Situated within studies on discourses about populism (De Cleen et al., 2018), this paper zooms in onthe use, meanings, and role of the word populist in contemporary socio-political debates and, morespecifically, 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” infour 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.

​This article examines the uses of the words populism(s) and populist(s)—hereafter populis*—by Members of Parliaments from Belgium, France, and Spain in 2019. It presents noteworthy findings unexplored in the literature on the uses of populis*. First, when employed by MPs, populis* refers mainly to actions, discourses and elusive threats rather than directly blaming political enemies (except in Spain). Second, in the three focal countries, populis* is mainly used pejoratively by right and centre-right MPs as a strategy implemented to disqualify political projects and discourses deemed nationalist, demagogical, and extremist. The originality of our study lies in demonstrating similar trends in Belgium, France, and Spain, while also unveiling differences stemming from national contexts.

This chapter analyzes media discourse about populism. Specifically, we examine the collocational profiles of the terms populism(s) and populist(s) in the Belgian media during 2019, a year with various elections. Using a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach, we compare the occurrences of the terms in the media outlets of the two main linguistic communities of Belgium: Dutch-speaking and French-speaking.

In this comparative study, we analyse quantitatively and qualitatively the occurrences of the term populis* in two datasets containing parliamentary debates that took place in 2019 in the French National Assembly and the Spanish Congress of Deputies. 

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.

El presente estudio se centra en el discurso de investidura de Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) y en el debate en torno a este discurso, al iniciarse el Segundo Gobierno Sánchez (2020). Este gobierno tiene la articularidad de ser el primer gobierno nacional de coalición en la democracia española moderna.