Populism as a Style of Political Communication. The Challenge of Measuring Populism Through Metaphors

The aim of this proposal is to highlight one possible method how to recognize populism in political communication. The method synthesizes frameworks of content analysis, metaphor analysis and Laclau’s perspective of populism as a style of communication that operates with empty signifiers. Laclau argues that populist statements usually contain stereotypes that are demonstrated as facts. These “facts” serve to strengthen social frustration of the masses, provoke their feeling of social injustice, and continually creating a gap between the elites and the people. All of this serves the populists, who use these “facts”, to gain popularity. Populists use terms like “nation”, “ours”, “theirs”, “migrants”, “good culture”, “bad Islam”, but they do not explain the proper meaning of these terms. The populist rhetoric is only about the style of communication, not the content, which strengthens the stereotypes even more and expresses basic values such as goodness, badness, stability, chaos, etc. We can explain these categories, for instance, through metaphors that link the reference terms (such as migrants, nation) to values. Populists can create linear metaphors like CZECH NATION IS HUMANE (good) and its opposite – MIGRANTS ARE PSEUDO-HUMANE (evil). Thus they create specific mentality of evil/good. The presentation will be focused on the Czech political party called Freedom and Direct Democracy in comparison to other parties. The data set is based on the discussion of the Czech parliament about the issue of the so-called “migration crisis”. According to the analysis, it is possible to distinguish populist rhetoric, in order to be able to measure it, from other types of political communication.