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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 25:3 (2026) ► pp.295–330

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Navigating Brexit through fear

An appraisal analysis of 2016–2024 British Prime Ministerial discourse

 | Masaryk University Brno | Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
ORCiD logo with link | Masaryk University Brno | Aston UniversityBirmingham | Loughborough University LondonLondon
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 28 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.25151.dia
Abstract
Addressing a highly intriguing question of the persistence of fear-based appeals in the Brexit context, the article provides the first comprehensive longitudinal analysis of such discourse in the British Prime Ministerial communication on Brexit across the post-referendum period (2016–2024). It draws on and adapts Lazarus’ appraisal theory of emotion and combines content analysis with the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, applied to a large, multi-genre dataset. The study shows that fear did not dissipate after the referendum but evolved and was strategically redeployed across successive leaderships. While May and Johnson used a more confrontational and populist rhetoric, Sunak adopted a more technocratic and policy-oriented variant — yet fear remained a subtle but powerful element through the period. The analysis advances existing scholarship by demonstrating how emotional rhetoric adapts to changing political contexts and leadership styles and offering a broader perspective on the discursive instrumentalisation of fear.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review and contribution to scholarship
  • 3.Contextualising Brexit and the broader communicative environment
  • 4.Theoretical and conceptual background
  • 5.Data
  • 6.Methodological framework
  • 7.Discursive construction of fear appeals: Analysis and findings
    • 7.1Scope and issue structure
  • 8.Discourse‑strategic structure of fear appeals
    • 8.1Nomination strategy
    • 8.2Predication strategy
    • 8.3Argumentation strategy
    • 8.4Framing strategy
    • 8.5Intensification strategy
  • 9.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Corpus of data referenced in the article
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