The role of “sociopolitical keywords” in discursive depoliticization: the case of the terms fascism and responsibility
(2026) Corpora & Discourse International Conference 2026 — Location: Lancaster (23.June.2026)
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- This presentation focuses on the preliminary findings of a research project examining the role of “sociopolitical keywords”: terms such as populism, woke, or fake news that, in some of their uses, have the “capacity to ‘encompass’ or […] ‘crystallize’ a whole set of ideas, values or political issues” (Hambye et al., 2025). The project seeks to deepen our understanding of these keywords by showing that they can play a crucial role in the language of persuasion (Partington, 2017) and, more specifically, in discursive depoliticization – “expression of a failure […] in the discursive articulation of social conflicts” by actors tasked with “sustaining democracy” (Bonnet et al., 2024; our translation) – characterized by a set of strategies that contribute to “closing […] debates” (Maeseele & Raeijmaekers, 2020). The project is therefore structured around two research questions: (1) What roles do sociopolitical keywords play in political discourse? (2) What is their impact on processes of persuasion and discursive depoliticization? To address these questions, we conduct a qualitative and collocational analysis of a corpus of authentic uses of eight sociopolitical keywords (responsibility, diversity, discrimination, fascism, extremism, inclusion, immobilism, transparency) extracted from political speeches delivered in the parliaments of French-speaking Belgium and France (2022-2025). To provide a diversified and generalizable overview of different types of keywords, these eight cases were selected according to several criteria established on the basis of previous research: their political connotation; their positive or negative evaluative valence; and their reference either to attitudes that political actors are expected to adopt or avoid in the conduct of political action (e.g. being responsible, transparent), or to ideologies or societal projects that political actors may defend or oppose (e.g. diversity, fascism). The data are analyzed using an analytical framework inspired by Rondiat (2025). For each occurrence of one of the eight keywords, we identify its context, meaning, evaluative charge, argumentative function, weight and pattern, the targeted referent(s), and whether the use of the term—and the utterance in which it appears—can be characterized as depoliticized or not. This presentation reports on the results of an initial, ongoing study comparing the uses of fascism and responsibility within our parliamentary corpus, which includes more than one hundred occurrences for each keyword. This study addresses research questions (1) and (2) for these two cases. We hypothesize that sociopolitical uses of these keywords recurrently follow argumentative patterns that contribute to forms of discursive depoliticization, notably through the naturalization of certain political positions or the disqualification of dissent. The comparative analysis aims to highlight these mechanisms and their variations, and to show that, despite their specificities, these terms belong to the same category of discursive phenomena, characterized by their function in the language of persuasion. Bonnet, V., Marty, E., & Robert, C. (2024). Mécaniques de la dépolitisation. Mots. Les langages du politique, n° 134(1), 198. Cairn. Hambye, P., De Cock, B., & Rondiat, C. (2025). Studying keywords in discourse: Contrasting different theories and methods. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, 8, 1‑20. https://doi.org/10.18573/jcads.149 Maeseele, P., & Raeijmaekers, D. (2020). Nothing on the news but the establishment blues? Toward a framework of depoliticization and agonistic media pluralism. Journalism, 21(11), 1593‑1610. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917739476 Partington, A. (2017). The Language of Persuasion in Politics: An Introduction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315177342 Rondiat, C. (2025). ‘Following the science’. Science* as a sociopolitical keyword during the pandemic | Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies. https://doi.org/10.18573/jcads.138
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Turneer, E. (2026, June). The role of “sociopolitical keywords” in discursive depoliticization: the case of the terms fascism and responsibility. Corpora & Discourse International Conference 2026, Lancaster. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/277861