What is it about?
The words ‘populism’ and ‘populist’ are constantly used in contemporary public debate. However, these words can mean different things to different people. This paper examines how Spanish political figures used the words ‘populism’ and ‘populist’ on Twitter during the period of election campaigning and the formation of a left-wing coalition government at the end of 2019. It explores the meanings and functions of these words in the tweets produced by political actors across the whole political spectrum in a context in which political parties with opposite ideologies (left-wing and right-wing) can be labelled as populist.
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Why is it important?
Scholars highlight the need to understand the meaning of ‘populism’ and 'populist' in political and media discourses. Why are these words so widely used by political and other actors? For what purpose are these words used by politicians themselves? Our analysis confirms that the meaning of 'populism' can be rather vague and variable. However, contrary to previous analyses, it also shows that (i) it is far from being random or meaningless, (ii) it can have different functions in discourse, (iii) it is associated with a concrete set of conceptualisations that vary depending on the author and the target of the use of the word, and on the political and communicative strategy of a political party. Finally, this paper suggests that a linguistic perspective on the study of such a contested concept as populism can offer new ways to understand its role in contemporary socio-political debate.
Perspectives
Working on this article made me think of how fascinating a study of one single word can be. Populism is such a contested term, and it can have so many meanings and interpretations in different contexts and time points. Studying the use of this word in actual discourse and looking at it in a more detailed way by examining different linguistic forms and their functions, all this has helped me to observe the differences between the use of this word in actual political communication and its academic definitions, as well as to point out a variety of things that one single word can do in discourse.
Nadezda Shchinova
Universite catholique de Louvain
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A meaningless buzzword or a meaningful label? How do Spanish politicians use populismo and
populista on Twitter?, Journal of Language and Politics, September 2023, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/jlp.23042.shc.
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