Talking the Talk of the Far-Right

Dan Clayton on why the Left adopting the language of the Right never works

Keir Starmer. Photo: GaryRobertsphotography / Alamy

There is a concept in linguistics called Communication Accommodation Theory that might be familiar to you. According to Howard Giles, the British-American social psychologist who developed the theory, all users of language tend to shift their linguistic behaviour, converging (towards) or diverging (away) from others, depending on what they want to achieve. Sometimes we might want to distance ourselves from others and show them (and maybe a wider audience) that we are not like them. Perhaps more frequently, and because we are social animals at heart, we might want to signal our solidarity and affiliation by shifting our language style closer to another person. I do it, according to my daughter, when I talk to our regular postman about 1980s post-punk bands on the doorstep most Saturday mornings.

Away from these individual and interpersonal moments, there have been some particularly notable public examples of politicians attempting to converge to what they perceive to be their constituency’s language style and tap into the ‘authenticity’ of the vernacular. What better way to keep it real, than by using the speech style of someone else? When George Osborne was out on the campaign trail in 2013, visiting a Morrisons supermarket warehouse, his glottalised and ‘tapped’ Ts, along with his elided wannas and gonnas raised a few eyebrows and smirks.

But it’s not just Eton-educated Second Lords of the Treasury and heirs to the Osborne baronetcy who feel the need to speak the lingo of their potential electorate: Tony Blair’s vaguely Estuary speech style, mimicking the accent of London and the southeast, was a far cry from his Edinburgh and Durham roots.  Even state-educated Ed Miliband went a touch more Cockney when interviewed in 2015 on Russell Brand’s channel in the days when Brand was seen by some as a voice of the left, before he went down the rabbit hole and serious allegations against him came to light.

But it’s a different kind of linguistic accommodation that’s been more noticeable on the political stage in the last decade: one that is less about smaller scale vocabulary and sound choices and more about wider discourses and narrative framings. Instead of adapting to the speech styles of the working-class base that they have been gradually drifting away from politically, many parties that might be broadly described as ‘social democratic’ have been adopting the language of the right and even far-right in an attempt to shore up their falling vote share.

Here’s why that can prove to be a massive mistake.

---