Riding the Populist Wave. Metaphors of Populism and Anti-Populism in the Daily Mail and The Guardian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2020.i15.686Keywords:
anti-populism, metaphors, media, news, populismAbstract
This paper addresses the construction of the concepts of populism and anti-populism and their metaphorical realisations in British news discourse, and specifically in the Daily Mail and The Guardian, in 2016, a crucial year for populist politics. The analysis of two corpora made of articles from the two newspapers is based on the methodology offered by Corpus Linguistics and Corpus Approach to Critical Metaphor Analysis. The metaphors of populism emerging from the analysis highlight a substantially standardised use of the metaphor POPULISM IS (UPWARD) MOVEMENT, both for populists and anti-populists, but with diverging evaluations. The authors argue that metaphors play a key role in orienting the public perception of populism based on shared modes of understanding social and political life.References
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Baker, Paul. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
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Bourdieu, Pierre. “Social Space and the Genesis of Appropriated Physical Space.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42.1 (2018): 106-114.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
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Conboy, Martin. The Language of the News. London: Routledge, 2007.
De Cleen, Benjamin and Yannis Stavrakakis. “Distinctions and Articulations: A Discourse Theoretical Framework for the Study of Populism and Nationalism.” Javnost 24.4 (2017): 301-319.
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Glaston, William A. “The Year Populism Went Mainstream.” The Wall Street Journal 6 December 2016. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-year-populism-went-mainstream-1481070623. Last visited 18/02/2020.
Grady, Joseph E. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1997.
Hamo, Michael, Zohar Kampf and Nahama Weiss-Yanim. “Populism as a Keyword and as a Meta-Discursive Resource of Positioning in Mediated Political Discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 29 (2018): 1-8.
Henderson, Ailsa, et al. “England, Englishness and Brexit.” The Political Quarterly 87.2 (2016): 187-199.
Jucker, Andreas H. Social Stylistics: Syntactic Variation in British Newspapers. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992.
Kelly, John and François Camille. “This is What Filter Bubbles Look Like.” MIT Technology Review 2018. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611807/this-is-what-filter-bubbles-actually-look-like/. Last visited 17/04/2020.
Kitis, Eliza and Michalis Milapedes. “Read it and Believe it: How Metaphor Constructs Ideology in News Discourse. A Case Study.” Journal of Pragmatics 28 (1997): 557-590.
Kneuer, Marianne. “The Tandem of Populism and Euroscepticism: A Comparative Perspective in the Light of the European Crises.” Contemporary Social Science 14.1 (2018): 26-42.
Kreckel, Reinhard. “‘New’ Social Inequalities and the Renewal of the Theory of Social Inequalities.” Organization Theory and Class Analysis: New Approaches and New Issues. Edited by Stewart R. Clegg. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990. 137-155.
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---. “The Populism/Anti-Populism Divide in Western Europe.” Democratic Theory 5.2 (2018): 1-16.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/22/populism-concept-defines-our-age. Last visited 10/03/2020.
---. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39.4 (2004): 541–563.
Musolff. Andreas. “Dehumanizing Metaphors in UK Immigrant Debates in Press and Online Media.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3.1 (2015): 41-56.
Nikisianis, Nikos, et al. “Populism Versus Anti-populism in the Greek Press: Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory Meets Corpus Linguistics.” Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power. Edited by Tomas Marttila. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 267-294.
Ossowski, Stanislaw. Class Structure in the Social Consciousness. London: Routledge, 1963.
Ostiguy, Pierre. “Populism: A Socio-Cultural Approach.” The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Edited by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017. 73-99.
Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse. Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel-farage-brexit-auschwitz-survivor-eu-parliament-auld-lang-syne-a9308816.html. Last visited 15/02/2020.
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge, 2001.
Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristobal, et al. “Populism: An Overview of the Concept and the State of the Art.” The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 1-26.
Schwartz, Barry. Vertical Classification: A Study in Structuralism and the Sociology of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Scott, Mike. WordSmith Tools version 7. [Computer software.] Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software, 2016.
Semino, Elena. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Stavrakakis, Yannis. “Discourse Theory in Populism Research.” Journal of Language and Politics 16.4 (2017b): 523-534.
---. “How Did ‘Populism’ Become a Pejorative Concept? And Why is this Important Today? A Genealogy of Double Hermeneutics.” POPULISMUS Working Papers 6. Thessaloniki: 2017a. http://www.populismus.gr/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/stavrakakis-populismus-wp-6-upload.pdf.
---. “Populism, Anti-Populism and Democracy.” Political Insight 9/3 (2018): 33-35.
---. “The Return of ‘the People’: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the European Crisis.” Constellations 21.4 (2014): 505-517.
Taguieff. Pierre-André. “Political Science Confronts Populism: From a Conceptual Mirage to a Real Problem.” Telos 103 (1995): 9-43.
Taylor, Ros. “What do British Newspaper Readers Think about Brexit?”. LSE Blogs 12 July 2019. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/07/12/what-do-british-newspaper-readers-think-about-brexit/#comments. Last visited 10/03/2020.
Vann Woodward, Comer. “Who are ‘the people’?” The New Republic 16 May 1981: 32-34.
Yglesias, Matthew. “Obama: Donald Trump is no Populist.” Vox 29 June 2016. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/29/12061728/obama-donald-trump-populist. Last visited 27/04/2020.
Baker, Paul. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
Baker, Peter C. “‘We the People’: The Battle to Define Populism.” Guardian 10 January 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-the-battle-to-define-populism. Last visited 18/02/2020.
Bale, Tim, Stijn van Kessel and Paul Taggart. “Thrown around with Abandon? Popular Understandings of Populism as Conveyed by the Print Media: a UK Case Study.” Acta Politica 46.2 (2011): 111-131.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Social Space and the Genesis of Appropriated Physical Space.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42.1 (2018): 106-114.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
---. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Conboy, Martin. The Language of the News. London: Routledge, 2007.
De Cleen, Benjamin and Yannis Stavrakakis. “Distinctions and Articulations: A Discourse Theoretical Framework for the Study of Populism and Nationalism.” Javnost 24.4 (2017): 301-319.
Etymonline. 2020. https://www.etymonline.com/word/movement. Last visited 05/06/2020.
Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. London: Sage, 2001.
Glaston, William A. “The Year Populism Went Mainstream.” The Wall Street Journal 6 December 2016. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-year-populism-went-mainstream-1481070623. Last visited 18/02/2020.
Grady, Joseph E. Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. PhD Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1997.
Hamo, Michael, Zohar Kampf and Nahama Weiss-Yanim. “Populism as a Keyword and as a Meta-Discursive Resource of Positioning in Mediated Political Discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 29 (2018): 1-8.
Henderson, Ailsa, et al. “England, Englishness and Brexit.” The Political Quarterly 87.2 (2016): 187-199.
Jucker, Andreas H. Social Stylistics: Syntactic Variation in British Newspapers. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992.
Kelly, John and François Camille. “This is What Filter Bubbles Look Like.” MIT Technology Review 2018. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611807/this-is-what-filter-bubbles-actually-look-like/. Last visited 17/04/2020.
Kitis, Eliza and Michalis Milapedes. “Read it and Believe it: How Metaphor Constructs Ideology in News Discourse. A Case Study.” Journal of Pragmatics 28 (1997): 557-590.
Kneuer, Marianne. “The Tandem of Populism and Euroscepticism: A Comparative Perspective in the Light of the European Crises.” Contemporary Social Science 14.1 (2018): 26-42.
Kreckel, Reinhard. “‘New’ Social Inequalities and the Renewal of the Theory of Social Inequalities.” Organization Theory and Class Analysis: New Approaches and New Issues. Edited by Stewart R. Clegg. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990. 137-155.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
LexisNexis. http://www.lexinexis.com/. Last visited 15/01/2020.
Levy, David A. L., Billur Aslan and Diego Bironzo. UK Press Coverage of the EU Referendum. Oxford: Prime Research, Reuters Institute, 2016.
Martinson, Jane. “Daily Mail Backs Brexit in EU Referendum.” Guardian 21 June 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/21/daily-mail-backs-brexit-on-eve-referendum. Last visited17/02/2020.
Moffitt, Benjamin. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
---. “The Populism/Anti-Populism Divide in Western Europe.” Democratic Theory 5.2 (2018): 1-16.
Mudde, Cas. “How Populism Became the Concept that Defines Our Age.” Guardian 22 November 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/22/populism-concept-defines-our-age. Last visited 10/03/2020.
---. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39.4 (2004): 541–563.
Musolff. Andreas. “Dehumanizing Metaphors in UK Immigrant Debates in Press and Online Media.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3.1 (2015): 41-56.
Nikisianis, Nikos, et al. “Populism Versus Anti-populism in the Greek Press: Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory Meets Corpus Linguistics.” Discourse, Culture and Organization: Inquiries into Relational Structures of Power. Edited by Tomas Marttila. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 267-294.
Ossowski, Stanislaw. Class Structure in the Social Consciousness. London: Routledge, 1963.
Ostiguy, Pierre. “Populism: A Socio-Cultural Approach.” The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Edited by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017. 73-99.
Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse. Theory and Practice in Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013.
Peck, Tom. “Nigel Farage Raved about Populism to EU Parliament—Right after an Auschwitz Survivor Spoke.” The Independent 29 January 2020.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nigel-farage-brexit-auschwitz-survivor-eu-parliament-auld-lang-syne-a9308816.html. Last visited 15/02/2020.
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge, 2001.
Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristobal, et al. “Populism: An Overview of the Concept and the State of the Art.” The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 1-26.
Schwartz, Barry. Vertical Classification: A Study in Structuralism and the Sociology of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Scott, Mike. WordSmith Tools version 7. [Computer software.] Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software, 2016.
Semino, Elena. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Stavrakakis, Yannis. “Discourse Theory in Populism Research.” Journal of Language and Politics 16.4 (2017b): 523-534.
---. “How Did ‘Populism’ Become a Pejorative Concept? And Why is this Important Today? A Genealogy of Double Hermeneutics.” POPULISMUS Working Papers 6. Thessaloniki: 2017a. http://www.populismus.gr/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/stavrakakis-populismus-wp-6-upload.pdf.
---. “Populism, Anti-Populism and Democracy.” Political Insight 9/3 (2018): 33-35.
---. “The Return of ‘the People’: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the European Crisis.” Constellations 21.4 (2014): 505-517.
Taguieff. Pierre-André. “Political Science Confronts Populism: From a Conceptual Mirage to a Real Problem.” Telos 103 (1995): 9-43.
Taylor, Ros. “What do British Newspaper Readers Think about Brexit?”. LSE Blogs 12 July 2019. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/07/12/what-do-british-newspaper-readers-think-about-brexit/#comments. Last visited 10/03/2020.
Vann Woodward, Comer. “Who are ‘the people’?” The New Republic 16 May 1981: 32-34.
Yglesias, Matthew. “Obama: Donald Trump is no Populist.” Vox 29 June 2016. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/29/12061728/obama-donald-trump-populist. Last visited 27/04/2020.
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