The article deals with the developement of the term 'popular' in the decades around 1800 and it takes a look at the negative attributions 'low', 'mean', 'platitudinous' and 'vulgar' that are related to it. In the text, the semantic differentiation processes of these five terms are analysed on the basis of relevant dictionary findings, and it is shown how these link to rhetorical, poetological, and socially specific circumstances. All of these terms contribute to outline the concept of the popular. The investigation is based on the assumption that with the partial revaluation of the popular, the terms related to it are recast and bundle the pejorative connotations of the popular in themselves.

In its research program, the CRC 1472 ‘Transformations of the Popular’ has argued that “the long conceptual and problematic history before 1950 should be conceived as a prefigurational space of the popular” (Döring et al. 2021: 19). In this working paper, our interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses the question of how the historical dimensions of the transformations of the popular were already evident before the transformation stage around 1950. We propose to better understand the corresponding observations not as ‘prefigurations’, but as enabling conditions for the transformations of the popular. The plausibility of these assumptions is illustrated by examples from the projects of the Collaborative Research Centre, which explore the phenomena of pop, popularization, and populism not only from the mid-20th century but already from around 1800.