A worrying discursive fracture

Abstract

We face the development of a variously designated phenomena: “rise of populism”, “anti-system movements”, etc. It is not only a social fracture, but also a “discursive” one. The populists think that they have been denied from accessing the right to the speech in environments in which there is a greater audience or moral authority / credibility, that an elite of privileged and / or minorities separated from “real” society have a monopoly on the legitimacy of speech. This discursive fracture is possible by social networks, in which those who think they are excluded express themselves abundantly. But there is a fundamental asymmetry between their statements and those of the “elites”, which justify their status by respecting a certain number of cognitive and linguistic norms. It is a dangerous situation of “interincomprehension” in which each of the two adversaries legitimizes itself by the other. Discourse analysts cannot be content with showing the deficiencies of “populist” statements; they must reflect on the discursive fracture itself. But treating the speech of the elites as discourse must not mean validating the “populist” point of view.