The following article by Chris Tribble illustrates the use of words by two prominent British politicians as reported in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly. Mr Blair was and Mr Brown is (at the time of writing) the British Prime Minister.

Various shades of Brown

There is a new prime minister in Britain, just in case you've not been following events. His name is Gordon Brown, and, for the past 10 years, he has been the UK's chancellor of the exchequer or minister of finance. -Although he's not an unknown quantity, I thought it might be interesting to see what this newspaper has been making of the Brown phenomenon.

First, Gordon Brown the man. What do we know about him? How does he compare with his predecessor Tony Blair? Over the past decade, Brown and Blair have largely been characterised by their roles. Brown has been most frequently associated with plans, lookout, treasury, budget, tax.

Blair, in contrast, is most closely associated with people - Brown, Bush, Ahern and Chirac being names at the top of the list.

Brown and Blair are also both politicians. They have announced, believed, insisted, launched, promised and warned. However, it is Brown who seems to have had the greater control of the agenda. When he has spoken or acted it has been to confirm, declare, focus, lead, reject or unveil policies, groups and new initiatives.

By contrast, Blair has had to apologise, argue, face, hope, offer and try, and has then gone on to appear to contradict, blame or concede. In what must have been difficult circumstances, Blair has also seemed to do various things - from being less than focused to walking on water.

Of course, Blair has also done some more positive things as he has backed, hailed and hugged various people and causes. Brown hasn't been reported as hugging anyone.

If Brown the man has had a reasonable press, how about brown the word? First, brown is not used very frequently (589 times in the past 10 years, compared with 16,159 for red). Second, in this newspaper brown, occurs in some strangely mixed company. The top five collocates for brown are paper, eyes, hair, bear and envelopes.

The eyes and the bear are not a problem, but brown envelopes? If you look at the context, you see that they are the container for money given as a bribe. Let's hope that this isn't the way things are going to be for the new Brown government.