36.3260, Calls: Status Quaestionis - "Special Issue: Post-truth and Populism in Politics, Communication and Discourse" (Jrnl)

Mon Oct 27 13:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3260. Mon Oct 27 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3260, Calls: Status Quaestionis - "Special Issue: Post-truth and Populism in Politics, Communication and Discourse" (Jrnl)

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Date: 25-Oct-2025
From: Massimiliano Demata [massimiliano.demata at unict.it]
Subject: Status Quaestionis - "Special Issue: Post-truth and Populism in Politics, Communication and Discourse" (Jrnl)

Journal: Status Quaestionis
Issue: Post-truth and Populism in Politics, Communication and
Discourse
Call Deadline: 15-Nov-2025

This issue of Status Quaestionis seeks to investigate contemporary
political communication from a sociolinguistic perspective, with
particular attention to the phenomena of post-truth and populist
discourse. In recent years, the relationship between language,
politics, and society has been profoundly reshaped by the impact of
social media, the spread of polarizing narratives, and the erosion of
the traditional link between factual truth and public credibility. In
this context, where “fake news”, “alternative facts”, and
algorithmically driven amplification circulate at scale, the stakes
for democratic debate are increasingly high.
This issue of SQ aims to provide a critical contribution to the
understanding of ongoing transformations in political communication,
while reflecting on the risks and opportunities for democratic debate
in a context increasingly marked by fragmentation, disinformation, and
discursive oversimplification. It welcomes analyses that foreground
how discursive practices shape public credibility, the mobilization of
identities, and the production of simplified oppositions between “the
people” and “the elites.”
We will publish original papers drawing on textual corpora from public
speeches, electoral campaigns, and digital interactions, examining how
rhetorical strategies and linguistic choices contribute to redefining
discursive authority, influencing not only electoral dynamics but also
the collective perception of reality (including, crucially, social
reality). Approaches may include or combine insights from discourse
analysis, pragmatics, and critical sociolinguistics, with the goal of
identifying recurring patterns in populist political language and
assessing how these contribute to the construction of a simplified,
oppositional, and identity-based imaginary.
In view of the publication of this issue, we invite scholars to submit
a 250-word proposal for an article. Contributions may address one or
more of the following areas, or propose alternative topics closely
related to them:
 - Discursive constructions of truth, authority, and legitimacy in the
post-truth era
 - Populist rhetoric: linguistic, pragmatic, and stylistic strategies
 - Political discourse, polarization, and identity-building
 - Language, emotions, and the mobilization of publics
 - The role of metaphors, narratives, and frames in populist
communication
 - Digital discourse, social media dynamics, and disinformation
 - Critical Discourse Analysis, corpus-based studies, and
computational approaches to political language
 - Comparative perspectives on populist discourse in national and
international contexts
 - Interdisciplinary intersections: sociolinguistics, political
science, media studies, and philosophy of language
We further welcome contributions that explore:
 - Platform-mediated dynamics (algorithmic visibility, virality, and
influencer ecologies) and their effects on discursive authority and
credibility;
 - Conspiracy and post-truth formations as pragmatic and interactional
practices (e.g., social validation through repetition).
Abstracts (250 words), together with a short bio, should be sent to
Massimiliano Demata (massimiliano.demata at unict.it) and Donatella
Montini (donatella.montini at uniroma1.it).
Final manuscripts should average 6,500 words (approximately 40,000
characters, including spaces).
Deadline for abstract submission: 15 November.
Deadline for final papers: 15 April.
Expected publication date: December 2026
Official call:
https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa03/status_quaestionis/announcement/view/119
References:
Bergmann, Eirikur (2018). Conspiracy & Populism: The Politics of
Misinformation. London: Palgrave.
Bouvier, Gwen, & Machin, David (2020). Critical Discourse Analysis and
the Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media. London: Routledge.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric. The
Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2014). Analysing Political Speeches.
Rhetoric, Discourse, Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Demata, Massimiliano (2018). ““I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here
if it wasn’t for Twitter”. Donald Trump’s Populist Style on Twitter.”
Textus 31, 1, pp. 67-90.
Di Martino, Elena, Blaxill, Luke. (eds.) (2018). Aspects of Political
Language in the Age of “Post-Democracy” and beyond. Textus 31, 1.
Edelman, Murray (1964). The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Edelman, Murray (1988). Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Fairclough, Norman (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman.
Foucault, Michel (2002) (1969). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London:
Routledge.
Foucault, Michel (1976). Sorvegliare e punire. Torino: Einaudi.
Hidalgo-Tenorio, Encarnación, Miguel-Ángel Benítez-Castro & Francesca
De Cesare (eds.) (2019). Populist Discourse. Critical Approaches to
Contemporary Politics. London: Routledge.
Judis, John B. (2016). The Populist Explosion. How the Great Recession
Transformed American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global
Reports.
KhosraviNik, Majid (2018). “Social Media Techno-Discursive Design,
Affective Communication and Contemporary Politics.” Fudan J. Hum. Soc.
Sci. 11, 427–442.
KhosraviNik, Majid (ed.) (2020). Social Media Critical Discourse
Studies. London, Routledge.
Kranert, Michael (ed.) (2020). Discursive Approaches to Populism
Across Disciplines. The Return of Populists and the People. London:
Palgrave.
Levitsky Steven & Ziblatt, Daniel (2018). How Democracies Die. What
History Reveals About Our Future. New York: Penguin.
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro (1998). La comunicazione politica. Bologna: Il
Mulino.
Moffitt, Benjamin (2016). The Global Rise of Populism. Performance,
Political Style, and Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Montini, Donatella (2019). "Hockey Moms and Pitbulls: Populist
Discourse and Female Leaders". Costellazioni 8, 89-108.
Mudde Cas, Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristòbal (2015). “Vox Populi or Vox
Masculini? Populism and Gender in Northern Europe and South America.”
Patterns of Prejudice 49 (1-2), 16-36.
Mudde Cas, Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristòbal (2017). Populism. A Very Short
Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taggart Paul (2000). Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press.
van Dijk, Teun (1997). Discourse as Structure and Process. London:
Sage.
Wodak, Ruth (2020). The Politics of Fear. The Shameless Normalization
of Far-Right Discourse. Second edition. London: Sage.

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Discourse Analysis
                     General Linguistics
                     Pragmatics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

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