Communicating climate change in UK parliamentary politics: Discursive fluctuation over time

This paper examines how UK politicians discuss climate change and how this evolves over time. Using the Hansard corpus for parliamentary debates in the UK House of Commons, we analyse the relative stability or changeability of collocates of “climate” during a ten-year period (2014–2023). The study takes a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) approach, applying collocational Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA) to a corpus of approximately 100 million words in order to identify and track climate collocates according to their consistency or type of changeability (transient, initiating, or terminating). Findings reveal three periods or points of relative stability/consistency (2014–2017, 2021, 2023) and two periods of change (2018–2020, 2021–2022). Consistent collocates of “climate” variably refer to the economy or economic issues related to climate change, metaphors of war/conflict that highlight climate action and climate change impact, and what we identify as a form of climate exceptionalism or leadership. Notable patterns of change include the transitory inclusion of other voices (scientists, young people, activists). They also include the initiation of more varied and nuanced journey metaphors related to climate action, reference to climate change as a crisis or emergency, and more explicit discussion of nature and the natural environment. These patterns of fluctuation are interpreted in light of a variety of key social, political, and climactic events during the ten-year period, e.g. amendments to the UK Climate Change Act and the emergence and activities of new climate activist groups.