Brexit and the everyday politics of emotion: methodological lessons from history

The 2016 European Union referendum campaign has been depicted as a battle between ‘heads’ and ‘hearts’, reason and emotion. Voters’ propensity to trust their feelings over expert knowledge has sparked debate about the future of democratic politics in what is increasingly believed to be an ‘age of emotion’. In this article, we argue that we can learn from the ways that historians have approached the study of emotions and everyday politics to help us make sense of this present moment. Drawing on William Reddy’s concept of ‘emotional regimes’, we analyse the position of emotion in qualitative, ‘everyday narratives’ about the 2016 European Union referendum. Using new evidence from the Mass Observation Archive, we argue that while reason and emotion are inextricable facets of political decision-making, citizens themselves understand the two processes as distinct and competing

Labels, identity, and narratives in children with primary speech and language impairments

Over time, the labels used for various speech and language impairments change. For example, language impairment in children has been called developmental dysphasia/aphasia, language impairment/ disorder/delay/difficulties (Bishop, 2013). Changes in labels reflect our evolving understanding of the nature of a disorder but also the changing social context and mores. Currently a number of terms are in use for speech and language impairments which may be used differently by practitioners and researchers in education and health contexts. For example, the phrase ‘speech, language, and communication needs’ (SLCN) was coined in the UK by the Bercow review to encompass the widest range of these impairments. However the term is used and understood in a variety of ways by different professionals and not used at all by parents (Dockrell, Lindsay, Roulstone, & Law, 2014; Roulstone & Lindsay, 2012). The use of other labels such as specific language impairment or language delay is by no means straightforward as recent debates have illustrated (Bishop, 2014; Reilly et al., 2014). That debate reflected the views of academics, clinicians, educators, and parents (Bishop, 2014; Huneke & Lascelles, 2014; Lauchlan & Boyle, 2014). While professionals debate the best label to describe language impairments, it is evident that language impairments are not well understood in the public domain when compared with other diagnostic categories such as Autism, and ADHD (Kamhi, 2004)