'The rising of the women is the rising of us all': Stylistic approaches to Repeal the 8th and Save the 8th

The Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution, which restricted access to abortion in Ireland, was repealed as a result of a referendum in May 2018 that represented a significant shift for social justice in Ireland. The campaign to secure reproductive justice for women in Ireland was spearheaded by the group ‘Together for Yes’. Both this group and the anti-choice groups ‘Love Both’ and ‘Pro-life Ireland’ coordinated large parts of their campaigns by utilising a wide range of semiotic resources. This paper will analyse campaign material from both groups, including videos that encouraged the Irish diaspora to come ‘Home to Vote’. Through a combined application of the Appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005), specifically the construal of evaluative judgement, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; 1989), with reference to Haidt’s (2012) foundations of moral judgement, we will examine the divergent linguistic constructions of the core themes of each campaign.