Masaryk University
Faculty of Education
Department of English Language and Literature
The Passive in the British Political News
Bachelor thesis
Brno 2017
Supervisor: Written by:
Mgr. Renata Jančaříková, Ph.D. Karolína Šafářová
Announcement
I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently and that I have used only the sources from the works cited list.
Brno, 30 March 2017 ..…..…………………
Karolína Šafářová
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Renata Jančaříková, Ph.D, for her guidance, kind support and valuable advice.
Anotace
Tato bakalářská práce The Passive in the British political news je zaměřena na užití trpného rodu v politických článcích na téma Brexit vyskytujících se v seriozních novinách The Guardian a bulváru The Daily Mail. V práci je použita kvantitatvní analýza za účelem srovnání výskytu činného a trpného rodu, vyhodnocení důvodů pro používání trpného rodu, analyzování výskytu významových a uvozovacích sloves, a poměru činitelů trpného rodu vyjádřených pomocí 'by'.
Annotation
This bachelor thesis The Passive in the British political news is focused on the use of the passive in the broadsheet The Guardian and the tabloid The Daily Mail on the topic of concerning Brexit. It uses quantitative analysis to compare the frequency of use of the active and the passive voice, to analyze reasons for using the passive, the frequency of occurrence of lexical and report verbs, and the proportion of agents expressed by 'by'.
Klíčová slova trpný rod, činný rod, noviny, politické zprávy, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, analýza, kvalitní noviny, bulvár
Key Words passive voice, active voice, newspaper, political news, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, analysis broadsheets, tabloids
Content
1 Introduction ...... 7
2 Theoretical part ...... 9
2.1 British Newspapers ...... 9
2.1.1 Current Situation ...... 9
2.1.2 Online Newspapers ...... 10
2.1.3 Broadsheets ...... 12
2.1.4 Tabloids ...... 14
2.1.5 Audience ...... 15
2.1.6 Political News ...... 18
2.2 Active and Passive voice ...... 19
2.2.1 Active vs. Passive voice ...... 19
2.2.2 Reasons for using the passive voice ...... 23
2.2.3 Lexical verbs used in the passive ...... 25
3 Practical Part ...... 28
3.1 Introduction ...... 28
3.2 Newspapers used in analysis ...... 29
3.2.1 Corpus ...... 30
4 Analysis ...... 31
4.1 Active vs. Passive voice ...... 31
4.2 Reasons for using the passive ...... 34
4.3 Lexical verbs ...... 36
4.4 Report verbs ...... 39
4.5 Agent expressed by 'by' ...... 42
5 Conclusion ...... 45
6 Bibliography...... 47
6.1 Sources...... 52
7 Appendix...... 61
1 Introduction
As the internet is evolving and it reaches to billions of people through computers, TV, smartphones, even through watches, for many people it is the main source of receiving information and more importantly news. Even though printed newspapers are still the primary source of news for many people their everyday circulation is decreasing over the period of time and the number of people who read news online is significantly rising. Therefore the main source for obtaining news has become the internet and so the British political online news, primarily focused on the Brexit, became the corpus for the present thesis.
This thesis is focused on the use of the passive in political news in the British online newspapers: the quality press (broadsheets) and the popular press (tabloids). The specific aim of this work is to examine the frequency of occurrence of the passive voice, the reasons for using the passive, frequency of occurrence of lexical and report verbs used in the passive and the proportion of agents expressed by 'by'.
The Theoretical part briefly describes the British newspapers and their current situation on the market, as well as the state of their online websites. It is also focused on broadsheets and tabloids, their intended audience and the topic of political news. Furthermore, it discusses the analytical part of this work, such as the difference between the active and the passive voice, reasons for using the passive as well as lexical and report verbs used in the passive.
The Practical part contains information about the corpus used for this work which is followed by the actual analysis divided into five parts. The first part of the analysis is based on the assumption that tabloids might contain less passives than broadsheets. It is supported by the statement from Crystal and Davy (1969) that “the tendency in the popular press is to use the active voice rather than the passive” (p. 187). In other parts of the analysis there are examined the reasons for using the passive, the frequency of occurrence of lexical and report verbs used in the passive and the analysis of agents expressed by 'by'.
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The thesis presents how frequently The Guardian and The Daily Mail use the passive voice in the articles that are focused on the same political events. The qualitative method have been applied in the analysis.
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2 Theoretical part
2.1 British Newspapers
As stated in the introduction, the thesis is focused on the use of the passive in British online newspaper. However, to understand the online news it is essential to be also informed about the printed press in the UK. The British press has changed enormously in the past seventy years, especially with the increased use of the internet in the 21st century, and some of the changes are mentioned later in this thesis. As described below, British newspapers are divided into broadsheets and tabloids which started to separate at the beginning of the 20th century.
2.1.1 Current Situation With the digital revolution being so influential it was a matter of time it would change the way in which newspapers are written and distributed. Moreover, nowadays owning a phone device, which has an internet connection, is very common, at least in the western world e.g. according to the statistics portal, there are 42.4 million people who use smartphones in the UK ("Number of smartphone users in the United Kingdom", n.d.). This enormous number had influenced the consumption of news through newspapers in the UK. According to National Readership Survey, in the past ten years there was a significant decline of reach of the national newspapers among adults by 27% (from 72.4% in 2005 to 45.4% in 2015). The manner in which the newspapers reach their readers also varies by age e.g. only 29.3% of 15-24 year olds are print newspaper readers whereas there is 67.9% of over 65 year old readers (Ofcom 2015). This decline in reading printed newspapers led The Independent, which was launched in 1986, to print its last daily title on 26th March 2016, making approximately 75 journalists redundant, and continue as only digital source of news (Armstrong 2016).
In January 2017, Roy Greensdale from theguardian.com wrote that the latest ABC figures for the national newsprint sales may confirm the long-running decreasing trend of the popular and quality sector. Surprisingly, the biggest downfall of sales recorded tabloids as opposed to broadsheets, as many experts would suggest otherwise. During December
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2016 the biggest year-on-year faller was The Daily Mirror which was down by 11.7%, which compared to The Daily Telegraph's decrease by 3.4% is alarming number. Sunday titles were not excluded from this trend - Sunday Tabloids fell by 10.6% on average whereas Sunday Broadsheets were up by 1.6% on average.
Table 1
December Percentage Tabloids 2016 (%) The Daily Mirror 716 926 -11.7 The Sun 1 611 464 -10.5 The Daily Mail 1 611 464 -6.7
Table 2
December Percentage Broadsheets 2016 (%) The Times 446 164 +9.2 The Guardian 161 191 -3 The Daily 460 054 -3.4 Telegraph
2.1.2 Online Newspapers Online news, also because of the increasing use of smartphones, has been experiencing a significant rise of subscribers and online audience e.g. when the monthly print and online readership are combined the daily title such as The Guardian achieved 222% rise (Greensdale 2015).
In the past, several studies suggested that online newspapers were only complementary to print newspapers which, these days, is not mostly true. Many quality and popular newspapers have paywalls and online subscriptions with which readers can see the same articles online as in print. However, almost every online newspaper has free articles on their websites and the income of the publishing houses is received through advertisement.
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Although, when articles which describe the same topic in print and online versions are compared, they might vary in the length. As Jason Steele (2015) says:
While readers may stare at their computer monitors all day, they rarely focus on a single article for more than a minute or two. That’s why the vast majority of what’s written for the Internet is under 1,000 words. Reading multi-page articles online can be a frustrating challenge, but taking in longform content in print, or at least on an e- reader, tends to be much more enjoyable. (6 Ways Writing For Online is Different Than Print, para. 7 )
And he adds:
Most people won’t finish what they read on the Internet. In contrast, the reader of a magazine or newspaper has made a significantly larger investment of effort, time, and money to select an article. So the reader is less likely to just flip the page and move on the way we tend to do with online content. (ibid.)
With how much online media connect the world, there is no wonder that online newspapers reach millions of viewers per month. The mostly viewed popular online newspaper in the UK is The Daily Mail Online with 14.8 million viewers per month which is, compared to one of the most viewed quality online newspaper The Independent with 4.6 million viewers, in lead before its competitors (Ponsford 2016).
In January 2017, the marketing body for national newspapers called Newsworks released a newspapers' market overview which examines the number of readers who use print, PC + print and mobile + tablet from October 2015 until September 2016. As it is illustrated in Figure 1 below, the monthly multi-platform readership is significantly increasing with the expanded use of digital media. In some cases, for example The Guardian or The Daily Telegraph the readership increased by 474% and 412%.
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Figure 1
Source: http://www.newsworks.org.uk/Market-Overview
2.1.3 Broadsheets Broadsheets refer to the most common newspaper format which had been developed in the 18th century in Britain and has been associated with high quality journalism. Even today they still use a more traditional approach to journalism with long, in depth, informative and not highly exaggerated or sensational articles generally written by specialists. Broadsheets were until recently all printed on large pages and are still regarded to be ‘quality papers’, ‘qualities’ – or the ‘heavies’ which are known for their elaborate news coverage and editorial. Merriam Webster's dictionary mentions that originally the term 'broadsheet' was derived from the size of newspaper, but nowadays the word 'broadsheet' implies serious content and no longer the size of the news.
They cover topics such as politics, business, and economy, foreign policy or national security. They include editorials with comments on important issues that reflect the political views of the paper's editor. Some of the other items included are sport news, obituaries,
12 articles, TV and radio schedules, theatre and cinema shows, crosswords, comic strips, advertisements and weather forecast (Hornby, Cowie & Lewis 1974). In Britain, broadsheets are represented by The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and Financial Times.
However serious the broadsheets are, in the past years there has been discussed a new phenomenon which is called the tabloidization of newspapers. Tabloidization is the direct result of commercialized media, most often promoted by the pressures of advertisers to reach large audience. New Statesman former editor thinks the British quality press, "now contains a species of nonsense and trivia which in better times a gentleman would have only discerned by running through the drawers of his valet" (Hargreaves 1999, We are not as dumbed down as Sir Robin Day Thinks, para. 4 ). The Mirriam Webster's dictionary found the first attestation of the term ‘tabloidization’ in American vocabulary in 1991 (Lowe 1994). One of the shortest and briefest explanations of the term is provided by Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Centre on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University - it is "a downgrading of hard news and upgrading of sex, scandal and infotainment" (as citied in Esser, 1999, p. 292).
2.1.3.1 The Guardian The Guardian is one of the most read daily newspapers, known from 1821 until 1959 as the Manchester Guardian, in the UK. From the 2008 it is a part of the Guardian Media Group, its incomes are reinvested back into the Group which prevents the newspapers to be independent and keeps them from being bought by large media owners, and from the 1936 it is owned by the Scott Trust which in 2008 transformed into the Scott Trust Limited. Since 2015 The Guardian is edited by Katharine Viner who was previously in charge of the online operations in Guardian Australia and US (Encyclopædia Britannica 2011).
As mentioned in above, with The Guardian being a broadsheet, the style in which the articles are covered is primarily the same for all quality press. They are expected to be accurate, reliable, covering topics such as world, politics, culture, business etc. which they are trying to maintain by using the newly launched program where anybody can become a Guardian supporter which should 'keep their journalism fearless and free from interference.
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2.1.4 Tabloids The sensational tabloid (a word derived from a small, easy to swallow dose of medicine) appeared in London in the early years of the twentieth century, its news for the common man packaged in a format that could be read comfortably on a streetcar (Fang 1997). Tabloids used to be printed on approximately half size format than broadsheets, but this is no longer the case as these days the terms 'tabloids' and 'broadsheets' refer to the quality of news rather than to the size. Therefore tabloids are nowadays called ‘low-quality papers’ or ‘popular papers’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2016). They are less serious or not serious at all, and report news in less depth. Their content mainly concentrates on human- interest stories, celebrity coverage, gossips, scandals etc. (Hornby, Cowie & Lewis 1974).
Tabloids can be divided into two subcategories – ‘middle-market’ tabloids and ‘red- top’ tabloids. The above specification of tabloids mainly applies for the red-top tabloids that are called the ‘red-tops’ for their distinctive red-background title logos and are the least serious of the British international daily papers. Into this category belong The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Star ("British Newspapers," 2015).
On the other hand, the other category - middle market or ‘middle-brow’ (Williams 2010) tabloids are somewhere in between broadsheets and red-tops and are read mainly by the middle and lower-middle classes. “They combine news and comment, information and entertainment, text and pictures in a way which satisfies their kind of readers” (ibid.). The Daily Express and The Daily Mail can be classified in this category.
Nonetheless, in recent years there was a significant transition of some respectable quality papers from the original broadsheet size to smaller compact sizes. It refers to newspapers such as The Independent and The Times in 2003, The Guardian in 2005 10 and The Observer in 2006 (Cridland 2010). Nowadays the terms ‘broadsheets’ and ‘tabloids’ refer more to the content than to their size of the newspapers.
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2.1.4.1 The Daily Mail The Daily Mail was founded by Alfred Harmsworth in 1896 and since 1922 it belongs to the London based company the Daily Mail and General Trust PLC which also has its shares in radio, television and newspapers. The Daily Mail experienced its ups and downs during the 121 year history - at the beginning of the 20th century it surpassed 1 million sold copies which made it one of the most read newspapers and it was one of the first newspapers who made its content more sensational to attract more audience. However after every successful period begins time of decline which started during the 70s but made its comeback in the 21st century with the online revolution and it became one of the most visited news websites in the UK (Encyclopedia Britannica 2010). The editor is Paul Dacre who is also editor-in-chief of DMG media which also publishes The Mail on Sunday and Metro, a free daily tabloid.
2.1.5 Audience As the topic of the present work is to analyze the use of the passive in political news this particular topic seems relevant to mention. As Richardson (2007) states, "It is impossible to select and compose news without a conception of the target of intended audience" (p.1). When applied on the newspapers it stresses that every newspaper writes for its intended audience to make the news appealing. Richardson (2007) also adds, " The consideration of the audience affects not just the choice of story but also the tone and the style of its presentation." (p.90); therefore it may be assumed that the audience, alongside with the topic of the news, might have certain influence on the use of passive in political news in tabloids and broadsheets.
We can divide the audience according to age, gender, education, social class, ethnicity, political preferences and other characteristics (some of them can describe what a reader of a specific newspaper eats or what kind of pet do they own) (Gani 2014).
After a close analysis of the voting patterns in general elections in 2015, Roy Greensdale (2015) revealed how readers of specific newspapers voted and if the press played any role in their decisions. As YouGov survey (2015) states, the only paper who supports Ukip, the Nigel Farage's party, is The Daily Express whose readers also voted for Ukip. The conservative press had other significant impact which was beneficial for David Cameron.
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Figure 2
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jun/08/newspaper- reader-election-ukip-express-sun-mail-telegraph
However, when it comes to education and audience broadsheets concentrate on a different audience than tabloids, e.g. the audience of The Guardian is mainly well-educated, rather young, male and liberal, located around London. The majority (52%) of readers are male with the average age around 44. They take interest in politics, international news but also in women's issues along with culture, art and general information about London ("Who is the target audience of The Guardian newspaper?," n.d.).
According to readership statistics, the target audience of tabloids such as The Daily Mail is lower-middle-class British women, however with its lower prices it is appealing to lower-middle-class in general ("What is the target audience of The Daily Mail?," n.d.). Nevertheless, The Daily Mail was the first British newspaper to dedicate one section, called Femail, only to women because as for 2013, it was the only newspaper with the majority (55%) of female audience. Its online branch called Mail Online is also mainly focused on women along with celebrity news and controversial topics. The average age of The Daily Mail readers is 58 which is 14 years older than readers of The Guardian (Taylor 2014).
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According to NRS (Dacre 2017), more than half of The Daily Mail readers are 65 and older which compared to the Guardian is much older audience. The Guardian's readers are approximately 10-20% throughout the age spectrum (15-65 plus) (Viner 2017).
When focused on the readership and the social class, almost 50% readers of The Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent belong to the upper-middle or the middle-middle social classes (according to the NRS classification A and B) and almost 30% are from the lower-middle class (C1). The middle-market tabloids such as The Daily Mail and The Daily Express have 75% of their readers from the lower- middle and working classes (C1, C2, D and E) while the 'red-top' tabloids, such as The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Star, have the majority - over 90% of C1, C2, D, E from which the 40% is unskilled working class (D,E) ("Who reads which newspaper in Britain?" 2016).
The classifications of social grades and social classes:
Figure 3
Source: //www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/
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2.1.6 Political News Political News, as the corpus of this work, is one of the topics which is covered by both broadsheets and tabloids in almost every country. It is common that newspapers prefer to write primarily about the home politics because most readers are concerned about the events happening in their own country. Nevertheless, with the world very tightly connected as it is today, the foreign political news is no exception, for example, the recent worldwide coverage of presidential elections in the USA, which were unexpectedly controversial and had an impact on the international politics, were minutely reported on in all British newspapers. Even though the world politics is very important, this thesis focuses solely on the British political news which was significantly affected by the Brexit, its preparation and by the new Prime Minister Theresa May.
Political journalists focus more on leaders and candidates; their personality, character and personal life; and simultaneously begin to be negligent to parties, its programmes and policies in the last twenty years (Brants & Voltmer 2011). Wattenberg (1994) describes this type of coverage as personalization of political news. Another term that is used by Langer (2007) when covering politics is presidentialization which is considered to be increased focus on the leaders instead of other political individuals. It can appear quite often when describing situations concerning the Prime Minister which is nowadays very common in British newspapers when Theresa May is the leading figure of Brexit.
According to Pattersen (1993), the journalists have become more cynical and tend to seek conflict when writing about politics in order to appeal to a broader audience. It is considered to be more typical for tabloids which appear to be more dramatic and sensational. However this approach can lead to negativity in news and therefore it can reflect in the negative tone and disengagement in the news. (Brants & Voltmer 2011)
The media coverage of politics also differs in election and non-election periods which could be evident considering the media is the main influential source during elections. The British newspapers tend to be more personalized, conflict-oriented and more focused on the Prime Minister, which can be the result of the political system in Britain. The personalized content is higher in tabloids (above 80%), which are focused mainly on the PM, than in broadsheets (above 60%). Personalization can also depend on specific events such as
18 changes in government or scandals. Furthermore British tabloids tend to be more negative in tone and conflict-oriented than broadsheets which is considered to be the result of attracting the audience (Brants & Voltmer 2011).
As the corpus this work is focused on the political news, one of the aims of this work is to examine the influence of this topic on the use of the passive. When using the active and the passive voice it is important to consider whether the responsibility is connected to a certain person (in the passive expressed by the agent, see Section 2.2.2) or if there is a tendency to omit the agent and avoid the responsibility.
2.2 Active and Passive voice
As the aim of the present thesis is the analysis of the passive in political news, it is essential to comment on the active and passive voice and their function and meaning in texts. This chapter focuses on the reasons of using the passive, frequently used report verbs in the passive, and also on the role the passive voice has in the newspaper and what it might predicate for the analysis.
2.2.1 Active vs. Passive voice Journalists prefer to use dynamic and action verbs to describe actions that happen and evolve over time (Reah 1998). The difference between active and passive voice can be applied primarily to transitive verbs, with the exception of most stative verbs, because the object of an active verb corresponds to the subject of a passive verb. As a result, only active sentences with clause types SVO (O, A and C) can be transformed into passive forms where the meaning remains the same (Greenbaum & Quirk 1990). Passive voice is used mainly in written language because of its syntactical construction and its passive meaning. In spoken language it is common to express oneself in active voice because it makes the production more fluent and continuous.
The English language has two types of verbal voice - active and passive. In the active voice the agent of the action is known as the subject and the verb is transitive and typically dynamic as it describes certain action. The active agent cannot be omitted like the agent in the passive. The present work is not focused on the intransitive verbs as they cannot be transformed into the passive voice (Greenbaum & Quirk 1990).
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The active voice is a set of forms of a verb in a sentence in which the subject, typically a person or a thing, is performing an action which is followed by an object, e.g. My mother cooked dinner. In articles the active voice is preferred by journalists because it enables them to write more directly and understandably as it reflects the way people think and process information. However, when the performer of the action is unknown, the form which is used cannot be active (Busà 2014).
When journalists want to use the active voice without linking the agent directly to the action and, simultaneously, capture reader's attention, they depersonalize the process by using an inanimate subject, which makes the performer more indirect; e.g. When the terrorist attack happens and no one is certain who is the attacker, we can use a bomb as an agent and write Bomb destroys night club.(ibid.)
On the other hand, the passive voice is comprised of the auxiliary BE followed by the passive verb construction formed by the past participle of a main verb, e.g. The chair was bought last year. In some cases, which primarily occur in conversation, passive can be created with GET + past participle e.g. He got killed in an accident. This statement is supported by Biber et al. (1999)who state "the be passive often simply describes a state, while the get-passive describes the process of getting into the state, with a resultant meaning similar to become. [...] get in this use is also typical of conversation, while the written registers, especially academic prose, would use become instead."(p. 481)
When the passive occurs in the newspaper headlines, It is possible to omit the auxiliary verb, e.g. Ancient fortress believed to have been used to annex Dukdo found (Busà 2014). However, the headlines are not the focus of the present work as it is focused only on the occurrence of the passive in articles as such.
Syntactic transformation active voice to the passive:
e.g. active - The butler murdered the detective. (Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990, p.45)
passive - The detective was murdered (by butler). (ibid.)
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The transformation from the active to the passive voice is realized by the active object from the active sentence (as can be seen above) which becomes the passive subject in the passive sentence (e.g. the detective in the sentence The butler murdered the detective. is transformed into The detective was murdered by the butler.). The originally active subject is shifted to the position of optional agent expressed by the preposition by (or with when the agent is an instrument). The preposition is inserted before the agent, although the agent does not need to be mentioned at all and in most passive structures it is omitted. When the agent is mentioned it emphasises the doer of the action as it is supported by Chalker (1992) who points out that "When the agent is mentioned with a by- phrase after the verb this puts the agent in the important position at the end." (p. 19) The purpose of the agent absent and present in the passive is more described below (see Section 2.2.2).
The passive voice is used primarily in written language for its formality and suitability to connect long phrases therefore the most common appearance of the passive is in newspaper articles and in academic writing. It is more convenient to write Their job was finished (formal) instead of They finished their job (informal). (Busà 2014)
Supporting the statement of the preferred use of the passive voice in the news, and written language as such, is a diagram from Biber et al. (1999), which shows a significant difference in using the finite passive verbs in all registers. As it is illustrated in Figure 4 below, the news register is second in the frequency of occurrence of the passive with 15% of finite passive verbs opposed to 85% of finite non-passive verbs. The number of passives increased only in the academic writing with proportion of 25% of finite passive verbs to 75% finite non-passive verbs. As a result of the Biber et al. (1999) analysis is the relatively frequent occurrence of the passive in the news discourse even though the most frequent use is in the academic writing. On the other hand, in the conversation and fiction is hardly any occurrence of the passive voice.
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Figure 4
Source: Biber, D., & Johansson, S., & Leech, G., & Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.
As the aim of this work is focused on the study of the passive in newspapers, it can also be mentioned that, according to Biber et al. (1999) there are used many verbs with negative meaning in the news to describe negative events that happened to someone:
e.g. He was accused of using threatening or insulting behaviour. (ibid.)
He was jailed for three months. (ibid.)
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2.2.2 Reasons for using the passive voice According to Greenbaum and Quirk (1990) there are seven reasons for using the passive voice in written production. In reports and articles the reason for using passive voice can be purposely leaving the performer of the action unspecified. Reporters can use this strategy to avoid taking responsibility for connecting someone to a certain action. However, according to Busà (2014) the more typical reason for using the passive is when the performer of the action is unknown or irrelevant. As Chalker (1992) observes, "when it (the passive voice) is used without mentioning the agent [...] this may be because the agent wants to avoid responsibility; or it may be to emphasize the action of the verb by having that near the end of the sentence." (p.19)
One of the aims of this work is to investigate/examine the most frequently used reasons for using the passive in the political news and if all reasons can be found in the newspapers. It is also examined, whether the broadsheets have the same approach to the passive as the tabloids, and what might be the reason for the difference. Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) also mention the possibility of applying more than one reason to the certain passives, although in this thesis the examples that occur in the practical part are connected to only one reason.
The reasons for using the passive are divided into two groups: the first group concerns the passives with agent unknown and the other group focuses on the passives where the agent is present.
The agent absent:
1. Reason: The agent of the action is unknown or obvious (e.g. The house was built a few months ago.) This type might occur in the corpus as there might be a tendency to avoid the obvious subject or not to emphasize the unknown agent.
2. Reason: The writers or speakers want to avoid identifying the agent because they do not want to assign or accept responsibility (e.g. A mistake has been made in calculating your change.) (Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990, p.46). This reason for using the passive is expected to be more common in the broadsheets as they are anticipated to avoid the
23 controversy of wrongly mentioning someone in the news. Whereas, tabloids might not be so reserved to connect the action directly to the agent.
3. Reason: No reason for mentioning the agent because the identification is unimportant or obvious from the context (e.g. Nowadays, sleeping sickness can usually be cured if it is detected early enough.) (ibid.) This reason for using the passive is very similar to the two previous reasons. As stated above in this chapter, these reasons are very similar and could be matched to the same passives.
4. Reason: In scientific and technical writing, writers often use the passive to avoid the constant repetition of the subject I or we and to put the emphasis on processes and experimental procedures. This use of the passive helps to give the writing the objective tone that the writers wish to convey (e.g. The subject was blindfolded and a pencil was placed in the left hand.) (ibid.). This type must be excluded from the analysis of political news as it is used only in scientific papers thus cannot appear in the news.
The category with agent present contains the last three reasons:
5. Reason: To put emphasis on the agent of the action (e.g. The portrait has been painted by my grandfather.). This reason for using the passive is applied when the agent is emphasised instead of the action. It is expected to be the one of the most used reasons because when the agent is indeed mentioned it is not expected it to be because of the other two reasons. Moreover, the topic of political news might also influence the frequency of occurrence of this particular type as politics is a very serious topic where might occur the tendency to emphasize the agent as many news might be focused on certain people.
6. Reason: To avoid what would otherwise be a long subject and 7. To retain the same subject and subject in later parts of the sentence (e.g. As a cat moves, it is kept informed of its movements not only by its eyes, but also by messages from its pads and elsewhere in its skin and its organs of balance, and its sense organs of joints and muscles. (ibid.) These types are not anticipated to occur in the corpus because there is not expected the need to avoid what would otherwise be a long subject.
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2.2.3 Lexical verbs used in the passive As the aim of this work is to analyse verbs in the passive in newspapers, this section of the theoretical part is dedicated to lexical verbs and one of their categories - report verbs. Verbs allow writers to modulate their ideas and they can position works to the certain discipline (e.g. news, academic writing). Biber et al. (1999) state in the LGSWE [Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English]:
there can be distinguished three major classes of verbs: lexical (full verbs, e.g. read, walk), primary verbs (be, have, do) and modal verbs (ca, might will). Lexical verbs comprise an open class of verbs that function only as a main verb. (p. 358)
The lexical verbs occur in both finite and non-finite verb phrases, nevertheless this work analyzes only finite verbs as the passives occur only with the finite verbs (see Section 2.2.1).
Hinkel (2004) classifies lexical verbs into five categories: activity verbs, reporting verbs, mental/emotive verbs, linking and logical-semantic relationship verbs. Among those categories the most attention in this work was paid to reporting verbs as they are expected to occur in the passive in the news.
Biber et al. in LGSW (1999) describe the frequency of occurrence of certain lexical verbs in the passive in four different registers: conversation, fiction, news and academic writing. As can be seen in Figure 5 below, the use of these particular words in the passive are the most common for the academic style and the news with their tendency to more formal style of English. In the practical part there is examined the frequency of occurrence of lexical verbs in the passive as it can be compared with the Figure 5, although the comparison is very relative because of the difference in length, topics and types of newspapers in the corpuses.
Even though, for example the verb say, according to Figure 5, occurs more than hundred times per million words in the news register, it is expected to be different in the following analysis, as the corpus of Biber et al. (1999) contains articles from many sections of news and this work's corpus is focused only on the political news.
25
Figure 5
Source: Biber, D., & Johansson, S., & Leech, G., & Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.
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2.2.3.1 Report verbs used in the passive In the language of newspapers there are certain verbs which are more commonly used than others - they are called report verbs (e.g. say, suppose, assume, think, understand etc.). They are used with impersonal constructions because, as it is said above, they express situations in which the performer is unknown or does not want to be mentioned. For this reason they are expected to occur more frequently in the passive in the newspapers than other verbs. As it was previously mentioned, the report verbs with impersonal constructions are expected to occur more in the political news of the quality press because of their tendency to be more objective than tabloids. However, it is interesting to see what influence might have (or not have) the topic of political news on the result.
e.g. It is thought that…
It is understood to be…
It is said that fruit is healthy.
He is thought to work too much.
He is believed to be in love.
He is said to be handsome.
Report verbs such as say are considered to be more spoken and used in the conversation than in the news as opposed to the verbs such as assume and suppose which are considered to be more formal and therefore might be more common.
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3 Practical Part
3.1 Introduction
The aim of this analysis is to compare the passive and the active voice in the British political news, which is represented by both types of newspapers – tabloids and broadsheets.
There were made 5 presumptions based on which the analyses is structured:
1. The proportion of the passive voice used in the broadsheets is expected to be higher than in the tabloids. This assumption is supported by the quote from Crystal and Davy (1969) "the tendency in the popular press is to use the active voice rather than the passive” (p. 187) 2. There should be different reasons for using the passives in the tabloids and broadsheets. 3. There might be similarity in the frequency of occurrence in the most frequently used lexical verbs in the analysed corpus of this thesis and the outline of verbs in the Figure 5 (Biber at al., 1999). 4. The occurrence of the report verbs used in the passive might be higher in the broadsheets than in the tabloids as broadsheets are expected to have bigger proportion of the passives than tabloids. 5. The agent expressed by 'by' is expected to occur more in the tabloids than in the broadsheets as the tabloids are expected to be more straightforward.
The main aim of the first part of the analysis is to contrast the number of the active verbs to the number of the passive verbs in the corpus and to determine the reasons for using the passive in the particular part of the article. In the second part there is used an outline of reasons from Greenbaum and Quirk (1990) (see Table 3) which is divided into two categories for better understanding. First category deals with the passive, at which the agent is not mentioned, and the second category is for the passives at which the agent is expressed. From this list of reasons there was excluded the reason for 'scientific and technical writing' which was not expected to appear in the articles oriented on political news.
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The third part examines the most frequently used lexical verbs in the corpus in comparison to the list of lexical verbs identified by Biber et al. (1999). The fourth part of the analysis is focused on the report verbs used in the passive throughout the corpus. To these four parts of the analysis is also closely connected to the last part focused on discovering of which agents of the passives are expressed by 'by'.
3.2 Newspapers used in analysis
There are a number of national newspapers in Britain with both printed and online versions which reach large audiences. For the purpose of this analysis there were chosen only two of them - a newspaper from the broadsheet category, represented by The Guardian, and a tabloid represented - The Daily Mail. As can be seen from Tables 1 and 2, these are ones of the most read newspapers in Britain each with very different audience. Therefore, they make a good source for the analysis focused on the use of active and passive voice because it might be influence by the type the newspapers’ of the audience.
In this analysis it is better to compare two different types of newspapers such as tabloids and broadsheets that have different styles and vocabulary for describing the same story and therefore there might be expected different results. The approach of tabloids is expected to be more sensational with straightforward style of writing, whereas the approach of broadsheets is expected to be more reliable, objective and reserved. This estimation is convenient for the linguistic analysis because it compares two articles written on the same topic, on the same day, but published in two different newspapers. Online newspapers are also much more beneficial in the accessibility because the reader can easily find new and old articles which can be very useful for verifying information.
It also must be mentioned, why The Guardian and The Daily Mail have been chosen for the analysis instead of The Daily Telegraph and The Sun which are the most sold newspapers on the market. The Times and The Sun have paywalls on the article archives of their websites which are available only to their subscribers. As in this thesis there are
29 primarily analysed articles from the archives from the past 9 months, their accessibility was crucial. Therefore The Sun and The Times had to be excluded from the analysis and were replaced by The Guardian ad The Daily Mail which have no restrictions. These four already mentioned newspapers sell altogether almost 4 million copies a day, from which 3 178 072 copies are sold by tabloids (1 511 357 for The Daily Mail) and only 629 014 are sold by broadsheets (156 756 for The Guardian) which makes them significant representatives of both types of newspapers for this analysis (Ponsford 2017).
3.2.1 Corpus The articles analyzed in this work have been taken from the websites of The Daily Mail and The Guardian and are focused on the British politics. The frequent topic of the British political news for the last 9 months was mainly Brexit so this thesis exclusively covers the events after the referendum in June 2016. The corpus contains 50 articles - 25 from The Daily Mail (19, 950 words) and 25 from The Guardian (22, 311 words) which were published on the same day and were written about the same topic. The length of each article is virtually the same with maximum 700 words difference - this contrast in length occurs primarily in The Daily Mail articles. There is often described history of a certain affair in detail which might be connected to the sensational character of this type of newspapers.
One of the criteria was to find suitable articles from the section of political news already created by the journalists on The Guardian website. However there is not such a section on The Daily Mail website. The articles published in the political section of The Guardian were used as a template for selecting the political news from The Daily Mail. One interesting thing has been found while compiling the corpus of this thesis - according to The Guardian, for example, as political news connected to Brexit can be also considered an article about one of the main politicians in the UK who wears a pair of very expensive leather trousers which were commented by the former minister Nicky Morgan. It might be a sign of a tabloidization and presidentialization as it comments on the topic that is not usually covered by the quality press. This article also appeared as one of the main political news in The Daily Mail.
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Considering the corpus of this thesis it must be stated that the headlines of the articles were excluded from the analysis because they are rather specific and they follow their own rules which are not discussed in the analysis.
In the Appendix the articles from The Guardian are marked by letter A and The Daily Mail articles are marked by letter B. There are inserted four whole articles (two from The Guardian and two from The Daily Mail) as the rest is outlined. There cannot be put all the articles as the appendix would have 200 pages.
4 Analysis
4.1 Active vs. Passive voice
The first part of the analysis investigates the proportion of the active and the passive verbs in the corpus. As it was mentioned in the theoretical part (see Section 2.2.1), the passive is expected more in the broadsheets as Crystal and Davy (1969) point out “the tendency in the popular press is to use the active voice rather than the passive” (p. 187). It might also be caused by the different type of audience which is assumed to be more educated than the readers of tabloids.
Another factor is also the way broadsheets articulate information - with a form of reservedness to which the use of the passive can contribute.
As can be seen from Tables 3 and 4 the proportion of the passive is below 10% in both The Daily Mail and The Guardian compared to the total number of verbs. In Figure 5 from Biber et al. (1999) there is demonstrated that the occurrence of the passive in the news is approximately 15% even though it is more than the result of the analysis (approximately 10%). It is not such a significant difference as it must be mentioned that the difference is caused by the limitation of size of the corpus (50 articles), which is focused only on political news, as opposed to the corpus used by Biber et al. (1999) which significantly larger (with thousands of articles) across all newspaper sections and types of newspapers.
The results of this analysis may also imply that the passive is not very frequently used in the section of political news as it might be in, for example, criminally oriented articles
31 where could be put more emphasis on action which would be achieved by using the passive without the agent.
When it comes to the audience and how it varies between the tabloids and broadsheets either by education, social class, gender etc., it was assumed that the use of the passive might be also influenced by these facts. As it is written in the theoretical part (see Section 2.2.1) it was presumed that the broadsheets would be more likely to use the passive as they are read by more educated people who are also from higher social classes. This assumption is also supported by the quote from Crystal and Davy (1969) that “the tendency in the popular press is to use the active voice rather than the passive” (p. 187). The passive is considered to be more formal but, in this case, it might indicate that political news may be less likely to contain the passive as the information might be less speculative with more hard evidence. As it is stated above, the tabloids may be influenced by their intended audience (mainly lower working classes) not to use as formal style as frequently as broadsheets. Moreover, with the quote from Crystal and Davy (1969) they are supposed to be less likely to use the passive. However, this theory might not apply to depicting the political news, according to this analysis. As it also might be influenced by the smaller size of the corpus, when it refers to the audience and its impact on the use of the passive it seems the message of the verb is more important than the actual use of the passive or active voice - as can be seen from Tables 3 and 4, where the proportion of the passives to the actives is below 10%. There does not seem to be significant difference as to the proportion of the active and passive forms in the broadsheet and the tabloid.
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Table 3 Active vs. Passive voice in Table 4 Active vs. Passive voice in
The Daily Mail The Guardian
Total Total The Daily The number Active Passive number Active Passive Mail Guardian of verbs of verbs 1. 53 46 7 1. 92 78 14 2. 97 88 9 2. 116 104 12 3. 44 39 5 3. 61 53 8 4. 76 72 4 4. 99 85 14 5. 51 49 2 5. 136 130 6 6. 92 84 8 6. 94 87 7 7. 192 175 17 7. 141 130 11 8. 91 83 8 8. 58 48 10 9. 96 91 5 9. 162 156 6 10. 131 126 5 10. 102 99 3 11. 81 75 6 11. 73 70 3 12. 145 131 14 12. 44 37 7 13. 42 37 5 13. 79 71 8 14. 31 29 2 14. 101 89 12 15. 73 69 4 15. 67 63 4 16. 87 80 7 16. 59 47 12 17. 209 203 6 17. 108 98 10 18. 169 156 13 18. 116 114 2 19. 86 81 5 19. 97 83 14 20. 50 44 6 20. 125 122 3 21. 43 40 3 21. 59 53 6 22. 46 46 0 22. 124 117 7 23. 95 84 11 23. 110 94 16 24. 115 100 15 24. 122 103 19 25. 42 40 2 25. 87 83 4 Total 2 237 2 068 169 Total 2 432 2 214 218 Percentage 100% 92% 8% Percentage 100% 91% 9%
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4.2 Reasons for using the passive
As it is stated in section 2.2.2, Greenbaum and Quirk (1999) introduces seven reasons for using the passive from which are six relevant for applying on this analysis. It is common to use the passive when the writer does not want to mention or does not know the agent of the action or on the other hand to emphasize the agent who is behind the action.
Agent absent The Daily Mail The Guardian 1. Unknown identity of the agent of the action 3 7 2. Not to assign or accept responsibility 91 118 3. Agent is unimportant or obvious from the context 33 35 Agent present
4. Emphasis on the agent of action 38 53 5.To avoid a long active subject - - 6. To retain the same subject in later parts of the sentence - -
Table 5 Reasons for using the passive in the British political news
As can be seen from Table 5, the most frequent reason for the passive, in both examined newspapers, is the second type which is to avoid identifying the agent in order not to accept responsibility. As mentioned in the theoretical part (see section 2.2.3), this type was expected to occur more in The Guardian because it is presumed that broadsheets are more likely to be careful with mentioning somebody's name if they are not positive about their veracity. Therefore they might not name somebody just for the sensation but they are supposed to be more careful. The use of report verbs examined in a fourth part of this analysis, may also contribute to the frequent occurrence of this type of the passive.
Examples of Reason n. 2
The Guardian
See appendix article 1A:
line 35 - an odd number is always required to ensure there cannot be a tie
line 69 - David Davis MP [...] is not expected to be present in court.
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The Daily Mail
See appendix article 1B:
line 6 - [...] the decision is announced next month. [...]
line 15 - [...] it is still expected to go through [...]
The second most frequent reason for the passive is n. 4 - Emphasis on the agent of action which belongs to the category of passive where the agent is present in the sentence and is expressed by 'by', also examined in separate analysis (see Section 4.4). What is quite surprising about this result, even though the corpus is quite small, is the predominance of emphasis on the agent in The Guardian compared to The Daily Mail. When the assumption from what we know about these two types of newspapers might be quite the opposite - The Daily Mail as a tabloid is expected to be more straightforward in describing news and to be less afraid of mentioning the agent of action. However, the smaller number might be also caused by fewer words and therefore fewer passives in the corpus.
Examples of Reason n. 4
The Guardian
See appendix article 1A:
line 33 - [...] The bench will be led by the president of the supreme court [...]
lines 49,50 - [...] article 50, which triggers Brexit, can be reversed at a future date by parliament. [...]
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 1B:
line 15 - [...] Even if Article 50 is debated by MPs and peers in the House of Lords [...]
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4.3 Lexical verbs
As mentioned in the section 2.2.3 lexical verbs are essential part of the spoken and written language because they are main verbs and therefore they carry main information.
The most frequent lexical verbs in the The Daily Mail The Guardian passive Expect 9 15 Trigger 4 6 See 2 8 Give 3 4 Force 6 2 Understand 4 3 Set 4 0 Tell 4 2 Ask 2 3 Hold 3 1
Table 6 The most used lexical verbs in the passive
As mentioned in the theoretical part (see section 2.2.3), Biber et al. (1999) examined lexical verbs that occur in the passive in their very broad corpus. As Biber el al. do not specify the examined category of lexical verbs it could be compared only with the most frequently used lexical verbs in corpus selected for this thesis to see if there could be any similarity in the frequency of appearance of certain verbs. The most frequently occurring lexical verbs that were found in the corpus, apart from the verb trigger, were all found in the list of lexical verbs in FIgure 5. For instance, the verb expect, which was found as an example of the lexical verb (specifically report verb) in the passive (see Section 4.4), was the most used lexical verb throughout the corpus - in The Daily Mail it occurred in 9 cases compared to The Guardian's 15 cases.
Examples of the verb 'expect' in the passive
The Guardian
See appendix article 1A:
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lines 7,8 - [...] their eagerly awaited judgment is not expected to be delivered until January. [...]
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 1B:
line 15 - [...] it is still expected to go through [...]
The verb expect corresponds also to the most used verb in the news in the Figure 5 (see Section 2.2.4) with over 200 appearances per million words. It might imply its frequent use across the different types of news such as political, criminal, science etc. It may also show how often the verb is generally used in tabloids and broadsheets as it seems to be more formal than, for example, the verb say which might, be more expected in the tabloids for its informality. (However, this conjecture did not affirm in this thesis, as say appeared twice in The Guardian and once in The Daily Mail as a part of direct speech).
Surprisingly, the verb trigger is used quite frequently in the passive throughout the corpus of this work. It might be connected to the topic of political news and Brexit because in many times it refers to “triggering the article 50” as it is shown in the example. As it is quite specific verb that is not used very often in other articles it is not mentioned in the list of lexical verbs in the passive in Figure 5 from Biber et al. (1990). Nonetheless it may be also caused by their broad corpus with thousands of different types of articles from different types of newspapers.
Examples of the verb 'trigger' used in the passive
The Guardian
See appendix article 10A:
line 15 - [...] The byelection, in a constituency where a majority of voters backed leaving the EU, was triggered by the resignation of Stephen Phillips [...]
See appendix article 21A:
line 30 - [...] The report says that those given a residency guarantee should comprise all those living in the UK on the day article 50 is triggered, [...]
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The Daily Mail
See appendix article 10B:
line 41 - [...] The byelection was triggered by the resignation of Stephen Phillips [...]
See appendix article 21A:
line 10 - [...] If found that setting the date Article 50 is triggered [...]
Other frequently used verbs in The Guardian are see and give where they appeared eight and four times compared to The Daily Mail they were mentioned twice and three times (see Table 6). In the Figure 5 both verbs appeared more than 100 times per million words which might indicate that see is also quite frequent verb to use in the passive even though the results are only indicative as it cannot be as compared to the Biber because of the very limited corpus of this work.
Examples of the verb 'see' used in the passive
The Guardian
See appendix article 2A:
line 11 - [...] Osborne and the home secretary, Theresa May, are now seen as potential “stop Boris” candidates [...]
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 2B:
line 1 - George Osborne was nowhere to be seen yesterday [...]
Compared to the Figure 5 the verbs understand, ask and force were used more than 40 times per million words which might show the decreasing use of this verb in the news register compared the verbs expect and see. The lexical verbs which were the most indentified in this analysis and their occurrence in the political articles seem to copy the frequency of lexical verbs presented in Biber et al. (1999). It may indicate the general use of these particular verbs across all types of newspapers and their categories.
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4.4 Report verbs
In the passive, report verbs are commonly used for expressing impersonality or it might be used for not taking responsibility over mentioning somebody's name in case the person does not want to mention, as it was briefly mentioned in the second part of the analysis dedicated to reasons for using the passive (see section 4.2). The proportion of report verbs to the overall passive voice is only 9 % for both examined newspapers (see Table 7). The assumption was made that the impersonality, reservedness and objectivity of broadsheets might lead to a higher occurrence of report verbs used in the passive. Nonetheless, this was no proven in this analysis. It might also be influenced by topic of Brexit in political as it may be less likely to contain report verbs in both types of newspapers.
The Daily Mail The Guardian
Passive 169 218 Report verbs 15 19 Percentage 9% 9%
Table 7 Proportion of report verbs used in the passive
The Daily The Report verb Mail Guardian Expect 9 15 Understand 4 1 Tell 1 0 Say 0 1 Persuade 0 1 Think 1 0 Claim 0 1 Total 15 19
Table 8 Report verbs used in the passive
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As can be seen in Table 8 the most frequently used report verb in the passive is expect in both newspapers. As it is said in the theoretical part (see Section 2.2.3) report verbs are also part of lexical verbs, nevertheless, they are not specified in the analysis from Biber et al. (1999) in Figure 5 so they have to be analyzed separately. Some report verbs might have also appeared in the previous part of the analysis as they also belong to lexical verbs.
Examples of the verbs 'expect' used as report verbs
The Guardian
See appendix article 7A:
line 56 - [...] Hammond is expected to use his first major outing at the dispatch box [...]
line 62 - [...] The speech is expected to be markedly shorter than in recent years, [...]
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 7B:
line 24 - [...] He is expected to commit to honoring Tory manifesto commitments [...]
line 38 - [...] Mr Hammond is expected to raise the 40p income tax [...]
Other commonly used report verbs are understand which, in this analysis, occurred 5 times in the passive voice - once in The Guardian and four times in The Daily Mail.
Examples of the verb 'understand' as a report verb
The Guardian
See appendix article 8A:
line 29 - [...] It is understood that Johnson's contentious words [...]
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 2B:
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line 59 - [...] it is understood that Vote Leave [...]
All the other report verbs occurred only once in either The Daily Mail or The Guardian which indicates a very low usage of report verbs among the passives found in this corpus. It might also be influenced by the quite low occurrence of the passive in general, nonetheless, these results are only indicative as the corpus is very small.
Example of the verb 'tell' used as report verbs
The Daily Mail
See appendix article 12B:
line 3 - [...] Ex-education Secretary Nicky Morgan has been told not to attend a scheduled Brexit meeting with Prime Minister [...]
Example of the verb 'claim' used as report verbs
The Guardian
See appendix article 3A:
line 4 - [...] Over the weekend, it was claimed that the Prime Minister wants to reduce the size of Britain's divorce bill [...]
Surprisingly say occurred in the broadsheet as it would be more likely to be a part of tabloids. Nonetheless, it must be said that the reason for its occurrence is direct speech which was used in the article, so it could not be omitted.
Example of the verb 'say' used as report verbs
The Guardian
See appendix article 14A:
line 73 - [...] " Because no one has caught it, it is said to be assumed to still roam free." [...]
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4.5 Agent expressed by 'by'
As it was mentioned in the theoretical part (see section 2.2.1), the passive without mentioning the agent focuses on emphasizing the action by excluding the agent as the agent might be unimportant or uncertain.
Total Total The Daily number of The number of Article Mail Passives in Guardian Passives in DM G 1. 1 7 2 14 2. 2 9 1 12 3. 0 5 4 8 4. 0 4 1 14 5. 1 2 0 6 6. 2 8 0 7 7. 5 17 2 11 8. 2 8 2 10 9. 1 5 3 6 10. 2 5 2 3 11. 0 6 1 3 12. 3 14 1 7 13. 1 5 2 8 14. 0 2 1 12 15. 1 4 1 4 16. 3 7 6 12 17. 1 6 2 10 18. 3 13 1 2 19. 0 5 3 14 20. 3 6 0 3 21. 1 3 0 6 22. 0 0 1 7 23. 1 11 3 16 24. 2 15 4 19 25. 1 2 0 4 Total 36 169 43 218 Percentage 21% 100% 20% 100%
Table 9 Agent expressed by 'by' in articles
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e.g. The Guardian
See appendix article 1A lines 30, 31 :
[...] the law lords were created in 1876. [...]
However, when the agent is expressed by 'by', it is intended to put an emphasis on the agent of the action.
e.g. The Guardian
See appendix article 2A line 1:
Senior MPs were contacted on Saturday to gauge the level of enthusiasm for a leadership bid by the chancellor [...]
Before the actual analysis it was assumed that the agent might be stressed more in the tabloids than in the broadsheets, which was also mentioned during the analysis in the section 4.2, because of their style of writing. Nonetheless, this assumption was not very strongly affirmed, as can be seen from Table 9, with only 21% of the passives expressed by agent with 'by' in The Daily Mail compared to 20% in The Guardian.
e.g. The Guardian
See appendix article 3A:
[...] The3million warned the government of the practical challenges facing the Home Office, which has been deluged by applications for permanent residence. [...]
See appendix article 5A:
[...]The byelection, in a constituency where a majority of voters backed leaving the
EU, was triggered by the resignation of Stephen Phillips because of “irreconcilable policy differences” with Theresa May. [...]
e.g. The Daily Mail
See appendix article 3B:
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[...] However, the suggestion has been rebuffed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Council President Donald Tusk. [...]
[...]The panel called for the permanent residence system, which is underpinned by EU law [...]
Due to the smaller number of agents expressed by 'by' and therefore to the smaller proportion of the passives with present agents to the passives without agents, any relevant conclusion cannot be drawn from this analysis. It appears throughout the corpus ,nonetheless, it cannot pinpoint if it is significantly typical for any of the analyzed newspapers. For a more detailed and revealing analysis a larger corpus would be needed in order to have broader range of articles to provide more study material.
As can be seen from the Table 9, in number of articles from both newspapers can be seen the absence of expressing the agent by 'by'. It could be influenced by the size of the articles as well as by the number of used passives which might be quite distanced from stating the actual agent of the action.
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5 Conclusion
The main aim of this linguistic analysis was to compare the use of the active and the passive voice in the British political online newspapers which were divided into the tabloids and broadsheets. As stated at the beginning, the corpus of this thesis was collected from the sections of British political news of The Daily Mail and The Guardian with the unifying theme of Brexit.
At the beginning there were made 5 presumptions:.
1. The proportion of the passive voice used in the broadsheets is expected to be significantly higher than in the tabloids. It is supported by the quote from Crystal and Davy (1969) "the tendency in the popular press is to use the active voice rather than the passive” (p. 187). The first presumption was not proved in the analysis because the difference between the proportion of the active and passive voice differs only in 1% as The Daily Mail has 8% of verbs in the passive and The Guardian has 9% of verbs in the passive which is not a significant difference. It might also indicate that this presumption is not applicable for the political news or that the newspapers might not use the passive voice in relation to the intended audience. Nevertheless, these results are only indicative.
2. There should be significantly different reasons for using the passives in the tabloids and broadsheets. The second presumption was also disproved by the analysis because as it was shown, that the reasons for using the passives in tabloids and broadsheets do not differ as much as it was thought. The most used reason was 'not to assign or accept responsibility' in both newspapers which might indicate a connection to the political news where the journalists might not want to name their sources. The other reasons were also the same for both newspapers, although,
3. There might be similarity in the use lexical verbs in the analysed corpus of this thesis as they were shown in Figure 5 in Biber at al. (1999). The third part of the analysis showed a certain similarity in the frequency of use of certain lexical verbs that occur in the corpus of this thesis with the lexical verbs in the passive in Figure 5 from Biber et al. (1990). Verbs such as except, see, give, force, understand occurred in both analysis quite frequently. Although, there is one verb trigger that occurs only in this work's corpus. It might be influenced by the political topic of the corpus as well as it is quite specific verb that does not 45 frequently appear in articles. Nonetheless, the results are only indicative as the corpus of both analysis differs in content and length.
4. There is expected to occur a higher number of report verbs in the passive in broadsheets than in tabloids. The fourth part of the analysis is focused on the occurrence of report verbs in the passive in the corpus as it was assumed that the number of report verbs would be higher in the broadsheets because of their tendency to be more objective and reserved. Nonetheless, this assumption is not proven by the analysis as there is very small occurrence of report verbs which might be caused by the small occurrence of the passive throughout the corpus. It might also be influenced by the length of the articles as well as the size of the corpus. It must also be mentioned that the results are indicative as the corpus is quite small.
5. The agent expressed by 'by' is expected to occur more frequently in the tabloids than in the broadsheets as the tabloids are expected to be more straightforward whereas broadsheets are expected to avoid any controversy. As for the last part of the analysis, which examined the agent expressed by 'by' that was expected to be more frequent in tabloids, as they are expected to be less afraid of naming their source or accusing people of doing something, this analysis showed that there also is not a significant difference. The results were quite surprising - 21% of the passives had agents expressed by 'by' in The Daily Mail and 20% in The Guardian. Such a small difference might be also caused by the topic of political news where the newspapers might be more aware of the importance of information they write about and be less likely to mention someone without knowing the verity of information.
Surprisingly, the overall difference of occurrence of the passive is not as significant as it was presumed based on the quote from Crystal and Davy (1969). Reporting of news has developed much more than it was expected 50 years ago when their book was published. Nevertheless, since the corpus consisted of only 50 articles (25 from The Guardian, 25 from The Daily Mail, written on the same topics) and thus the conclusions written above are only indicative and cannot be generally applicable.
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Gani, A. (2014). Who are you? YouGov profiles the nation’s newspaper readers. The Guardian. Retrieved from
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Greensdale, R. (2015) . Newspaper readers' election votes reveal influence of rightwing press. The Guardian. Retrieved from
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Greensdale, R. (2015) . Popular newspapers suffer greater circulation falls than qualities. The Guardian. Retrieved from
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Greensdale, R. (2015) . Spectacular rises for digital readerships as newsprint audiences fall. The Guardian. Retrieved from:
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51
6.1 Sources The Guardian
Asthana, A. (2016, December 12) . Hammond calls for transitional deal for when UK leaves EU. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/12/philip-hammond-calls-for-post- brexit-transitional-deal
Asthana, A. (2016, November 14) . Theresa May does not need third person in Trump relationship, says No 10. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/14/theresa-may-does-not-need- third-person-nigel-farage-in-trump-relationship-no-10
Asthana, A. , Stewart, H. & Mason, R. (2016, November 22) . Millions affected by universal credit cuts to be partly compensated by chancellor. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/21/millions-affected-by-universal- credit-cuts-to-be-partly-compensated-by-chancellor
Asthana, A. , Mason, R. & Carrell, S. (2017, March 14) . May hits back over Nicola Sturgeon's demand for new independence vote. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/13/may-rejects-sturgeons- demand-for-second-independence-vote
Asthana, A. , Mason, R. & O'Carroll, L. (2017, March 13) . Parliament passes Brexit bill and opens way to triggering article 50. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/13/brexit-vote-article-50-eu- citizens-rights-lords-mps
Boffey, D. & Helm, T. (2016, June 26) . George Osborne weighs his chances in leadership race. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/game-thrones-tory-george- osborne
52
Boffey, D. & O'Carroll, L. (2017, March 17) . UK projects 'at risk' if PM demands £9bn refund from EU after Brexit. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/13/uk-projects-at-risk-if-pm- theresa-may-demands-9bn-refund-eu-after-brexit
Bowcott, O. & Walker, P. (2016, December 5) . Senior judges prepare to hear Brexit supreme court appeal. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/05/senior-judges-prepare-to-hear- brexit-supreme-court-appeal
Carrell, S. (2017, March 9) . Late 2018 could be best time for new Scottish referendum, says Sturgeon. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/09/late-2018-could-be-best-time- for-new-scottish-referendum-says-sturgeon
Elgot, J. & Mason, R. (2016, December 9) . Labour MPs say they fear party is alienating both sides of EU debate. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/09/labour-mps-blame-brexit-lack- clarity-sleaford-north-hykeham-byelection-result
Johnson, C. (2016, December 10) . Peter Tatchell disrupts Jeremy Corbyn speech with Syria protest. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/10/peter-tatchell-disrupts- jeremy-corbyn-speech-with-syria-protest
Mason, R. (2017, March 7) . Lords vote against second Brexit referendum. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/07/lords-vote-against-second- brexit-referendum
Mason, R. , Elgot, J. & Rankin, J. ( 2016, November 15) . Leaked Brexit Memo: Whitehall struggling to cope and no single plan. The Guardian. Retrieved from
53
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/15/whitehall-struggling-to-cope- with-scale-of-work-arising-from-brexit-vote
O'Carroll, L. (2016, December 12) . Campaigners urge PM to give EU nationals in UK permanent right to stay. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/12/the3million-campaign-group- letter-theresa-may-eu-citizens-in-uk-right-to-remain
Pengelly, M. & Helmore, E. (2016, November 13) . Nigel Farage discusses 'freedom and winning' in meeting with Trump. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/12/nigel-farage-arrives-in-new- york-to-meet-president-elect
Riddoch, L. (2017, March 3) . May’s speech shows how little Scotland means in her dangerous game of Brexit. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/03/theresa-may-speech- scotland-brexit-independence
Stewart, H. , Asthana, A. & Allen, K. (2017, March 8) . Philip Hammond breaks manifesto pledge with budget tax grab. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/08/philip-hammond-economy- budget-2017-chancellor-growth-brexit
Stewart, H. , Mason, R. & Syal, R. (2016, June 24) . David Cameron resigns after UK votes to leave European Union. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/david-cameron-resigns-after-uk- votes-to-leave-european-union
Topping, A. & Walker, P. (2016, December 11) . UK firms 'face more, not less, red tape if Britain exits customs union'. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/11/uk-firms-face-more-not-less- red-tape-if-britain-exits-customs-union
54
Walker, P. (2016, December 11) . Theresa May trousers row: angry text exchange between Tories revealed. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/11/theresa-may-trousers-row- angry-text-exchange-nicky-morgan
Walker, P. (2016, December 12) . End Brexit uncertainty for EU citizens in the UK, report urges. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/12/end-brexit-uncertainty-for-eu- citizens-in-the-uk-report-urges
Walker, P. (2017, March 12) . Davis: MPs must choose between May's deal and crashing out of EU. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/12/davis-mps-must-choose- between-mays-deal-and-crashing-out-of-eu
Walker, P. & Wintour, P. (2016, December 16) . Boris Johnson urged to promote human rights after Saudi Arabia gaffe. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/11/boris-johnson-emphasises- friendship-with-saudi-arabia
Weaver, M. & agencies (2016, December 12) . Council tax hike being considered to cover social care costs. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/dec/12/council-tax-hike-being- considered-to-cover-social-care-costs
Wintour, P. (2016, November 21) . Tony Blair aims to fight resurgent populism with centre- ground campaign. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/21/tony-blair-hoping-to-revitalise- centre-ground-with-political-comeback
55
The Daily Mail
AFP. (2016, December 11) . British FM's 'proxy war' comment misconstrued: Saudi Arabia. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4022258/British-FMs-proxy-war- comment-misconstrued-Saudi.html
Associated Press. (2017, March 13) . UK Parliament gives government power to begin EU exit. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-4309996/UKs-EU-exit-bill-reaches-final- hurdle-Parliament.html
Dathan, M. (2016, December 12) . Brexit could take more than FOUR years to deliver: Philip Hammond widens Cabinet split by warning we WILL need a transitional deal with the EU as he takes a swipe at David Davis. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4025966/Brexit-two-years-deliver-warns- Philip-Hammond.html
Dathan, M. (2016, November 15) . Ministers disown 'leaked memo' from pro-EU consultants that claims Theresa May has no plan for Brexit and 30,000 extra civil servants will be needed. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3937296/Cabinet-splits-delaying-Brexit- leaked-memo-reveals.html
Dathan, M. (2016, November 20) . Blair is back! Former PM announces he is 'returning to British politics' because the Tories are 'screwing up Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn is a nutter' as he prepares to meet with Theresa May. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3954246/The-Tories-screwing-Brexit- Jeremy-Corbyn-s-nutter-m-returning-politics-Tony-Blair-hunts-Westminster-office- set-new-Brexit-lobbying-group.html
56
Dathan, M. (2016, November 20) . 'Stop this endless pessimism!' Tory MPs blast Chancellor Philip Hammond after he warns of rising inflation, slower growth and 'eye-watering debt' in latest doom-laden Brexit warning. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3954506/Stop-endless-pessimism-Tory- MPs-blast-Chancellor-Philip-Hammond-warns-rising-inflation-slower-growth-eye- watering-debt-latest-doom-laden-Brexit-warning.html
Doyle, J. (2016, June 26) . Osborne goes to ground as his credibility is destroyed: Chancellor is nowhere to be seen, as Tory MPs say his political career is finished. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3659224/Osborne-goes-ground-credibility- destroyed-Chancellor-seen-Tory-MPs-say-political-career-finished.html
Groves, J. (2016, November 10) . 'Theresa is my Maggie': President-elect Donald Trump phones May to say he wants to revive the close bond enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in charm offensive. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3925524/Theresa-Maggie-says-Trump- President-elect-phones-invokes-Reagan-era-upbeat-message-Britain.html
Groves, J. (2017, March 14) . Hands off our Brexit, Nicola! Historic MPs' vote paves way for UK to quit the EU but Sturgeon cynically demands new Scottish poll just as Britain will leave Europe. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4310956/Sturgeon-demands-new-Scottish- poll-just-UK-leave-EU.html
Hunter, M. (2016, November 12) . A golden welcome! A beaming Nigel Farage poses with Donald Trump in his New York bling palace after beating Theresa May to become the first British politician to meet the new President-elect. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3930572/Farage-arrives-Trump-Tower- talks-President-elect-come-away-dream-job-ambassador-EU.html
57
Hunter, M. (2016, December 10) . Supreme Court judges 'are heading for a split decision on Brexit appeal', frustrating Remain MPs attempts to block Article 50. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4020506/Supreme-Court-judges-heading- split-decision-Brexit-appeal-frustrating-Remain-MPs-attempts-block-Article-50.html
Martin, D. (2016, December 12) . Guarantee EU nationals' right to stay in Britain, MPs tell May: Group says it is 'morally wrong' that the PM has not confirmed the status of those who already live here. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4023508/Guarantee-EU-nationals-right- stay-Britain-MPs-tell-May.html
Peev, G. (2017, March13) . PM may demand a £9bn refund from the EU during Brexit negotiations for the UK's holdings in the European Investment Bank. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4307398/PM-demand-9bn-refund-EU.html
Press Association. (2017, March 8) . Hammond accused of breaking Tory manifesto pledge with National Insurance rise. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4293254/May-hails-Hammond-s- Budget-long-term-plan-growth-prosperity.html
Press Association. (2017, March 9) . Nicola Sturgeon `not ruling out Scottish independence referendum in 2018´. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4296286/Nicola-Sturgeon-not-ruling- Scottish-independence-referendum-2018.html
Press Association. (2016, December 11) . Peter Tatchell disrupts Jeremy Corbyn human rights speech with Syria protest. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4019864/Peter-Tatchell-disrupts- Jeremy-Corbyn-speech-Syria-protest.html
58
Press Association. (2016, December 12) . Firms 'face deluge of paperwork if UK quits customs union'. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4022406/Legal-challenge-planned- Brexit-means-leaving-single-market.html
Sculthorpe, T. (2016, December 12) . Council tax could be hiked by £100 to cover a crisis in social care but No 10 blames town hall chiefs for failing in the worst hit areas. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4024250/Theresa-considering-council-tax- hikes-government-struggles-escalating-social-care-crisis.html
Stevens, J. (2017, March 4) . I won't let UK drift apart, May tells Scottish Tories as she insists Britain is 'four nations but one people at heart'. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4280464/I-won-t-let-UK-drift-apart-tells- Scottish-Tories.html
Stevens, J. (2017, March 7) . Brexit-blocker peers may land us with a band deal, warns the PM ahead of second vote in the Lords. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4288260/Brexit-blocker-peers-land-band- deal.html
Tapsfield, J. (2017, March 12) . 'Don't tie our hands': David Davis sets stage for Brexit Bill showdown with demand that MPs overturn defeats by pro-EU peers. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4305694/Davis-demands-MPs-overturn- Brexit-Bill-defeats-Lords.html
Tapsfield, J. (2016, December 12) . Three million EU nationals should be told that they can stay after Brexit as a gesture of 'goodwill', report urges. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4024178/Three-million-EU-nationals-told- stay-Brexit-gesture-goodwill-report-urges.html
59
Tapsfield, J. (2016, December 9) . Conservative Caroline Johnson wins Sleaford by-election with Corbyn's weak stance on immigration blamed for driving voters to Ukip. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4015946/Conservative-Caroline-Johnson- wins-Sleaford-North-Hykeham-election-UKIP-second-place.html
Tapsfield, J. , Sculththorpe, T. , Robinson, M. , Slack, J. & Groves, J. (2016, June 24) . It all ends in tears: David Cameron stands down in the wake of historic Brexit vote with emotional resignation speech as rival Boris Johnson makes first pitch to take over. The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3657160/David-Cameron-QUITS-Prime- Minister-voters-Brexit-EU-referendum.html
Walters, S. (2016, December 10) . The Trousergate Texts Vitriolic messages reveal how May's fixer banned Nicky Morgan from No 10 after she sniped at the PM's £995 leather strides (So what would she say about Theresa's other outfits?). The Daily Mail. Retrieved from
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4020918/The-Trousergate-Texts-Vitriolic- messages-reveal-Theresa-s-fixer-banned-MP-Nicky-Morgan-Downing-Street-sniped- PM-s-995-leather-strides.html
60
7 Appendix
61
Appendix 1
The Guardian
1A. Senior judges prepare to hear Brexit supreme court appeal
1 All 11 of the UK’s most senior judges will take their seats on the supreme court bench on 2 Monday to decide whether parliament or the government has the authority to trigger Brexit.
3 The four-day hearing on the divisive constitutional issue will be broadcast live, testing the 4 public’s appetite for intricate legal argument, arcane vocabulary and historical precedents.
5 The “justices”, as supreme court judges are known, may still be pondering their conclusions 6 as they digest their Christmas puddings; their eagerly awaited judgment is not expected to 7 be delivered until January.
8 Emotions are running high. Ukip has accused those behind the claim of being “arrogant 9 federalists” intent on blocking Brexit, the Daily Mail has branded the high court judges who 10 found against the government in the first round as “enemies of the people” and individual 11 challengers – such as Gina Miller – have received death threats.
12 Nigel Farage’s pledge to lead a protest march of 100,000 Brexiters to the doors of the court 13 may have receded, but the high-ceilinged courtroom will be packed with senior law officers 14 and QCs from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales as well as the rival claimants’ legal 15 teams and interveners.
16 On Monday, Labour’s shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, said the political aspect 17 of the case had been “hyped in parts of the media”. She said: “This is about process. It is not 18 about outcomes.”
19 Chakrabarti told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s not just about doing it or not doing it. 20 There are lots of questions to be decided about what happens next – how we live after 21 Brexit, what our relationship will be with the remaining states of the European Union.”
22 She said it was unfair for newspapers to delve into the personal lives or supposed opinions 23 of the judges.
24 “They have to be referees of the constitution,” she said. “If we start dragging these people 25 through the media or through politics, putting them through a kind of political scrutiny – 26 people like me are fair game, but the judges are not fair game. They cannot speak up for 27 themselves. We all need them in the end if we’re going to settle our disputes in a civilised 28 way in a courtroom.”
29 The panel of 11 justices is the largest ever assembled for a single case since the law lords 30 were created in 1876. Such judicial mass mobilisation is recognition of the constitutional 31 significance and political sensitivity of the hearing.
32 The bench will be led by the president of the supreme court, Lord Neuberger, and his 33 deputy, Lady Hale. There are 12 justices on the court but one has recently retired and is yet 34 to be replaced. The court normally sits in panels of five; an odd number is always required to 35 ensure there cannot be a tie.
36 The court is housed in the neo-Tudor exuberance of what was once Middlesex County Hall, 37 Westminster, opposite parliament. Its proceedings are less archaic than most crown courts: 38 wigs are no longer worn and hearings are routinely broadcast live online. Most documents 39 will be in digital versions. Daily transcripts of the hearing will be published.
40 The legal dispute is over who has authority to notify Brussels formally that Britain is 41 withdrawing under article 50 of the treaty on European Union (TEU) – parliament or 42 ministers.
43 Article 50 states that any member state may leave “in accordance with its own constitutional 44 requirements”, an undefined term that has allowed both sides to pursue rival 45 interpretations. The case has opened deep rifts in the consensus over the UK’s unwritten 46 constitution.
47 Having lost by a three-nil ruling at the high court, there was speculation that the government 48 would switch its argument on appeal and tell the court that article 50, which triggers Brexit, 49 can be reversed at a future date by parliament. That would enable ministers to say that once 50 triggered, MPs would have a subsequent opportunity to control the process.
51 Acknowledging that Brexit is not irrevocable would, however, be politically awkward for the 52 prime minister and could risk the case being referred to the European court of justice (ECJ) 53 in Luxembourg, the EU’s highest court, for clarification of the treaty’s meaning.
54 Such a diversion – apart from handing European judges power over the most intimate 55 working of the UK’s constitution – would delay Brexit for months. None of the main parties is 56 eager for a referral to Luxembourg.
57 The justices are unlikely to want it either but may not be able to ignore the question entirely. 58 Some of the appellants from Northern Ireland argue in their submission that “if the court 59 feels that anything turns on this issue ... plainly it is an issue of EU law which should be 60 referred to the court of justice of the European Union”.
61 Legal submissions are due to be opened by the attorney general for England and Wales, 62 Jeremy Wright QC, who will outline the government’s argument that executive powers, 63 inherited through what was once the royal prerogative, are sufficient to sign and authorise 64 international treaties.
65 The industrious James Eadie QC, whose work as “Treasury devil” requires him to be present 66 at innumerable cases involving the government, will pick up the more detailed line of 67 reasoning along with Jason Coppel QC. The Brexit secretary, David Davis MP, formally the 68 respondent in the case, is not expected to be present in court.
69 As well as Wright, who is a Conservative MP, other senior law officers taking part include the 70 counsel general for Wales, Mick Antoniw, who is a Labour member of the Welsh assembly, 71 Scotland’s lord advocate, James Wolffe QC, and the attorney general for Northern Ireland, 72 John Larkin QC.
73 The original challengers have retained a host of successful QCs to develop their assertion 74 that the government cannot arbitrarily remove rights established through domestic 75 legislation by executive decree. Parliamentary sovereignty, they maintain, is supreme.
Appendix 2
2A. In this Brexit vote, the poor turned on an elite who ignored them
1 Senior Conservative MPs were contacted on Saturday to gauge the level of enthusiasm for a 2 leadership bid by the chancellor, who has been all but silent since the country ignored his 3 advice and voted to leave the European Union.
4 The moves by the Osborne camp came to light as parliamentary colleagues of Johnson, the 5 leading Brexit campaigner and former mayor of London, said they believed he would declare 6 his candidacy early this week.
7 While his aides said he had not made any decision and was focusing on reassuring people 8 after the referendum result, it is likely he will make his announcement after the executive of 9 the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers meets on Monday to determine the rules and 10 timetable for the contest.
11 Osborne and the home secretary, Theresa May, are now seen as potential “stop Boris” 12 candidates after David Cameron announced on Friday that he would step down in the 13 autumn.
14 A close ally of Cameron insisted he would not be part of any “stop Boris” campaign either 15 behind the scenes or publicly. He also stressed that Cameron felt no bitterness towards 16 Johnson or Michael Gove. “He is not going to interfere in the leadership. Reports on who he 17 is and isn’t prepared to back are wide of the mark. He wants to be clear – we fought hard 18 but in the end the country voted to leave the EU on a big turnout. So there is no bitterness 19 and no recriminations on his part.”
20 Only a few months ago, Osborne was seen as a likely successor to Cameron, later in this 21 parliament. But a disastrous recent budget and his role as lead player in the Remain 22 campaign have damaged his chances. In the run-up to the vote, Osborne warned that leaving 23 the EU would mean calling an emergency budget in order to slash spending in response to 24 an inevitable economic shock that would choke off tax revenue. The move infuriated many 25 Tory MPs, who believed it was an attempt to scare the country and would never happen.
26 On Saturday night, pro-Brexit MPs said Osborne had “not a cat in hell’s chance” of winning 27 the leadership. One senior member of the parliamentary party said he would be “mad” to go 28 for it because it would lead to another humiliation. “If he does, it will show once and for all 29 that he has no political antennae at all.”
30 Osborne’s aides were unavailable for comment. Johnson is the clear favourite, having taken 31 a leading role in the campaign to leave the EU. He is also popular with Tory party members, 32 who will have the final say after MPs have whittled the list of entrants down to two in a 33 series of ballots. A member of the 1922 committee said: “I wouldn’t say Boris is a shoo-in. He 34 is a Marmite candidate. And in a leadership contest things can go wrong. But he is in pole 35 position.”
36 Gove, his fellow Brexit campaigner, is thought unlikely to join the contest, having said 37 repeatedly that he does not feel up to the demands of the job. A friend of Johnson said he 38 expected the pair would meet within the next 48 hours to decide their next move together. 39 “I think a Boris/Michael dream ticket would be the most likely. Perhaps with Michael as 40 Boris’s chancellor.”
41 Senior members of the party are concerned that Cameron’s decision to step down by the 42 time of the next Tory conference in October leaves too little time for a proper contest. They 43 want a “beauty parade” of leading contenders at the conference before a vote by the 44 150,000-strong party membership.
45 The chancellor’s allies believe he still has strong support in the parliamentary party. One 46 senior Tory MP said: “George hasn’t given up hope. He has support in the party to get on the 47 ballot, although I think the membership would surely support Boris.”
48 Treasury sources said the chancellor had spent the period since the referendum trying to 49 limit the economic damage from the Brexit vote. He has held discussions with fellow finance 50 ministers across the world, as well as other key figures, including Bank of England governor 51 Mark Carney.
52 Other possible candidates include junior minister Dominic Raab and employment minister 53 Priti Patel, both leading lights in the Brexit camp. Another MP said: “There is a chance a new
54 name will prove to be the star of the contest. That is what happened with David Cameron in 55 2005. But they would have to beat Boris and that would be tough.”
56 May is seen as the second favourite. Although she backed staying in the EU, she kept a 57 deliberately low profile in the campaign, and did not attract the level of criticism that was 58 aimed at Osborne from anti-EU forces in the party.
59 “Theresa has plenty to recommend her. If there was a crisis, a terrorist incident or 60 something requiring a steady hand, would people want her or Boris?”
61 Many of the UK’s elected members of the European parliament have vowed to work until 62 they lose their jobs as a result of Brexit, AP adds.
63 Until the UK formally leaves the union, which could follow two years of negotiations, the 64 country’s 73 MEPs can still take part in votes, said an EU spokeswoman in Brussels. Some 65 have indicated they will continue to vote until the day they leave office, with those from 66 Ukip saying they will abstain from decisions that do not affect Britain.
67 The current set of UK MEPs, who are paid a basic salary of £5,200 a month after EU taxes, 68 were elected in 2014 on a turnout of 35.6% and the next European election is not until 2019. 69 Olga Dziewulska, of the EU Information Office in the UK, said: “MEPs have a democratic 70 mandate until 2019, but their fate will be decided in the renegotiation package. For now, 71 technically, until things are decided, the UK remains a member and MEPs retain the 72 mandate.”
Appendix 3
3A. UK projects 'at risk' if PM demands £9bn refund from EU after Brexit
4A. Boris Johnson urged to promote human rights after Saudi Arabia gaffe
5A. Davis: MPs must choose between May's deal and crashing out of EU
6A. Council tax hike being considered to cover social care costs
7A. Millions affected by universal credit cuts to be partly compensated by chancellor
8A. Campaigners urge PM to give EU nationals in UK permanent right to stay
9A. Theresa May does not need third person in Trump relationship, says No 10
10A. Tony Blair aims to fight resurgent populism with centre-ground campaign
11A. Theresa May trousers row: angry text exchange between Tories revealed
12A. End Brexit uncertainty for EU citizens in the UK, report urges (13A)
13A. UK firms 'face more, not less, red tape if Britain exits customs union'
14A. Peter Tatchell disrupts Jeremy Corbyn speech with Syria protest
15A. Whitehall struggling to cope and no single plan
16A. David Cameron resigns after UK votes to leave European Union
17A. Hammond calls for transitional deal for when UK leaves EU
Appendix 4
18A. May’s speech shows how little Scotland means in her dangerous game of Brexit
19A. The Undertaker's budget brings death, taxes then a crazy kamikaze attack
20A. Lords vote against second Brexit referendum
21A. Late 2018 could be best time for new Scottish referendum, says Sturgeon
22A. Parliament passes Brexit bill and opens way to triggering article 50
23A. May hits back over Nicola Sturgeon's demand for new independence vote
24A. Nigel Farage discusses 'freedom and winning' in meeting with Trump
Appendix 5
The Daily Mail
1B. Supreme Court judges 'are heading for a split decision on Brexit appeal', frustrating Remain MPs attempts to block Article 50
1 Supreme Court judges are set to rule in favour of giving Parliament a say on the country 2 leaving the EU.
3 Before the start of the four day hearing Brexiteers thought all judges would vote with the 4 Remain side and grant power to Parliament to discuss Article 50.
5 But sources now think it will be a 7 to 4 split vote against the Government when the decision 6 is announced next month.
7 The case is at the Supreme Court after the Government appealed a High Court ruling that 8 meant ministers could not enact Article 50 - the formal process of leaving the EU - without 9 Parliament's consent.
10 One source told the Telegraph: 'It is difficult to predict how the case is going to go but the 11 thinking of those in the room is that there might be a sizeable minority who are with the 12 Government.
13 'The understanding is that it is unlikely to be a slam dunk either way; even if a majority agree 14 with Gina Miller there will be a sizeable minority who don't.'
15 Even if Article 50 is debated by MPs and peers in the House of Lords it is still expected to go 16 through after Labour announced it would not block it.
17 And a slight win against the Government's wishes to push forward Article 50 without 18 Parliament could put pro-European MPs and peers under pressure to allow the timetable to 19 Brexit to continue.
20 Remain campaigner Gina Miller, a partner in an investment management firm, is leading the 21 fight to give Parliament a say.
22 Earlier today Europhile lawyers launched new proceedings in Ireland that could pave the way 23 for Britain’s departure being abandoned after the two-year formal exit process has been 24 started.
25 The pro-EU campaigners will bypass the British courts as they believe the Irish judiciary will 26 be more likely to refer the case to the European Court of Justice – putting key decisions on 27 Britain’s withdrawal in the hands of judges in Luxembourg
28 The action could lead to more drawn out court battles that see the divorce proceedings 29 tangled up in EU courts for longer than a year.
30 Jolyon Maugham QC, a barrister who is leading the legal bid, said he wanted to give voters 31 the opportunity to ‘change their minds’.
32 He will challenge the government’s claim that once Theresa May invokes the mechanism for 33 leaving the EU, the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50, that this cannot be stopped.
34 If EU judges rule the two-year process is reversible, it would mean MPs would have the 35 power to halt the process further down the line.
36 Mr Maugham believes this will tie Theresa May’s hands in negotiations, as Parliament, which 37 has a majority of Remain-supporting MPs, will have the ability to reject or water down a deal 38 between her and other EU leaders.
Appendix 6
2B. Osborne goes to ground as his credibility is destroyed: Chancellor is nowhere to be seen, as Tory MPs say his political career is finished
25 June 2016
1 George Osborne was nowhere to be seen yesterday as Tory MPs pronounced the end of his 2 political career.
3 The Chancellor, unlike other leading Remain campaigners, did not appear publicly, limiting 4 himself to several short statements on Twitter.
5 Brexit supporters said his credibility – and his diminishing hopes of becoming Tory leader – 6 were fatally undermined by his relentless scaremongering during the referendum campaign.
7 Last night there was speculation in Westminster that Mr Osborne could quit the Treasury as 8 early as next week, having stayed for the immediate aftermath of the referendum.
9 Responding to the shock win for Leave this morning the Chancellor tweeted he will do 'all I 10 can to make it work'.
11 Tory party chairman Andrew Feldman will also quit when the Prime Minister leaves Downing 12 Street later this year, it was announced yesterday.
13 Shortly after David Cameron's resignation speech, Lord Feldman – one of Mr Cameron's 14 oldest friends in politics – became the first Tory to quit his role.
15 Mr Cameron has asked him to stay on until the party elects a new leader, expected to take 16 place before the Conservatives' autumn conference in October.
17 Last night a party spokesman said: 'Andrew Feldman always said that he would serve 18 alongside the Prime Minister for as long as he was needed.
19 'Lord Feldman will step down when the Prime Minister leaves Downing Street.'
20 As the chief architect of Project Fear, he claimed Brexit would mean the average pensioner 21 would be £32,000 worse off, families would be £4,300 worse off by 2030, house prices 22 would plummet and the country would plunge into recession.
23 He also claimed Leave campaigners were 'economically illiterate'.
24 The final straw was his attempt to scare the public with an emergency 'Brexit Budget'. This, 25 Mr Osborne claimed, would mean a £15billion cut to the NHS, defence and other priorities 26 and £15billion in tax rises, including a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax to 22 per cent, a 27 3p rise in the higher rate to 43 per cent, and a 5p rise in inheritance tax rates to 45p as well 28 as higher fuel duties.
29 But the last-ditch ploy, which followed a series of worrying opinion polls for the Remain 30 camp, backfired horribly.
31 Yesterday Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said Mr Osborne 'used up all his credibility' on the 32 'punishment budget'.
33 He said there was 'genuine anger' among MPs when Mr Osborne came out 'threatening to 34 go back' on so many manifesto commitments: 'He was like a poker player who went all in. He 35 bet the farm and lost.'
36 Yesterday Mr Osborne did not appear before the cameras, but wrote on Twitter that it was a 37 'hard-fought campaign'.
38 He added: 'It is not the outcome I wanted but I respect the decision of British people and will 39 do all I can to make it work.' Earlier in the day, in the wake of the result being announced, he 40 tweeted that had 'briefed G7 finance ministers and bank governors on outcome of EU 41 referendum. They all respect the decision of the British people.
42 He added: 'G7 central banks have taken steps to ensure adequate liquidity and to support 43 functioning of markets.'
44 Last night one Remain MP said Mr Osborne had 'run his course' and was finished. 'He's a 45 spent force. It's over,' the MP said.
46 'I'm sure he knows that, and there's no chance he'll stand for the leadership'. A year ago, in 47 the wake of the Tory general election victory, Mr Osborne was firm favourite to follow Mr 48 Cameron as the next Tory leader and Prime Minister.
49 But the last 12 months saw his political stock crash repeatedly, after he was forced to 50 reverse controversial tax credit cuts in last June's Budget, and this year, cuts to disability 51 benefits.
52 In the last Parliament, Mr Osborne was hailed as the Cabinet's 'master strategist' and, like 53 his immediate predecessor Gordon Brown he used the Treasury to build a Whitehall empire 54 and dispense political patronage. But the referendum campaign destroyed relations with 55 Brexit Tory MPs, for whom he became a hate figure, much more even than the Prime 56 Minister.
57 According to one biography of the Prime Minister, Mr Osborne argued with Mr Cameron 58 against including a referendum promise, fearing the consequences. Anthony Seldon wrote 59 that both 'are profoundly irritated by their Eurosceptic MPs, but Osborne is even more 60 pragmatic than Cameron.
61 'The Chancellor's view is that it is simply not sensible to talk about disengaging from major 62 international institutions in the 21st century – not worth considering it.' On Wednesday Mr 63 Osborne is expected to take PMQs when Mr Cameron is in Brussels for the European 64 Council.
65 The Brexit camp last night paved the way for sidelining 'toxic' Nigel Farage from future 66 European Union negotiations.
67 Vote Leave sources said the Ukip leader had tried his best to damage their campaign but 68 would now become an 'irrelevance'.
69 Mr Farage dominated the airwaves as the vote came in. But it is understood that Vote Leave 70 – the official Brexit campaign group, which includes Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – now 71 want to distance themselves from him entirely.
Appendix 7
3B. PM may demand a £9bn refund from the EU during Brexit negotiations for the UK's holdings in the European Investment Bank
4B. I won't stop speaking my mind! Boris Johnson is unapologetic as he visits Saudi Arabia after accusing the state of conducting 'proxy wars'
5B. 'Don't tie our hands': David Davis sets stage for Brexit Bill showdown with demand that MPs overturn defeats by pro-EU peers
6B. Theresa May is considering council tax hikes as government struggles with escalating social care crisis
7B. Tory MPs tell Chancellor to stop his 'endless pessimism' about Brexit
8B. Three million EU nationals should be told that they can stay after Brexit as a gesture of 'goodwill', report urges
9B. 'Theresa is my Maggie': President-elect Donald Trump phones May to say he wants to revive the close bond enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in charm offensive
10B. Conservative Caroline Johnson wins Sleaford by-election
11B. Tony Blair returns to politics as he hunts for Westminster office
12B. The Trousergate Texts Vitriolic messages reveal how May's fixer banned Nicky Morgan from No 10 after she sniped at the PM's £995 leather strides (So what would she say about Theresa's other outfits?)
13B. Guarantee EU nationals' right to stay in Britain, MPs tell May
14B. Firms 'face deluge of paperwork if UK quits customs union'
Appendix 8
15B. Embarrassment for Jeremy Corbyn as his speech is interrupted by protesters demanding he takes a stronger stance on the Syrian civil war
16B. Ministers disown 'leaked memo' from pro-EU consultants that claims Theresa May has no plan for Brexit and 30,000 extra civil servants will be needed
17B. Cameron QUITS after Brexit vote - and Boris makes pitch to be next PM
18B. Brexit could take MORE than two years to deliver, Chancellor warns
19B. I won't let UK drift apart, May tells Scottish Tories as she insists Britain is 'four nations but one people at heart'
20B. Hammond accused of breaking Tory manifesto pledge with National Insurance rise
21B. Brexit-blocker peers may land us with a band deal, warns the PM ahead of second vote in the Lords
22B. Nicola Sturgeon `not ruling out Scottish independence referendum in 2018´
23B. UK Parliament gives government power to begin EU exit
24B. Sturgeon demands new Scottish poll just as UK set to leave EU
25B. Nigel Farage poses with Donald Trump in his New York bling palace