Politically narrow but performatively rich: Populist communication and normative disruption

Populists have a distinct, if fairly narrowly circumscribed, set of policy stances and issues they are willing to discuss (e.g., immigration, anti-elitism, nostalgia for an idealized past). Yet within this narrow policy bandwidth, they are expansive nonverbal communicators and attempt to achieve social dominance in the spaces where they contest for power. This can happen through interruptions and ignoring the rules of civilized debate, through loud vocal projections, excessive gesturing and histrionic facial expressions, whether speaking or not, and an overall agentic and aggressive style of communication (see Bucy et al., 2020). By asserting themselves physically, vocally, and thematically – harping on the same issues again and again – they seek to control the real-time dynamics and ensuing media narrative. Their appeal is in their simplicity, (supposed) authenticity, and emotionality. Yet, these widely held impressions of populists as agents of disruption are largely anecdotal and have little systematic empirical backing. This study builds on previous work analyzing the transgressive communication style of Donald Trump in the U.S. and applies it to the political behavior of populists across several different national contexts. For the study, a selection of speeches and debates from recognized populists (e.g., Le Pen, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Erdoğan, Wilders, Modi, Chavez) will be selected and manually coded across a set of common expressive indicators, including gestures and body movements, facial expressions, patterns of interruption, and intonations, then compared for similarities. From this, the core elements of a populist repertoire or style of communication will be identified and the patterns of behavior documented. This project lays the groundwork for subsequent audience-based research that assesses the influential elements of populism’s performance and how publics remain susceptible to expansive but dangerously narrow forms of political communication.