Cover not available

In:Imagining the Peoples of Europe: Populist discourses across the political spectrum
Edited by Jan Zienkowski and Ruth Breeze
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 83] 2019
► pp. 315–339

Get fulltext
PDF logo with download linkDownload Chapter PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Chapter EPUB

Chapter 12
Measuring people-centrism in populist political discourse

A linguistic approach

Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 13 August 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.83.13lee
Abstract
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 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.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Geert Wilders and Alexander Pechtold and the general debates of 2008 and 2009
  • Referring to “the people” or not
  • Presenting “the people” in subject, complement or adjunct position
    • Syntactic position and prominence of information
    • Syntactic position of “the people” in Wilders’ and Pechtold’s speeches
  • The use of perspective
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
References
Akkerman, Agnes, Cas Mudde, and Andrej Zaslove. 2014. “How Populist Are The People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters.” Comparative Political Studies 47 (9): 1324–1353. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonell. 2008. “Introduction: The Sceptre and the Spectre.” In Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, ed. by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonell: 1–14. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bonikowski, Bart, and Noam Gidron. 2016. “The Populist Style in American Politics: Presidential Campaign Discourse, 1952–1996.” Social Forces 94 (4): 1593–1621. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. London: Junction Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornelis, Louise. 2003. “Ajax is the Agent: Subject versus Passive Agent as an Indicator of the Journalist’s Perspective in Soccer Reports.” In Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse, ed. by Titus Ensink, and Christoph Sauer: 171–190. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. 2012. Viewpoint in Language: A Multimodal Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deegan-Krause, Kevin, and Tim Haughton. 2009. “Toward a More Useful Conceptualization of Populism: Types and Degrees of Populist Appeals in the Case of Slovakia.” Politics & Policy 37 (4): 821–841. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M.W. 2005. A Semantic Approach to English Grammar. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elchardus, Mark, and Bram Spruyt. 2016. “Populism, Persistent Republicanism and Declinism: An Empirical Analysis of Populism as a Thin Ideology.” Government and Opposition 51 (1): 111–133. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, and Elda Weizman 2018. “‘What I Would Say to John and Everyone Like John Is …’: The Construction of Ordinariness Through Quotations in Mediated Political Discourse.” Discourse & Society 29 (5): 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guilbealt, Douglas 2017. “How Politicians Express Different Viewpoints in Gesture and Speech Simultaneously.” Cognitive Linguistics 28 (3): 417–447. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. Fourth edition. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hameleers, Michael, Linda Bos, and Claes de Vreese 2017. “The Netherlands. A Heartland Full of Insights Into Populist Communication.” In Populist Communication in Europe, ed. by Toril Aalberg, Frank Esser, Carsten Reinemann et al.: 138–150. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasereyn, Walter, K. Romijn, G. Geerts et al. (eds). 2002. Elektronische Versie van de Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. [ General Reference Grammar .]. Second, revised edition. Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff Uitgevers. [URL]. Accessed March 18, 2017.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hawkins, Kirk A. 2009. “Is Chávez Populist? Measuring Populist Discourse in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (8): 1040–1067. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1987. “The Status of Thematic Relations in Linguistic Theory.” Linguistic Inquiry 18: 369–411.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jagers, Jan, and Stefaan Walgrave. 2007. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium. European Journal of Political Research 46 (3): 319–345. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jansen, Frank, and Raoul Wijnands. 2004. “Doorkruisingen van het Links-Rechts Principe. [Thwarts of the Left Right Principle.].” Neerlandistiek.nl 4: 1–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kalkhoven, Lieuwe. 2016. “How to Make Politics … Bigger, Better & Simpler:” The Analysis of Metaphor, Hyperbole and Simplicity in the (Populist) Rhetoric of Politicians in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) in the 21st Century. Dissertation Antwerp University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oliver, Eric, and Wendy Rahn. 2016. “Rise of the Trumpenvolk: Populism in the 2016 Election.” ANNALS, AAPSS 667: 189–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pauwels, Teun. 2014. Populism in Western Europe: Comparing Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rooduijn, Matthijs, and Thijs Akkerman. 2017. “Flank Attacks: Populism and left-right radicalism in Western Europe.” Party Politics 23 (3): 193–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rooduijn, Matthijs, Sarah de Lange, and Wouter van der Burg. 2014. “A Populist Zeitgeist? Programmatic Contagion by Populist Parties in Western Europe. Party Politics 20 (4): 563–575. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rooduijn, Matthijs, and Teun Pauwels. 2011. “Measuring Populism: Comparing Two Methods of Content Analysis.” West European Politics 34 (6): 1272–1283. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, José. 2009. “De Verdeling van Verantwoordelijkheid tussen Journalist en Nieuwsbron: Vorm en Functie van Citaatmengvormen in Journalistieke Teksten [The Division of Responsibility between Journalist and News Source: Form and Function of Mixed Quoations in Journalistic Texts].” Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 31 (1): 1–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, José, and Gisela Redeker. 1996. “Perspective and the Representation of Speech and Thought in Narrative Discourse.” In Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar, ed. by Giles Fauconnier, and Eve Sweetser: 290–317. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, Paul. 1993. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stockemer, Daniel, and Mauro Barisione. 2017. “The ‘New’ Discourse of the Front National Under Marine Le Pen: A Slight Change with a Big Impact.” European Journal of Communication 32 (2): 100–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomlin, Russel. 1997. “Mapping Conceptual Representations into Linguistic Representations: The Role of Attention in Grammar.” In Language and conceptualization, ed. by Jan Nuyts and Eric Pederson: 162–189. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Krieken, Kobie, José Sanders, and Hans Hoeken. 2015. “Viewpoint Representation in Journalistic Crime Narratives: An Analysis of Grammatical Roles and Referential Expressions.” Journal of Pragmatics 88: 220–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Maarten. 2011. “Balancing between Autonomy and Representation: A Stylistic Case Study.” In Proceedings of the Conference Stylistics Across Disciplines, Leiden University, June 16-17: 1–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Stijl en Politiek. Een Taalkundig-stilistische Benadering van Nederlandse Parlementaire Toespraken [ Style and Politics. A Linguistic-stylistic Approach to Dutch Parliamentary Speeches .]. Utrecht: LOT Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. ‘Man van het Volk:’ Stijl en imago van Geert Wilders [Man of the People: Style and Image of Geert Wilders].” Tekstblad, Tijdschrift over Tekst en Communicatie 22 (2): 6–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Maarten, and Freek Van Vliet. 2019. “De Stem van het Volk: Populisme en Perspectief [The Voice of the People. Populism and Perspective].” Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 41 (1): 173–187. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verhagen, Arie. 2001. “Subordination and Discourse Segmentation Revisited, or: Why Matrix Clauses May Be More Dependent than Complements.” In Text Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects, ed. by Ted Sanders, Joost Schilperoord, and Wilbert Spooren: 337–357. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Constructions of Intersubjectivity: Discourse, Syntax, and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vis, Kirsten, José Sanders, and Wilbert Spooren. 2012. “Diachronic Changes in Subjectivity and Stance: A Corpus Linguistic Study of Dutch News Texts.” Discourse, Context & Media 1: 95–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vossen, Koen. 2010. “Populism in the Netherlands after Fortuyn: Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders Compared.” Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11 (1): 22–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Classifying Wilders: The Ideological Development of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.” Politics 31 (3): 179–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The Power of Populism. Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Zehnter, Lisa
2025. Identity Through Distinction: Contextualizing Populist In- and Outgroup References. Political Studies DOI logo
Galochkin, A. E.
2024. The syntactic position of the “people” in the political discourse of left and right populism (NLP-based syntactic analysis experience). Linguistics & Polyglot Studies 10:2 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Pacześniak, Anna
2024. The anti-elitist strategy of political parties as a populist tool to (re)gain electoral support. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 32:4 ► pp. 1021 ff. DOI logo
Vuković-Stamatović, Milica & Branka Živković
2024. People-Centrism in Parliamentary Question Time: Three Montenegrin Prime Ministers Compared. In Discourse Approaches to an Emerging Age of Populist Politics [The Language of Politics, ], ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Krämer, Benjamin, Emily Alexander & Peter Maurer
2023. How German Communication Research Discovered Bourdieu but Missed His Potential for the Study of (Populist) Political Communication. History of Media Studies 3 DOI logo
Jansen, Henrike & Maarten van Leeuwen
2021. The presentational dimension of Geert Wilders’s populist argumentative style. Journal of Argumentation in Context 10:1 ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2020. Angry tweets. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Breeze, Ruth
2020. Exploring populist styles of political discourse in Twitter. World Englishes 39:4 ► pp. 550 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue