Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\nHow to mobilize individuals? Can catchy phrases and slogans suffice in bringing people together for collective action? In this presentation, we focus on the use of \u2018the people\u2019 as one such mobilizing term in the case of Les Gilets Jaunes (the Yellow Vests) in France. We argue that instead of uniting, the term quickly turned into an ideological battleground. We outline the contours of this symbolic struggle over \u2018the people\u2019 in the context of French politics, pondering its implications for collective action.Data consist of media coverage, but also memes, and social media messages shared in relation to five moments that took place between December 2018 and January 2019 at the height of the Gilets Jaunes movement: President Macron\u2019s speech on TV, Christophe Dettinger\u2019s attack on the police, President Macron\u2019s letter, Marl\u00e8ne Schiappa attending a TV show, the Foulards Rouges (Red Scarves) demonstration. These five moments were selected because they illustrate the discursive struggle over \u2018le peuple\u2019 and offer insights into the diversity of voices that give meaning to who \u2018the people\u2019 are or are not. Informed by discourse analysis (Wodak, 2006), the analysis focuses on identifying the meanings associated with \u2018the people\u2019 and the struggles they encapsulated. We focus our discussion on two discursive strategies through which the identity of the movement as well as its legitimacy are constructed and contested: references to republican values and the use of numbers.In French, \u2018le peuple\u2019 benefits from a rich semantic ambiguity: it can refer to the civic or the ethnic nation; to the commoners or the folk; to a large crowd; or, to the citizen body as a whole (Larousse, n.d.). More importantly, \u2018le peuple\u2019 gains its meaning in opposition to two other terms: the bourgeoisie and the government. As such, it has an anti-elite and anti-establishment ring to it. Yet, while political and technocratic elites have become the Other of \u2018le peuple\u2019, the latter is the French Republic. Indeed, the recurrent references to Marianne and to the slogan \u2018Libert\u00e9, Egalit\u00e9, Fraternit\u00e9\u2019 by the Gilets Jaunes invoke the French revolutions of 1789 and 1848.While \u2018le peuple\u2019 can be an extremely potent mobilizer, it is also a problematic one. For, in spite of its rich historical heritage \u2013 or, perhaps, because of it \u2013 \u2018le peuple\u2019 remains a contested terrain of struggle between various social actors. As an \u2018empty signifier\u2019 (Laclau, 1996), \u2018le peuple\u2019 simultaneously invites identification and contestation. If in the early stages of the mobilization, \u2018le peuple\u2019 worked in an inclusive manner, allowing the right and the left sides of the political spectrum to join the movement, it quickly turned into a terrain of discursive struggle. The use of numbers sheds light on these struggles \u2013 specifically, whether the idea of mass and representativity go hand in hand \u2013 as different social actors started accusing each other of not being the \u2018rightful\u2019 representative of the people, or proposing different interpretations of who or where \u2018le peuple\u2019 is to be found. The Foulards Rouges (the Red Scarves), another citizen-led and digitally enabled mobilization, actively resorted to the notion of silent majority as a counter-narrative to legitimize their movement while discrediting the Gilets Jaunes. The use of numbers quickly became a bone of contention and reveals arguments related to class and nation. Discourses about Christophe Dettinger as well as the presence of Marl\u00e8ne Schiappa on a TV show questioned the difference between being popular (both in terms of social class and in numbers) and being representative of the people.<\/p>\n
Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\nBennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, communication & society, 15(5), 739-768. Larousse (n.d.). Peuple. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.larousse.fr\/dictionnaires\/francais\/peuple\/60039<\/p>\n
Laclau, E (1996). Why do empty signifiers matter to politics. In: Emancipations. Verso, London<\/p>\n
Wodak, R. (2006). Discourse-analytic and socio-linguistic approaches to the study of nation(alism). In Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (Eds.). The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (pp. 104-117). London : Sage Publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Delia\u00a0Dumitrica –\u00a0Erasmus University, Netherlands M\u00e9lodine\u00a0Sommier\u00a0–\u00a0Erasmus University, Netherlands Presentation Keywords Collective identity; Collective action; Discourse; Gilets Jaunes Abstract How to mobilize individuals? Can catchy phrases and slogans suffice in bringing people together for collective action? In this presentation, we focus on the use of \u2018the people\u2019 as one such mobilizing term in the case of Les…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3223,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-588","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/588\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}