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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 22:6 (2023) ► pp.846–868

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A meaningless buzzword or a meaningful label? How do Spanish politicians use populismo and populista on Twitter?

ORCiD logo with link | UC Louvain
Published online: 22 September 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23042.shc
Abstract
While there is substantial research on populism and populist discourse, research on discourses about populism is still developing. Scholars highlight the need to understand why populism is so widely used and what the rapid spread of this socio-political keyword tells us about political and media discourse. The main objective of this paper is therefore to understand discourses on populism. To this aim, we examine for what purpose the terms populism and populist – henceforth populis* – are used and what they allow to do in discourse. Based on the analysis of a corpus of tweets produced by political figures in Spain, we show that, contrary to previous analyses, populis* does not have the sole function of being a randomly used buzzword or of proposing an anti-populist discourse. Indeed, our analysis shows that political actors resort to different patterns of use of populis* depending on their political and communicative strategy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Populism, from empty signifier to socio-political keyword
    • 2.2The Spanish case study
    • 2.3Political communication on Twitter
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Overview of the occurrences of populis* in the corpus
    • 4.2What happens when Spanish politicians talk about populismo(s) and populista(s) on Twitter?
      • The abstract use of populis*
      • The concrete use of populis*
      • Populis* in the reported speech of an opponent
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (29)
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