LANGUAGE is important in politics.

In a sense, it's all politics is, from the hustings or television debates to bills and acts written in legalese. The latter need not detain us. They're for those and such as those and not for us commoners, whose fare, in Scotia Minor at least, is the straightforward soundbite, today usually containing a twisted threat or warning. In essence: stay in your place.

We hear but only the weakest obey. Besides, that's language mediated through the media. Real political talking takes place in parliaments, places where politicians go to escape the people.

Fine words unheard by the mob have spewed forth in such institutions over the years, and now Glasgow University linguists will analyse more than 2.3 billion of those trilled at yonder Westminster between 1803 and 2003.

They'll chart the incidence of topics such as war, honesty, honour, homosexuality and terrorism, and also examine how the language of individual MPs changes. Shame it stops at 2003. Median Labour statesman or woman 2004: "We will oppose the wicked Conservatives unceasingly." And 2014: "We stand shoulder to shoulder with our Conservative colleagues against the cancer of independence."

As a columnist, I've little time for topics, but language fascinates me. Folk have ever complained that it's not what it used to be, though today it is undeniably wan and cautious, as minor gaffes are construed as major splits.

Maybe it was ever thus. Humphrey Catiline committed the harmless blunder of trying to overthrow the Roman government and, in 63BC, was torn to shreds by Albert Cicero, who said in the Senate: "How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity hurl itself?"

Of course, what he actually said was something about patientia nostra and ad finem sese effrenata: meaningless bilge, in other words. Fortunately, nobody talks like that any more. Or like this: "Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place?"

That was yon Cromwell, not in Senga's Sauna, Embra, but to the Commons in 1653. In 1791, the same sordid place saw William Wilberforce ululate against the arguably iniquitous practice of slavery: "Let us not despair. It is a blessed cause and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory. We have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature … "

Stirring stuff, and how rerr to hear the word "ere" there. Maiden speeches are supposed to be uncontroversial but one by the Conservatives' FE Smith (in olden times, many people had initials instead of first names) is said to have been the most famous ever made. Effie used the occasion to quote the poet Dryden on fortune: "I can enjoy her while she's kind; But when she dances in the wind, And shakes her wings, and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away."

I think we can see a theme developing here. But, leaving aside prostitutes, and passing over the wondrous beaches and hills of Churchill, we cast our eyes on recent times.

Tony Blair post-9/11 was riveting at Labour conference ("Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater"), by Donald Dewar on Scotland's past ("the shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards, the speak of the Mearns rooted in the land"), by Neil Kinnock on the Tory threat ("I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to get old").

Later, the latter spent more time warning against left-wingers, nuclear disarmers, and independence supporters. But that's the way it goes.

The independence debate has thrown up remarkably little linguistic heroics, with only Labour leader Johann Lamont showing any spark: "See they Nats, ah pure hate thum so ah do."

Back at Westminster, I predict the Glasgow researchers won't find more stirring words than those of Viscount Amberley to the House of Lords in 1978: "This House is indisputably Marxist and inherits the banner of the Red Army of the Soviet Union."

To which he added: "The official rating of the human race in the northern hemisphere is: toad." Says it all really.