How gesture shapes political identity: A multimodal analysis of adverbs of negation and modals in the discourse of Nigel Farage and Reform UK

Abstract

By stating their ideology and policies, new parties are able to affirm their authority as legitimate participants in the democratic process. Defining the political party’s identity through affirmation means also acknowledging the boundaries of this identity. This can be identified through markers of negation. Socially, a community’s identity can be defined not only by what it is, but also by what it is not. Linguistically, the use of negative structures implies that there is a corresponding affirmative statement. Gesturally, it has been argued that negation involves specific types of gestures. The verbal and visual markers of negation can therefore be transposed on to the discursive interface. This article focuses on two speeches given by Nigel Farage, the leader of the political party Reform UK. It argues that negation serves an important role in the construction of the new political party’s identity by facilitating the process of identifying the available and desirable options for identity construction. Gesture analysis is integrated into the linguistic analysis of the adverbs of negation not, -n’t and never in the verbal group, with a focus on the force-dynamic properties of modal auxiliary verbs in relation to negation.