Euphoric defiance: The role of positive emotions in the British Eurosceptic discourse

Abstract

Ever since Britain voted to leave the European Union, emotions have dominated the public debate. How negative emotions, such as anger, have impacted the Brexit vote, has been widely researched. Less attention has been focused on the role positive emotions played in debating Britain’s relationship to the EU. Using critical discourse analysis and drawing on appraisal theory to investigate the representation of emotions in six sample texts from a corpus of so-called ‘Euromyths’ ( N = 334), this study argues that positive emotions were used to create a myth in Roland Barthes’ sense to naturalise a Eurosceptic ideology of British defiance and power.

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