Public health messaging by political leaders: a corpus linguistic analysis of COVID-19 speeches delivered by Boris Johnson

This study analyses the language of speeches about COVID-19 delivered by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 3rd March 2020 and 5th April 2021. We use transcribed speeches to construct a digitised body of texts called a corpus (plural ‘corpora’) that we analyse linguistically. This approach, ‘corpus linguistics’ uses specialist software to identify common patterns that occur in language, including the frequency and usage of specific words. The results reported here will further inform our investigation of the reception and evaluation of public health messaging and related measures which are of key concerns to our project partners Public Health England, Public Health Wales, and NHS Education for Scotland.