1887
Volume 8, Issue 1
  • ISSN 2213-1272
  • E-ISSN: 2213-1280
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

The rise of populism has turned researchers’ attention to the importance of affect in politics. This is a corpus-assisted study investigating lexis in the semantic domain of anger and violence in tweets by radical-right campaigner Nigel Farage in comparison with four other prominent British politicians. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of discourse show that Farage cultivates a particular set of affective-discursive practices, which bring anger into the public sphere and offer a channel to redirect frustrations. Rather than expressing his own emotions, he presents anger as generalised throughout society, and then performs the role of defending ‘ordinary people’ who are the victims of the elites. This enables him to legitimise violent emotions and actions by appealing to the need for self-assertion and self-defence.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/jlac.00033.bre
2020-02-25
2024-12-08
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bale, Tim
    2018 “Who Leads and who Follows? The Symbiotic Relationship between UKIP and the Conservatives – and Populism and Euroscepticism.” Politics38 (3): 263–277. 10.1177/0263395718754718
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718754718 [Google Scholar]
  2. Bednarek, Monika
    2009 “Dimensions of Evaluation: Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectives.” Pragmatics and Cognition17(1): 146–175. 10.1075/pc.17.1.05bed
    https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17.1.05bed [Google Scholar]
  3. Ben Moussa, Mohamed
    2013 “From Arab Street to Social Movements: Re-theorizing Collective Action and the Role of Social Media in the Arab Spring.” Westminster Papers9(2): 45–68.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Berrocal, Martina
    2017 “‘Victim Playing’ as a Form of Verbal Aggression in the Czech Parliament.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict5(1): 81–107. 10.1075/jlac.5.1.04ber
    https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.04ber [Google Scholar]
  5. Breeze, Ruth
    2017 “Tired of Nice People? An Appraisal-based Approach to Trump’s Dichotomies.” Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación18: 7–25.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. 2019 “Emotion in Politics: Affective-discursive Practices in UKIP and Labour.” Discourse & Society30(1): 24–43. 10.1177/0957926518801074
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926518801074 [Google Scholar]
  7. Brindle, Andrew, and Corrie Macmillan
    2017 “Like & Share if you Agree. A Study of Discourses and Cyber Activism of the Far-right British Nationalist Party Britain First.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict5(1): 108–133. 10.1075/jlac.5.1.05bri
    https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.05bri [Google Scholar]
  8. Clough, Patricia
    2012 “War by Other Means: What Difference do(es) the Graphic(s) Make?” InDigital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion, ed. byAthina Karatzogianni, and Adi Kuntsman, 21–32. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1057/9780230391345_2
    https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391345_2 [Google Scholar]
  9. Deakin, Michael
    2019 “Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is Tearing itself apart.” Daily Telegraph, 6December.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Eatwell, Roger, and Matthew Goodwin
    2018National Populism. The Revolt against Liberal Democracy. London: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Ekström, Mats, Patrona, Marianna, and Thornborrow, Joanna
    2018 “Right-wing Populism and the Dynamics of Style: A Discourse-analytic Perspective on Mediated Political Performances. Palgrave Communications4 (83). 10.1057/s41599‑018‑0132‑6
    https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0132-6 [Google Scholar]
  12. Ernst, Nicole, Sven Engesser, Florin Büchel, Sina Blassnig, and Frank Esser
    2017 “Extreme Parties and Populism: An Analysis of Facebook and Twitter across Six Countries.” Information, Communication & Society20(9): 1347–1364. 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329333
    https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329333 [Google Scholar]
  13. Gammerl, Benno
    2012 “Emotional Styles – Concepts and Challenges.” Rethinking History16(2): 161–175. 10.1080/13642529.2012.681189
    https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2012.681189 [Google Scholar]
  14. Gillioz, Christelle, Johnny Fontaine, Cristina Soriano, and Klaus R. Scherer
    2016 “Mapping Emotion Terms into Affective Space.” Swiss Journal of Psychology75(3): 141–148. 10.1024/1421‑0185/a000180
    https://doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185/a000180 [Google Scholar]
  15. Goodwin, Matthew, and Caitlin Milazzo
    2015UKIP: Inside the Campaign to Redraw the Map of British Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. KhosraviNik, Majid, and Eleonora Esposito
    2018 “Online Hate, Digital Discourse and Critique: Exploring Digitally-mediated Discursive Practices of Gender-based Hostility.” Łodz Papers in Pragmatics14(1): 45–68. 10.1515/lpp‑2018‑0003
    https://doi.org/10.1515/lpp-2018-0003 [Google Scholar]
  17. Krapp, Claudia
    2019 “Das ‘Phänomen Johnson’.” Forschung und Lehre, 1August 2019.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Leezenberg, Michiel
    2017 “Discursive Violence and Responsibility: Notes on the Pragmatics of Dutch Populism.” InContemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres, ed. byMonika Kopytowska, 243–270. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 10.1075/bct.93.09lee
    https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.93.09lee [Google Scholar]
  19. Marsh, David, Paul ’t Hart, and Karen Tindall
    2010 “Celebrity Politics: The Politics of the Late Modernity?” Political Studies Review3(1): 17–33.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Martell, Luke
    2018 “Corbyn, Populism and Power.” Hard Times101: 1–11.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. McArthur, Tom
    1981Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Mishra, Pankaj
    2017Age of Anger. A History of the Present. London: Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Moffitt, Benjamin
    2016The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 10.11126/stanford/9780804796132.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804796132.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  24. Mudde, Cas
    2007Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511492037
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492037 [Google Scholar]
  25. 2016 “Europe’s Populist Surge.” Foreign Affairs95(6): 25–30.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Nadeem, Nahla
    2019 “Politicizing Collective Identities: Online News Commentaries in the Arab Spring.” InPopulist Discourse across Modes and Media, ed. byRuth Breeze, and Ana M. Fernández Vallejo, 239–256. Bern: Peter Lang.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Ng, Kwai Hang, and Jeffrey L. Kidder
    2010 “Toward a Theory of Emotive Performance: With Lessons from how Politicians Do Anger.” Sociological Theory28(2): 193–214. 10.1111/j.1467‑9558.2010.01373.x
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2010.01373.x [Google Scholar]
  28. Nussbaum, Martha
    2016Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Ott, Brian L.
    2017 “The Age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of Debasement.” Critical Studies in Media Communication34(1): 59–68. 10.1080/15295036.2016.1266686
    https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2016.1266686 [Google Scholar]
  30. Partington, Alan, and Anna Marchi
    2015 “Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis.” InCambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, ed. byDouglas Biber, and Randi Reppen, 216–234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139764377.013
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139764377.013 [Google Scholar]
  31. Rayson, Paul
    2008 “From Key words to Key Semantic Domains.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics13(4): 519–549. doi:  10.1075/ijcl.13.4.06ray
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.13.4.06ray [Google Scholar]
  32. 2009 “Wmatrix: A Web-based Corpus Processing Environment.” Computing Department, Lancaster University. ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/
  33. Reddy, William M.
    2001The Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511512001
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511512001 [Google Scholar]
  34. Rone, Julia
    2012 “The Seducer’s Net: Internet, Politics and Seduction.” InDigital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion, ed. byAthina Karatzogianni, and Adi Kuntsman, 214–229. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1057/9780230391345_13
    https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391345_13 [Google Scholar]
  35. Scherer, Klaus R.
    2005 “What are Emotions? And How Can They Be Measured?” Social Science Information44(4): 695–729. doi:  10.1177/0539018405058216
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018405058216 [Google Scholar]
  36. Stieglitz, Stefan, and Linh Dang-Xuan
    2013 “Emotions and Information Diffusion in Social Media-sentiment of Microblogs and Sharing Behavior.” Journal of Management Information Systems29(4): 217–47. 10.2753/MIS0742‑1222290408
    https://doi.org/10.2753/MIS0742-1222290408 [Google Scholar]
  37. Strömbäck, Jesper, and Frank Esser
    2014 “Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework.” InMediatization of Politics. Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies, ed. byFrank Esser, and Jesper Strömbäck, 3–27. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Van Leeuwen, Maarten
    2019 “Measuring People-centrism in Populist Political Discourse: A Linguistic Approach.” InImagining the Peoples of Europe: Populist Discourses across the Political Spectrum, ed. byJan Zienkowski, and Ruth Breeze, 315–340. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 10.1075/dapsac.83.13lee
    https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.83.13lee [Google Scholar]
  39. Wagner, Markus
    2014 “Fear and Anger in Great Britain: Blame Assignment and Emotional Reactions to the Financial Crisis.” Political Behavior36: 683–703. 10.1007/s11109‑013‑9241‑5
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-013-9241-5 [Google Scholar]
  40. Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin
    2019Emotions, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Watts, Jake, and Tim Bale
    2019 “Populism as an Intra-party Phenomenon: The British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations21(1): 99–115. 10.1177/1369148118806115
    https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118806115 [Google Scholar]
  42. Weaver, Iain S., Hywel Williams, Iulia Cioroianu, Matthew Williams, Travis Coan, and Susan Banducci
    2018 “Dynamic Social Media Affiliations among UK Politicians.” Social Networks54: 132–144. 10.1016/j.socnet.2018.01.008
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2018.01.008 [Google Scholar]
  43. Wetherell, Margaret
    2012Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. London: Sage. 10.4135/9781446250945
    https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446250945 [Google Scholar]
  44. Wetherell, Margaret, Tim McCreanor, Alex McConville, Helen Moewaka Barnes, and Jade le Grice
    2015 “Settling Space and Covering the Nation: Some Conceptual Considerations in Analysing Affect and Discourse.” Emotion, Space and Society16: 56–64. 10.1016/j.emospa.2015.07.005
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2015.07.005 [Google Scholar]
  45. Wheeler, Mark
    2011Celebrity Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Wodak, Ruth
    2015The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Political Discourses Mean. London: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/jlac.00033.bre
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/jlac.00033.bre
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): anger; emotion; political discourse; populism; social media
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error