La trasformazione neolaburista del 1995. Un caso di ibridazione dei generi del discorso politico

ABSTRACT: This work aims to approach the debate on Labour Party’s Clause IV from the perspective of genre analysis, taking into account the genre variations and macro-textual hybridizations that lie behind lexical change. The rewriting of the Clause IV, approved in 1995, represented the major gap between Blair’s so–called New Labour and the socialist tradition. We will see that a discourse analysis perspective reveals a transformation based on genre change, namely from the legal language of Labour Party’s Rule Book to a quite vague and ambiguous promotional discourse. The features of the legal register that identified the old Clause IV will be highlighted, whereas the rhetorical moves of the New Clause IV will be compared to the moves exploited by companies addressing potential customers. The construction of beneficiaries excludes the category of workers and mirrors a different vision of Labour party’s role within British society.