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The Language of Right-Wing Populist Leaders: Not So Simple

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2020

Duncan McDonnell Open the ORCID record for Duncan McDonnell [Opens in a new window]  and
Stefano Ondelli Open the ORCID record for Stefano Ondelli [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Political scientists have long asserted that populists use simpler language than their mainstream rivals to appeal to ordinary people and distance themselves from elites. However, there is little comparative evidence in support of that claim. In this study, we investigate the linguistic simplicity of four right-wing populists compared to their principal opponents in the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Italy. We do so by analysing a corpus of approximately one million words from leaders’ speeches, using a series of linguistics measures for evaluating simplicity. Contrary to expectations, we find that Donald Trump was only slightly simpler than Hillary Clinton, while Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France were more complex than their main rivals, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini was simpler on some measures but not others. We conclude that the simple language claim is not borne out and that other aspects of the received wisdom about populism should be re-examined.

Type
Special Section: Revisiting Populism
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 828 - 841
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

*Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N5PYXZ

They would like to thank the following colleagues who provided valuable advice and assistance during the development of this research project and article: Paris Aslanidis, Paul Kenny, Dominique Labbé, Conor Little, Ferran Martinez i Coma, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, George Mikros, Frank Mols, Lee Morgenbesser, Paolo Nadalutti, Floriana Sciumbata, Luca Tringali, Arjuna Tuzzi, Marco Valbruzzi, and Annika Werner. They are also very grateful to the interpreting and translation students at the University of Trieste who helped with the data collection.

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Supplementary material: Link

McDonnell and Ondelli Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N5PYXZ
Link
Supplementary material: File

McDonnell and Ondelli supplementary material

Appendix A
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Supplementary material: File

McDonnell and Ondelli supplementary material

Appendix B
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