Towards a rhetorical understanding of statistics in politics: Quantifying the National Health Service ‘Winter Crisis’

Abstract

Statistics are a central part of political communication, yet little is known about how they are used rhetorically by politicians. This article therefore develops a rhetorical understanding of statistics in political debate and explores how they function primarily as strategies of argumentation. Through an analysis of how British politicians use numbers in debates on the National Health Service ‘winter crisis’, it is argued that four tropes underpin the use of statistics as a rhetorical device. The trope of dehistoricisation is said to engender consensus over the facticity of statistical arguments, while the tropes of synecdoche, enthymeme and framing are said to enable contestation over their presentation and meaning. The article concludes that a rhetorical understanding of statistics is vital to elucidating the selective, contestable and strategic ways in which numbers function in political debate, thereby challenging the notion that quantification can be an objective or value-free means of establishing political claims.