How People Talk About Politics

Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds. He has written and edited nine books, including Can The Internet Strengthen Democracy?, and has published over a hundred peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. He led the research evaluations of the UK televised election debates in 2010, 2015 and 2017. The seventy interviews conducted for this research were funded by the British Academy.

Everyone likes to talk, fewer like to listen. Fortunately, Stephen Coleman is wonderfully good at listening. In his book, Coleman listens to ordinary people discuss politics, telling us what they say but also how they wish to be heard. Coleman exhibits great generosity when doing so and, when combined with his own deft interpretations, a masterwork results. How People Talk About Politics is a book to be read but also a book to be savored.

• Chapter 1 – Political talk as social practiceChapter 2 – Biographical feelingsChapter 3 – Performing the political genreChapter 4 – Taking positions on BrexitChapter 5 – Unintelligible subjectsChapter 6 – We need to talk – but how? Appendix – About the research methodIndex