Before undertaking our research, we looked at a previous study relating to the investigation into the accuracy and representation of Hansard as a political database.

Mollin (2007) looked at the suitability of Hansard transcripts as a corpus resource whereby she compared a CA transcript with the Hansard transcript (accessed from the Hansard database). She found that “transcribers and editors also alter speakers’ lexical and grammatical choices towards more conservative and formal variants” (2007:187) and came to the conclusion that linguists are advised to be cautious with the way they look at Hansard transcripts since they are not explicitly made for linguistic purposes.

The paper supports our research in that Hansard is perhaps linguistically inaccurate with some of its claims. For instance, it states that:

“Hansard (the Official Report) is the edited verbatim report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Daily Debates from Hansard are published on this website the next working day by 6am”

Members’ words are recorded by Hansard reporters and then edited to remove repetitions and obvious mistakes but without taking away the meaning.

Our paper will discuss the various implications of the Hansard transcription and will attempt to underline why their representation of the discourse may be considered as inaccurate and perhaps misleading for journalists, members of the public and of course, linguists.