Qualitative Analysis of Nigel Farage's Post-Brexit Speech

Abstract

This qualitative report uses a thematic analysis to indicate the main themes and subthemes that occur in the recent speech delivered by the United Kingdom's Independence Party (UKIP) leader, Nigel Farage, after the results of the European Union (EU) referendum came to light. A total of 14 specific codes were identified in the beginning, and were then later reorganised and grouped together into two broader superordinate themes, relating to the themes of identity and intergroup relations and consisting of four finalised subordinate themes; British identity, national identity, in-groups, and the use of pathos (Table 1). Existing literature on identity and intergroup relations were assessed and the finalised themes were applied to these wherever it was possible to do so. The findings of the thematic analysis supported existing literature related to these themes. Nonetheless, an understanding of the attitudes which stem from an identity crisis is surely an issue of importance in such times of increasing current political globalisation.

Keywords: thematic analysis, social identity, national identity, intergroup relations, Brexit, qualitative analysis

A Qualitative Analysis of the Present Themes in Nigel Farage's Post-Brexit Speech

Aristotle's Rhetoric classified three modes of persuasion; pathos, ethos and logos. For the purpose of this report, pathos will be mentioned to help analyse the post-Brexit speech. Pathos in psychology refers to the way in which a public speaker uses emotion to convince the target audience by creating an emotional response that they can relate to (McCormack, 2014).

The United Kingdom(UK) has shown an increase in the interest for voting for UKIP which could be due to many reasons. This is evident as for the first time in years, UKIP gained enough seats to be considered as a main opposition party, besides the Conservative party and the Labour party (Goodwin, 2015). This suggests that the UK feel that they are losing their own identity and are just being considered as another country in the EU, and so are starting to fight for their identity. The social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) could aid to explain why British residents are reluctant to identify with Europe and the EU (Cinnirella & Hamilton, 2007), this being assumed due to the refusal to adopt the use of the Euro and choosing to keep using the Sterling pound, and wanting to leave the EU. Through thematic analysis, previous research on the effects of social identity, specifically within the UK (Abell, Condor & Stevenson, 2006; Stevenson, McNamara & Muldoon, 2014), have concluded that national identity is not simple and is in fact a rather abstract phenomenon, in that it is not clear-cut nor concrete, and has many contributing factors in how and why people identify with others the way that they do.

Allport (1954) recognised that there is evidence of bias within an individual's ingroups due to preferring members within said group. Allport found that the belonging to an ingroup gave a sense of identity to an individual, yet Brewer (1999) thought that ingroups caused conflict with outgroups because they are different but findings of her research discovered that this was not true, as there was no significant correlation.

The reason for this report is to recognise and identify what Nigel Farage is suggesting about identity and intergroup relations within his speech about making the right decision to leave the EU. This is important to identify because these are social psychological concepts which are appearing in current political events, putting psychology into practice.

• Method
  • Participants and Materials

The data for this study were obtained from a speech which had been transcribed by Independent (referred to as post-Brexit speech, see Appendix), after the votes of the referendum, which took place on the 23^rd June 2016, had been counted and released on 23^rd, delivered by UKIP leader, Nigel Farage on the 28^th June 2016. The audio and transcript of the post-Brexit speech can be found at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-brexit-speech-european-parliament-full-transcript-text-a7107036.html . A computer software programme, NVivo was used to aid with coding procedures and to carry out a word frequency count, to recognise and record the weight percentage of words used to show any underlying themes or links within the speech.

• Procedure

As the aim of this study was to identify what Nigel Farage is saying about identity and intergroup relations in his post-Brexit speech, it seemed practical to use a qualitative method, such as thematic analysis, to summarise the raw datum and identify any relevant, underlying themes. For this thematic analysis, the transcript provided by Independent was re-read several times to become familiarised with the data and avoid any information being missed out, reducing the risks of affecting the overall outcome of the results in this report, as missing codes could mean that a theme seems less important in the text, leading to the discarding of said theme. Once the text had been familiarised, similar phrases and quotes were easily identified within the transcript, and were grouped and coded accordingly (Table 1).

Initially, 12 codes were identified, yet there was a large amount of crossover between themes and subthemes was later recognised. In order to reduce the amount of crossover, yet not entirely, broader themes were produced, those being the superordinate theme, whilst still differentiating between the two themes sufficiently. A word frequency count query was run using NVivo (Figure 1), but was later noted to be of no use in analysis and was discarded.

Ethics

One ethical problem in this analysis is the right to withdraw; Farage is unaware that this report has been written about him and therefore does not have the right to withdraw, nor has he given his informed consent for this qualitative analysis to take place. However, it can be assumed that as he is a public figure, and the speech was recorded and released to the public, he gave his consent to the individual who originally recorded the speech.

• Results

Identity - National

The first theme that was identified was national identity, suggesting that, although the UK decided to leave the EU, Farage still suggested that the UK and EU still co-operate with one another and keep the relationship that occurred pre-Brexit, to benefit and help one another, suggesting that the UK's decision to leave the EU was still the right one. The language Farage uses such as 'friends; mutual; both; cooperate' insinuates that the UK has an economic, reward-cost relationship with the EU. Ideas from the social exchange theory (Homans, 1961; Blau, 1964; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) could blame the break of the economic relationship down to the lack of rewards the UK was getting from the EU, in that the UK was putting in more to the EU than they were making use of.

Extract 1: post-Brexit speech, page 1, lines 31-35; post-Brexit speech, page 2, line 50; post-Brexit speech, page 2, lines 62-64

'we now offer a beacon of hope to democrats across the rest of the European continent. I'll make one prediction this morning: the United Kingdom will not be the last member state to leave the European Union.; trade is mutually beneficial to both of us, that trade matters; the United Kingdom will be your friend, that we will trade with you, cooperate with you, we will be your best friends in the world.'

However, regardless of the UK attempting to make a deal with European countries, four of them rejected the deal, with the opinion that the UK should not have the opportunity of any favours after choosing to leave the EU (Sims, 2016). This could also be due to the four countries believing that the UK take more out of the EU than they put in, although still adopting the opinion that the UK should have voted to remain.

Identity - British

The next theme that was identified was the identity of Britain alone, and language used to suggest that the UK will not lose anything now that they have left the EU and do not need to consider itself as a member of anything other than the United Kingdom, all suggest that the British identity is more important than the identity of being a part of Europe, insinuating that Europe has taken Britain and stripped it for its independence, thus deciding that they are better off alone.

Extract 2: post-Brexit speech, page 2, lines 55-56; post-Brexit speech, page 1, lines 28-29; post-Brexit speech, page 1, line 30

'no deal is better for the United Kingdom, no deal is better than the current rotten deal that we've got; we want our country back, we want our fishing waters back, we want our borders back; We want to be an independent, self-governing, normal nation.'

Farage's language also suggests that if the UK were to remain a member of the EU, the other member states would do nothing but hinder us into reaching our full potential, insinuating that he doesn't want the UK to be considered in the European identity, just wants the identity of being British, alone.

Extract 3: post-Brexit speech, page 2, line 64-65

'allow us to go off and pursue our global ambitions and future.'

Pathos

Farage uses certain language to cast the audience's minds back and bring back memories of what the UK used to be like and how problems have developed from being part of the EU during this time. This would affect older adults, causing them to have more sympathy for him and possibly change their minds about the result of the referendum being the correct one. He also tries to boost the self-esteem of the voters, praising their decision and outcome of vote.

Extract 4: post-Brexit speech, page 1, line 1; post-Brexit speech, page 1, lines 24-26

'When I came here 17 years ago; Because what the little people did, what the ordinary people did - what the people who'd been oppressed over the last few years who'd seen their living standards go down did.'

Ingroups

The post-Brexit speech includes a lot of language a dialect that would gain an understanding from people who have been in a similar situation, in the case of the report, this refers to negative situations such as deception and ignorance. For example, Farage uses language that makes him seem the victim of politics, that he was in fact an outcast in UK government and gets this idea across using certain words.

Extract 5: post-Brexit speech, page 1, line 3; post-Brexit speech, page 1, lines 15-17; post-Brexit speech, page 1, line 19; post-Brexit speech, page 1, line 20; post-Brexit speech, page 2, lines 64-65.

'you all laughed at me; by stealth and deception, and without telling the truth to the rest of the peoples of Europe, you have imposed upon them a political union; you simply ignored them; through the back door; allow us to go off and pursue our global ambitions and future.'

All of the extracts from the speech, suggest that Farage is trying to aggravate the peace and cause conflict between British residents and residents in Britain who are European, using his identity of a patriotic Englishman, a victim of humility and deception. ­­­

• Discussion

The data could support that social psychology is current in relation to political events in the current day and that social identity and intergroup relations are current working theories, relating to the previous findings of the social identity theory and intergroup relations.. Tajfel (1979) suggested that social identity is important for individuals in terms of pride and self-esteem. This is evident in relation to this post-Brexit speech as Farage is smug and full of pride, after obtaining the confidence to taunt his peers when the EU referendum results were in his favour, suggesting that residents of the UK supported him and agreed with him.

In analysing the post-Brexit speech, it was possible to identify two themes; identity and intergroup relations. For identity, there were two subthemes; British identity and national identity. Evidence of wanting British identity was shown through Farage's language that he suggests that the EU Parliament let us reach our goals and ambitions by accepting our choice to leave the EU. Despite efforts to avoid crossover between themes, some of the data contained a mix of two or more codes in different themes, as multiple messages could at times be identified in the extracts. This is a common risk within thematic analysis, and potential for such a limitation has been identified previously in the discussions of this qualitative method, as themes are created in line with a researcher's interpretation of the raw data (Braun & Clark, 2006), and as it is a qualitative analysis, it is possible that one theme can be found within the same quote or code. Also, in relation to the themes being created by the researcher, this could potentially lead to researcher bias as they could already possess an opinion of the ideas and themes within a text. In relevance to this report, maybe even an opinion on the speaker, in this case, Nigel Farage, assumptions may be pre-determined and therefore affecting the overall view of the speech before hearing or reading it.

Throughout the deliverance of his post-Brexit speech, Farage emphasised that trade between the UK and other countries who are members of the EU is still in fact a fundamental requirement for future achievement, both for itself to reach its full potential as well as the European countries too and trade is still possible, even without being a member of the EU (Azim, 2017). Assuming this is correct, research such as this- concerning the opinions that stem from one's national identity, specifically in regards to the impact the choice to leave the EU has had on neighbouring nationalities- holds relevance in the current political climate and this time of increasing political globalisation.

An advantage of thematic analysis is that it can summarise key themes and features within a large amount of text, in this case the speech, and explain the data in a more useful, easy way. (Attride-Stirling, 2001) This helps to relate any findings to real life and put psychology into practice. On the other hand, it may be summarised in a way that only the researcher understands and can make the connections, and should therefore be peer-reviewed by fellow researchers. (Vaismoradi, Turunen & Bondas, 2013)

Even though it is evident that Farage shared the similar opinion of just over half of Britain's population, it can be concluded that the data obtained from Farage is not representative of the UK as a union, due to the mere 48 percent (Goodwin & Heath, 2016) who voted against Farage's ideology, and wanted to remain within the EU and many individuals regretted their decision once the results of the referendum were announced, wishing they hadn't opted to leave. Therefore, the analysis of one post-Brexit speech alone is not enough to conclude any findings or to understand Farage's view on identity and intergroup relations. It is suggested that further evidence be investigated to disprove or support the idea that social identity and intergroup relations are that of importance in current politics.

• References

Abell, J., Condor, S. & Stevenson, C. (2006). We are an island: Geographical imagery in accounts of citizenship, civil society and national identity in Scotland and in England. Political Psychology, 27 (2) 207-226.

Allport, G. W. (1979). The nature of prejudice. Basic books.

Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic networks: an analytic tool for qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 1(3), 385-405.

Azim, P. (2017). An Analysis of Economic Implications of the UK Leaving the EU. Iranian Economic Review, 21(1), 71-83.

Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. Transaction Publishers.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.

Brewer, M. B. (1988). A dual process model of impression formation. Advances in Social Cognition, 1.

Cinnirella, M., & Hamilton, S. (2007). Are all Britons reluctant Europeans? Exploring European identity and attitudes to Europe among British citizens of South Asian ethnicity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(3), 481-501.

Goodwin, M. J. (2015). UKIP, the 2015 General Election and Britain's EU Referendum. Political Insight, 6(3), 12-15.

Goodwin, M., & Heath, O. (2016). Brexit vote explained poverty, low skills and lack of opportunities. http://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-low-skills-and-lack-opportunities?gclid=CK-flJnA6NICFaMy0wodbGkPaw

Homans, G. C. (1961). Human behavior: Its elementary forms.

Independent. (2016). Nigel Farage delivers first post-Brexit speech to the European Parliament - in full. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-brexit-speech-european-parliament-full-transcript-text-a7107036.html

Kelley, H. H., & Thibault, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relationships: A theory of interdependence. New York: John Wiley.

McCormack, K. C. (2014) Ethos, Pathos, and Logos: The Benefits of Aristotelian Rhetoric in the Courtroom. Washington University Jurisprudence Review (7)1, pp. 131-155

Sims, G. R. (2016). How the Poor Live, Horrible London. George R. Sims.

Stevenson, C., McNamara, N., & Muldoon, O. (2014). Stigmatised identity and service usage in disadvantaged communities: Residents', community workers' and service providers' perspectives. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 24(6), 453-466.

Stone, J. (2017). Nigel Farage's taunting post-Brexit speech to the European Parliament - in full. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-brexit-speech-european-parliament-full-transcript-text-a7107036.html

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In S. Worchel, & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey CA: Brooks-Cole

Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & Health Sciences, 15(3), 398-405.

Tables and Figures
Table 1

Underlying finalised themes ­discovered in post-Brexit speech

Figure 1. A word cloud created by NVivo, showing the weight percentage of words used in Nigel Farage's post-Brexit speech. Words containing less than 3 letters were not included, therefore are not displayed.      

Appendix

Independent. (2016). Nigel Farage delivers first post-Brexit speech to the European Parliament - in full. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-brexit-speech-european-parliament-full-transcript-text-a7107036.html

Referred to as post-Brexit speech