclusions of the family as foundation of society, the necessity
of the modernisation of the welfare state, the plans for anti-discrimination laws
and constitutional change as well as for cooperation with Europe. Furthermore,
it is central to the topoi of value change, where it can be found metonymically (‘A
young country gives rights, but it demands responsibilities’ (Blair 1995b: 101)) or
in connection with nation as building: ‘Let us rouse ourselves to a new moral
purpose for our nation to build a new and young country that can lay aside all the
prejudices that have dominated our land for generations’ (Blair 1995b: 102). This
strategy of the repeated use of the phrase ‘young country’ was certainly successful
in terms of reception by the media. An article in the Guardian (White, M., 19th
October 1995), for example, picks up the phrase and quotes it three times in an
article of 728 words.
Blair’s catchphrase ‘age of achievement’, from the party conference speech
in 1996, was similarly successful in that respect. It was also picked up in com-
mentaries in the Guardian (White, M., 2nd October 1996), the Times Educational
Supplement quotes it in a commentary (Barber, 11th October 1996), and it was the
headline of a section of quotes in The Independent (The Independent, October 03,
1996, 3rd October 1996). Similarly to in his speech in 1997, Blair introduces the
catchphrase at the beginning as a purposive topos, and then repeats it 16 times
throughout the speech: ‘How do we create in Britain a new age of achievement in
which all of the people – not just a few but all of the people – can share?’ (Blair
1996a: 80). He also uses ‘age of achievement’ in other speeches, such as a speech
given at Ruskin College, Oxford (Blair 1996c), making it his main promotional
signifier for the pre-election year. Also, as in the other two speeches, the phrase
contributes to the very ceremonial, quasi-religious tone of the speech. Firstly,
‘age of ’ is typically used for historical eras, if not for the age of a famous person.
‘The age of achievement’ is therefore an early claim to historicity, a meaning that
Blair claims himself in the speech: ‘History will call it the decent society, the new
age of achievement in Britain’ (Blair 1996a: 84). This is a very clear example of
promotionality – a signifier that blurs the boundaries between fact and prediction,
between sign and object. A second element that supports the ceremonial tone is
the connection of ‘age of achievement’ to the millenarist element of the speech:
And it is here now, in this room, as we build around the Labour Party the new
force for progress in British politics to bring in the new age of achievement for all
our people. A thousand days – yes – to prepare for that thousand years.
(Blair 1996a: 87)
Both the ‘thousand days’ and the ‘thousand years’ are also used as elements of
coherence for the speech, appearing at the beginning, in the middle, and at the
close of the speech. This allusion to the Christian millenarist tradition has become
a generalised myth in the Western world and origins from the two apocalyptic
books of the bible – Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testa-
ment. This myth of the return of Christ for a thousand years and his final victory
after the apocalypse has often been re-appropriated in the arts and was also rife
in pop culture in the late 1990s (Gould 2011: 64). So again, Blair uses a Christian
allusion, a latent and widely available myth almost like that of the golden age.
This connection between the millenarism, the catchphrase and the ceremonial-
religious tone of the speech was picked up by the aforementioned Guardian article:
Tony Blair yesterday delivered an evangelical appeal to the Labour Party and the
country to give him a 1,000-day opportunity – from election day to the Millen-
nium – in which to start creating a new ‘Age of Achievement’ for Britain. (White,
M., October 02, 1996: 2nd October 1996)
The catchphrases in the other two speeches discussed have both been metaphorical,
but this is not the case for ‘the age of achievement’. However, the phrase is mostly
used in a metaphorical scenario. Firstly, it is used twice in a scenario where ‘the

age of achievement’ as being the future is portrayed as a container, and politics
is portrayed as a movement forward. In this scenario, Blair literally functions as
the leader who leads the people into a better future, which in turn functions as the
purposive topos in the argumentative structure of the speech:
I want to lead Britain into this age of achievement. (Blair 1996a: 80)
Another way of depicting this goal is the use of nation as a building, which
occurs six times:
Our task is to restore that hope, to build a new age of achievement in a new and
different world. (Blair 1996a: 81)
And finally, at the conclusion of the speech, both metaphors are combined, but
this time the party is construed as leading the people:
We have the programme. We have the people to make decent change in our
country. Let us call our nation now to its destiny. Let us lead it to our new age of
achievement and build for us, for our children, their children, a Britain – a Britain
united to win in the 21st century. (Blair 1996a: 87)
This is parallel to constructions in other speeches, where Blair presents himself as

the leader of the party which will free the British people – a theme typical for third-
way discourses (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 42). Argumentatively, the catchphrase
‘age of achievement’ fulfils a parallel function to the central catchphrases of the
other three speeches in that it connects the macro-topoi of the speech.
All of the discussed catch terms condense the argumentation of the speech to
a unique programme term that supports the transmission of the message of a new
‘agency’ (Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 42) in politics via the press. Blair and his
speechwriters were clearly thinking in terms of headlines, trying to communicate
a single, unique idea, since if you ‘[c]ombine two ideas or sentiments together and
mass communication will not repeat them, it will choose between them’ (Blair,
November 24, 1987).
Schröder was similarly aware of the mechanisms of a media democracy.
He was after all known to be the ‘media chancellor’ (see for example König, J.,
September 06, 2002; Strohmaier, November 22, 2002; Meng 2002), and in 2000
was even awarded the German Media Prize (‘Deutscher Medienpreis 2000’). How-
ever, there is no evidence of the strategy found in Blair’s speeches. Although both
Schröder and Lafontaine use certain programme terms repeatedly, they are not
metaphorical terms that fulfil the global argumentative function of connecting
all the macro topoi of the speeches, are less emotionally loaded, and they lack the
ceremonial tone.
In Schröder’s pre-election speech of 1998, the central programme phrase is

‘Innovation und Gerechtigkeit’ as part of the chosen electoral slogan ‘Arbeit, In-
novation und Gerechtigkeit’. Schröder introduces this phrase at the beginning as
a theme and generally uses the morpheme ‘innova-’ 13 times. This is, however,
more parallel to the use of the programme term ‘partnership’ in Blair’s speeches.
The analysis of Lafontaine’s party conference speech in 1997 yields a similar result
in that it focuses on the programme term ‘Solidarität’.
In his speech at the special conference 2003, Schröder uses two catchphrases
as structuring elements: ‘Mut zur Veränderung’ and ‘Freiheit, Solidarität und
Gerechtigkeit’. The first slogan was shown on the big screen and the platform
stand, and is briefly used in the middle of the speech. Although not metaphorical,
it might have had the potential to structure the speech and to create an emotional
atmosphere. However, Schröder and his speechwriters decided to use the second
element to structure the speech. It is important to note that this phrase reintro-
duces one of the most central traditional programme terms of social democracy,
that of ‘Solidarität’, which was used very selectively in his speeches in 1997/1998.
The reintroduction at the beginning of the speech is strategic: It stresses traditional
values of social democracy, but also serves as a prerequisite of a central argumenta-
tive topos of separation of values and means. However, this is different from Blair’s
strategy. The catchphrase consists of programme terms that describe the central
values of the party and are used for one central argument, but do not connect all
the macro topoi and do not contribute to the pathos of the speech.
In their use of metaphorical programme terms, Blair’s speeches seem to be
unique. This may simply be a matter of personal style, or rather the style of a group
of writers surrounding Blair, Lafontaine and Schröder. It is, however, also plausible
to argue that this is an effect of political culture. As party conferences in the UK
are a ritualised part of the political year in Britain, the aestheticisation and promo-
tionalisation of the speeches are employed as strategies to promote the party more
effectively in this environment. I have argued that this strategy is clearly successful,
as the media regularly pick up on the metaphorical catchphrase employed in the
speeches. However, it may also be an effect of the British leader’s speeches as a
genre that is more focused on symbolic pathos. Since there is no leadership elec-
tion to be held at party conferences, they are more a ritual forming and projecting
group solidarity, and not deliberative instruments to convince possible undecided
delegates to support the leader in the vote.
7.10 Conclusions: Metaphors of the Third Way
In the discourses of the Third Way, journey metaphors and battle metaphors
are dominant. The reason seems to be a partly common political culture that con-
ceptualises politics as a way forward, in line with the teleological view of history
originating in the age of enlightenment. Similarly, politics is a battle metaphors
are deeply engrained in the Western political discourse, and speakers do not even
avoid them when they actually call for an end to ideologies, which is one of the
central topoi in both the discourse of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’. However,
the journey metaphors seem to be particularly important to these discourses as
they dominate the self-reference, and are used to depoliticise issues through the
use of barrier and burden metaphors. In the party conference speeches similar
metaphors to the ideological monographs are pertinent.
The crisis topoi in the data topos of both discourses are experiential metaphors
that construe ‘globalisation’ and ‘change’ as being inevitable de-agentivised forces
of nature, despite brief attempts by Hombach and Giddens to demythologise this
conception. I have argued, similarly to Hay (2007), that this can lead to a self-
denial of political autonomy amongst the political class.
The analysis of Blair’s speeches highlighted two unique patterns that cannot be
found in Schröder’s speeches in the same way. Firstly, Blair outlines a golden-age
myth through a combination of the re-rhetoric and metaphor, where the nation
and the party are construed as life forms that have been reborn. This evokes a
topos that Bastow and Martin (2003) describe as typical for third-way ideologies.
This strong version of the golden-age myth that expresses a special status of the
party is less prominent in the German speeches for two reasons: Firstly, German
history does not allow a golden-age myth in the same way. Secondly, the German
political system involves the two big catch-all parties into decision- making on
various levels: to construe either party as being outside the political system and
therefore not a credible strategy. There is, however, a weak version of the golden-
age myth in Hombach (1998) and in Schröder’s pre-election speech, whereby the
SPD takes over the conservative catch term ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’.
The second unique pattern in Blair’s party conference speeches is the use of
metaphor as a tool of aestheticisation and promotionalisation through metaphori-
cal programme terms. In most of his speeches, Blair chooses one metaphorical
programme term he connects to all argumentative topoi of the speech, and which
represents the goal of Labour’s policies and the goal of the nation. I have described
these metaphorical terms as promotional signifiers, as they are not only reused
in other publications, but are also aimed to be picked up in press headlines. This
strategy was successful with the press, as the programme word was reliably re-
ported by the press and also contributes to the strong pathos of Blair’s speeches.
The German party conference speeches do not use these metaphorical key-
words in the same way, as they emphasise pathos to a much lesser degree. A pos-
sible explanation is that British party conference speeches are a part of the ritual
of party conferences that builds groupness and that are of less importance for
decision-making and deliberation. There is an element of ritualisation in British
party conferences that cannot be found in Germany. For New Labour, the speech
of the leader is more akin to a ritual as the leader does not try to win votes for re-
election directly. The German party conferences, in contrast, do not happen at the
same time every year. They are, however, events where it is possible to challenge
for the leadership directly, and there was a recent precedent for that in the SPD
through the deselection of Rudolf Scharping in 1995.
A final result is the conclusion that a comparative approach needs to take
metaphorical scenarios into consideration, as they are the level at which differ-
ences become apparent. Both the SPD and the Labour Party in 1997/98 used one
central conceptual metaphor – politics is a journey in Germany and politics
is building in the UK. The German choice was based on the discourse-historical
context at the time, in which metaphors of ‘standstill’ dominated the political
discourse. The complex metaphorical scenarios that Labour and the SPD used to
legitimise their political position in the 1997/1998 election were then reused in
the re-election manifestos of 2001/02 to claim credit for political success, mitigate
blame for changes that did not happen, and argue for the necessity of the re-
election to finish the project of political change.
Chapter 8
Conclusions
Political cultures and the political discourses
To unlock a society, look at its untranslatable words. (Salman Rushdie, Shame1)
Even if political actors try to align their political efforts because they think they
‘share a common destiny’ (Blair and Schröder 1999: 2), they will have to adapt a
global ideology to local political circumstances. Local contexts are reflected in po-
litical discourse on the level of genre, lexis, argumentation and metaphor. In order
to understand the relation between the political contexts and political language
use, I have presented an approach to comparative politico-linguistic discourse
analysis and a case study on the discursive construction of the modernisation of
social democratic parties in Britain and Germany, a project that was named ‘Third
Way’. I asked how the British Labour Party and the German SPD at the end of the
twentieth century repositioned their ideology in order to overcome an electoral
failure of almost two decades. I explored how this repositioning was achieved
using the discursive strategies (mis-)representation, (de-)legitimisation and (de-)
politicisation and their linguistic realisations, through investigating a corpus
of ideological publications, leaders’ speeches at party conferences and election
manifestos. I will now return to the research questions asked in the introduction
to discuss the results point to opportunities for future research and contextualise
current social democratic discourses with the results of the presented analysis.
As research question 1 is the most abstract question, which also needs a
more general discussion of the contribution of this study to the field of political
discourse analysis as a sub-discipline of Applied Linguistics, I will first discuss
research questions 2–5 and return to research question 1 later.
8.1 Genres differences in political discourse
In the conceptual and methodological discussion I argued that the Discourse-

Historical Approach (DHA) demands a detailed genre analysis of the genres
1. Rushdie, Salman. 1984. Shame. London: Picador., 29.

represented in the corpus before analysing the discursive structures (Reisigl and
Wodak 2001: 36). We also saw in the introduction that this is often forgotten by
transnational approaches to political discourse. In the present study, I demon-
strated that it is essential to include genre differences in a comparative analysis of
political discourse, as the genres in my corpus turned out to be heavily dependent
on the cultural and institutional contexts. In order to understand register differ-
ences, the genre analysis needs to include a discussion of the role of a genre in an
institutional setting.
Three main parts of the macro context influence the party conference speech
genre. Firstly, the general political culture with a higher presidentialisation seems
to produce more leadership focused speeches and effects the footing of the speech-
es. However, the footing was also influenced by the position of the Chancellor
Candidate of the party or a re-election as party leader. Secondly, the differences
in the institutional context of party conferences and the role of the party leader
also seem to be reflected in the more pathos heavy speeches by Blair as opposed
to the more policy-oriented speeches by Schröder and Lafontaine. A final part of
the context is the difference of discourse history and hegemony in discourse, as
the modernisation discourse was not yet hegemonic in the German SPD before
the election in 1998.
Election manifestos generally present the ideology of an in-group (‘we’), but
do not construe an ideological out-group to the same extent as the conference
speeches (‘they’). They serve both internal and external functions in party politics,
and the balance of the functions differs in Germany and the UK. The external
function, especially the advertising function, is far less prominent in Germany,
as the manifestos do not contain salient visual elements. In the UK, this function
has increased in importance in the New Labour manifestos. These manifestos
present multimodal texts that integrate picture and text to convey a message, and
the pictures are increasingly used to construe the leadership of the party leader.
In 1997 and 2001, the manifestos depict Blair multiple times, whilst other Labour
politicians are absent. The voice of the leader in the manifestos is generally more
dominant in the New Labour manifestos, as in the prefaces of leaders which change
into the leader’s personal voice (‘I’) and lose the distancing headline ‘preface’. In
sharp contrast, the German manifestos are characterised by a strong party voice
and, with the exception of the 1994 manifesto, their prefaces are also phrased that
way. Even in a 1998 election campaign brochure that presents the SPD programme
multimodally and contains numerous depictions of Gerhard Schröder and a re-
production of his CV, the general voice of the text is the voice of the SPD, as the
party is represented on the front page and the text phrase is ‘we’ throughout. I have
argued that this discursive structure underlines the higher ‘partyness of society’ in
Germany, as it can also be found in CDU manifestos.
Chapter 8. Conclusions 251
The significant genre differences in both the party conference speeches and
the election manifestos confirm Martin and Rose’s (2008) theory of genre, which
models ‘genre as the stratum of culture, beyond register, where it could function
as a pattern of field, tenor and mode patterns. In this step we had remodelled
language in social context as an integrated semiotic system, in which “situation”
and “culture” were reconstructed in as semiotic strata – register and genre. […]’ (
Martin, J. R. and Rose, D. 2008, 16, emphasis in original). This also means that the
discursive strategies of political discourse are realised in genre as register. Hence,
they are dependent on the cultural context.
8.2 Legitimation of party-ideological change
The second research question asked, how changes in the social democratic party-
political ideologies in Germany and the UK are represented and legitimised in
the language use of the party. It was answered in an analysis of the macro topoi
of argumentation and the lexico-semantic competition in the corpus. The general
macro-topoi of the two discourses were described using Klein’s (2000a) approach
to political argumentation. The purposive topoi, ‘a better future for Germany/the
UK’ and ‘a secure future for social democracy’ were to be expected in a modernisa-
tion discourse of social democratic parties. Similarly, the conclusive topoi of lower
taxes, welfare reform and reform of the education system are well known to have
been hegemonic policies at the time. Thus, my analysis focused on the data topoi
and the topoi of values and principles.
In the data topoi and value topoi, I identified similar general patterns in the
discourse of New Labour and ‘Die Neue Mitte’. The data topos was dominated by
crisis topoi which construe a crisis of society and blame the current government
for it. However, these topoi are adapted to the local political discourse. Hombach,
for example, talks about the crisis of corporatism, and the metaphorical scenarios
of CRISIS AS STANDSTILL are based on a prevalent crisis discourse in the Ger-
man press. Furthermore, the crisis topoi are evoked to legitimise the necessary
change of ideology, portrayed through a national crisis caused by ‘change’ and
‘globalisation’ – processes that are reified in the speeches through nominalisation
and therefore function as constructions of necessity for a change of ideology. A
further topos for the change of ideology was the crisis of the party: Change was
necessary because the party has lost its voter base and does not represent the
values of the voters any more.
Klein’s (2000a) model of political argumentation predicts that topoi of
values and principles are employed to support the conclusions. In my corpus, I
found many examples of the values themselves being justified. I described these
justifications by introducing Freeden’s (1998) model of political ideologies. This

seemed to be particularly appropriate, as the politicians themselves employed the
core-periphery metaphor that Freeden (1998) based his model on, in that they
talked about core values, often before they suggested discarding other values
or concepts as they were not core to the Labour movement. The re-evaluation
of party ideologies also changed the adjacency of values. New concepts such as
‘the rigour of markets’, ‘flexibility’ and the adjacency of ‘rights and responsibilities’
were introduced in both New Labour and the ‘Neue Mitte’ discourse. Conversely,
traditional social democratic values such as equality of distribution, government
spending as resources, or nationalisation were discarded, either because they sup-
posedly did not have an effect on policies any longer, or they were not the values of
the voters and hence responsible for the electoral failure. The separation of former
adjacencies such as ‘justice’ and ‘redistribution’ was supported by the argument
that values and means are separate, and that ‘redistribution’, for example, was an
outdated policy. Finally, all texts contained very salient topoi of post-ideology,
arguing that the crisis evoked can only be overcome by pragmatism as opposed
to the division between left and right. This topos was described by Bastow and
Martin (2003) as one of the core topoi of third-way ideologies.
On the level of discourse theory, these results suggest that for party political
discourses, Klein’s (2000a) model of political argumentation needs to be supple-
mented by a theory of the morphology and development of political ideologies.
Freeden’s (1998) model has proven to be a fruitful tool in this respect, as it pre-
dicted the mechanisms of the changes in value topoi of both New Labour and the
SPD: the reorganisation of core and peripheral values. For the analysis of the party
conference speeches, it was also necessary to add topoi of blame and credit claim,
which can be seen as part of the data topos.
The analysis of the catch terms in the ideological publications revealed that
the programme and stigma terms formed a semantic frame that is split into three
categories of programme terms for the Third Way on the one hand, and stigma
terms against left, and also against right, on the other. This three-part semantic
frame is derived from the left–right metaphor that is typical of the categorisation
of political ideologies in Western political cultures, and also from the metaphori-
cal scenario of POLITICS AS A JOURNEY, which is the basis of the metaphor
of the ‘Third Way’. The use of stigmatisation against left and right is obviously a
contradiction to the topos of post-ideology which argues that the left–right divide
needs to be overcome.
Although my suggested semantic frame for the lexis of Third Way discourses
generally covers the whole corpus, there are significant differences in its individual
realisation. In Hombach’s publication, the stigma terms against the ‘old left’ are of-
ten framed as stigma terms against the ‘party state’ and ‘old corporatism’, whereas
in the election manifestos of the Schröder-SPD the stigma terms against the old
left are generally less prominent, although they clearly contain Third-Way argu-
mentative patterns. The semantic frame is also less populated with stigma terms
against the old left in pre-election conference speeches of both Schröder and Blair,
and I have argued that in this genre they need to focus on the external other,
the conservative parties, to unite the party. This shows clearly that an analysis of
political lexis needs to take genre into account as a variable, a fact often ignored in
computer assisted analyses such as that by L'Hôte (2014).
Within the central programme terms, I demonstrated that both New Labour
and the SPD tried to take over central conservative programme terms, often indi-
cated by meta-linguistic comments on the use of these words. Some catch terms
that had historically been conservative have developed into positive symbol terms,
for example ‘one nation’ in Britain and ‘soziale Marktwirtschaft’ in Germany, and
were then claimed by New Labour and the SPD. The SPD programme term ‘Neue
Mitte’ was chosen for its inter-discursive links with the ‘New Democrats’ and ‘New
Labour’, but at the same time has intra-discursive links in the tradition of German
social democracy. However, this term was not anywhere near as frequently used
as the term ‘new Labour’, which was used as a rebranding of the Labour Party
whose official name in its constitution was still ‘The Labour Party’. In conclusion,
both parties use the same semantic mechanisms to position themselves. The
lexical realisation, however, clearly depends on the discourse history of a political
community. It is the discourse history that determines the symbol terms of a local
discourse that are appropriated and reframed.
8.3 Linguistic construction of Third Way ideology in Germany and

the UK
Clear differences between the discursive features occurred in all analysed linguistic
domains of argumentation, metaphor and lexis. The following discussion will also
answer the questions whether the differences are present mainly on the level of
tokens, i.e. the catch terms and metaphors, or on the level of the macro structures
such as the semantic frame of catch terms and the metaphorical scenarios. I also
found differences in general discursive features such as use of recontextualised
religious elements and promotionalisation.
The discussion of the argumentative macro structures in the last section estab-
lished that both discourses are similar in the types and subtypes of macro topoi,
and that the realisation of these types depended on the local political culture.
Hombach and Giddens even showed an awareness of the differences between the
political cultures and the necessary adaptations of the Third-Way discourse for that
reason, an awareness that had a clear influence on the Schröder-Blair Paper, where
central catch terms in the translation were replaced to allow a cultural adaptation.
The metaphor analysis demonstrated that journey, battle and building
metaphors were dominant in all genres. In the naming of ‘Third Way’, the concept
politics as way forward, which has been deeply ingrained in most political
cultures of Europe since the Enlightenment, was combined with the left–right
metaphor that is also established in most Western political cultures since the
French revolution. Journey metaphors are also central to strategies of depoliticisa-
tion that depict the state, the welfare state or regulation of the market as barriers
against the way forward.
The similarities of the quantities of tokens can be explained by the long-term
relatedness of the analysed political cultures, specifically, their origins in the ideas
of the Enlightenment. The differences, on the other hand, occur at the level of
metaphorical scenarios (Musolff 2003, 2006). Similar to the cultural adaptations
of the macro topoi, the metaphorical scenarios seem to be more dependent on
the recent changes in ideology and on the recent movements of the local political
discourse. This demonstrates the role of conceptual metaphors in the narratives
and arguments constructed by the scenarios. The metaphorical scenarios should
therefore be treated as realisations of macro topoi, which are dependent on the
political culture.
In the political lexis and the semantic battle in the Third-Way corpus, the
tokens differ and are culturally dependent. Most importantly, the appropriated
miranda or positive symbol terms ‘soziale Marktwirtschaft’ and ‘one nation’. The
macro strategies and the semantic frames, however, are similar in both discourses.
The semantic frame was constructed on the basis of a conceptual metaphor that is
deeply engrained in both political cultures as politics as way forward.
Outside the linguistic realisations topoi, metaphors and catch terms, dif-
ferences in the discourses occurred on another macro level, that of the level of
religious narratives and political myths. In the British election manifestos there
are keywords that form a conceptual metaphor of politics as religion through
a connection of the connotations. Blair’s party conference speeches also contained
elements of a religious ritual, for example a recontextualisation of the dismissal
in the Christian service, and in addition, Mandelson and Liddle (1996: 31–59)
present a quasi-hagiographic account of Blair’s development as the New Labour
messiah. These quasi-religious or mythological elements can also be found in a
deeper layer of the New Labour discourse through the construction of a golden-
age myth to legitimise New Labour’s special position as the party of change. This
myth is represented by the use of many re-derivations in Mandelson and Liddle
(1996) and Giddens (1998), and the combination of the metaphors of ‘rebirth of
nation’ and ‘rebirth of party’. This myth was recontextualised from a cultural and
sport discourse with the underlying argument that Labour has returned to its
original values, the values of a national British golden age.
The discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’ differs in this respect because of specifics in
the political culture: the golden-age topos is very restricted in Germany because
German history does not allow the construction of a national German golden age
as easily as the UK’s. Furthermore, an overarching myth of the SPD as being a
special agent for political change would be problematic in Germany, as the large
catch-all parties in Germany are never in total opposition. Rather, they are always
part of the state governments, and share power through the second chamber.
Despite these restrictions, I found elements of the golden-age topos in Hombach,
who demands the reconstruction of the social market economy by the SPD and
depicts the SPD of ‘Die Neue Mitte’ as the true heir of Ludwig Erhard. Similarly,
we found other attempts at recontextualisation from the New Labour discourse.
For example, the concept of the activating state, originally used by New Labour
in the discourse on welfare reform, is used in the criticism of ‘old corporatism’,
while the terms ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Zivilgesellschaft’ are used to import the
‘community’ discourse. This discourse was described as a typical element of third-
way discourses by Bastow and Martin (2003). However, ‘community’ is a salient
symbol term in British political discourse that was difficult to recontextualise as
the term ‘Gemeinschaft’ has a problematic discourse history during the time of
National Socialism.
A final central difference between the German and British discourse is the lack
of leadership focus in the discourse of ‘Die Neue Mitte’. I argued that the leader-
ship focus was visible in the election brochure analysed, yet it was still qualified in
election manifestos and party conference speeches, as German party leaders are
more dependent on their party on the one hand, and the SPD in 1998 had a dual
leadership on the other.
An additional distinctive feature revealed by the comparative analysis of the
New Labour and ‘Neue Mitte’ discourses is an element of promotionalisation in
Blair’s party conference speeches and the ‘New Labour’ election manifestos. We
saw how ‘new Labour’ was established as a brand through repetition and through
the choice of a particular spelling. The SPD used the term ‘Neue Mitte’ much less
frequently, although it was strategically placed in the election manifestos.
In Blair’s speeches, I described the repeated use of metaphorical catch terms
as a strategy of promotionalisation and aestheticisation. These catch terms were
chosen to represent the purposive topos of the speeches, and also to connect all
other topoi. I interpreted this strategy also as an exploitation of the particular
institutional structure of party conferences and party conference speeches in that
they have an element of ritualisation, as all parties in the UK held the conferences
annually at the same time at seaside resorts, which makes them a fixed element
of the political calendar in the UK and attract far greater media attention. As the
party leader was not elected by the conference, his speeches were less deliberative
and aimed at re-election, but more motivational and aimed towards the formation
of group solidarity.
8.4 The text-context relation in political discourse
Most of the interdependencies between the discourses and the political contexts
have already been discussed in the previous parts of this conclusion that aim to
answer research questions 2–4. In the theoretical discussion I argued that the
influences of the discourse contexts should not be understood as determining the
discourse, but as reflecting the context sensitivity of the discourse. The context
analysis in Chapter 3 carved out three major differences in the political cultures
of Germany and the UK. Firstly, the differences in the discourse history which
led to different path and time scales of the modernisation discourse becoming
hegemonic; secondly, the institutional differences of the political systems, and;
finally, the differences in the political cultures.
Most of the discursive differences occurring in the corpus analysed can be at-
tributed to these three variables within the level of context of culture, but also had
to return to the context analysis. Firstly, the analysis of party conference speeches
as a genre made an analysis of the institution ‘party conference’ necessary, which
is part of the institutional setting of a polity. And secondly, the analysis of the lexis
and metaphors in the corpus suggested they form a political golden-age-myth, but
this golden age myth could not be applied the same way in Germany and the UK
for reasons in the broader discourse history of Germany.
The specific paths of the modernisation discourses in Germany and the UK
described in Chapter 3.1 led to general differences in the party-political discourses
of New Labour and the SPD. While the modernisation discourse of New Labour
was already dominant in the Labour Party at the time of the election campaign in
1997, this was not the case in Germany. The German SPD in 1998 used a double
leadership in the election campaign, presenting the ‘moderniser’ Schröder as the
chancellor candidate who aimed for more conservative voters, while the party
chairman Lafontaine presented a more traditional social democratic argument.
While both politicians fought for the hegemony of their position in their party
conference speeches in 1997, they presented a united front in 1998. In 1997, we
saw clear differences in their positions, where Lafontaine presented an alterna-
tive to Schröder’s position of economic liberalism. These differences are clearly
mitigated in the 1998 pre-conference speeches of the two leading SPD politicians.
The modernising and more market-liberal position only became hegemonic in the
SPD after Lafontaine stepped down from all positions in 1999. Nevertheless, the
reform policies of Agenda 2010 were not prepared by a long inner-party discourse
or a public campaign. Therefore, Schröder had to defend them in his party confer-
ence speeches at a special conference in 2003, where his rhetoric was dominated
by constructions of necessity, high-obligation modals and the dismissing of sup-
porters of alternative approaches as being lazy thinkers.
The different political and electoral systems of Germany and the UK had a
significant influence on the footing and voice of the election manifestos and the
party conference speeches which were both discussed in the explanation of the
genre differences. However, they also influenced the strategies of party-political
position, as Schröder, for example, had to position the SPD in a five party system,
keeping in mind his plans for a future coalition. Whilst on the one hand he had to
sharpen the ideological profile of his own party also against the Green Party as a
competitor and stress the position of the SPD as the stronger partner in a coalition
(see the analysis of the catch term ‘SPD-geführte Bundesregierung’), he also had
to make sure not to drive his future coalition partner away and hence mitigate the
distinction strategies.
Although the expected discursive differences attributable to the differences in
the context of political culture, such as state culture versus non-state culture, could
be found in the corpus, additional cultural elements emerged, which need to be
considered. Firstly, I suggested that symbol terms are part of the political culture,
and that both the Labour Party and the SPD employed similar mechanisms of ap-
propriating conservative programme terms, for example ‘one nation’ and ‘Soziale
Marktwirtschaft’. However, when they appropriated these terms, they had already
become symbol terms and the tokens were culturally specific. Secondly, I demon-
strated that on the level of conceptual metaphors, the political cultures of Germany
and the UK were strongly related as a result of the common discourse history in
the Enlightenment. The metaphorical scenarios, however, are discursive elements
that are more sensitive to the recent discourse history. Finally, I established that
the political culture restricts the political myths constructed in political discourse.
8.5 Theoretical and methodological conclusions for a comparative

politico-linguistic discourse analysis
Returning to research question 1 about theoretical elements and research methods

for a comparative linguistic analysis of political discourses, I will now discuss its
contribution to the field of political discourse analysis as a sub-discipline of Ap-
plied Linguistics. The theoretical discussion in Chapter 2 argued that the analysis of
the text-context-relation benefits from a comparative approach. The comparative
analysis of the genres of the party conference speech and the election manifesto
revealed that genre is linked to culture, and genres of political language are linked
to political culture. The similarities of the two political discourses analysed existed
mainly at the level of macro strategies, schemas and frames, such as the semantic
frame of catch terms and the movement of political concepts within the morphol-
ogy of ideologies. An exception was, however, the use of metaphors. Here, the
quantity of tokens for established metaphorical source domains was similar in
both Germany and UK, whilst the differences are in the metaphorical scenarios
they use. This supports Mussolf’s (2006) assumption of metaphorical scenarios as
an independent mechanism in metaphorical ideation. These results form a strong
argument for the suggestion to understand Applied Linguistics as type of cultural
studies (see Chapter 2.2), but also reinforce the idea that this type of Applied Lin-
guistics must be an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary endeavour, as the context
analysis necessarily relies on other disciplines; in the case of the present study on
political science.
If we argue that Cultural Linguistics is a transdisciplinary undertaking, the
results of a linguistic analysis should also feed back into the discourses within
the other disciplines. In the case of the comparative politico-linguistic discourse
analysis presented and applied in the present study, the results are mainly relevant
for political science. A first suggestion is the necessity of a new attempt to define
political culture on a theoretical level. Although political cultures and political
discourses proved to be interdependent, a more theoretical debate seems neces-
sary as the term political culture is still dominated by the meaning produced by
the survey research of the 1960s. Linguistic analysis can demonstrate the influ-
ences of political cultures on genres and a semiotic approach to political cultures
appears to be helpful to explain genre differences. However, more theoretical work
is necessary to explain the integration of and feedback between political culture
and political institutions. A further question would be the relatedness of political
cultures at a deeper level. This became apparent in the metaphor analysis which
produced similar results on the level of conceptual metaphors. Here, a more global
quantitative linguistic analysis of more distant political cultures (especially in
Asia) is necessary.
A second insight for political science concerns the understanding of party-
political ideologies. I established how political ideologies must be understood as
discursive structures and demonstrated how the politics of knowledge approach
should be integrated with Freeden’s (1998) morphology of ideologies. The
discourse-linguistic analysis also underpinned Finlayson and Martin’s (2008)
suggestion that the analysis of political ideologies should be based on the analysis
of political rhetoric and political language use. The discussion of the discursive
strategies showed also that the analysis of political ideologies needs to focus on
both understandings of ideology. The singular use of ideology as closed knowl-

edge systems was captured in the strategy of politicisation and depoliticisation
through argumentation and metaphor. A theory of competing political ideologies,
however, must include the mechanisms concerning the linguistic construction of
groupness within political ideologies as well as the political competition of ideas.
Both can be grasped with the analysis of catch terms.
I am aware that the comparative analysis of a specific political discourse in
Germany and the UK can only be a first step, as the results of my analysis are
limited by the space allowed for this study, by the choice of a historical discourse as
well as the corpus for the analysis. In terms of Third Way discourses, a further step
needs to be the analysis of the recontextualisation of discourse elements into differ-
ent political cultures, such as Australia and New Zealand. This might allow further
generalisations of cultural restrictions, as all of these polities have distinct political
cultures and differ considerably in their political institutions. Yet of course there
are even more general routes of comparative research to be taken, for example
through employing larger corpora. Furthermore, the use of political language
that seems shared by all Western democracies, such as the left–right distinction
or the use of JOURNEY and BATTLE metaphors, could be investigated in other
European languages. Starting with the notion of discourse linguistics as part of
cultural studies and following the research paradigm of Cultural Linguistics (Kuße
2012), the present study provides a theoretical basis for such work, as it presents
an integrated approach drawing on traditions in political science, sociology and
discourse linguistics.
8.6 Social democracy after the Third Way: Questions for future
comparative politico-linguistic research
To a large extent, the SPD, like the SAP (Swedish Social Democratic Party) and the
UK Labour Party, is experiencing a prolonged hangover from its turn to the Third
Way. (Manwaring and Kennedy 2017: 9)
The focus of the research presented in this book is the linguistic construction of
the Third Way ideology as party political ideology of the British Labour Party and
the German Social Democrats. The Third Way ideology as party ideology helped
both parties to win elections, but both parties lost power again after 7 and 13 years
respectively, and have not yet regained power as the biggest party in parliament.
In this final section I will briefly discuss the current situation of social democratic
parties in Europe (with a focus in Germany and the UK of course), and sketch
some possible research questions for future enquiry on social democratic dis-
courses from a comparative politico-linguistic perspective.
In the Schröder-Blair Paper (Schröder and Blair 1999), the Third Way was
presented as an attempt for a unified reform of social democratic ideologies, and
was more or less accepted as such by the German, Australian and New Zealand
parties. Even the French Parti socialiste under Lionel Jospin attempted a ‘middle
way’ – albeit between the state directed left and the Third Way, which he rejected
as being too close to neoliberalism. Yet, circumstances have changed significantly,
and a fragmentation and polarisation of party politics in most European countries
coupled with a loss of trust after the Third Way reforms of Labour and the social
democrats has led to a return of crisis and decline of the centre-left. There is even
a debate as to whether this loss of trust and the ‘feelings of social betrayal within
the core social democratic electorate’ after the Third Way are one cause of the rise
of right-wing nationalist and anti-establishment parties who exploit resentments
of the ‘left behind’ (Cuperus 2017: 189). A further effect seems to be the rise of left
wing anti-establishment parties.
In conjunction with the political culture, the diverse strategies of the centre-
left parties of the Third Way had different consequences for party-ideological dis-
courses in different countries. Generally, the picture has become more complex,
and social democratic parties have had different answers to the problem of social
democracy after the Third Way, which can be analysed with the model of party
political change and identity presented in this book.
Germany is a clear case of an increasing fragmentation of the party-political
system. In the 1990s and early 2000s the successor party to the former East Ger-
man Socialist Unity Party (SED) needed to reinvent itself. In attempts to do this,
it changed its name several times, from ‘PDS’ to ‘Linkspartei. PDS’ to ‘Die Linke’
(Kilian 2006) to signify its political reformation and to move it away from an East
German regional party. The social reforms introduced by Schröder under the
label Agenda 2010 led to protests and to the formation of a protest movement of
Unionists and disgruntled members of the SPD. This became the Wahlalternative
Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG),2 which was later also joined by Oskar
Lafontaine. In order to form a strong enough alternative to the SPD, WASG and
Linkspartei.PDS first formed an electoral alliance and merged in 2007 under the
co-leadership of Oskar Lafontaine, now named ‘Die Linke’. This seems a prime
example of the left-right spectrum re-establishing itself, despite efforts of major
parties to overcome the left-right distinction, a mechanism that Bobbio (1996) ex-
plains through the necessarily adversarial nature of politics. Discursively, this was
achieved through the establishment of ‘Hartz VI’ as a stigma term against both the
SPD who introduced these reforms and the Great Coalition of SPD and CDU who
did not change them (Bock 2013: 210–57; Niehr 2018: 52) . This unique stigma
2. Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative

term was barely used by other parties. Together with the redefinition of ‘left’ as op-
posed to ‘middle’ and ‘neoliberal’ (Kilian 2006: 67) and the appropriation of SPD
core vocabulary such as ‘Solidarität’ (Kilian 2006: 76) and ‘soziale Gerechtigkeit’ it
helped Die Linke to become a serious competitor on the left of the SPD.
The SPD, on the other hand, struggled greatly to present a coherent ideologi-
cal narrative (Jun 2017: 105) and attempted not to debate the Agenda reforms and
the Third Way repositioning. Even in the 2017 election campaign, it still showed
hints of the Third Way reinterpretation of justice as equality of opportunity and
a focus on middle class voters (Römer 2018: 13–14). The hope that a stronger
expression of general party identity and continuity in the SPD ideology in the
campaigns of 2005 and 2013 (Niehr 2006; Girnth 2013) proved to be futile. An
ever increasing personalisation of the election campaigns and the lack of a credible
and charismatic chancellor candidate of the SPD was a further factor. An unclear
distinction from the CDU, whose junior partner in government the SPD was for
most of the time after 2005, also damaged the position of the party. The SPD at-
tempted to remedy this in 2017 by presenting a party candidate for chancellor
from outside the German Bundestag, the former President of the EU Parliament
Martin Schulz. This decision led to a short-lived media hype and a boost in mem-
bership and polls. However, it transpired to be a self-referential intertextual effect
of media discourses (Römer 2018: 8), and the SPD gained the lowest share of the
vote in post-war history.
The Labour Party in the UK at first also focussed on continuity. L'Hôte (2014)
demonstrates that both Brown, and to a lesser extent Miliband, still relied on New
Labour strategies, especially the no alternative topos and the closing of the knowl-
edge market. The recurrent recontextualisation of the one nation topos under
Miliband, often mistaken as a new strategy (Gaffney and Lahel 2013; Manwaring
and Beech 2017), was also an attempt to reuse a successful rhetorical tool of the
past. In 2015, the changes to the rules for the election of a party leader under Ed
Miliband’s leadership led to a rupture in Labour history. The rule changes resulted
in election of the socialist outsider Jeremy Corbyn, who managed to inspire in par-
ticular many young voters and to almost double the Labour Party membership to
around 550,000 by 2017 (Audickas, Dempsey, and Keen 3rd September 2018: 8).
An interesting question for comparative analysis here would be the question of
projection of personality and authenticity in politics at a time of strong mediatisa-
tion and personalisation and to ask why Corbyn succeeded and Schulz did not.
This would help reveal the growing complex interactions in the media-politics
complex.
Corbynism, as the leadership and ideology change in the Labour Party is termed
in the UK, represents a clear break with the centrist tradition in Labour (Crines
2015: 6; Manwaring and Beech 2017: 32). This is construed through the reclaim of
the program term ‘socialism’ and a move towards policies such as nationalisation.
However, Corbynism has been stifled by a strong battle for hegemony between fol-
lowers of New Labour, and also of Corbyn’s more socialist cause, which is fought
out within the Labour party itself instead of between a centrist and a left-wing
party. This is also an effect of the British political system that ‘makes it difficult
to have a splitting of parties on the centre-left and the left. People, if they want to
vote for the left, they’re really only ever got one party’ (Crouch 2018: 65). For a
comparative researcher, the question here is to what extent discursive strategies of
actors in inter- and intra-party competition for hegemony differ. The situation is,
however, somewhat more complicated: There is not only a split along the lines of
party ideology, an opposition of an Anti-Corbyn sentiment in the Parliamentary
Labour Party and Corbyn’s Grassroot support, but also the cleavage along the line
of Brexit supporters and Brexit opposition within the Labour Party.
Because recent analyses describe Emmanuel Marcon in terms that are remi-
niscent of the Third Way, my final comments will discuss the question of how his
success in France relates to developments in Social Democratic Parties as well as
to the Third Way ideology.:
His appeal rested, to a large extent, on an electoral campaign promising to tran-
scend the classic left–right divide and to revolutionise the way France is being
governed. His ‘catch-all’ party platform of En Marche! was pitched to offer French
citizens an alternative to the corrupt, clan-based and inefficient political system of
the two mainstream parties. (Di Francesco-Mayot 2017: 162)
There are, however, stark differences in context: Firstly, the French Parti socialiste
which is the longstanding social democratic power pole in French politics (Kriesi
et al. 2012: 52; Merkel et al. 2008: 102) was completely supplanted by Macron’s
new movement rather than reformed by its former member Macron. This was
partly due to a highly volatile party system that is very president centred (Thie-
bault 1993; Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 168), increasingly fragmentary, and allows
easy access for new political parties. In order to fight the presidential election as an
anti-establishment figure not linked to party politics and in reaction to the failing
socialist plagued by factionalism, Macron founded ‘En Marche!’ – later renamed
‘La République en marche’. Bordignon (2017) interprets this as a of strategy ‘anti-
populist populism’ in order to capitalise on the anti-establishment mood in France
while at the same time positioning himself as centrist and pro-European Union. I
see in this strategy a further similarity to the Third Way discourse of New Labour
which contained an ‘sense of agency’ portraying the party as a symbol of change
(Bastow and Martin, J. 2003: 57). In New Labour this element was realised through
a golden age myth and the one nation rhetoric, and in the SPD through the catch
term ‘Erneuerung der sozialen Marktwirtschaft’. It would therefore strengthen the
theory of political myth as a legitimation strategy (see also Kranert 2018) if the
realisation of this anti-populist populism was also based on national symbol terms
and political myths.
A further question in any comparative research programme would be how
Marcon’s aim to overcome of the left-right divide is constructed discursively and
how other parties, potentially the Parti socialiste, will attempt to re-establish it.
Throughout this book, I have analysed a period of competition for the centre
ground in which social democratic parties have been argued to overcome the
left-right divisions and used topoi of post-ideology and depoliticisation. In this
final discussion of developments post Third-Way I illustrated that we are now
going through a time of re-politicisation, fragmentation and a development of the
extremes. The new repositioning of left parties post-Third Way started in the UK
with the selection of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party; however, it is
questionable whether this is a model for other social democratic parties as the
political contexts differ significantly. This growing complexity of political contexts
makes comparative politico-linguistic research more necessary then ever as it
will help us understand the dependency of political discourse on local political
cultures. This is key, as understanding differences between political discourses on
a local level will improve our understanding of the global dynamics of political
discourse as political actors act in a stratified system. Thus, in public appearances,
their discourse navigates a fine balance between the local and the global in that
they often try to speak to both local followers and party members, but also to
national and international audiences.
Appendix
Short Biographies of Political Actors
Beveridge, William (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British econo-

mist known for his report ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’ published
in 1942. This report, now often referred to as the ‘Beveridge Report’ laid the
foundations for the British social welfare system introduced by the Labour
government after their election victory in 1945.
Biedenkopf, Kurt (born 28 January 1930) is a German Christian-Democratic
politician who served as the first Minister President of the German state of
Saxony between 1990 and 2002.
Blair, Tony (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour politician who served as
Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 and as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom between 1997 and 2007.
Brandt, Willy (18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German social
democratic politician who led the SPD between 1964 and 1987 and served
as the first social-democratic Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
after WWII from 1969 to 1974.
Brown, Gordon (born 20 February 1951) is a British Labour politician who
served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Tony Blair
between 1997 and 2007. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Leader of the Labour
Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Clement, Wolfgang (born 7 July 1940) is a German social democratic politi-
cian who was Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Labour in Gerhard
Schröder’s Government from 2002 to 2005.
Corbyn, Jeremy (born 26 May 1949) is a British Labour politician and Mem-
ber of Parliament (MP) since 1983. A long term backbench MP and leadership
critical party member, he became Leader of the Labour Party in a surprise
victory in the leadership elections after Ed Miliband resigned because of the
lost general election in 2015.
Geißler, Heiner (3 March 1930 – 12 September 2017) was a German Christian-

democratic politician and served as General Secretary of the CDU from 1977
to 1989. From 1982 to 1985 he was minister for Youth, Family, and Health in
Helmut Kohl’s government.
Genscher, Hans-Dietrich (21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German
liberal politician who served as Foreign Secretary and Vice Chancellor of
Germany between 1974 and 1992 and as leader of the Freie Demokratische
Partei (FDP) from 1974–1985.
Giddens, Anthony (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist of reflexive
modernity and globalisation who provided an academic underpinning for the
ideas of a Third Way.
Hartz, Peter (born 9 August 1941) was an executive Human Resources
manager at the Volkswagen AG and became known as adviser on welfare and
labour market reform under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Social benefits in
Germany are often named Hartz IV after the fourth stage of reforms intro-
duced following the Agenda 2010.
Herzog, Roman (5 April 1934 – 10 January 2017) was a German Christian-
Social politician and constitutional court judge who served as President of
Germany from 1994 to 1999.
Hombach, Bodo (born 19 August 1952) is a German social democrat who
has run several state and federal election campaigns of the Social Democratic
Party in Germany and an advocate of the SPD of the ‘new centre ground’. After
the election victory in 1998, Gerhard Schröder appointed him to his Cabinet
as Federal Minister for Special Tasks and Head of the Federal Chancellery.
Jospin, Lionel (born 12 July 1937) is a socialist French politician, who served
as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002. In the presidential elections of
1995 and 2002 he ran unsuccessfully as Socialist Party candidate for President
of France. He was Prime Minister of France between 1997 and 2002.
Kinnock, Neil (born 28 March 1942) is a British Labour Party politician and
was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition between 1983
and 1992.
Klimmt, Reinhard (born 16 August 1942) is a German social-democratic
politician and close supporter of Oskar Lafontaine. From 1998 to 1999, he was
Prime Minister (‘Ministerpräsident’) of Saarland.
Appendix 267
Kohl, Helmut (3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German Christian-demo-

cratic politician and Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998, and also the
chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998.
Lafontaine, Oskar (born 16 September 1943) is a German politician who
served in Gerhard Schröder’s government as Minister of Finance from 1998
to 1999. He resigned as minister, leader of the Social Democratic Party and
member of parliament only a half year after the election victory and positioned
himself as a popular opponent of Schröder's policies, later becoming leader of
the Left Party in 2007.
Macron, Emmanuel (born 21 December 1977) is a French politician and has
been President of France since 14 May 2017. Previously a member of the Parti
Socialiste, he founded his own party En Marche to support his presidential
election campaign.
Major, John (born 29 March 1943) is a British conservative politician who was
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party
from 1990 to 1997.
Mandelson, Peter (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour politician and
key advocate of New Labour.
Milliband, Ed (born 24 December 1969) is a British Labour politician and was
Leader of the Labour Party as well as Leader of the Opposition from 2010 until
the lost General Election in 2015.
Scharping, Rudolf (born 2 December 1947) is a German social-democratic
politician and was leader of the SPD from 1993 to 1995. Unsuccessful chancel-
lor candidate of the SPD in the elections of 1994, he was famously defeated
as party leader by a surprise candidacy of Oskar Lafontaine at the SPD Party
Conference in Mannheim in 1995.
Schmidt, Helmut (23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German
social democratic politician, who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic
of Germany (West Germany) from 1974 to 1982.
Schröder, Gerhard (born 7 April 1944) is a German social-democratic politi-
cian, who was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. His most important
political project was the highly controversial Agenda 2010, a plan to reform
the German welfare system and deregulate the German labour market in
order to promote growth and reduce unemployment.
Schulz, Martin (born 20 December 1955) is a German social-democratic

politician who was President of the European Parliament from 2012 to 2017.
He stood unsuccessfully as chancellor candidate for the SPD in the general
election of 2017.
Thierse, Wolfgang (born 22 October 1943) is a German social-democrat who
served as President of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2005.
Wieczorek-Zeul, Heidemarie (born 21 November 1942) is a German social-
democratic politician who stood for the Social Democrats' candidacy for the
chancellor's office in an inner-party race against Rudolf Scharping and Gerhard
Schröder in 1993, which was won by Scharping with 40% of the votes. From
1998 until 2009 she was Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development.
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Name index
A G Kuße, Holger 15–16, 21–22,

Aristotle 1, 10, 83, 170 Gee, James P 10 259
Geißler, Heiner 104, 266
B Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 37, L
Berger, Peter L. 13 266 L’Hôte, Emilie 6, 28, 115, 148,
Beveridge, William 34, 55, 56, Giddens, Anthony 44, 45, 176, 183, 200, 253, 261
127, 265 60, 61, 109–116, 124–133, Lafontaine, Oskar 7, 29–47,
Biedenkopf, Kurt 101, 265 162–186, 203, 206, 217, 57–64, 80, 84, 94, 99, 117,
Blair, Tony 4–7, 31–110, 117, 230–233, 246, 253, 254, 266 120, 130–141, 167, 176,
119–139, 155–156, 162–167, Girnth, Heiko 9, 70, 71, 75, 192–221, 240, 244, 245, 250,
174–265 85, 101–104, 261 256, 257, 260, 266, 267
Brandt, Willy 34, 37, 110, 135, Goffman, Erving 78, 79 Lakoff, George 173, 207
136, 237, 265 Lijphart, Arend 2, 24, 47
Brown, Gordon 36, 42, 59, H Luckmann, Thomas 13
190, 261, 265 Halliday, Michael A.K. 13, 19,
Burkhardt, Armin 10–15 208, 234 M
Hartz, Peter 39, 42, 43, 260, Macron, Emmanuel 262, 267
C 266 Major, John 36, 49, 186, 231,
Charteris-Black, Jonathan 9, Hermanns, Fritz 3 267
72, 207–208, 216, 221–226, Herzog, Roman 196, 197, Mandelson, Peter 58–61,
235–239 217, 266 103, 109–118, 126, 128, 132,
Chilton, Paul 1, 10, 16, 17, 18, Hombach, Bodo 6, 38, 41, 161–192, 218, 226, 229, 234,
21, 27, 169 58–61, 109–133, 161–189, 197, 254, 267
Clement, Wolfgang 7, 55, 265 205–206, 217–219, 229–237, Mannheim, Karl 26, 38, 267
Clinton, Bill 40, 42, 58, 92, 246, 251–255, 266 Milliband, Ed 267
155, 240 Mittler, Gernot 7
Corbyn, Jeremy 261, 262, J
263, 265 Jospin, Lionel 260, 266 P
Posner, Roland 22
E K
Erhard, Ludwig 162, 165, Kinnock, Neil 36, 39, 40, 47, R
182, 255 86–94, 266 Reisigl, Martin 9–20, 69–76,
Klein, Josef 6, 7, 17, 70, 76, 170, 250
F 85, 101–105, 120, 141, 169,
Fairclough, Norman 6, 10, 12, 171–179, 216, 223, 251, 252 S
13, 21, 44, 70, 77, 103, 125, Klimmt, Reinhard 59, 133, Schäffner, Christina 1, 10–17,
131, 132, 157, 191, 239, 240 136, 178, 266 27, 59, 130–132, 169
Foucault, Michel 10, 11, 12, 25 Kohl, Helmut 31, 37, 38, 57, 73, Scharping, Rudolf 38, 50,
Freeden, Michael 29, 30, 46, 94, 100, 136, 177, 186, 194, 75–86, 94, 247, 267, 268
61–66, 173–179, 181, 184, 219, 237, 266, 267 Schmidt, Helmut 37, 52, 56,
205, 206, 252, 258 Kress, Gunther 88, 89, 90, 57, 81, 135, 136, 237, 267
91, 93
Schröder, Gerhard 4–7, T W

29–64, 66, 75, 79–86, Thatcher, Margaret 5, 35, 36, Warnke, Ingo H 10–13, 16, 65
94–100, 108, 117, 120–141, 48, 57, 59, 60, 116, 218, 239 Wengeler, Martin 12, 13, 57,
159, 162, 167, 174–206, 211, Thierse, Wolfgang 101, 268 132, 170
216–221, 230–266, 267, 268 Wieczorek-Zeul, Heidemarie
Schulz, Martin 261, 268 V 38, 86, 268
Spitzmüller, Jürgen 10–13, Van Dijk, Teun A. 12, 1–28, Wodak, Ruth 11–20, 69–71,
16, 65 62, 103, 133 167, 170, 202, 250
van Leeuwen, Theo 2, 91,
173, 232
Subject index
Relevant catch terms from the data are marked with italics, conceptual metaphors in
Small Capitals.
A CDA 2, 12, 13, 70, 167 context 8, 16–31

a beacon to the world 83, see also Critical Discourse context-sensitivity 16, 19,
236, 239 Analysis 20, 77, 87, 129
a young country 162, 236, chancellor democracy 49–50 of culture 21–30
240, 242 change 176–178, 186–188, of political discourses
adversary politics 44, 51 191, 192, 197–203, 231–235, 21–25
aestheticisation 238–246 246, 251 of the Third Way 31–67
age of achievement 81, Change is a Force of see also text-context
185–188, 236–239, 242–244 Nature 234 relation
Agenda 2010 6, 39–43, 63–64, Clause Four 38–40, 47, 63, 83, coordinated market economy
198–206 84, 119, 198, 200–203 56
animator 78, 79 coalition 48–51, 61, 75, 82, 85, corporatism 52, 115, 132, 177,
anti-miranda 102 99, 141, 187, 189, 190, 196, 178, 180, 187, 206, 251, 252,
antimentalism 20 238, 257, 260 255
applied linguistics 8, 15, 249, coercion 17, 32 corpus
257, 258 cognitive metaphor theory assisted discourse analysis
appropriation 115–116, 261 207 138
argumentation 66, 169–173 collocation 54, 103, 120, 141, linguistics 105, 106, 107
see also topos 152, 155, 158, 196, 230 covert predication 102
artefact 22, 219 community 45, 46, 54, 113, 114, credit claiming 173, 196, 220,
Aufbruch 60, 61, 133, 168, 176, 119, 131–132, 153, 157–159, 223
178, 196, 217, 219 162, 163, 177, 180, 199, 205, crisis topos 175, 179, 184, 186,
255 187, 217, 219, 221
B comparative Critical Discourse Analysis 2,
Beveridge Report 34, 55, 265 analysis 3, 5, 8, 15, 30, 62, 9, 11, 12
big D discourse 10 65, 70, 88, 155, 167, 174, see also CDA
blaming 173, 190–198 250, 255, 259, 261 cross-national studies 2
Bundeskanzler 48, 50 methods 2 cultural
Bundesrat 48, 192, 220, 238 Politico-Linguistic adjacency 179, 184, 206
Bundestag 48, 51, 54 Discourse Analysis Linguistics 15–16, 21, 258,
business 36, 119, 144, 152–155, 1–2, 6–9, 65, 249, 259
198 257–259, 263 see also Kulturwissen
comparative research 2, schaftliche Linguistik
C 14, 259, 263 cultural studies 8, 9, 15, 30,
catch term 102–112, 116, 118, concordance 107, 150–156, 222 258, 259
123, 127, 128, 133n12, 146, 167, conference season 74 culture
217, 219, 233, 246, 257, 262 connotational competition see also political culture
see also Schlagwort 104, 119, 155, 196 cuts 114, 120–121, 135–136,
catch-all party 33, 87 consensus democracy 48 153–156, 226
causal topos 172 construction of necessity 118,
202, 204, 230
D Erneuerung der Sozialen H

data topos 66, 137, 171–175, Marktwirtschaft 117, 180, Hängematte 128, 229
178, 183, 190, 194, 199, 201, 237, 262 Hartz reform 39, 43
205, 217, 231, 242, 246, 251, ethos 37, 72, 222, 231, 236, 239 Hartz VI 260
252 evaluative contextualisation help 141–144, 152, 155, 167
delegitimisation 17, 117, 137, 104, 178
190, 205 exclusion 47, 76, 113, 124, 125, I
deliberative 126, 128, 133 ideational
oratory 72, 235 metafunction 14, 19, 71, 102
speech 72 F metaphor 125, 208–209, 220
democratic socialism 119, filler 104, 108, 112–114 identity 6, 15, 28, 64, 73, 76,
137, 188 first person pronoun 77–86 162, 163, 166, 173, 189, 201,
denotational first-past-the-post system 36, 239, 260, 261
competition 103 47, 48, 50, 51 see also groupness
contextualisation 91, 104 forensic speeches 72 ideological
depoliticisation 18, 46, 79, frame 11–12, 66–67, 104–107, change 29, 115, 147, 173,
118, 179, 254, 259, 263 109–120, 166, 252–254, 258 174, 175, 177, 198, 205, 251
Deutschland 2010 204 semantics 105 groupness 85, 163, 164,
DHA 12, 13, 16, 70, 249 175, 183
see also Discourse- G Ideologie 61, 113, 115, 176,
Historical Approach Gemeinschaft 131, 157, 159, 183–184
DIMEAN 11, 11n3 184, 205, 255 ideology (keyword) 92, 118,
discourse genre 7, 66, 69–71, 98–99, 191, 162–163, 183, 228
linguistics 9, 10, 12, 15, 30, 245, 249, 250–251, 256–258 see also post-ideology
169, 172, 207, 259 analysis 70 Ideology as Inheritance
of globalisation 176 relations 71 182
of change 176 see also election manifesto ideology (theory) 1, 24–30,
sensitivity 16 see also party conference 166–167, 253–259
system 4, 20 speech inclusion 58, 76, 87, 113, 115,
Discourse-Historical see also presidential 116, 124, 125, 126, 128, 139
Approach 9, 12, 13, 30, 69, inaugural industry 33, 39n3, 130, 144, 154,
70, 249 theory 14, 69 155, 156, 177, 190, 192, 193, 222
see also Discourse- Gerechtigkeit 101, 104, 113, 119, Innovation 63, 101, 104,
Historical Approach 124, 134, 135, 159, 178, 194, 113–121, 127, 134–136, 160,
Diskurslinguistische 196, 201, 240, 245, 261 178, 193, 196, 203–205, 218,
Mehrebenen-Analyse, see globalisation 96, 176–177, 233, 240, 245
DIMEAN 180, 187, 194, 231–235, 246, interdisciplinarity 2, 19
divided Britain 113, 116, 126, 251, 266 interdiscursivity 20, 58,
177 Globalisierung 96, 165, 187, 70–71, 110, 136
232, 233 interpersonal metafunction
E Godesberg programme 33, 14, 19
effective number of 203 interpretative positivism 16
parliamentary parties 50 golden age 163–168, 189,
Eigenverantwortung 113, 120, 236–243, 255–256, 262 J
166, 205 grammatical metaphor 14, judicial oratory 72
see also See also 123, 199, 201, 208–209, justice 29, 58, 72, 113, 123, 124,
responsibility 230–234 128, 129, 166, 180, 182, 188,
election manifesto 15, 51, 64, group solidarity 62, 72, 76, 77, 203, 204, 252, 260
84–98, 117–122, 138–166, 79, 82, 84, 173, 200, 245, 256
217–222, 258 groupness 28, 62, 66, 72, 77, K
Enkelgeneration 37 85, 98, 109, 139, 163, 164, Kanzlerdemokratie 49
epideictic oratory 72, 98, 235 175, 183, 235, 247, 259 knowledge market 26–27
equality 112–115, 123–129, 241, growth 127, 135, 149, 151–152, keyword 106–108, 138–139,
252, 261 198, 217 147–161, 167
Subject index 297
Kulturwissenschaftliche multiauthored 73 persuasion 9, 18, 19, 27, 235

Linguistik 15 multilevel linguistic analysis of political
see also Cultural Linguistics discourse 11 culture 21–33, 47–57,
multimodal 86, 87, 88, 93, 94, 66–67, 98–99, 130–133,
L 95, 96, 97, 250 147–161, 166–168, 216,
Labour Party As A Life multiple addressing 73 250–257
Form 236 mythopoesis 173 political lexis 66, 101–108,
leader’s speech 62, 64, 66, 72, 129–134, 148, 161–167,
73, 74, 75, 76, 82 N 183, 225, 253, 254
leadership narrative 61, 70, 126, 163, political myth 161, 164,
construction of 77–84, 87 164, 173, 190, 191, 192, 207, 167, 187, 216, 228, 236,
focus 94, 98 217, 261 238, 263
legitimisation 17, 26–27, 66, Nation as building 244 political system 24, 79,
72, 74, 79, 84, 101, 151, 165, Nation as a life form 236 98, 100, 141, 151, 174, 187,
169, 174, 191, 198, 206–208 neoliberal 46, 125, 157, 261 190, 238, 246, 260–262
lemmatisation 107, 147, 148, Neue Mitte 4–7, 41–47, of Britain 47–48
149 108–112, 121–122, 130, 134, of Germany 48–50
liberal economy 56 184, 253 politicisation 18, 27, 169, 208,
linguistic discourse analysis new rhetoric 18 226, 249, 259, 263
1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 15, 30, 65, 102, Politico-Linguistics 9, 10, 30
105, 249, 257, 258 O politics 149–153
little d discourse 10 old labour 92, 112, 113, 117, 123, Politics as Journey 133,
logos 72, 98, 235 180, 182, 183 218, 229
Lohnnebenkosten 133, 230 one nation 87, 105, 116, 118, Politics is Battle 223, 224
164, 167, 177, 200, 227, 228, Politics is Building 221,
M 237, 241, 253, 254, 257, 261, 247
Macro topoi 172, 176, 251 262 Politics is Religion 226,
mentefact 22 228
metalinguistic comment 104, P politics of knowledge 26,
119, 134–137, 167 parliamentary 46, 258
metaphor 66–67, 207–247, labour party 36, 74, 262 Politik 54, 151–162
253–259 report 74 post-election speech 82, 196
see also grammatical Parteiengesetz 49, 75 post-ideology 44, 109, 178,
metaphor Parteienstaat 49, 178 180, 183, 189, 199, 223, 252,
metaphorical Partnerschaft 131, 132 263
construction of political Party as a Life Form 236 pre-election speech 79, 117,
myths 235–238 party 136, 191, 237, 245, 246
programme term 245–247 conference 66, 71–77, presidential inaugural 83, 226
scenario 108, 109, 187, 192, 81–84, 185, 193, 198, presidentialisation 49, 50, 79,
217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 245, 247 94, 99, 100, 191, 206, 250
223, 230, 238, 244, 252 conference speech 15, 57, principal 78, 79, 81, 84, 98
millenarism 243 62–64, 72–84, 112–117, private-public partnerships
millenarist topos 199 134–140, 166, 173, 198, 132
miranda 102–104, 123, 254 216, 240, 242, 245, 250, programme term 103–104,
misrepresentation 17, 208, 232 258 113–121, 127–136, 144, 154,
Mittelstand 133, 154, 155 government 7, 49, 85, 178 158, 164, 165, 166, 167, 177,
mixed-member proportional party law, see Parteiengesetz 178, 193, 194, 200, 203, 204,
representation 48 partyness of society 51, 98, 217, 229, 230, 233, 237, 241,
modern 118–121, 132–136, 99, 250 244, 245, 246, 253
163–164, 191, 193–199 pathos 72, 98, 201, 239, 245, promotionalisation 88, 225,
Modernisierer 61, 133n12, 134, 246, 247, 250 238, 240, 245, 246, 253, 255
176, 195–199 personalisation 6, 49, 76, 99, purposive topos 159, 185, 196,
morphology of ideologies 29, 174, 261 204, 240, 243, 244, 255
173, 174, 179, 184, 258
R socio-cognitive approach 19, T

re-derivation 161–168 26 tax burden 124, 230
re-evaluation 103, 179, 252 sociology of knowledge 13 Tax is a Burden 154, 155, 221
rebirth 189, 201, 226, 237, 254 Solidarität 104, 120, 129, 158, Teilhabe 128
reception condition 72–73 201, 205, 240, 245, 261 terminological competition
recontextualisation 15, 71, 110, solidarity 29, 30, 45, 46, 62, 102
120, 123, 127, 128, 159, 180, 72–84, 98, 104, 120–131, 158, text-context relation 69–70,
184, 188, 189, 191, 217, 226, 166, 173, 194–205, 245, 256 130, 256–257
229, 254, 255, 259, 261 Sozialabbau 120, 121, 135 text type 70
reform 6–7, 134–137, 141–146, soziale Gerechtigkeit 159, 194, see also genre
196 196, 260, 261 Textsortenlinguistik 70
Reformblockade 217 Soziale Marktwirtschaft 113, textual metafunction 14, 19,
Reforming the Country 116, 165, 166, 167, 182, 246, 71, 91
is Building 222–223 257 Third Way 108–115, 128, 180,
Reformstau 61, 178, 217, see also Erneuerung 184, 216–217, 252, 254
219, 220 der Sozialen topos 66, 170–206, 251–261
register 69, 98, 177, 191, 250, Marktwirtschaft and metaphor 217–246
251 SPD-geführte Bundesregierung see also causal topos
religious leader 191, 226 121, 141, 167, 257 see also crisis topos
renewal 103, 110, 117–120, 149, spending 40, 112, 113, 153, 156, see also data topos
150–151, 162, 178, 187, 191, 182, 222, 252 see also macro topoi
198–203, 237, 238, 242 Sprachthematisierung 104, 134 see also millenarist topos
representation 14, 17, 27, 48, see also metalinguistic see also purposive topos
51, 85, 99, 130, 145, 207, 208, comment topos of values and
209, 220, 249 State is a Barrier 229 principles 172–175,
see also misrepresentation state societies 52 179–185, 187, 189, 199
responsibility 120, 122–123, stigma term 103, 115–120, 137, trans-textual layer 11
128–133, 137, 149–152, 180, 141, 146, 149, 166, 167, 178, triangulation 105, 138
181, 186 184, 205, 217, 219, 233, 260
see also Eigenverant strategic U
wortung functions 16–18 Umbau 113, 120, 121
ritual 73, 74, 239, 240, 245, language use 6, 16, 18 Unternehmen 154, 155, 177, 234
247, 254 strategies 16–30
rot-grün 140, 141, 151, 167 strategies of V
ruck 196, 197, 217 delegitimisation, see veto player 24, 48, 79
delegitimisation
S strategies of politicization, W
Schlagwort 102 see politicisation Wachstum 134, 151, 152
see also catch term strategies of legitimisation, welfare 113–119, 153–158, 162,
semantic struggle 101, 102, see legitimisation 229–233
104, 108, 167, 195 strategies of to work 40, 113, 119, 125,
SFL 13, 14, 19, 20, 71, 209 misrepresentation, see 155, 156, 158, 184, 185
see also Systemic misrepresentation welfare state 40–42, 52–56,
Functional Linguistics strategies of representation, 63, 112, 115, 127–129, 180,
sketch engine 106–108, see representation 184, 194, 218, 222, 227–233,
138–141 strategies of politicization, 254
slot 104–105, 108, 110, 113–114 see politicisation Westminster model 47, 85
social democracy 112–114, 120, symbol term 102–104, 119, wordsmith 106, 107, 108, 138,
123, 162, 180, 218 123, 131, 133, 165, 167, 197, 141, 147, 148, 149
socialism 103, 112, 113, 116, 119, 253, 254, 257, 263
128, 137, 178, 188, 192, 198, Systemic Functional Z
199, 200, 262 Linguistics 13, 89, 208 Zivilgesellschaft 131, 159, 255
Society as a Building 218 see also SFL
This book presents a new approach to comparative politico-linguistic
discourse analysis. It takes a transdisciplinary stance and combines
analytical tools from linguistic discourse analysis (keywords, metaphors,
argumentation, genre) and political science (political culture, comparative
politics, ideologies). It is comprehensive in its introduction of approaches
from the German tradition of politico-linguistics. This tradition has not,
thus far, been accessible to a non-German speaking readership and hence
the volume adds insights into the mechanics of political discourse from a
diverse set of viewpoints.
The book analyses the modernisation discourses in social democratic
parties in Britain and Germany between 1994 and 2003, a project that was
named ‘Third Way’. It demonstrates how political language and political
culture are related and how politicians will adapt a global ideology to local
political circumstances in order to convince the electorate. At the same time,
the book presents new insights into the German political culture and the
version of Third Way discourses in the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD) under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder which have played a key role
in shaping current political discourse in Germany. It concludes with a model
for the study of political discourse which makes the work relevant to scholars
in Social Sciences and beyond.
“This book presents an innovative linguistic approach to compare the political

discourses and cultures of Germany and the UK. Taking into consideration the diferent
political contexts throughout the discussion of the Third Way discourses, it should
appeal to a broad audience from linguists to social and political scientists.”
Martin Wengeler, Universität Trier
“Kranert’s study represents an important contribution
to comparative political discourse analysis, combining isbn 978 90 272 0421 9
approaches from diferent research traditions and
ofering an in-depth analysis that covers context, genre,
argumentation strategies and linguistic features alike.”
Veronika Koller, University of Lancaster
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

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politics, society and culture

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

John Benjamins Publishing Company

the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence

© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V.

8.5 Theoretical and methodological conclusions for a comparative politico-

Appendix: Short Biographies of Political Actors 265

Name index 293

Subject index 295

Table 1. Self-references in party conference speeches (Kranert 2017: 192) 80

Figure 1. Exclusive and inclusive ‘we’ 78

adav Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein

1.1 Comparative discourse research: Global and

Changes in political ideologies and movements seem to happen in global waves

1.2 The Case study: Discourses of the Third Way

‘Reform’ and contextualises the unprepared announcement of the agenda without

1.3 Aims and Research Questions

Elements of Comparative Politico-Linguistic

2.1 From Politico-Linguistics to Comparative Politico-Linguistic

A central justification for a linguistic approach to language in politics results from

1. ‘Politolinguistik’ is a research paradigm in German linguistics (see Burkhardt 1996; Niehr

2. For a detailed discussion of these relations, see Warnke 2007.

A slightly different focus by a more recent generation of discourse linguists,

3. DIMEAN is the acronym of ‘Diskurslinguistische Mehrebenen-Analyse’ which translates as

However, the value of comparative analysis for politico-linguistic research had

2.2 Discourse as texts in context, or Discourse Linguistics as

4. Kuße talks about ‘Kulturwissenschaftliche Linguistik’, which could be understood as ‘lin-

obfuscation strategies to conceal deficits and strategies of semantic competition.

through constraint or conditioning’ (Perelman 1982: 11). More recent literature

2.3 The contexts of political discourses

Taking up Leckie-Tarry’s distinction between cultural and situational contexts,

2.3.1 The context of culture: Political institutions and political culture

Interpreting the concept of culture in a similar way from a semiotic perspective,

of subcultures in a specific general culture. The political culture of a society is

government systems). Political scientists use typologies of political systems to

2.3.2 Context and subject of political discourse: Ideology and ideologies

The analysis of political language is often understood as the analysis of ideological

7. This is analysed in detail Section 6.5.

2.4 Conclusions: Methodological approaches to comparative political

Comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis is an approach indebted to Po-

Contexts of the Third Way in Germany

3.2 Discourses of the Third Way – a global phenomenon?

3.3 The political systems and political cultures of Germany and

is dominant, since it consists of influential members of a cohesive majority party.

authority, so long as they do so within the guidelines set by the Bundeskanzler,

Prussian state tradition. The state in this concept is conceived as a precondition

Mandelson, almost as controversial as Hombach, was originally the media

Ideologies are, after all, manifestations of group behaviour, supportive or sub-

– Labour 1992 – 12,459 words;

3.5 Conclusions: Research questions for a comparative politico-linguistic

8. See my discussion of Buckler and Dolowitz (2009) in Chapter 2.3.2.

4.1 Genre and the text-context relations in political discourse

interdiscursive relations – the analysis of the realisation of different discourses in

(Peele 2004: 290–93). However, a leader’s performance at the party conference is

presenting themselves as a visionary (Gaffney 1990: 107; Klein, J. 2000b: 750).

construction of the political position is partly served by symbol, programme and

in the pragmatic domain of the speaker’s responsibilities for illocutionary force

Table 1. Self-references in party conference speeches (Kranert 2017: 192)

Appendix: Short Biographies of Political Actors 265

Name index 293

Subject index 295