Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 25, Issue 3, 2026

Abstract

Addressing a highly intriguing question of the persistence of fear-based appeals in the Brexit context, the article provides the first comprehensive longitudinal analysis of such discourse in the British Prime Ministerial communication on Brexit across the post-referendum period (2016–2024). It draws on and adapts Lazarus’ appraisal theory of emotion and combines content analysis with the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, applied to a large, multi-genre dataset. The study shows that fear did not dissipate after the referendum but evolved and was strategically redeployed across successive leaderships. While May and Johnson used a more confrontational and populist rhetoric, Sunak adopted a more technocratic and policy-oriented variant — yet fear remained a subtle but powerful element through the period. The analysis advances existing scholarship by demonstrating how emotional rhetoric adapts to changing political contexts and leadership styles and offering a broader perspective on the discursive instrumentalisation of fear.

Abstract

Globally, populism is on the rise. Studies demonstrate how populism is a ‘thin’ ideology that is articulated with ideologies ranging from authoritarianism to its challenges. Here, we examine how two politicians who, at similar times in their careers, represented themselves as inclusive and democratic, yet articulated different incarnations of populism. One of these (Turkish President Erdoğan) has since become an authoritarian populist and the other (Ekrem İmamoğlu), Erdoğan’s political opposition. Both İmamoğlu in 2019 and Erdoğan in 1994 were first elected as Istanbul’s mayor. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyse their public utterances around the times of these mayoral victories. This close reading reveals how discursive strategies are used in Erdoğan’s utterances that articulate the seeds of authoritarian populism while İmamoğlu, 25 years later, uses populism to challenge these. This study offers insights into how populism can be employed to both articulate and challenge authoritarian populism.

Abstract

This article examines how intertextuality and polyphony in online media narratives shaped media discourse on COVID-19 vaccination in Cyprus, focusing on their relationship with vaccine hesitancy. Drawing on concepts of legitimation, pre-legitimation, and crisis imaginaries, the analysis explores how media narratives constructed vaccination as a pathway to “returning to normality.” The findings reveal that while Cypriot media predominantly adopted a pro-vaccination stance, their hierarchical privileging of elite voices — scientific experts and politicians — potentially undermining trust. Pre-legitimation strategies framed vaccination as a necessary response to speculative crises, while unvaccinated individuals were constructed as societal threats. These imaginaries aligned with technocratic discourse, emphasizing expertise while sidelining citizen positioning. This, along with contradictions in rhetorical strategies, such as juxtaposing scientific and religious appeals, may have contributed to vaccine hesitancy. This article contributes to critical discourse studies by illustrating how crisis communication can simultaneously legitimize solutions and alienate segments of the public.

Abstract

This paper explores dominance as expressed in discourse during political debate in a U.S. state legislative chamber with a Republican supermajority. In particular, I map the discursive strategies used in the Tennessee legislature during the expulsion hearings of three Democratic lawmakers in the Tennessee General Assembly on April 6, 2023. Using discourse analysis, I explore how boundaries of power, race, and protest unfold discursively across 6 hours of political debate between supermajority Republicans and minority Democrats. Although the paper offers only a snapshot of the lawmakers’ framing strategies, the study demonstrates that the Black legislators who were expelled from the Tennessee House were linguistically and rhetorically positioned to be deemed worthy of excessive punishment. The findings suggest that forwarding racism and inequality through discourse is one of many facets of the radical right-wing, global movement, and it was reified in the Tennessee Legislature in 2023.

Abstract

One key consequence of the UK leaving the EU (Brexit) is that it now has full responsibility for making its own international trade policy. In this context, NatCen and the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy initiated Citizens’ Juries on the topic of trade policy. From the transcripts of these juries, we created a corpus of 317,974 words. Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis, we focus on the concept of trust in trade policy. We find that trust conferred on actors in trade policy is limited. The greatest degree of trust is conferred on experts, on account of their epistemically-elevated position. The government is broadly not trusted. Jurors wished to be consulted about trade policy decisions and be assured that they are based on sound advice, but few wished to have a role in actually making them. Our findings highlight a deficit of trust among the jurors that could be remedied by greater perceived honesty and transparency from the government.

Abstract

This article examines how Macedonian opinion makers engage in the Europeanization of memory to justify North Macedonia’s Europeanness amid the bilateral dispute with Bulgaria. Drawing on a Discourse-Historical Approach-informed analysis of 43 opinion pieces from 2019 to 2023, the study demonstrates how national narratives are recontextualized, either aligning with or challenging the EU memory regime. By invoking antifascism and Yugoslav socialist modernity, opinion makers construct a European identity based on local historical legacies through what the article conceptualizes as defensive Europeanization via justification. The latter concept highlights how memory actors resist hegemonic narratives, suggesting an alternative understanding of (EU)rope. As a result, the article proposes a new lens by which Europeanization and European identity can be comprehended.

Abstract

We argue that grassroots participation in multilateral negotiations over norm-setting is important because grassroots discourses differ from those of multilateral organizations. To compare the two, we use sociolinguistic theories that link embodied experience, ideology and discourse. We analyze texts about domestic work from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a grassroots organization of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB). Findings show that AMCB’s commitment to grassroots migrants, and the embodied experiences of its members and leaders, enables their discourses on “decent work for domestic workers” to be more intersectional, more substantive and more critical than the discourses of the ILO. This case illustrates that even when the overarching norms appear to be the ‘same’, the discourses of grassroots and multilateral organizations still offer fundamentally different images of what constitutes “decent work” and what is required to achieve it.

This article reviews Policy, Media, and the Shaping of Spain-Morocco Relations: Discursive Representations of Migration to Ceuta and Melilla978-3-031-64017-9£ 28.83

This article reviews The Rhetoric of Manipulation: Unmasking Semantic Perversions9798765100813US$ 24.95

This article reviews A Corpus-assisted Multimodal Analysis to Policy Addresses of Macao SAR Government: Two Decades of Change in Macao978-981-99-1195-0