An Interdisciplinary Approach to Discourse on Populism

This collection examines the construction and circulation of discourses on populism, charting their role in shaping collective understandings of democracy.

The volume advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of populism as a form of categorization used by several types of actors to label people and phenomena in political and social debate, with the first section highlighting chapters on making such a framework work in practice. Chapters collectively make the case for the possibilities afforded by interdisciplinary perspectives, demonstrating how the interplay of discursive, linguistic, political, and communicative analyses is imperative to understanding discourses on populism as discursive practices embedded in specific contexts. The second section showcases interdisciplinary empirical studies on the uses of populism(s) and populist(s) in various types of political and media discourse in Belgium, France, and Spain in 2019. This focus highlights analyses on the uses of this notion in different contexts where actors and actions attached to different ideologies have regularly been qualified as ‘populist’, but also the value of an interdisciplinary approach in analysing other concepts prevalent in contemporary public discourses more broadly.

This book will appeal to scholars interested in populism across disciplinary fields, including discourse analysis, language and communication, media studies, history, and political science, as well as those interested in interdisciplinary research methods.