Populism and the people in Lula's political discourse: Bridging linguistic and social theory

This paper combines conceptual tools from discourse and social theories to analyze a particular speech that former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivered at the end of his second term (2007-2010) in the Complexo do Alemao, a neighborhood located in one of the poorest areas of Rio de Janeiro. It attempts to highlight how Lula breaks with a longstanding tradition of Brazilian politicians who have chiefly represented the political elites. While using a specific rhetoric, Lula constructs (and is constituted by) a "populist" locus of enunciation. Drawing from Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism, this paper argues that populist logic in Latin America should not be understood pejoratively, but rather as a particular way of doing politics. It thus claims that Lula positioned himself and his interlocutors as "the people," a specific discourse that breaks with certain Eurocentric expectations about the "appropriate" language of politics in Brazil.