Comparative Keyword Analysis and Leadership Communication: Tony Blair — A Study of Rhetorical Style

Abstract

In this chapter I will illustrate a method known as comparative keyword analysis by demonstrating how it can be used to compare the rhetorical style of the British politician Tony Blair with other British politicians through the identification and analysis of high-frequency lexis. My understanding of rhetorical style goes back to how the term was employed in classical rhetoric where style was very closely related to lexical choice. Comparative keyword analysis is a method for the conjoint qualitative and quantitative analysis of large amounts of text or corpora, adapted for social research purposes from the discipline of corpus linguistics. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the rhetorical features of Tony Blair’s style of communication. I will first outline the relationship between leadership and communication before considering how it is that leaders are able to persuade through a command of rhetoric. I will then go on to outline the method of comparative keyword analysis and demonstrate how this can be applied to identify the rhetorical style of Tony Blair.KeywordsLabour PartyPolitical SpeechReference CorpusCorpus LinguisticStyle ApproachThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.