La Vox del populismo en Instagram: Santiago Abascal

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate populist discourse on Instagram. With this objective, I analyse a corpus of posts that Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, published over the course of one year (31 March 2022 – 30 March 2023). I have used the theoretical framework of pragmatic linguistics, the theory of argumentation and its grammar, as well as studies on political discourse and the methods of critical discourse analysis. After a brief introduction on the characteristics of populist discourse, I will demonstrate how the locutor uses a wide range of persuasive strategies to create a discourse which is characterised by self-exaltation of the charismatic leader, the denunciation of the source of evil, the use of fallacies and of emotive language (evaluative lexicon, metaphors…) which assumes highly impolite tones or the features of the so-called "Debasing Political Rhetoric".