Network for Oratory and Politics

Network for Oratory and Politics

Professor Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow) on referendum rhetoric in public debate.

Murray Pittock’s lecture, 'Referendum Rhetoric: political debate, personal valency and the triumph of ante occupatio in print, electronic and social media, 2013-15’ addressed the rhetoric of the referendum campaign. The lecture looked at questions of authority, the level of public debate, and whether and how the use of rhetoric varied given the high degree of migration of the debate to social media during the campaign.

Watch the full lecture here or on YouTube.

Murray Pittock on Referendum Rhetoric

Murray Pittock is Pro Vice-Principal of the University of Glasgow and a leading expert on Scottish identity internationally, author of The Road to Independence? Scotland in the Balance (2014) and of the five part series on The Roots of Scottish Nationalism for Radio 4, which attracted an aggregate audience of over 6 million. In the 1980s and 90s, he presented the Rhetoric for Engineers session in the Edinburgh M Eng degree and was a member of the British Isles international debate team and Visiting Scholar of the Speech Communication Association of America.