How Elites Mobilize the Vernacular: A Case Study of Australian Prime Ministers’ Use of ‘Fair Go’ Rhetoric

Abstract

Prime ministers often use vernacularisms in their political rhetoric, but we know little about how they deploy these forms of speech and the consequences for politics and policy. This article extends work on the ‘rhetorical PM’ by focusing on how leaders deploy idiomatic expressions in their oratory. The article presents a thematic analysis of four successive Australian prime ministers’ use of the country’s distinctive ‘fair go’ expression in speeches and media interviews between 1972 and 1996. Australian PMs increasingly invoked the ‘fair go’ expression throughout this period for multiple rhetorical purposes, including to make national identity claims, engage in partisan competition and justify policy reforms with strong neoliberal elements. While prevailing scholarship sees ‘vernacular politics’ as a tool of grassroots actors opposing discourses of globalization and elite-driven reform, this research shows the vernacular is a versatile rhetorical tool mobilized by elites for multiple purposes, including to justify radical policy change.