The Grammar of Politics: A Brief History of Legislative Language in Britain

Abstract

Legislative language is a crucial, yet somewhat overlooked element of British politics. So how has the language of British legislation changed over the past century? For this study, all 191,080 pages of legislation enacted between 1900 and 2015 were assessed for changes in the quantity of legislation, and 5,878 sections of legislation from 1920 to 2015 were analysed for changes to the quality of language. Parts of speech that affect the subject, object and verb of sentences were recorded, giving a novel long‐term study of indeterminacy in legislative language. Findings show that interpreting legislation became increasingly dependent on circumstance and discretion after the war. Change further accelerated after 1975. This reflected a widening gap between public demands placed on government power and the difficulties faced in accommodating these demands.

Building Confidence in Using New Research Methods: Reflections From a Former Numerophobe’s Use of Computer Programming and Advanced Statistics

“…To see through the wide-angled lens, I was going to have to measure these parts of speech across many years of legislation. For my doctorate, I did this by hand, painstakingly reading nearly 9,000 sampled sections of legislation (Williams, 2016;Williams, 2017a). This produced the goods, but sated my appetite for more.…”

The Coproduction of Primary and Secondary Legislation: Israel as a Case Study of Substitutive Relationships

“…Therefore, fewer delegated provisions were implemented or used in new primary legislation from 1985 to 2009 than during the years prior to 1985 [H3]. Overall, this evidence demonstrates that the relationship between primary and secondary legislation is not only shaped by the “letter of the law” and the legislative process but is also subject to discretion through the policy process (Page ; Williams , ). This could also mean that a relatively large amount of primary legislation was not implemented by secondary legislation.…”

Legislative language and judicial politics: The effects of changing parliamentary language on UK immigration disputes

“…Third, framing the debate on UK immigration law does not constrain the wider interest of the research. All UK legislation has become increasingly indeterminate, not just that pertaining to immigration (Williams, 2016(Williams, , 2017. Furthermore, comparative politics and public debate will both benefit from consideration of the legal language as an important variable.…”