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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 19:4 (2020) ► pp.666–690

Who are ‘the people’?

Uses of empty signifiers in propagandistic news discourse

ORCID logo | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
| The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
As expressions without clear definition but with strong normative charging, empty signifiers play an important role in political discourse. Uniting diverse populations under a common banner and endowing political demands with self-evident legitimacy, they constitute a potent tool for rallying support for political action. Among empty signifiers, one particularly versatile construct are ‘the people’ as bearers of ultimate political legitimacy. In this paper, we investigate how ‘the people’ are constructed in propagandistic conflict narratives during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, imbuing the concept with different meanings in the pursuit of competing political ends. We show how ‘the people’ are constructed as democratic sovereign, enduring nation, moral humans or dispersed media publics, each time summoning different kinds of legitimacy and using different strategies to construct encompassing consensus and marginalize dissent. We discuss implications for the study of ideological discourse, populism and political communication.
Keywords: the people, empty signifiers, populism, propaganda, legitimation, political discourse, ideology, Russian-Ukrainian conflict
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Empty signifiers
    • 2.1Empty signifiers as appeals to consensus
    • 2.2Empty signifiers as legitimizing devices
    • 2.3Empty signifiers as tools for political mobilization
    • 2.4The power of ‘the people’
  • 3.Populism and propagandistic narratives in Eastern Ukraine
    • 3.1The role of propagandistic media
  • 4.Method
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1The people as a sovereign
    • 5.2The people as the nation
    • 5.3The people as humans
    • 5.4The people as the public
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19057.pas
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