In recent years, a growing body of political-scientific literature has focused on the empirical measurement of populism. In such studies, “people-centrism” is one of the most frequently analysed... Show moreIn recent years, a growing body of political-scientific literature has focused on the empirical measurement of populism. In such studies, “people-centrism” is one of the most frequently analysed discourse characteristics, i.e. to what extent “the people” are put in the focus of attention in a politician’s discourse. In order to measure people-centrism empirically, it is common practice to use the number of references to the electorate as the only indicator. In this contribution, however, I argue that the way in which politicians refer to “the people” should be taken into account as well. By presenting a case study from Dutch politics, in which the populist Geert Wilders plays an important role, I substantiate that analysing the syntactic position in which “the people” are presented and the strategic use of perspective or attributed viewpoint deepens our understanding of how (populist) politicians put “the people” in the centre of attention in their discourse. As such this contribution also aims to demonstrate how a linguistic approach to populism can contribute to the empirical measurement of populism. Show less
Recently, a growing body of (political-scientific) literature has focused on the empirical measurement of populism. In such studies, “people-centrism” is one of the most frequently analysed... Show moreRecently, a growing body of (political-scientific) literature has focused on the empirical measurement of populism. In such studies, “people-centrism” is one of the most frequently analysed discourse characteristics, i.e. to what extent “the people” are put in the focus of attention in a politician’s discourse. In order to measure people-centrism empirically, it is common practice to use the number of references to the electorate as the only indicator. In this contribution, we substantiate that a linguistic-stylistic analysis of “perspective” or “attributed viewpoint” offers additional tools for analysing people-centrality in (populist) political discourse empirically. As a case study, we report on an analysis of series of parliamentary speeches delivered by the Dutch populist politicians Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk. Show less
This contribution is a plea to pay more systematicattention to the infrequently studied, fine-grained grammatical phenomenon ofcomplementation in the analysis of political discourse. The way the... Show moreThis contribution is a plea to pay more systematicattention to the infrequently studied, fine-grained grammatical phenomenon ofcomplementation in the analysis of political discourse. The way the Dutchradical populist Geert Wilders uses complementation serves as a case study tothat end. In the first half of the contribution, an in-depth description of thephenomenon of complementation is given; it is argued that the use ofcomplementation affects the degree of certainty by which a speaker presents hisideas. The second half of the contribution reports on a diachronic analysis ofGeert Wilders’ use of complementation in 47 parliamentary speeches held between2004 and 2009. It is argued that Wilders’ use of complementation significantlydecreases between 2004 and 2009. The decrease is not a gradual transition: abreak occurs between 2006 and 2007. This is an indication that Wilders offersless room for discussion from this period onwards. Strikingly, Wilders’ changeduse of complementation coincides with the moment that political scientistsindicate as the moment that Wilders’ political views radicalized. The casestudy not only shows that studying complementation can add to the inventory oflinguistic phenomena relevant to the analysis of political discourse; it alsostresses the significance of combining quantitative and qualitative methods ofanalysis for the quantification of stylistic phenomena. Show less
