For the many, not the few

This chapter provides a transitivity analysis of the 2017 labour manifesto that offers insights into the linguistic patterns employed by the centre-left party and, in turn, determines whether Labour can be considered to adopt a populist stance. The focus was on the process types together with their corresponding semantic roles. The most common process was the (inter)action category, a finding that coincides with other studies on transitivity in which actions and events are central to discourse. According to Akkerman the term populism was first officially used in connection with the North American People’s party and a Russian political movement, known as the Narodniki, in the 19th century. The 2017 Labour manifesto, entitled “For the many, not the few”, consists of 12 subsections. Each addresses an issue in British society, such as healthcare or social security. The dataset used comprises the foreword (FWD) and five subsections of the 2017 Labour manifesto, producing a sample of 10,494 words.