Duelling Commonwealth Family of Nations Metaphors and Britain’s Post-Brexit Global Identity

Abstract

This study examines the communication of conceptual metaphors in contemporary narratives of British politics, and specifically, the competitive communication of a Commonwealth 'family of nations' metaphor in the context of ongoing Brexit debates. This line of inquiry has been pursued through an analysis of parliamentary speeches made in the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the period from 23 June 2015 (1 year before the EU Referendum) through October 2018, facilitated by the use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. Although multiple 'family of nations' metaphors were identified, British parliamentarians made more references to the Commonwealth as a family unit than other multinational groupings, and two prominent variants of this family metaphor have been defined.Speakers competed for control over the meaning of the base metaphor, with mainly English Conservative speakers communicating a positive aspirational variant (framing the Commonwealth as a historically-rooted, harmonious and prosperous alternative to the EU), while speakers from the other main parties communicated a competing critical judgmental variant (framing the Commonwealth as discriminatory, unequal and failing to defend shared human rights principles). It is argued that this metaphor, and particularly its positive aspirational variant, contributes to a broader communicative effort to encourage the imagination of a transnational and global British orientation and identity outside Europe.

The Use of Historical Analogy in the 2017 Parliamentary Debates on the Future of Post-Brexit Commonwealth Trade

“…Political scientists have noted the prominent role that conservative historians who support the idea of deepening Anglosphere ties have played in the debate about Brexit (Vucetic, in press). A study of how speakers in parliament represented the Commonwealth in the period between June 2015 and October 2018 (Eaton, 2019) has shown that there was a marked increase in the frequency of references to the Commonwealth as a ‘family of nations’ in the 2-month period following Theresa May’s 17 January 2017 ‘Global Britain’ speech. Eaton (2019) found that Conservative speakers were far more likely to use the metaphor of the Commonwealth as a family than were speakers in other political parties, particularly Labour, with this metaphor being used 59 times by Conservative MPs and just four times by Labour MPs.…”

A Certain Class of Undesirables

“…This metaphor functioned to deepen the political, economic, military, social and cultural ties between Britain and the settler colonies (Bell, 2009;Brysk et al, 2002;McIntyre, 1998;Namusoke, 2016). In the process, a collective identity could be created between the people of Britain and those in the white dominions, strengthening the United Kingdom's position in the international system (Eaton, 2020). An inherent part of this conception was the presentation of Britain as a generous and welcoming 'mother country '. Furthermore, this metaphor is gendered because it is based on a notion of social hierarchy within the unity of the family, where gender functions as a tool of subordination (McClintock, 1993).…”

“…According to Nadine Chan, however, the way this metaphor is used changes depending on what the 'mother country' needs (Chan, 2013). When there is economic or political instability or threat, the family metaphor is used to substitute cooperation with local people for colonial hierarchy (Chan, 2013;Eaton, 2020). The family metaphor was not unique to Britain or the British empire and was used in other contexts too (Buettner, 2017;Laarman, 2013;Mills & Lefrançois, 2018).…”