The words ‘populism’ and ‘populist’ have been extensively used over the last years to refer to disparate contemporary political phenomena around the globe, ranging from the left to the right extremes of the political spectrum. As a result, political scientists and theorists have been struggling for years to find a common and consensual definition of the concept of populism. Some have even argued to drop it due to its conceptual darkness. Given that social semiotics has relevant light to shed on this conceptual debate, the webinar ‘The Social Semiotics of Populism’ will argue what a semiotic examination of populism would look like. The main focus of the session will be set on the discursive construction by populist political actors of collective political identities –namely, those of ‘the people’ and an ‘Other’ –, a topic that the speaker has dealt with in a recent journal paper.
Sebastian Moreno Barreneche Faculty of Management and Social Sciences, Universidad ORT Uruguay
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