“Experience Doesn’t Pay the Bills” Exploring the Identity-Populism Nexus in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Political Activism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2020.i15.599Keywords:
identity nexus, multimodal critical discourse analysis, populist discourse, TwitterAbstract
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), currently the youngest Representative of the United States Congress, is intent on convincing the American political system to put the material interests of ordinary people above those of the economic elite. After her 2018 upset victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District, AOC seems to devote the bulk of her political message to establishing an identity-based connection with her constituents, especially through her Twitter account which she uses as an agenda-setting tool. However, her willingness to appeal to the people as well as her marked anti-elitist rhetoric have often aligned her with a populist identity which, this study poses, she leverages along with her personal, cultural and political identities to increase her relatability factor and legitimize her role as the people’s representative. The aim of this investigation is, therefore, twofold: firstly, to assess the extent to which this nexus or blend of identities influences AOC’s political activism and, secondly, to evaluate the impact of populist undercurrents on her style of communication. To this purpose, by applying a methodological framework that combines the resources of qualitative approaches, such as transitivity, appraisal and multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study analyzes a corpus of AOC tweets containing verbal and non-verbal instantiations of self-representational strategies and features that provide evidence of a nexus of identities and of how this construct can reconcile the coexistence of AOC’s multiple narratives.References
Belk, Russell W. “Possessions and the Extended Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 15 (1988): 139-168.
Block, Elena and Ralph Negrine. “The Populist Communication Style: Toward a Critical Framework.” International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 178-197.
Canovan, Margaret. “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy.” Democracies and the populist challenge. Edited by Yves Mény and Yves Surel. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 25-44.
---. The People. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
---. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies 47.1 (1999): 2-16.
Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers,1997.
Chadwick, Andrew. The Hybrid Media System: Politics and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Da Silva, Chantal. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has as Many Twitter Followers as Incoming Democratic Freshman House Members Combined.” Newsweek 18 October 2018. https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-has-many-twitter-followers-incoming-60-democratic-1251551. Last visited 28/04/2019.
Data Miner. [Computer software.] Software Innovation Lab LLC, 2019 https://data-miner.io/. Last visited 05/05/2020.
Deng, Francis M. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: Brookings, 1995.
Erikson Erik, H. Identity, Youth, and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.
Ernst, Nicole, Sven Engesser and Frank Esser. “Bipolar Populism? The Use of Anti-Elitism and People-Centrism by Swiss Parties on Social Media.” Swiss Political Science Review 23.3 (2017): 253-261.
Fairclough, Norman. Critical Discourse Analysis, the Critical Study of Language. London: Longman, 1995.
Fairclough, Norman and Ruth Wodak. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Edited by Teun Van Dijk. London: SAGE, 1997. 258-284.
Fenno, Richard. Home Style: House Members in their Districts. Reading: Addison Wesley, 1978. Fukuyama Francis. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
Halliday, Michael. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold, 1985. Halliday, Michael and Christian Matthiessen. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Routledge, 2004.
Herring, Susan C. “Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis: An Approach to Researching Online Behavior.” Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Edited by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling and James H. Gray. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 338-376.
---. “Emergent Forms of Computer-Mediated Communication and Their Global Implications.” LinguaPax Review 2017. World Language Diversity: Old and New Frontiers, Emerging Scenarios 5 (2017): 94-130.
Heyes, Cressida. “Identity Politics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018). Edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/identity-politics. Last visited 02/06/2020.
Hong, Sounman. “Who Benefits from Twitter? Social Media and Political Competition in the US House of Representatives.” Government Information Quarterly 30.4 (2013): 464-471.
Inglehart, Ronald F. and Pippa Norris. “Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash.” HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-026 (August 2016).
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/trump-brexit-and-rise-populism-economic-have-nots-and-cultural-backlash. Last visited 29/04/2020.
Jagers, Jan and Stefaan Walgrave. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 46.3 (2007): 319-345.
Johnson, Ben. “What is Hanukkah?” Acton Institute 24 December 2019. https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/12/03/faq-what-hanukkah. Last visited 10/04/2020.
Judis, John B. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2017.
Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold Publishers, 2001.
---. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 2006.
Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. London: Verso, 2005a.
---. “Populism: What’s in a Name?’” Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. Edited by Francisco Panizza. London: Verso, 2005b. 32-49.
Ledin, Per and David Machin. “Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis.” Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis. Edited by John Flowerdew and John Richardson. London: Routledge, 2018. 60-76.
Machin, David. “What is Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies?” Critical Discourse Studies 10.4 (2013): 347-355.
Machin, David and Andrea Mayr. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: SAGE, 2012.
Martin James R. and Peter R. White. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal of English. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro. “Populism and the Media.” Twenty-first Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 49-64.
McNeill, David. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Moffitt, Benjamin. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Mudde, Cas. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39.4 (2004): 541–563.
Mudde, Cas and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, edited by. Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Muñoz, Gabriella. “Liberals’ Failure to Win Majority Support for Marquee Legislation Reveals Democrats’ Divisions.” The Washington Times 12 May 2019. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/12/green-new-deal-medicare-all-fail-win-democrat-supp/. Last Visited 05/11/2019.
Negrine, Ralph and Stylianos Papathanassopoulos. “The Transformation of Political Communication.” Media Perspectives for the 21st Century. Edited by Stylianos Papathanassopoulos. London: Routledge, 2011. 41-54.
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Papacharissi, Zizi. “Without You, I’m Nothing: Performances of the Self on Twitter.” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 1989-2006.
Rasulo, Margaret. “The Economic Framing of Populism: A Linguistic Overview of US and UK Newspaper Headlines.” I-Land Journal. Identity, Language and Diversity 2 (2017): 11-44.
Rooduijn, Matthijs and Tjitske Akkerman. “Flank Attacks: Populism and Left-Right Radicalism in Western Europe.” Party Politics 23.3 (2017): 193–204.
Schab, Nikki. “Ocasio-Cortez Says She Once Acted like a ‘white dude’ to Fit in.” New York Post 27 February 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/02/27/the-secret-to-ocasio-cortezs-success-act-like-a-white-dude/. Last visited 05/11/2019.
Stanley-Becker, Isaac. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals Jewish Ancestry at Hanukkah Celebration.” The Washington Post 10 December 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/10/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-reveals-jewish-ancestry-hanukkah-celebration/. Last visited 28/04/2020.
Stavrakakis, Yannis and Giorgos Katsambekis. “Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA.” Journal of Political Ideologies 19 (2014): 119-142.
Taggart, Paul. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.
---. “Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics.” Democracies and the Populist Challenge. Edited by Yves Mény and Yves Surel. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 62-80.
Taylor, Charles. The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Triandafyllidou, Anna and Ruth Wodak. “Conceptual and Methodological Questions in the Study of Collective Identities: An Introduction.” Journal of Language and Politics. 2.2 (2003): 205-223.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Van Leeuwen, Theo. “Critical Analysis of Multimodal Discourse.” The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol Chapelle. London: Blackwell, 2013. 4002-4006. Vignoles, Vivian L. “Identity Motives.” Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. Edited by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles. New York: Springer, 2011. 403-432.
White, Peter R.R. “Appraisal Theory.” The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. Edited by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie and Tod Sandel. New York, NY: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 1-8. Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourse Means. London: SAGE, 2015.
Block, Elena and Ralph Negrine. “The Populist Communication Style: Toward a Critical Framework.” International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 178-197.
Canovan, Margaret. “Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy.” Democracies and the populist challenge. Edited by Yves Mény and Yves Surel. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 25-44.
---. The People. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
---. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies 47.1 (1999): 2-16.
Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers,1997.
Chadwick, Andrew. The Hybrid Media System: Politics and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Da Silva, Chantal. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has as Many Twitter Followers as Incoming Democratic Freshman House Members Combined.” Newsweek 18 October 2018. https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-has-many-twitter-followers-incoming-60-democratic-1251551. Last visited 28/04/2019.
Data Miner. [Computer software.] Software Innovation Lab LLC, 2019 https://data-miner.io/. Last visited 05/05/2020.
Deng, Francis M. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington: Brookings, 1995.
Erikson Erik, H. Identity, Youth, and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.
Ernst, Nicole, Sven Engesser and Frank Esser. “Bipolar Populism? The Use of Anti-Elitism and People-Centrism by Swiss Parties on Social Media.” Swiss Political Science Review 23.3 (2017): 253-261.
Fairclough, Norman. Critical Discourse Analysis, the Critical Study of Language. London: Longman, 1995.
Fairclough, Norman and Ruth Wodak. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Edited by Teun Van Dijk. London: SAGE, 1997. 258-284.
Fenno, Richard. Home Style: House Members in their Districts. Reading: Addison Wesley, 1978. Fukuyama Francis. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. London: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
Halliday, Michael. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold, 1985. Halliday, Michael and Christian Matthiessen. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Routledge, 2004.
Herring, Susan C. “Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis: An Approach to Researching Online Behavior.” Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning. Edited by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling and James H. Gray. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 338-376.
---. “Emergent Forms of Computer-Mediated Communication and Their Global Implications.” LinguaPax Review 2017. World Language Diversity: Old and New Frontiers, Emerging Scenarios 5 (2017): 94-130.
Heyes, Cressida. “Identity Politics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018). Edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/identity-politics. Last visited 02/06/2020.
Hong, Sounman. “Who Benefits from Twitter? Social Media and Political Competition in the US House of Representatives.” Government Information Quarterly 30.4 (2013): 464-471.
Inglehart, Ronald F. and Pippa Norris. “Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash.” HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-026 (August 2016).
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/trump-brexit-and-rise-populism-economic-have-nots-and-cultural-backlash. Last visited 29/04/2020.
Jagers, Jan and Stefaan Walgrave. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 46.3 (2007): 319-345.
Johnson, Ben. “What is Hanukkah?” Acton Institute 24 December 2019. https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/12/03/faq-what-hanukkah. Last visited 10/04/2020.
Judis, John B. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2017.
Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold Publishers, 2001.
---. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 2006.
Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. London: Verso, 2005a.
---. “Populism: What’s in a Name?’” Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. Edited by Francisco Panizza. London: Verso, 2005b. 32-49.
Ledin, Per and David Machin. “Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis.” Handbook of Critical Discourse Analysis. Edited by John Flowerdew and John Richardson. London: Routledge, 2018. 60-76.
Machin, David. “What is Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies?” Critical Discourse Studies 10.4 (2013): 347-355.
Machin, David and Andrea Mayr. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: SAGE, 2012.
Martin James R. and Peter R. White. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal of English. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro. “Populism and the Media.” Twenty-first Century Populism. The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 49-64.
McNeill, David. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Moffitt, Benjamin. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Mudde, Cas. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39.4 (2004): 541–563.
Mudde, Cas and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, edited by. Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Muñoz, Gabriella. “Liberals’ Failure to Win Majority Support for Marquee Legislation Reveals Democrats’ Divisions.” The Washington Times 12 May 2019. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/12/green-new-deal-medicare-all-fail-win-democrat-supp/. Last Visited 05/11/2019.
Negrine, Ralph and Stylianos Papathanassopoulos. “The Transformation of Political Communication.” Media Perspectives for the 21st Century. Edited by Stylianos Papathanassopoulos. London: Routledge, 2011. 41-54.
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Papacharissi, Zizi. “Without You, I’m Nothing: Performances of the Self on Twitter.” International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 1989-2006.
Rasulo, Margaret. “The Economic Framing of Populism: A Linguistic Overview of US and UK Newspaper Headlines.” I-Land Journal. Identity, Language and Diversity 2 (2017): 11-44.
Rooduijn, Matthijs and Tjitske Akkerman. “Flank Attacks: Populism and Left-Right Radicalism in Western Europe.” Party Politics 23.3 (2017): 193–204.
Schab, Nikki. “Ocasio-Cortez Says She Once Acted like a ‘white dude’ to Fit in.” New York Post 27 February 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/02/27/the-secret-to-ocasio-cortezs-success-act-like-a-white-dude/. Last visited 05/11/2019.
Stanley-Becker, Isaac. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals Jewish Ancestry at Hanukkah Celebration.” The Washington Post 10 December 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/10/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-reveals-jewish-ancestry-hanukkah-celebration/. Last visited 28/04/2020.
Stavrakakis, Yannis and Giorgos Katsambekis. “Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA.” Journal of Political Ideologies 19 (2014): 119-142.
Taggart, Paul. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000.
---. “Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics.” Democracies and the Populist Challenge. Edited by Yves Mény and Yves Surel. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 62-80.
Taylor, Charles. The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Triandafyllidou, Anna and Ruth Wodak. “Conceptual and Methodological Questions in the Study of Collective Identities: An Introduction.” Journal of Language and Politics. 2.2 (2003): 205-223.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Van Leeuwen, Theo. “Critical Analysis of Multimodal Discourse.” The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol Chapelle. London: Blackwell, 2013. 4002-4006. Vignoles, Vivian L. “Identity Motives.” Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. Edited by Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles. New York: Springer, 2011. 403-432.
White, Peter R.R. “Appraisal Theory.” The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. Edited by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie and Tod Sandel. New York, NY: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 1-8. Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourse Means. London: SAGE, 2015.
Downloads
Published
2020-06-01
Issue
Section
Articles: Special Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Margherita Rasulo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Iperstoria is an Open Access journal.- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 BY-NC License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of their work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. We require authors to inform us of any instances of re-publication.
