Call for Papers by Maria Ivana Lorenzetti
Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political communi... more Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political community, legitimise specific actions and mobilise supporters by appealing to specific values or discursive argumentations. Combining a critical discourse analysis perspective derived from van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this paper investigates people-building discourse strategies in Donald J. Trump's speech prior to the Capitol Hill riots and President Joseph R. Biden's Inaugural Address. The research aims to compare strategies adopted in populist and anti-populist discourse. Results show that, while the distinction between populism and antipopulism is still underdeveloped, similar discourse strategies and metaphorical mappings chiefly revolving around the ideas of nation and democracy may be deployed with opposite ends. Furthermore, the study highlights how the populist/anti-populist frontier is not clear-cut and may shape different civic identities and ideals of democracy according to the ideology underpinning each politician's discourse.
Iperstoria, 2020
Volume 15 (Spring 2020) of Iperstoria (www.iperstoria.it)
Special Section Theme: Populism and ... more Volume 15 (Spring 2020) of Iperstoria (www.iperstoria.it)
Special Section Theme: Populism and its Languages
Editors: Massimiliano Demata (University of Turin) Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (University of Verona)
Call for Papers
Today the term Populism is a trendy delegitimising term used by politicians to criticise the modus operandi of their opponents, portrayed as demagogues or manipulators. In political science, however, it is an ambiguous and complex phenomenon that ultimately entails putting into question the institutional order by constructing a dualistic view of society.
Populism has taken on many forms and connotations through time, also shifting from right-wing to left-wing orientation. Nowadays populist movements on both sides of the political spectrum exploit a feeling of disillusion, widely felt in the public sphere of many countries, in the traditional workings of representative democracy and in the establishment (or the “elite”) by claiming to represent the true will of the “people” and are founded on a divisive rhetoric (us vs. them) .
Populism has been the subject of a vast literature and the source of intense scholarly debate. Many definitions of populism have been proposed, as it has been considered an ideology, or “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde), a discourse (Laclau), a style (Moffitt), a discursive style (Hofstadter) or a form of political strategy (Weyland). However, very little attention has been devoted to how populism is structured in discourse: while both media observers and scholars debate on who or what is truly “populist”, there are still gaps in the literature about the language – and most crucially the discursive strategies – used by populist actors as well as their electorate.This special section of Iperstoria on “Populism and Its
Languages” will focus on the discursive strategies used by those political leaders, movements and segments of the electorate who are ritually branded as “populist” within political and media discourses. The ultimate aim of this collection is to explore the possibility that there are certain common features in discourse that can be characterised as quintessentially populist.
We welcome contributions in English from scholars working within a wide range of theoretical approaches, both from a quantitative or qualitative perspective, addressing discourses (by leaders, parties, media as well as the public) in the Anglo-American public spheres that may be characterised as “populist”, that discuss populist performances, rhetoric and practices, or focus on different textual typologies (e.g. speeches, newspapers articles, social media posts). Papers may also include contrastive studies, but a focus on the Anglo-American perspective is required.
Abstracts, of no more than 300 words plus references and a short bio sketch of the author(s), should include a clear indication of the methodology used and should be submitted to both editors Massimiliano Demata ([email protected]) and Maria Ivana Lorenzetti ([email protected]) by 30 September 2019.
Papers will be subjected to a double-blind peer review process.
Submission Schedule:
30 September 2019: abstracts submission to the editors 15 October 2019: notification of acceptance 31 January 2020: first draft sent to the editors 30 March 2020: reviewers’ comments sent to authors 30 April 2020: submission of final manuscript
All inquiries regarding the issue should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
Papers by Maria Ivana Lorenzetti
Constructional and Cognitive Explorations in Contrastive Linguistics, 2024
Building on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which combines insights from Critical Disc... more Building on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which combines insights from Critical Discourse Analysis with research in gender and sexism studies, this chapter presents the results of a qualitative contrastive research on online sexism against female politicians by two right-wing populist leaders, former US President Donald J. Trump and current League leader Matteo Salvini. Consistently with previous studies on right-wing populist discourse strategies, the results of our research, which features Trump’s conspicuous use of name-calling aimed at character assassination, reveal the deployment of similar tactics. Female political opponents may be represented as untrustworthy members of an elite, inadequate, or too emotional. Furthermore, personifications, and dehumanising strategies through objectification and animalisation, although adopted differently by the two leaders, are designed to reaffirm traditional gender norms, keeping women away from leadership positions.
Iperstoria, 2022
Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political communi... more Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political community, legitimise specific actions and mobilise supporters by appealing to specific values or discursive argumentations. Combining a critical discourse analysis perspective derived from van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this paper investigates people-building discourse strategies in Donald J. Trump's speech prior to the Capitol Hill riots and President Joseph R. Biden's Inaugural Address. The research aims to compare strategies adopted in populist and anti-populist discourse. Results show that, while the distinction between populism and antipopulism is still underdeveloped, similar discourse strategies and metaphorical mappings chiefly revolving around the ideas of nation and democracy may be deployed with opposite ends. Furthermore, the study highlights how the populist/anti-populist frontier is not clear-cut and may shape different civic identities and ideals of democracy according to the ideology underpinning each politician's discourse.
Iperstoria, 2022
Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political communi... more Social-identity creation is crucial for politicians to rhetorically build their political community, legitimise specific actions and mobilise supporters by appealing to specific values or discursive argumentations. Combining a critical discourse analysis perspective derived from van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this paper investigates people-building discourse strategies in Donald J. Trump's speech prior to the Capitol Hill riots and President Joseph R. Biden's Inaugural Address. The research aims to compare strategies adopted in populist and anti-populist discourse. Results show that, while the distinction between populism and antipopulism is still underdeveloped, similar discourse strategies and metaphorical mappings chiefly revolving around the ideas of nation and democracy may be deployed with opposite ends. Furthermore, the study highlights how the populist/anti-populist frontier is not clear-cut and may shape different civic identities and ideals of democracy according to the ideology underpinning each politician's discourse.
ITA, 2020
Taking its cue from the crucial role of language in populist communication, this special section ... more Taking its cue from the crucial role of language in populist communication, this special section of Iperstoriaon \u201cPopulism and Its Languages\u201d aims at exploring the various discursive dimensions of populist leaders and parties, mostlytaking place in the digital environment. This special section opens with a paper by Massimiliano Demata, Michelangelo Conoscenti,and Yannis Stavrakakis on the construction of the concepts of populism and anti-populism and their metaphorical realisations in the British press in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendumand Trump\u2019s victory, a crucial moment not only for British politics but also for the EU and populist discourseworldwide. Adopting both the methodology offered by Corpus Linguistics and the Corpus Approach to Critical Metaphor Analysis, the authors emphasise the critical role that metaphors play in orienting the public perception of populism based on shared modes of understanding social and political life. Following onfromBrexit-related discourse, in the second paper,Michael Boyd proposes a fine-grained critical analytical study of an article in a British mid-market newspaper with a pro-Brexit stance, highlighting the discursive and multimodal strategies employed to negatively represent both the Remain-supporters and the judiciary, while stressing the positive presentation of Leavers and the newspaper role as the \u2018voice of the people.\u2019 Maria Ivana Lorenzetti\u2019s study compares right-wing populist discourses on migration in the national contexts of the USA and Italy,unveiling how the joint contribution of language and other semiotic modes is strategically exploited on social media by prominent right-wing populist leaders, such as Donald Trump and Italian Leagueleader Matteo Salvini inthe othering and exclusion of ethnic minorities. The study, adopting a critical multimodal analytical perspective, reveals that the two leaders employ comparable strategies. Web 2.0 affordances are crucial for both Trump and Salvini to enact the rhetorical exclusion of minorities while constructing their role as leaders and \u201cbuild their people.\u201d The social media domain is also the focus of the next contribution,in whichMarianna Lya Zummo investigates how politicians employ social media Demata andLorenzettiIntroduction to \u201cPopulism and its Languages\u201dSaggi/Essays5Issue 15\u2013Spring/Summer 2020Iperstoriaplatforms to enhance authenticity and boost their connection with \u2018the people.\u2019 Within the framework of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (KhosraviNik 2017), and adopting tools from multimodal discourse analysis, Zummo highlights how politicians of different orientation, i.e. American Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Italian right-wing leader Salvini, exploit social media affordances, and in particularlive-streamed videos, creating a new politainment genre for the strategicperformance of their authenticity.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also the focus of the next two contributions. Applying a methodological framework that combines the resources of qualitative approaches, such as transitivity, appraisal and multimodal critical discourse analysis, Margaret Rasulo explores the identity-populism nexus in a corpus of AOC\u2019s tweets containing verbal and non-verbal instantiations of self-representational strategies. Based on the analysis, the communication style adopted by the politician emerges as the result of a blend of identities and life experiences, correspondingly sharpened by the presence of populist behaviour. Such a nexus allows AOC to intensify her self-presentation and build her political persona. By exploring the mechanisms that govern the presentation, interpretation, and framing of the antagonistic opponent viathe analysis of delegitimisation strategies, recontextualising principles, and (re)framingprocesses, Jacqueline Aiello\u2019s study analyses the coverage of AOC by a political commentator with a right-wing populist ideological orientation. Her findings suggest that the delegitimisation of the antagonist occurs primarily by recontextualisation, whereby the antagonist\u2019s viewpoints are systematically concealed, ridiculed, or the target of personal attacks, underscoring covert and overt sexism and racism.Racism and its subtle connection with right-wing populism are evident in the next paper by Philip Limerick. Focusing on the case of the Central Park Five, a criminal case involving the wrongful conviction of four African-Americans and one Latino, the paper investigates the covert and overt racist discourse by Trump. Applying a critical discourse analytical perspective to acorpus of diversified sources, the author unveils Trump\u2019s discursive construction of African-Americans as \u2018the others\u2019 through fearmongering, delegitimisation, and evasion, emblematic in his \u2018law and order\u2019 ideology, also shedding light on resistance discourse by the Central Park Five members.Antipodean populism is…
By employing a discourse-analytic perspective, and drawing on both Van Dijk\u2019s socio-cognitiv... more By employing a discourse-analytic perspective, and drawing on both Van Dijk\u2019s socio-cognitive model and Lakoff\u2019s framing theory, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the anti-immigration rhetorical strategies of two influential contemporary right-wing populist leaders, American President Donald Trump and League leader Matteo Salvini. Concentrating on the lexical level and on the rhetorical devices in both their speeches and social media posts, our analysis highlights remarkably similar ideas and strategies that suggest the idea of right-wing populist coordination across a globe. The rhetoric of exclusion put forward by the two leaders articulates around the idea of immigration as a threat for the security, the economy and the culture of the nation and of the people and is revealed by recurring metaphorical mappings, like IMMIGRATION IS WAR, IMMIGRATION IS NATURAL DISASTER and IMMIGRATION IS A BURDEN, but also by equivalential chains assimilating immigrants to criminals, a strategy that promotes their removal from moral concerns, or what Zygmunt Bauman terms \u201cadiaphorization\u201d
Lingue e Linguaggi, 2022
Building on the theoretical lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, t... more Building on the theoretical lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this paper examines the rhetorical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic of two right-wing populist leaders whose management of the emergency has been viewed as controversial, namely former American President Donald J. Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Through the critical examination of a dataset of speeches, press conferences and social media posts, and focusing on the discursive strategies employed in framing the pandemic, attributing responsibility, people-building, and policy-making, our study reveals that through different trajectories, the two leaders attempted to exploit the emergency to perform a "crisis within the crisis" in the typical populist style to serve their political interests, based on Moffitt's (2015) framework. In his trademark style, Trump used the pandemic as a stage to call out and blame multiple enemies both at home (the Congress, the media) and abroad (China). On the other hand, Johnson, who, unlike Trump, did not lend an ear to conspiratorial thinking but still initially minimised the extent of the danger, framed the pandemic as the fight of a nation "walking alone" in a nationalist sense.
Lexis, 2008
This paper argues that the phenomenon of the null instantiation of objects, i.e. the property of ... more This paper argues that the phenomenon of the null instantiation of objects, i.e. the property of some transitive verbs to omit their direct complements, can be viewed as a polysemy-trigger. Our study, adopting a lexical complexity perspective, suggests that in the majority of cases verbs retain traits of their prototypical meaning, which becomes the starting point for possible inferences, contributing to the overall interpretative process, and leading to the dynamic emergence of different semantic interpretations and nuances through complex mechanisms of figure and ground. Corpus-data on the verb see support the main typologies of null objects outlined, as well as the main factors attested to play a role in licensing null objects. Moreover, the deprofiling of the object in the case of a nuclear verb like see triggers the emergence of new pragmatic meanings, which cannot be derived from the lexical meanings of the various elements in a proposition taken in isolation, but which are interactionally-driven and surface in unpredictable ways, determining a progressive shift towards the cognitive dimension of the verb.
English language panel at …, 2007
Iperstoria - Journal of American and English Studies, 2022
Combining the theoretical background of Critical Discourse Studies (van Dijk 2015a, 2015b; van Le... more Combining the theoretical background of Critical Discourse Studies (van Dijk 2015a, 2015b; van Leeuwen 2008; Wodak 2015a) with a corpus-assisted methodology (van Diik 2015a; 2015b), this paper contrastively investigates the discursive representation of migration and migrant people by leading British (Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn) and Italian politicians (Matteo Salvini, Matteo Renzi) in the years 2016-2018, starting from the examination of the collocational profile of such migration-related terms as immigration, immigrant, migrant, refugee and asylum seeker. The period is salient for the global upsurge of populism (Mudde 2004), the Brexit referendum, and the so-called 'refugee crisis,' which turned immigration into a hot topic in the political agenda of parties of different orientations. Our empirical analysis sheds light on two opposing views: the negative portrayal of migrants as a threat by right-wing populist politicians across countries (Lorenzetti 2020), while left-wing politicians display a more humanitarian attitude. Regardless of political stance or specific migrant terms, however, the representation of migrant groups as social actors is crucially founded on the strategies of aggregation, collectivisation and functionalisation (van Leeuwen 2008), which ultimately result in the perpetuation of stereotyped and partial depictions that overlook their features as individuals.
This paper presents a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a sample from a larger corpus of ... more This paper presents a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a sample from a larger corpus of multimodal posts about immigration from the social media pages of right-wing populist leaders Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini. Drawing on Van Leeuwen’s framework for the representation of social actors, we investigate how multimodal resources contribute to shaping immigration discourse and to its bias, highlighting exclusionary ideologies through the recontextualisation of social practices. Our analysis reveals how the strategic synergy of images, videos, slogan-like language and the social affordances of Web 2.0 enables the two leaders to spread their nativist propaganda and emphasise the view of immigrants as a threat to security. The othering of immigrants as non-natives is enacted through biased representation based on covert racist stereotypes. At the same time, visual anti-immigration rhetoric allows the leaders to “build their people” and self-promote their role as gate-keepers of...
One of the most significant achievements in metaphor theory in the last twenty years has been the... more One of the most significant achievements in metaphor theory in the last twenty years has been the observation that metaphor is not merely a decorative tool, or a rhetorical figure, but it plays a central role in people’s thought and imagination (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Since conceptual metaphor theory claims to describe central processes and structures of human thought, it should have explanatory power and be of potential use in cross-linguistic research as well. The possibility that metaphors are not language-specific has been investigated in a variety of studies in the last few decades (Lakoff 1993, Gibbs 1993, Sweetser 1990, Viberg 2001) highlighting similarities in metaphorical mappings across different languages, and leading to the conclusion that at least some conceptual metaphors are widely shared (especially in the realms of perception and emotions). However, different surface realisations of the same metaphors can also be found (Deignan et al. 1997, Boers and Demecheleers...
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Call for Papers by Maria Ivana Lorenzetti
Special Section Theme: Populism and its Languages
Editors: Massimiliano Demata (University of Turin) Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (University of Verona)
Call for Papers
Today the term Populism is a trendy delegitimising term used by politicians to criticise the modus operandi of their opponents, portrayed as demagogues or manipulators. In political science, however, it is an ambiguous and complex phenomenon that ultimately entails putting into question the institutional order by constructing a dualistic view of society.
Populism has taken on many forms and connotations through time, also shifting from right-wing to left-wing orientation. Nowadays populist movements on both sides of the political spectrum exploit a feeling of disillusion, widely felt in the public sphere of many countries, in the traditional workings of representative democracy and in the establishment (or the “elite”) by claiming to represent the true will of the “people” and are founded on a divisive rhetoric (us vs. them) .
Populism has been the subject of a vast literature and the source of intense scholarly debate. Many definitions of populism have been proposed, as it has been considered an ideology, or “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde), a discourse (Laclau), a style (Moffitt), a discursive style (Hofstadter) or a form of political strategy (Weyland). However, very little attention has been devoted to how populism is structured in discourse: while both media observers and scholars debate on who or what is truly “populist”, there are still gaps in the literature about the language – and most crucially the discursive strategies – used by populist actors as well as their electorate.This special section of Iperstoria on “Populism and Its
Languages” will focus on the discursive strategies used by those political leaders, movements and segments of the electorate who are ritually branded as “populist” within political and media discourses. The ultimate aim of this collection is to explore the possibility that there are certain common features in discourse that can be characterised as quintessentially populist.
We welcome contributions in English from scholars working within a wide range of theoretical approaches, both from a quantitative or qualitative perspective, addressing discourses (by leaders, parties, media as well as the public) in the Anglo-American public spheres that may be characterised as “populist”, that discuss populist performances, rhetoric and practices, or focus on different textual typologies (e.g. speeches, newspapers articles, social media posts). Papers may also include contrastive studies, but a focus on the Anglo-American perspective is required.
Abstracts, of no more than 300 words plus references and a short bio sketch of the author(s), should include a clear indication of the methodology used and should be submitted to both editors Massimiliano Demata ([email protected]) and Maria Ivana Lorenzetti ([email protected]) by 30 September 2019.
Papers will be subjected to a double-blind peer review process.
Submission Schedule:
30 September 2019: abstracts submission to the editors 15 October 2019: notification of acceptance 31 January 2020: first draft sent to the editors 30 March 2020: reviewers’ comments sent to authors 30 April 2020: submission of final manuscript
All inquiries regarding the issue should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
Papers by Maria Ivana Lorenzetti
Special Section Theme: Populism and its Languages
Editors: Massimiliano Demata (University of Turin) Maria Ivana Lorenzetti (University of Verona)
Call for Papers
Today the term Populism is a trendy delegitimising term used by politicians to criticise the modus operandi of their opponents, portrayed as demagogues or manipulators. In political science, however, it is an ambiguous and complex phenomenon that ultimately entails putting into question the institutional order by constructing a dualistic view of society.
Populism has taken on many forms and connotations through time, also shifting from right-wing to left-wing orientation. Nowadays populist movements on both sides of the political spectrum exploit a feeling of disillusion, widely felt in the public sphere of many countries, in the traditional workings of representative democracy and in the establishment (or the “elite”) by claiming to represent the true will of the “people” and are founded on a divisive rhetoric (us vs. them) .
Populism has been the subject of a vast literature and the source of intense scholarly debate. Many definitions of populism have been proposed, as it has been considered an ideology, or “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde), a discourse (Laclau), a style (Moffitt), a discursive style (Hofstadter) or a form of political strategy (Weyland). However, very little attention has been devoted to how populism is structured in discourse: while both media observers and scholars debate on who or what is truly “populist”, there are still gaps in the literature about the language – and most crucially the discursive strategies – used by populist actors as well as their electorate.This special section of Iperstoria on “Populism and Its
Languages” will focus on the discursive strategies used by those political leaders, movements and segments of the electorate who are ritually branded as “populist” within political and media discourses. The ultimate aim of this collection is to explore the possibility that there are certain common features in discourse that can be characterised as quintessentially populist.
We welcome contributions in English from scholars working within a wide range of theoretical approaches, both from a quantitative or qualitative perspective, addressing discourses (by leaders, parties, media as well as the public) in the Anglo-American public spheres that may be characterised as “populist”, that discuss populist performances, rhetoric and practices, or focus on different textual typologies (e.g. speeches, newspapers articles, social media posts). Papers may also include contrastive studies, but a focus on the Anglo-American perspective is required.
Abstracts, of no more than 300 words plus references and a short bio sketch of the author(s), should include a clear indication of the methodology used and should be submitted to both editors Massimiliano Demata ([email protected]) and Maria Ivana Lorenzetti ([email protected]) by 30 September 2019.
Papers will be subjected to a double-blind peer review process.
Submission Schedule:
30 September 2019: abstracts submission to the editors 15 October 2019: notification of acceptance 31 January 2020: first draft sent to the editors 30 March 2020: reviewers’ comments sent to authors 30 April 2020: submission of final manuscript
All inquiries regarding the issue should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]