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Populist elements in the election manifestoes of AfD and UKIP

Populist elements in the election manifestoes of AfD and UKIP
Populist elements in the election manifestoes of AfD and UKIP
The term populism is omnipresent in current political science and political discourse. This paper discusses, how so-called “populist” discourse is linguistically construed in the 2017 election manifestos of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the British United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). It does so by operationalising populism concepts from political science, specifically the difference between exclusive and inclusive populism. In order to investigate how “populist” discourses depend on the respective political culture of a discourse community, these categories are employed in a corpus based comparative politico-linguistic analysis. Based on a corpus of German and British election manifestos from 2017, the paper demonstrates that both UKIP and the AfD combine elements of in inclusive populism based on demands of a democratic renewal, and an exclusive populism based on the idea the people as a homogeneous ethnos. The discursive realisation, however, differs because of general historic and political differences such as Britain being a state of four nations and the AfD aiming to avoid a rhetoric known from Germany’s past. Particularly pronounced are differences in the delineation to the enemy “European Union” as both parties link their euro-sceptical discourse to different central signifiers of the German and British political culture.
Comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis, populism, Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP
0044-2305
265–282
Kranert, Michael
2054176a-2b70-491b-9ee7-5388ae25296f
Kranert, Michael
2054176a-2b70-491b-9ee7-5388ae25296f

Kranert, Michael (2019) Populist elements in the election manifestoes of AfD and UKIP. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA), 67 (3), 265–282. (doi:10.1515/zaa-2019-0023).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The term populism is omnipresent in current political science and political discourse. This paper discusses, how so-called “populist” discourse is linguistically construed in the 2017 election manifestos of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the British United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). It does so by operationalising populism concepts from political science, specifically the difference between exclusive and inclusive populism. In order to investigate how “populist” discourses depend on the respective political culture of a discourse community, these categories are employed in a corpus based comparative politico-linguistic analysis. Based on a corpus of German and British election manifestos from 2017, the paper demonstrates that both UKIP and the AfD combine elements of in inclusive populism based on demands of a democratic renewal, and an exclusive populism based on the idea the people as a homogeneous ethnos. The discursive realisation, however, differs because of general historic and political differences such as Britain being a state of four nations and the AfD aiming to avoid a rhetoric known from Germany’s past. Particularly pronounced are differences in the delineation to the enemy “European Union” as both parties link their euro-sceptical discourse to different central signifiers of the German and British political culture.

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Accepted/In Press date: 3 October 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 22 October 2019
Published date: 25 October 2019
Keywords: Comparative politico-linguistic discourse analysis, populism, Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434621
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434621
ISSN: 0044-2305
PURE UUID: 42f693e1-a714-475f-85db-5f1cfbf03d2e
ORCID for Michael Kranert: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0270-7136

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Date deposited: 03 Oct 2019 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 08:14

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