A corpus-assisted analysis of the term <em>populism</em> in French and Spanish media discourses

In this paper, we analyse the use of the lexemes populism(s) and populist(s) in French and Spanish media discourses during the electoral year 2019. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion among scholars in different fields on the meanings and functions of these controversially debated terms by providing corpus evidence of how these terms are used in contemporary public discourses. Using a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach, we seek to examine how populism(s) and populist(s) are used in the media sources from France and Spain, focusing on (i) the meanings of these socio-political keywords; (ii) the similarities and differences in the use of these lexemes in two languages (French and Spanish) and in four types of media (an established source, a serious-popular medium, a free daily medium, and a state-funded medium). First, we present a quantitative comparison of the occurrences of the terms in the French and the Spanish corpora. Then, we cover the findings of the collocation analysis of populism(s) and populist(s) focusing on the five strongest collocates of the terms in each corpus, as well as on the comparison of the collocates grouped into semantic categories. The analysis reports the recurrent and shared patterns of use of populis* across the two countries (e.g. the collocates rise, nationalism). Furthermore, the cross-linguistic analysis highlights numerous differences. Namely, it shows distinct uses of the word-forms of populis* (i.e. the use of the noun populism versus the use of the noun and adjective populist), and distinct uses of populis* across different types of media. Finally, the findings show how populis* functions as a socio-political keyword in a particular political context (i.e. a tendency to discuss populism as an abstract phenomenon in Europe in the French media versus a tendency to label concrete actors in the national context in the Spanish media).