Thatcher's legacy in the Brexit debate

This thesis analyses how the English newspapers the Telegraph and The Guardian refer to Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister in England from 1979 to 1990 who died in 2013) in the debate on Brexit (which lasted from February to June 2016). The study is divided into two parts: a background allowing us to comprehend the theme treated and an analysis based on 65 articles coming from two corpora. On the one hand, we focused on Thatcher, speaking consecutively of her education, her political career, about the notion of 'Thatcherism' and about her relationship with the European Union. Then, we explained how Brexit happened. We gave a chronological recall of the United Kingdom’s historical relationship with the European Union by recounting all the Prime Ministers that were in office from the start of membership integration to the Brexit vote, and we analysed the arguments of both the Remainers and the Leavers’ side. Finally, we focused on the newspapers in England and on their link with politics and most especially, on the Telegraph and on The Guardian On the other hand we carried out various textual analysis of the articles of our two corpora to assess how the newspapers used the name of Margaret Thatcher in order to make their readers into voting for or against the Brexit. We studied consecutively the number of articles, the use of the word Thatcher in the titles, the use of the word 'legacy' in the articles, the use of the words 'Thatcher' and 'legacy' when written in the same sentence and how Thatcher is used within articles. We concluded that both broadsheets mostly used Thatcher's memory as an argument of authority for supporting – in the case of the Telegraph – or to go against – in the case of The Guardian – the Brexit.