Cover not available
Part of
Imagining the Peoples of Europe: Populist discourses across the political spectrum
Edited by Jan Zienkowski and Ruth Breeze
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 83] 2019
► pp. 229–256

Chapter 9
Standing up for ‘real people’

UKIP, the Brexit, and discursive strategies on Twitter

Right wing populism has always been exclusionary in nature and relies on classic positive in-group/negative out-group constructions (van Dijk 1998). This chapter investigates how the UK Independence Party (UKIP) discursively constructed ‘the people’ during the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum campaign. It will be argued that ‘the people’ were defined in opposition to two key groups: Elite mainstream political actors and migrants. The consequence of this strategy has been the legitimisation of race hate crimes and a further conceptual separation of ‘the people’ from the political classes. Data is taken from the UKIP twitter account and I qualitatively analyse this by paying particular attention to topoi and to the discursive construction of ‘the people’ as a social actor.
Keywords: UKIP, Brexit, referendum, Twitter, social media, populism, critical discourse analysis, argumentation
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Populism
  • Twitter as a site of populist discourse (re)production: An alt-space for the alt-right
  • The awkward squad: A ‘mutiny within conservatism’ and UKIP’s rise to prominence
  • Methodology and data collection
    • ‘Concepts’ in discourse theory and CDA
    • Data collection and categories of analysis
  • Analysis
    • The people…
    • … vs the elites
    • … vs immigration (but not immigrants)
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 13 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.83.10ben
References (56)
References
Albu, Elena. 2014 . “Love Britain? Vote UKIP! The Pragmatics of Electoral Tweets during the European Elections 2014.” In Tweets from the Campaign Trail: Researching Candidates’ Use of Twitter During the European Parliamentary Elections, ed. by Alex Frame, Arnaud Mercier, Gilles Brachotte, and Caja Thimm. Vienna: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Adi, Ana, Kristofer Erickson, and Darren Lilleker. 2014. “Elite Tweets: Analyzing the Twitter Communication Patterns of Labour Party Peers in the House of Lords.” Policy and Internet 6 (2014), (1): 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aslandis, Paris. 2015. “Is Populism an Ideology? A Refutation and a New Perspective.” Political Studies 64: 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BBC. 2006. “UKIP demands apology from Cameron.” BBC News, 4 April, 2006. Accessed 30 March: 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Bennett, Samuel. 2016. “New ‘Crises’, Old Habits: Online Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in UK Migration Policy Discourses.” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies: 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018a. Constructions of Migrant Integration in British Public Discourse: Becoming British. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
. 2018b. “Present tense, future (im)perfect: ‘Brexit’ as a crisis issue in UK political discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies 15.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Basil. 1990. The Social Construction of Pedagogic Discourse: Vol. IV, Class, Codes and Control. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bourne, Jenny. 2016. “The seeds of post-Brexit racial violence lie in government policy.” Open Democracy, 2 December 2016. Accessed 3 April, 2017. [URL]Google Scholar
Clarke, John. 2013. “In Search of Ordinary People: The Problematic Politics of Popular Participation.” Communication, Culture and Critique 6 (2): 208–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deacon, David, and Dominic Wring. 2016. “The UK Independence Party, populism and the British News Media: Competition, Collaboration or Containment?” European Journal of Communication 31 (2): 169–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dennison, James, and Matthew Goodwin. 2015. “Immigration, Issue Ownership and the Rise of UKIP.” Parliamentary Affairs 8 (1): 168–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elgot, Jessica. 2017. “Ukip politicians condemn leadership candidate’s ‘£9,000 to leave UK’ idea.” Guardian, 18 August 2017. Accessed 21 August, 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Ewen, Neil. 2016. “Nigel Farage, celebrity everyman.” In UK Election Analysis 2015: Media, Voters and the Campaign, Early Reactions from Leading UK Academics, ed. by Daniel Jackson, and Einar Thorsen: 99–100. Bournemouth: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community, Bournemouth University.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ford, Robert, and Matthew Goodwin. 2014. “Understanding UKIP: Identity, Social Change and the Left Behind.” The Political Quarterly 85 (3): 277–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Alan Sheridan Smith, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jack, Ian. 2016. “In this Brexit vote, the poor turned on an elite who ignored them.” Guardian, 25 June 2016. Accessed 30 March, 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Jagers, Jan, and Stefaan Walgrave. 2007. “Populism as political communication style: An empirical study of political parties’ discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 46 (3): 319–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Robert. 2011. “Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism.” Sociological Theory 29 (2): 75–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelsey, Darren. 2015. “Hero Mythology and Right-Wing Populism: A Discourse-Mythological Case Study of Nigel Farage in the Mail Online.” Journalism Studies. Accessed 2 February, 2017. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid. 2010. “Actor descriptions, action attributions, and argumentation: towards a systematization of CDA analytical categories in the representation of social groups.” Critical Discourse Studies 7 (1): 55–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, and Zia Mahrou. 2014. “Persian Nationalism, Identity and Anti-Arab Sentiments in Iranian Facebook Discourses.” Journal of Language and Politics, 13 (4): 755–780. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, and Johnny Unger. 2016. “Critical Discourse Studies and Social Media: Power, Resistance and Critique in Changing Media Ecologies.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, Third Edition, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer: 205–233. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2016. “Recontextualisation of Neoliberalism and the Increasingly Conceptual Nature of Discourse: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies.” Discourse and Society 27 (3): 308–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto. 1990. New Reflections on the Revolutions of Our Time. London: Verso.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Populism: What’s in a Name?” In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, ed. by Francisco Panizza: 32–49. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Littler, Mark, and Matthew Feldman. 2017. “Social media and the cordon sanitaire: Populist politics, the online space, and a relationship that just isn’t there.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (4). Forthcoming. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McAllister, Ian. 2007. “The Personalization of politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour, ed. by Russell Dalton, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann: 571–588. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mehlman, Jeffery.1972. “From Lévi-Strauss to Lacan.” Yale French Studies 48: 10–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin, and Simon Tormey. 2014. “Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style.” Political Studies 62: 381–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, Jan-Werner. 2014. “The People Must Be Extracted from within the People”: Reflections on Populism.” Constellations 21 (4): 483–493. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. “The End of Polities and the Challenge of Rightwing Populism”. In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, ed. by Francisco Panizza: 50–71. London: VersoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Panizza, Francisco. 2005. Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Parris, Matthew. 2014. “UKIP Isn’t a Nation Party. It’s a Tory Sickness.” The Spectator, 3 May, 2014. Accessed 30 March, 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Perry, Steven. 1983. “Rhetorical Functions of the Infestation Metaphor in Hitler’s Rhetoric.” Central States Speech Journal 34: 229–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rheindorf, Markus, and Ruth Wodak. 2017. “Borders, Fences, and Limits–Protecting Austria From Refugees: Metadiscursive Negotiation of Meaning in the Current Refugee Crisis.” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies: 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richardson, John, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. “Recontextualising Fascist Ideologies of the Past: Right-Wing Discourses on Employment and Nativism in Austria and the UK.” Critical Discourse Studies 6 (4): 251–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sakkit, Inari, and Katarina Pettersson. 2016. “Discursive Constructions of Otherness in Populist Radical Right Political Blogs.” European Journal of Social Psychology 46: 156–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, Kate. 2015. “The Pragmatics of Hashtags: Inference and Conversational Style on Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 81: 8–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Statista. 2016. “Number of Twitter users in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2012 to 2018 (in million users).” Statista. 1 January 2017. Accessed 25 January, 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2014. “The Return of ‘the People’: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the European Crisis.” Constellations 21 (4): 505–517. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Techopedia. 2016. “Twitterstorm.” Techopedia. Accessed 25 February, 2017. [URL].Google Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen. 1969. The Uses of Argument, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
van Eemeren, Frans, and Rob Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. “The Representation of Social Actors.” In Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, and Malcolm Coulthard: 32–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2001. “The Discourse-Historical Approach”. In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer: 63–94. London, UK: Sage.Google Scholar
. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele. 2012. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Cited by (18)

Cited by 18 other publications

Öneren-Özbek, Melis
2024. Antisemitism in contemporary Türkiye: Discourses on Turkish Jews on Twitter. Discourse & Society 35:1 ► pp. 116 ff. DOI logo
Hansson, Sten & Ruth Page
2023. Legitimation in government social media communication: the case of the Brexit department. Critical Discourse Studies 20:4 ► pp. 361 ff. DOI logo
Bennett, Samuel
2022. Mythopoetic legitimation and the recontextualisation of Europe’s foundational myth. Journal of Language and Politics 21:2 ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo
Tanner, Samuel & Aurélie Campana
2022. “We Are the News Now”: The Role of Networked Conspiracy and the Quebec “Tweetosphere” in Shaping the Narrative Around the Anti-COVID-19 Restrictions. In Right-Wing Extremism in Canada and the United States [Palgrave Hate Studies, ], ► pp. 155 ff. DOI logo
Tanner, Samuel & Aurélie Campana
2022. « Je ne suis pas anti-vaccin, mais cette affaire de COVID-19 pue la merde ». Criminologie 55:2 ► pp. 269 ff. DOI logo
Xia, Shizhou
2022. Review of Islentyeva (2021): Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideological Bias: Migration in the British Press. Journal of Language and Politics 21:1 ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
Zappettini, Franco & Samuel Bennett
2022. Reimagining Europe and its (dis)integration. Journal of Language and Politics 21:2 ► pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Brusenbauch Meislova, Monika & Steve Buckledee
2021. Discursive (re)construction of populist sovereignism by right-wing hard Eurosceptic parties in the 2019 European parliament elections. Journal of Language and Politics 20:6 ► pp. 825 ff. DOI logo
McManus, Ian
2021. The Case of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In The Populist Radical Right and Health, ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Zappettini, Franco
2021. The tabloidization of the Brexit campaign. Journal of Language and Politics 20:2 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo
Zappettini, Franco
2022. Taking the left way out of Europe. Journal of Language and Politics 21:2 ► pp. 320 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2020. Exploring populist styles of political discourse in Twitter. World Englishes 39:4 ► pp. 550 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2022. Performing right-wing political identities on reader comments pages. Pragmatics and Society 13:1 ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2024. Time for Brexit? Temporalities in the 2019 UK European election campaign. Text & Talk 44:5 ► pp. 577 ff. DOI logo
Kissas, Angelos
2020. Performative and ideological populism: The case of charismatic leaders on Twitter. Discourse & Society 31:3 ► pp. 268 ff. DOI logo
Lipiński, Artur
2020. Populizm a medialne struktury możliwości. Przypadek nowych mediów. Władza Sądzenia :19 ► pp. 74 ff. DOI logo
Statham, Simon
2020. The year’s work in stylistics 2019. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:4 ► pp. 454 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Voices of Supporters [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 101], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.