The New Challenges of Populist Discourses in Romance Speaking Countries

The aim of this volume is to identify, explore and compare expressions of populism in the Romance-speaking part of the world. The volume includes studies from different academic disciplines such as discourse analysis, cultural and media studies. Populist discourses are generally characterized by a deep polarization of positions and a disproportionate reliance on accusations. Populist discourses frequently reinforce existing antagonisms and undermine the traditional political argumentative style, based on the factual confrontation of opinions in the public space. Populist leaders often present themselves as the unfettered spokespersons of the people with whom they form a community of "us" in the struggle against "them". This accords with the strong polarization mentioned earlier.

The rise of populist discourses in many countries over the past decades could be due to changes in political communication. The constant and overwhelming dissemination of information in all types of media, the consequent relativization of truth, as well as a less clear political division on a left-right scale, could favor political alternatives based on personality and the highly polarized messages we see today. The question of how to reach voters in today's media buzz is a much bigger question today than it was a few decades ago, and the exposure of faces and comments has increased exponentially, which in itself can promote a certain kind of politicians. In fact, there is a strong emphasis on the leadership of populist movements, which is also a recurring theme in this book, alongside the impact of the new media landscape on political discourses.

In this light, some of the recurring themes in the thirteen studies included in the volume are the denunciation - by populist voices - of the corruption of the so-called elites as well as their inability to solve concrete political and economic problems. It is also about the escalation and reinforcement of populist discourses as an expression - an act - of extreme criticism, even hatred, against traditional political leaders. These populist voices are looking for scapegoats and claiming proximity to the people, represented in the discourse as an authentic and uniform group. Other recurring themes are the emphasis on traditional values, national symbols, ethnicity, and nostalgia for a bygone era, which are effective subjects for eliciting feelings and fostering a sense of togetherness. The interplay between some of these issues is explored in more detail in the book. The chapters of the book indeed show to what extent populist discourses introduce a system based on characteristics such as unilaterality, through the designation of a threat and/or a common enemy, and on the strong focus on the rejection of the legitimacy of the adversary.

Malin Roitman is Associate Professorin French at Stockholm University. Her research deals especially with argumentation and pragmatic phenomena in media and political discourse, especially the presidential election debates in France. She has mainly been interested in the use of negation as an argumentation strategy in political and media discourse. Furthermore, Malin has published studies on the self-representation (the use the first-person pronoun "I"), (ethos), the terms of address, and the denomination of national identity in French presidential election debates. She has published two books gathering studies on the function of negation in different languages: The Pragmatics of Negation: Negative Meanings, Uses and Discursive Functions (JB Publishing Company, 2017) and Negatives and Meaning: Social Setting and Pragmatic Effects: Using Negatives in Political Discourse, Social Media and Oral Interaction. (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press 2023). ORCID: https: //orcid.org/0000-0001-7045-7557

María Bernal is Full Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Stockholm University (Sweden), and a member of the EDICE Programme, which focuses on the study of linguistic (im)politeness. Her research interests are interactional pragmatics, conversation and discourse analysis, mainly from a sociopragmatic perspective and through oral corpora (Spanish colloquial conversations, courtroom interactions, political discourse, etc.). Her work has appeared in journals such as Pragmatics, Sociocultural Pragmatics and Journal of Spanish Language Teaching. She is the co-editor (with Diana Bravo) of Perspectivas sociopragmáticas y socioculturales del análisis del discurso. Buenos Aires, Dunken, 2015. She is currently engaged in a research project devoted to Political discourses in Romance-speaking countries (ROMPOL, Stockholm University) and in a project investigating the communication on gender equality between Andalusian institutions and citizens. ORCID: https: //orcid. org/0000-0002-9231-9494

Christophe Premat is Associate Professor in French with a major specialization in Cultural Studies at Stockholm University. He is a member of the editorial board of the review Sens Public, an international web journal of social sciences. His current research focuses on the perception of participatory processes in the political discourse of French-speaking elites, the analysis of memory debates in France, and discourse analysis. He recently published a book on the institutionalization of Francophonie organization (Pour une généalogie critique de la Francophonie, Stockholm University Press, 2018) and, in 2015, co-edited a handbook on French-German relations, Handwörterbuch der deutsch-französischen Beziehungen (Nomos). He is part of the research project analyzing the political discourses in Romance-speaking countries (ROMPOL, Stockholm University) and the research project 'Language and Power' (Språk och Makt, Stockholm University). ORCID: https: //orcid.org/0000-0001-6107-735X.