“Technology” in UK Conservative Party rhetoric, 1979–2019: An integrative dual-method conceptual and ideological analysis

This article presents an integrative dual-method conceptual and ideological analysis of British Conservative Party rhetoric from 1979 to 2019, focusing on the concept of “technology”. It demonstrates the Conservatives have embraced “technology” rhetoric, and increasingly done so more than Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The article contends that “technology” rhetoric provides a window into the fluid process of ideological adaptation in Conservative Party politics. It contributes to the subdiscipline of British rhetorical studies in three ways: (1) methodologically, through development of a novel, theoretically informed integrative approach to mixed quantitative-qualitative rhetorical analysis; (2) empirically, through original analysis of a new composite corpus of British political rhetoric; and (3) theoretically, by interrogating use of the versatile political concept “technology” in Conservative Party rhetoric and ideology.