Abstract
How do discursive practices contribute to social polarization? This question lies at the heart of this edited volume. The book starts from the premise that polarization is not simply a pre-existing social reality that language reflects. Rather, it is actively produced through language use. Through processes of naming, categorizing, and evaluation, a binary world is constructed in which ‘us’ and ‘them’, legitimate and illegitimate, or normal and abnormal are placed in opposition (Van Dijk, 1998, 2008). Across twelve cross-national studies, the contributors examine the linguistic strategies and cognitive processes through which these oppositions are created and maintained, and how they become embedded in wider relations of power.
The volume is situated at the intersection of several influential traditions in polarization research. Its main theoretical foundation is Van Dijk’s (2008) socio-cognitive approach, particularly his concept of the ‘ideological square’. This model explains how group identities are discursively reproduced through four recurring strategies: emphasizing the positive qualities of one’s own group and the negative qualities of other groups, while downplaying one’s own shortcomings and the positive qualities of others. In this way, everyday language helps sustain boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
A second key influence is Lakoff’s (2014) theory of framing. According to Lakoff (2014), frames are mental structures that shape how people interpret and make sense of social reality. Once activated, a frame impacts upon how events are understood, evaluated, and remembered. While highly influential, the author’s work remains largely conceptual and provides relatively little guidance on how frames can be systematically identified in empirical data. The volume also draws on research into ‘affective polarization’. Iyengar et al. (2019) argue that contemporary polarization is not driven solely by policy disagreements but also by strong emotional attachments to one’s own group and hostility towards opposing groups. This focus on emotions adds an important dimension to the study of polarization, one that several contributors address directly.
Finally, studies on digital communication (e.g. Bail et al., 2018; Yardi and boyd, 2010) highlight how social media platforms can intensify political divisions through algorithmically driven echo-chambers and selective exposure to information. Although these traditions have generated important understanding and knowledge, they often remain disconnected. Socio-cognitive approaches are strong at explaining how discourses reproduce broader power relations, but they sometimes pay less attention to the detailed linguistic mechanisms through which this occurs. By contrast, cognitive and corpus linguistic approaches provide sophisticated analyses of language patterns but often stop short of examining their social and political implications. One of the volume’s central contributions is its attempt to bring these strands of research into closer dialogue.
Methodologically, the book’s most distinctive contribution is its integration of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This combination allows qualitative interpretations to be grounded in large-scale corpus evidence, helping to address criticisms that CDA can rely on selective examples (Mautner, 2016), while retaining a focus on ideology and power. The chapters draw on independently compiled data sets and make use of tools such as Sketch Engine, LancsBox, and ATLAS.ti. Through techniques including keyword analysis, collocation analysis, and semantic prosody analysis, the contributors identify recurrent patterns of polarization across different languages, media, and political contexts. These methods serve a broader aim: connecting detailed linguistic choices to wider social and ideological processes.
The first part of the volume examines how polarized identities are discursively constructed. Peterssen and Soares da Silva’s comparative study of Bolsonaro and Abascal identifies three recurring narratives of national identity. These include the nation as oppressed victim, rebellious victim, and rescued victim. Their analysis demonstrates that national identity is not a fixed entity but is continuously produced through rhetorical and linguistic choices. Carneiro and Neto complement this perspective by looking at class-based polarization. They show how landless people are systematically represented as ‘criminals’, while large agricultural producers are legitimized as engines of economic development.
The second part shifts attention to lexical choice and meaning. Cuenca and Morales Moreno’s analysis of Spanish election manifestos reveals how the same word can acquire markedly different meanings within competing ideological frameworks. Polarization, they argue, operates not only through the selection of particular words but also through struggles over their meaning. Similarly, Malory’s study of language use regarding abortion shows how conservative evaluative frameworks can shape communication, even in ostensibly liberal media contexts.
The third and fourth parts extend the analysis to metaphor and narrative. Muelas-Gil and Asenjo demonstrate that social media posts supporting opposing sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict rely on contrasting metaphorical patterns centred on resistance and attack. Drawing on Musolff’s (2006, 2016) concept of ‘metaphor scenarios’ (meaning recurring, culturally structured mini-narratives that organise metaphorical framing in public debate), other chapters consider how conspiracy narratives frequently depend on the figure of the ‘traitor’ as a key narrative role. Breeze’s contribution illustrates how a broader narrative of betrayal helped sustain polarisation in post-Brexit Britain. Together, these studies expand the range of linguistic and semiotic resources through which polarisation is produced and maintained, although strategies for reducing polarization receive considerably less attention.
Taken as a whole, the volume’s theoretical contribution lies in its integration of socio-cognitive discourse theory with the tools from cognitive linguistics. The result is a multilayered framework that links language use, cognition, and the reproduction of power. Methodologically, the volume provides a model for combining quantitative corpus methods with CDA. Its cross-linguistic scope is also noteworthy. By examining material in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Chinese, Croatian, and other languages, the volume broadens a field that has often been dominated by monolingual research.
At the same time, several issues warrant further reflection. One concerns the empirical focus of the volume. Much of the analysis centres on social media communication, while institutional settings such as parliamentary debate, legal proceedings, and other sites where authority is formally exercised receive comparatively little attention. Yet these are precisely the contexts in which discourses may directly participate in the production of legitimacy and power. Their relative absence limits the volume’s engagement with how polarized discourse becomes institutionalised. A second issue concerns the relationship between language and power. Most chapters provide detailed accounts of how polarised discourse is produced, but less attention is given to how these discursive strategies are shaped by broader social structures, or how they may challenge or transform existing relations of power. For a volume seeking to connect language, cognition, and social practice, this remains an important avenue for future research.
The volume will be particularly valuable for early-career researchers in CDA, political communication, and corpus-assisted discourse studies. It offers numerous examples of how cognitive-linguistic concepts can be translated into systematic analytical categories and applied to empirical data. More broadly, the book provides a useful framework for understanding contemporary political communication and the linguistic processes through which social divisions are constructed and sustained.