![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article explores how neoliberal and populist elements were initially fused in US political talk to legitimize the expansion of corporate power and socioeconomic inequality that has occurred over recent decades. Applying neo-Gramscian critical semiotic analysis to speeches, news texts and legislative statements about the 1981 Reagan economic plan, I illustrate how a distinctive neoliberal-populist discourse articulates signs of ‘the American people’ with signs of market individualism, and further connects these signs to the neoliberal political project’s policy moves to roll back state protections and deliver large tax cuts. Neoliberal populism is a paradigmatic instance of what Stuart Hall has termed the ‘trans-coding’ of distinct semantic elements to form a new hegemonic discourse. Through neoliberal-populist signifying processes, people who are deemed unable or unwilling to inhabit market-centric subjectivities, or to promote policies defined as ‘free market,’ are ideologically drawn outside the perimeters of social esteem and political legitimacy. These processes have created obstacles to imagining a unified, politically effective opposition to the neoliberal project in the United States. Moreover, by ideologically constructing ‘the American people’ as anti-statists in the realm of economic and social welfare policy, neoliberal-populist discourse makes it difficult to articulate democratic values and practices with the state as a mechanism through which greater economic equality and substantive democracy could be realized. My analysis illuminates the immediate historical roots of a public discourse with deep anchors in popular common sense which continues to pervade official US policy talk. The cultural resonance and political influence of neoliberal-populist discourse help to explain the persistence of the neoliberal project in the USA.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2013 and 2014 annual meetings of the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association, the 2016 American Political Science Association Methods Studio Workshop, and the 2016 Providence College Political Science Department Research Workshop. The author is particularly grateful to Sandy Schram, Thea Riofrancos, Gizem Zencirci, Dean Snyder and the journal's manuscript reviewers for their thoughtful critiques and commentary.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Matt Guardino is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, Providence, RI, USA. A former journalist, his research applies social-scientific and critical-cultural approaches to analyse news media, advertising, political discourse and public opinion. His work has appeared in several academic journals and edited volumes, and he is the author (with Danny Hayes) of Influence from Abroad: Foreign Voices, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). His forthcoming book examines the role of corporate news media in supporting the neoliberal shift in US public policy.
Notes
1 Statements were obtained from the official US Congressional Record, accessed through the LexisNexis database. I selected statements from the July 23 through August 4, 1981, period, which spans the week of debate in each chamber immediately preceding the key votes on the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), the centerpiece of the Reagan economic plan (votes were taken July 29, July 31 and August 4).
2 News stories were selected from January 20 (the day Reagan took office) through August 13, 1981 (the day he signed ERTA).
3 Indeed, no major Reagan speeches from this period articulate bureaucratic profligacy and opacity with national security programs, despite the massive military spending buildup that formed a central part of his policy agenda.