How do speaker characteristics influence use of rhetorical history? Insights from text mining analysis of discourse about Brexit

Management researchers interested in rhetorical history have hitherto paid little attention to how the personal characteristics of managers influence how individuals use the tool of rhetorical history to persuade others. We use advanced text mining tools to explore the impact of gender, education, and political ideology on how speakers use rhetorical history. We derived hypotheses from the management literature on rhetorical history and from moral foundations theory. Our dataset includes a large number of speeches delivered in the British parliament during a debate about Brexit. Our results reveal statistically significant differences in the nature of the historical arguments used by male and female opponents of Brexit. Educational background also influenced how speakers used history, with Oxford and Cambridge graduates mentioning more distant historical events than did other speakers. The findings, which can likely generalize to managerial contexts, highlight the importance of personal characteristics in understanding how leaders use rhetorical history.