“I am not populist”
Mechanisms for the re-negotiation of category membership on Twitter
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21201064 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laura Filardo Llamas (0000-0002-2644-975X, Universidad de Valladolid), Barbara De Cock (0000-0001-6968-3880, University of Warwick), Philippe Hambye (0000-0003-4990-0432, University of Warwick), Nadezda Shchinova (0000-0002-8769-5903, University of Warwick) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 653-675 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Pragmatics and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1878-9714 • E-ISSN: 1878-9722 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/ps.24027.fil |
| OpenAlex | W4404586025 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 34 |
Situated within studies on discourses about populism ( De Cleen et al., 2018 ), this paper zooms in on the use, meanings, and role of the word populist in contemporary socio-political debates and, more specifically, on social media. This paper examines populist as stigma term ( Kranert, 2020 ) and seeks to determine how people negotiate their categorisation as (non-)populist — and hence the meaning of this category — on Twitter. Based on the analysis of 139 tweets including the phrase “I am not populist” in four different languages (Dutch, French, English, Spanish), we propose that two patterns can be identified for the renegotiation of users’ identities as populist: denial and self-categorisation. This analysis confirms that populist as a category can refer to a variety of (political) attitudes and orientations and shows the consequences of the polysemous nature of populist while proving that, in certain contexts, populist refers to some specific and stable categories
Denial · Epistemology · Linguistics · Negotiation · Phrase · Political science · Politics · Populism · Social category · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Linguistic research and analysis · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Psychology
Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe
Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science
Researching Language and Social Media
The stance triangle
Lectures on Conversation
An Introduction to Functional Grammar
Critical research on populism
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis
What's in a buzzword? A systematic review of the state of populism research in political science
Discursive constructions of populism in opinion-based journalism
Populism as an Expression of Political Communication Content and Style
Stance and dialogicity in Barack Obama and George W. Bush's farewell addresses to the nation
Thrown around with abandon? Popular understandings of populism as conveyed by the print media
Populism, the media, and the mainstreaming of the far right
Don't call me a populist! The meaning of populism for western European parties and politicians
Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy
A meaningless buzzword or a meaningful label? How do Spanish politicians usepopulismoandpopulistaon Twitter
Populism as political communication style
Moving forward with membership categorization analysis
The Populist Zeitgeist
From expressing solidarity to mocking on Twitter
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |