Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 13:1 (2022) ► pp.85–106

Performing right-wing political identities on reader comments pages

| Universidad de Navarra
Recent discourse research has examined the rise of right-wing populism. Yet the predominant focus on political parties and politicians means that we know less about how right-wing identities are performed among ordinary people with different degrees of political engagement. This paper examines reader comments pages in three British newspapers, analysing how participants perform, defend and reinforce their political identities in online fora. It traces how supporters of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party perform collective identities and enact political antagonisms. The conclusions emphasise how online media particularly propitiate the blending of personal and societal discourses, and suggest that the internal dynamics of affordances such as comments pages propel conflict escalation and heighten antagonism.
Keywords: discourse analysis, political discourse, digital discourse, reader comments, right-wing populism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Collective identities and social media
  • 3.Material and methodology
  • 4.Performing and negotiating identities
    • 4.1Identity symbols: Creating a recognisable online “we”
    • 4.2Rational arguments and narratives supporting the UKIP position
    • 4.3The relational “we”: Our origins, allies and allegiances
    • 4.4Projecting adversaries and performing antagonism
  • 5.The dynamics of antagonism
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18063.bre
References (47)
References
Adler, Marina. 2012. “Collective identity formation and collective action framing in a Mexican ‘movement of movements’.” Interface 4 (1): 287–315.Google Scholar
Angouri, Jo, and Theodora Tseliga. 2010. “‘you HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!’ From e-disagreement to e-impoliteness in two online fora.” Journal of Politeness Research 61: 57–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Badarneh, Muhammad, and Fathi Migdadi. 2018. “Acts of positioning in online reader comments on Jordanian news websites.” Language & Communication 581: 93–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bastos, Liliana and Maria do Carmo de Oliveira. 2006. “Identity and personal/institutional relations: people and tragedy in a health insurance customer service.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna de Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 188–212. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Sam. 2019. Imagining the Peoples of Europe. Populist Discourses across the Political Spectrum, ed. by Jan Zienkowski and Ruth Breeze, 229–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bingham, Adrian, and Mark Conboy. 2015. Tabloid Century: The Popular Press in Britain, 1896 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bottero, Wendy. 2004. “Class identities and the identity of class.” Sociology 38 (5): 985–1003. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Breeze, Ruth. 2019a. “Imagining the people in UKIP and Labour.” In Populist Discourse: A Methodological Synergy, ed. by Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio, Miguel-Ángel Benítez-Castro, and Francesca de Cesare, 120–135. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019b. “Emotion in politics: Affective-discursive practices in UKIP and Labour.” Discourse & Society 30 (1): 24–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “Exploring populist styles of discourse in Twitter”. World Englishes 39(4): 550–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7 (4–5): 585–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Terry, and Seymour Lipset. 1991. “Are social classes dying?” International Sociology 61: 397–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Robin. 1994. Frontiers of Identity. The British and the Others. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Coretti, Lorenzo, and Daniele Pica. 2015. “The rise and fall of collective identity in networked movements: Communication protocols, Facebook, and the anti-Berlusconi protest.” Information, Communication & Society 18 (8): 951–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, Bronwen, and Rom Harré. 1990. “Positioning: The discursive production of selves.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1): 43–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani. 2006. Social Movements: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eder, Klaus. 2009. “A theory of collective identity. Making sense of the debate on a ‘European identity’.” European Journal of Social Theory 12 (4): 427–447. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garland, Jon, and Mike Rowe. 1996. “War minus the shooting? Jingoism, the English press and Euro 96.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 23 (1): 80–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2015. “Protest avatars as memetic signifiers: political profile pictures and the construction of collective identity on social media in the 2011 protest wave.” Information, Communication & Society 181: 916–929. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gifford, Chris. 2014. “The People against Europe: The Eurosceptic Challenge to the United Kingdom’s Coalition Government.” Journal of Common Market Studies 52 (3): 512–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erwin. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. New York: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Huddy, Leonie. 2001. “From social to political identity: A critical examination of social identity theory.” Political Psychology 22 (1): 127–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Scott, Robert D. Benford, and David A. Snow. 1994. Identity fields, framing processes and the social construction of movement identities. In New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, ed. by Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield, 185–208. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Kerbrat Orecchioni, Catherine. 1997. “A multi-level approach in the study of talk-in-action.” Pragmatics 7 (1): 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kienpointner, Manfred. 1997. “Varieties of rudeness. Types and functions of impolite utterance.” Functions of Language 4 (2), 251–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kimmel, Michael. 2018. Healing from Hate. How Young Men get into – and out of – Violent Extremism. Oakland: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kleinke, Sonja. 2010. “Interactive aspects of computer-mediated communication.” In Discourses in Interaction, ed. by Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo, Marjut Johansson, and Mia Raitaniemi, 195–222. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korostelina, Karina. 2014. “Intergroup identity insults: a social identity theory perspective.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 141: 214–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2011. “On-line polylogues and impoliteness: The case of postings sent in response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube video.” Journal of Pragmatics 431: 2578–2593. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Melucci, Alberto. 1995. “The process of collective identity.” In Social movements and culture, ed. by Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, 41–63. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Milan, Stefania. 2015. “From social movements to cloud protesting: The evolution of collective identity.” Information, Communication & Society 181: 887–900. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mollin, Sandra. 2018. “The use of face-threatening acts in the construction of in- and out-group identities in British parliamentary debates.” In The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline. Personal – Group – Collective, ed. by Birte Bös, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin, and Nuria Hernández, 205–225. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moore, Charles. 2013. Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2018. “Why is the far right dominated by men?” The Guardian, 17 August. [URL]
Nadeem, Nahla. 2014. “The Emergence of Politicized Collective Identity in Online News Commentaries as a form of Social Capital.” In Identity and Leadership in Virtual Communities: Establishing Credibility and Influence, ed. by Dona Hickey and Joseph Essid, 47–60. Hershey, Penn.: IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. “Politicizing collective identities: Online news commentaries in the Arab Spring”. In Populist discourse across modes and media, ed. by Ruth Breeze and Ana María Fernández Vallejo, 317–338. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Perelmutter, Renee. 2013. “Klassika zhanra: The flamewar as a genre in the Russian blogosphere.” Journal of Pragmatics 45 (1): 74–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reay, Diane. 2005. “Beyond consciousness. The psychic landscape of social class.” Sociology 39 (5): 911–928. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ruelle, Olivier, and Peter Peverelli. 2016. “The discursive construction of identity through interaction on social media in a Chinese NGO.” Chinese Journal of Communication. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Bernd. 2004. Identity in Modern Society. A Social Psychological Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Bernd, and Bert Klandermans. 2001. Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist 56 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treré, Emiliano. 2015. “Reclaiming, proclaiming and maintaining collective identity in the in the #yosoy132 movement in Mexico.” Information, Communication & Society 181: 901–915. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turner, John, Michael Hogg, Penelope Oakes, Stephen Reicher, and Margaret Wetherell. 1987. Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-categorization Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A.. 2009. Critical discourse studies: A socio-cognitive approach. In Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, 62–86. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Lewis, Harry M. & Vivian L. Vignoles
2024. Construction and contestation of climate activist identities in the comments section of a large UK‐based online newspaper. European Journal of Social Psychology 54:1 ► pp. 154 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2023. “Not One of Our Experts.” Knowledge Claims and Group Affiliations in Online Discussions of the COVID-19 Vaccine. In Digital Scientific Communication, ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.