“He just doesn’t care”: The Language of Evaluation on Twitter during the 2019 UK General Election Claire Mackay Master’s Programme in English Studies Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki May 2021 Tiedekunta – Fakultet – Faculty Koulutusohjelma – Utbildningsprogram – Degree Programme Faculty of Arts Master’s Programme in English Studies Opintosuunta – Studieinriktning – Study Track English Philology Tekijä – Författare – Author Claire Mackay Työn nimi – Arbetets titel – Title “He just doesn’t care”: The Language of Evaluation on Twitter during the 2019 UK General Election Työn laji – Arbetets art – Level Aika – Datum – Month and year Sivumäärä– Sidoantal – Number of pages Master’s Thesis May 2021 65 Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract The language of evaluation enables us to share opinions, cement values, and create interpersonal meaning. It is a fundamental aspect of both social media communication and political discourse. This study uses Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Framework to investigate how political actors use evaluation to express emotions and confer judgement in their attempts to increase support on social media. Drawing on a corpus of 1,212 tweets from Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the 2019 British General Election campaign, this study focuses on how the individual politicians use ATTITUDE to build positive-self and negative-other evaluations. The analysis then considers the wider performance of populism in political discourse by examining positive appraisals of the people, presented against negative judgements of a corrupt elite. Finally, the thesis explores how specific Twitter features can be incorporated into the Appraisal Framework to better capture evaluation in tweets as complete objects. Contrary to expectations about the prevalence of negative messaging in electoral campaigns, the findings show that both candidates preferred to post positive evaluations on Twitter. Corbyn favoured judgements of his party that empathised their moral superiority (PROPRIETY), and Johnson praised his party for their ability to negotiate a departure from the EU (CAPACITY). Both candidates performed elements of populism, but the presentation and evaluation of the people was very different, with Johnson performing an exclusionary form of populism and Corbyn presenting a more inclusionary form. Whilst there are challenges in applying the Appraisal Framework to online campaigning, the results give a much more nuanced understanding of the evaluation inherent to this discourse than automated sentiment analysis is able to, particularly in identifying the interplay of positive-self and negative-other evaluation. However, Appraisal reaches beyond the text, and many features were present in the media attached to the tweets, and future studies would benefit from incorporating these aspects into the analysis. The evaluative force of other resources, such as emoji and hashtags, and Twitter practices, such as retweeting, should similarly not be underestimated, and this study concludes by suggesting how these aspects can be brought into the Appraisal Framework. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Appraisal Framework, Evaluation, Twitter, Political discourse, Brexit, Populism Säilytyspaikka – Förvaringställe – Where deposited University of Helsinki digital archive HELDA (E-thesis) Muita tietoja – Övriga uppgifter – Additional information Contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research questions ................................................................................................................. 3 2. Background .......................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 The Appraisal Framework ....................................................................................................... 4 2.1.1 ATTITUDE ........................................................................................................................... 4 2.1.2 ENGAGEMENT ..................................................................................................................... 8 2.1.3 GRADUATION .................................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Political campaigning on Twitter........................................................................................... 11 2.3 The Performance of Populism............................................................................................... 13 2.4 Previous studies .................................................................................................................... 14 3. Method .............................................................................................................................. 16 3.1 Data ....................................................................................................................................... 16 3.2 ATTITUDE and targets of appraisal .......................................................................................... 16 3.3 Layers of Appraisal ................................................................................................................ 18 3.4 Evaluation outside the text ................................................................................................... 20 4. Results ............................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Positive Appraisals ................................................................................................................ 24 4.2 Negative evaluation .............................................................................................................. 26 4.3 Topic Orientated Appraisal ................................................................................................... 28 4.4 INSCRIBED ATTITUDE .................................................................................................................. 29 5. Discussion and Analysis ...................................................................................................... 33 5.1 Positive self and negative other evaluation .......................................................................... 33 5.1.1 Johnson’s evaluative style ............................................................................................. 33 5.1.2 Corbyn’s evaluative style .............................................................................................. 36 5.2 The Performance of Populism............................................................................................... 39 5.2.1 People-centric ............................................................................................................... 39 5.2.2 Anti-elite........................................................................................................................ 42 5.3 Applying Appraisal to political Twitter .................................................................................. 44 5.3.1 Retweets: Amplification of Other Voices ...................................................................... 44 5.3.2 Mentions and Hashtags: Interactivity and Imagined Audiences .................................. 46 5.3.3 External links: Evidentiality and Intertextuality ............................................................ 48 5.3.4 Emojis: Gesture as Text ................................................................................................. 49 5.3.5 Typography: Prosody as Text ........................................................................................ 51 5.3.5 Multimedia .................................................................................................................... 52 6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 55 7. References ......................................................................................................................... 58 1. Introduction Social media has changed the way political parties conduct their election campaigns, and the relationship between “content, emotions, and user engagement is a central question for the under- standing of politics in the digital era” (Gerbaudo et al. 2019: 1). Twitter “offers a fertile ground for self- presentation” and is considered by many “to be the preferred ‘political’ medium” (Kissas 2020: 272) as it provides a rapid, unmediated channel to distribute opinions to a wide audience. A number of studies look at how politicians’ use of social media may influence voters (Bright et al. 2020, Barberá et al. 2015) or examine the link between populism and various platforms (De Luca 2021, Kissas 2020, March 2017). Fewer studies focus on the role of evaluative language in achieving these ends (Breeze 2019 & 2020, Gerbaudo et al. 2019, Hoffman 2018, Gross & Johnson 2016), so this study looks to close this gap by exploring how political actors use appraisal to increase support on social media. Using Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Framework, this analysis focuses on how emotion is expressed, and judgements proclaimed, in the tweets of the two main candidates in the 2019 UK General Election: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. The snap General Election in 2019 may represent “one of the highest moments of political conflict in the UK” (De Luca