Language, Populism, and Political Discourse in Contemporary Europe
The Dutch Case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.23.2026.102.08Keywords:
populism, political discourse, Netherlands, PVV, critical discourse analysis (CDA), corpus linguisticsAbstract
This paper examines how populism operates through language in contemporary Europe, using the Netherlands as a revealing case and focusing on the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV). We treat populism primarily as a discursive phenomenon: a political practice enacted through lexical choices, symbolic boundarymaking, and recurring oppositions between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’, while drawing on ideational, strategic, and performative perspectives as interpretive cross-checks. Methodologically, the study combines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Corpus Linguistics (CL): a dedicated corpus of PVV electoral texts is analyzed in Sketch Engine to identify statistically salient keywords (via frequency and keyness), which are then interpreted through close, contextsensitive CDA. The findings show that PVV discourse is organized around a compact set of lexical anchors (e.g., asylum restriction, border control, regulatory skepticism), which function as condensed ideological signals enabling blame-shifting, moralization, and the naturalization of exclusion. By mapping these mechanisms, the paper offers a replicable framework for studying how populist rhetoric gains coherence, resonance, and political force in an increasingly mediated and algorithmically shaped public sphere.
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