Keys to populism? Exploring varieties of mainstream populist discourse through key item analysis
Keys to populism? Exploring varieties of mainstream populist discourse through key item analysis

Summary/Abstract: Despite extensive research, populism remains one of the most strongly contested concepts relating to political language. This study aims to contribute to its understanding by putting forward an approach to identifying markers of populist communication, which draws on the Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies toolkit. In order to test the “populist Zeitgeist” hypothesis (Mudde, 2007), and to fill the gap in research on populism in Eastern Europe, this methodology is then applied to a corpus of Polish mainstream politicians’ election campaign speeches. The results point to the populist contagion, provide counter-evidence to the claims of a transitory nature of populism and show significant variation, despite the relatively subtle ideological differences between the analysed parties. This suggests that populism should not be considered merely as an attachment to a “host” (usually extreme) ideology, but rather as a complex discursive phenomenon in its own right.

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