The linguistic construction of populism

The central topic examined in the volume Politics and Populism across Modes and Media edited by Breeze and Fernández Vallejo, namely populist communication, has already received much scholarly attention. The innovative perspective adopted by the authors, however, makes this book an important contribution. Working at the intersection of political science, media studies, and critical discourse analysis, this edited volume offers a valuable insight on the relationship between populist communication and social media across different contexts. 

One of the most interesting features of the volume lies in the inclusion of often-neglected cases such as Pakistan and Puerto Rico, showing that — by abandoning Eurocentrism — the study of populism acquires fascinating nuances and convincingly challenges many assumptions that are often taken for granted in the literature on European populism. Another strong feature of the volume is its eclecticism. The authors rely on both quantitative and qualitative methods, and analyse several types of populist discourses: right- and left-wing, in interaction with Islam, in power and in opposition, generated by politicians and also as a reaction from citizens. While this, at times, produces a very heterogeneous array of styles and approaches, the focus remains convincingly clear and enjoyably entertaining. 

The overall impression is that populist actors build a sense of crisis that in turn generates the conditions for the rise of charismatic leaderships. Leaders claim to be one with the people, protecting the common citizen from corrupt elites and out-groups presented as a threat. This sense of looming catastrophe is created linguistically through an aggressive narrative that builds a Manichean antagonism between the followers of the populist leader or movement and corrupt elites, and is often done by exploiting frustration, fear, and anger. 

Politicians rely on populist discourses to be perceived as ordinary, accessible people, like Tsipras in Greece, while Trump mobilises his voters by creating a category of ‘un-American’ enemies that include Latinos and Muslims. Populist actors claim to be champions of the national good, but while this brings Salvini to produce nativist messages, Imran Khan in Pakistan promotes a modernising agenda focusing on women’s rights and minority protection. Moreover, as the interesting case of Romania shows, populist strategies are widespread across the political spectrum and mainstream parties articulate populist messages too. 

The main merit of this volume consists in presenting the characteristics of populist communication in different cultures and political systems across the world. Another interesting aspect that emerges is the analysis not only of how populism works across media, but also how specific media influence the messages and the way people receive them. Finally, it is praiseworthy the use that the different authors make of the toolkit offered by discourse studies. 

The potential applications of discourse analysis to populist communication are virtually endless, and this volume constitutes an excellent demonstration of the possible directions for research. For example, the authors address several crucial issues concerning the growing polarisation in contemporary politics and the formation of extreme political views, suggesting that this might be a direct consequence of the impact of unmediated channels of communication. The volume presents an extremely interesting introduction to the potential that discourse analysis can offer in analysing mediatised populist messages, but also shows two main weaknesses. 

First, the volume could have approached more systematically the issue of how different media influence the diffusion and reception of populist messages. For example, it would have been interesting to devote less attention to Twitter — which certainly remains together with Facebook the main channel for unmediated political communication— and focus more on emerging channels of unmediated communication between political actors and citizens such as Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, and Medium to mention just a few. 

The second limit of the volume lies in the disproportionate attention it devotes to Donald Trump: four of the twelve chapters analyse Trump’s populist communication from different perspectives. While the relevance of the dramatic changes Trump introduced in both political communication and the use of social media are undeniable, the volume could have continued its precious exploration of less-known and too often neglected cases. 

Another element that the volume touches only indirectly, is the enormous transformation introduced by social media. Political communication in general — and the diffusion of populist messages in particular — rely on the direct transmission of content between political actors and citizens: the anthropological and linguistic mutation caused by this phenomenon could be fruitfully investigated in future volumes of this interesting book series. This edited volume will certainly constitute a point of reference for studies on these topics and on the interplay between populist communication, media and language.