Interview with Benjamin De Cleen: Discourse Theory and the Turn to Practice

We talk to Benjamin De Cleen about a recent Journal of Language and Politics special issue, Discourse Theory and the Turn to Practice: Lessons from the Populist Moment, which he guest-edited alongside Nico Carpentier, Jason Glynos, Jana Goyvaerts, Maximilian Grönegräs and Yannis Stavrakakis.

We also interviewed some of the authors of papers in that special issue here:

Théo Aiolfi

Emmy Eklundh and Sebastián Ronderos

Thomas Jacobs

Alan Finlayson

Why did you decide to propose this special issue?

This special issue grew out of the second edition of the Discourse Theory: Ways Forward conference, which the research center DESIRE organized in Brussels in March 2023. We had previously edited a special issue for the Journal of Language and Politics based on the 2019 edition of the conference, which came out in 2021. We were really happy with how that collaboration went, so after the second edition, we reached out to them again—and we were very pleased they were open to working with us once more.

The starting point for this issue is a question we think is crucial: how can we make Essex School Discourse Theory (DT) as useful as possible for studying political practice—not just in the sphere of politics, but also in media, culture, and broader societal contexts? At its core, DT is concerned with a critical understanding of concrete political struggles. While the conceptual framework has been developed in theoretically dense texts, it’s clear that DT is fundamentally about analyzing real-world politics.

It offers a discursive lens for understanding how meaning-making shapes political strategy and power struggles. That includes questions like: How are societal demands translated into political projects, and how do they gain meaning along the way? How do different political actors give different meanings to the same issues? How are appeals to citizens constructed by different political projects? How are alliances built—and how do they fall apart? How are group identities shaped through discourse? And how does hegemony work?

What are the key takeaways?

We titled the special issue Discourse Theory and the Turn to Practice. In our introductory article, we reflect on what that phrase means, drawing on insights from DT’s extensive engagement with the study of populism over the past decade or so. We argue that this ‘populist moment’ in DT has taught us at least three key lessons that point toward what we’re calling a turn to practice.

The first lesson is about rebalancing the relationship between ontology, analysis, and intervention. Traditionally, DT has focused more on ontological-theoretical reflection and political-strategic intervention—most clearly so in the work of Laclau and Mouffe themselves—than on systematic, empirical analysis of the messy details of political practice. What we’re seeing now is a partial shift: the empirical study of how political practice actually unfolds is moving closer to the center of DT work. That’s a welcome development, but we also warn against a detachment of empirical research from theoretical and strategic concerns.

The second dimension follows from this. If DT is to take political practice seriously, it needs to move more decisively beyond a focus on language. Theoretically, DT has always defined discourse more broadly than just spoken or written language—but in practice, that wider scope hasn’t always been reflected in the research. That has changed, most visibly in DT work on populism, where we’ve seen more engagement with approaches that emphasize style and performance, for example. To really study political practice today, DT needs to pay more attention to how it operates in and through media, culture, affect, and technology.

The third lesson concerns the role of populism within the tradition. On the one hand, DT’s work on populism has shown how powerful the framework can be for analyzing real-world politics. On the other hand, this strong focus on populism also raises questions about DT’s capacity to understand other kinds of political practice. If DT is to remain a sharp and flexible tool, it needs to engage with forms of politics that are less obviously aligned with its historical development and major points of interest.That includes less antagonistic forms of politics, and political dynamics that unfold outside of formal political arenas.

These three themes run through the articles in the issue, each of which engages in some way with other traditions, develops methodological innovations, or explores new areas for DT. For example, Thomas Jacobs puts DT into dialogue with strategic communication. Alan Finlayson brings it into conversation with rhetorical political analysis. Julius Schneider, Rebecca Warren, and Jason Glynos explore the practice of community organizing. Emmy Eklundh and Sebastián Ronderos propose a “methodology of praxis” that centers affect. Théo Aiolfi bridges DT and performance studies to develop a political performance analysis protocol. And Jenny Gunnarsson Payne argues for a deeper engagement with feminism and gender—as both topics of analysis and theoretical resources.

Where do you plan to go next in your research?

The next event on the agenda of the DESIRE group is the Populism Specialist Group annual workshop in Thessaloniki in October 2025. We were happy to team up with the Populism Specialist Group for this workshop on ‘Reimagining emancipatory politics: Hegemony, Populism, and Political Strategy Today’. What’s really central here is the question: what can we do with the DT study of populism and with the DT tradition more broadly in the current conjuncture with its growing right-wing hegemony? I’m sure the three levels of the turn to practice that structure the special issue will help us think this through, at the very least by helping us ask the right questions.