‘You’re a populist! No, you are a populist!’: The rhetorical analysis of a popular insult in the United Kingdom, 1970–2018
| Author | Matteo CM Casiraghi |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120978646 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120978646
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2021, Vol. 23(4) 555 –575
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148120978646
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‘You’re a populist! No, you
are a populist!’: The rhetorical
analysis of a popular insult
in the United Kingdom,
1970–2018
Matteo CM Casiraghi
Abstract
This article focuses on discourses on populism, presenting a case study on the United Kingdom.
Analysing all references to populism in the British Parliament from 1970 to 2018, this article
provides a framework to think about rhetoric and populism, a method to investigate political
attitudes, and insights about the debate on populism in the United Kingdom. Results show that
from the 1970s to the 1990s politicians interpret populism in demagogical terms and most often
refer to the category of the political role of ‘the people’. More recently, negative references and
personal attacks increase, and politicians refer to different categories. Moreover, the analysis
shows how British politicians employ epideictic and forensic rhetorical strategies more often when
debating about populism, whereas deliberative strategies rarely emerge. Finally, the investigation
over the 2015–2018 period shows that government membership, a distant election, and a right-
wing party membership increase the likelihood of rhetorical positive interpretations of populism.
Keywords
British parties, British politics, discourses on populism, parliamentary debates, populism,
rhetorical political analysis
Introduction
Scholars have worked on a variety of topics linked to populism, from the definition of the
concept (Müller, 2017) to the measurement of populist attitudes (Pauwels, 2011) and
from populism during elections (Bernhard and Kriesi, 2011) to the efficacy of populist
narratives (Bos et al., 2020). Despite such attention, some territories remain unchartered
and some questions open. This article focuses on the rhetorical analysis of political lan-
guage, investigating how politicians employ the term populism in their debates. How do
politicians define populist attitudes? Why do politicians rhetorically employ the term in
Department of International Studies, University of Milan, Milano, Italy
Corresponding author:
Matteo CM Casiraghi, Department of International Studies, University of Milan, Via Conservatorio 7, Milano
20122, Italy.
Email: matteo.casiraghi@unimi.it
978646BPI0010.1177/1369148120978646The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsVariablesModel 1Model 2Model 3Model 4Neg refPos refNeg refPos refValenceValenceCasiraghi
research-article2021
Original Article
556 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 23(4)
different ways? Do politicians refer to the theoretical categories of populism established
by scholars in the academic debate?
The first contribution of this article is to enlarge the scope of research on populism.
While previous studies have mostly focused on the strategies and language of populist par-
ties, this analysis considers all actors in the parliamentary arena. Moreover, the article
introduces rhetorical political analysis to the debate on populism, shifting the attention on
rhetorical uses of the term, and not on previously defined categories. As Baker (2019) has
recently argued, ‘The noisy dispute over the meaning of populism is more than just an
academic squabble – it’s a crucial argument about what we expect from democracy’. The
second contribution is that the article sketches a new framework to connect theories of
populism with political attitudes and rhetorical strategies in the parliamentary arena. Third,
the article offers a methodological contribution, coding all references to populism in par-
liamentary debates in the United Kingdom from 1970 to 2018. Quantitative and qualitative
elements provide a picture of the rhetorical use of the populist lemma, as the former high-
lights general trends, whereas the latter investigates political strategies thoroughly.
Results show that British politicians produce mixed interpretations of populism from
the 1970s to the 1990s. However, more recently, negativity dominates references to the
phenomenon, personal attacks that employ the term increase, and politicians provide new
interpretations of populism, especially following the recent ‘populist hype’ (Glynos and
Mondon, 2016). Moreover, the investigation of the post-2015 period highlights how gov-
ernment–opposition membership, the position of a party over the left–right spectrum, and
the distance from the next general elections influence the likelihood of observing nega-
tive or positive references to populism in politicians’ speeches. Finally, the article pro-
vides rich descriptive details about the adjectives associated with populism, the theoretical
categories of populism to which politicians refer, and the different rhetorical strategies
that politicians employ.
Populism and rhetoric
Previous studies have provided extensive literature reviews on populism (Gidron and
Bonikowski, 2013; Rooduijn, 2019), showing the depth and diversity of this research
agenda. As anticipated, after an overload of research focusing on populist discourses,
there is a necessity to study discourses about populism. As De Cleen et al. (2018) argued,
‘We must also turn our attention towards how the term is used, by whom and why, and
with what performative effects’. Thus, here the focus moves from populism as a concept
to populism as a rhetorical signifier. Rhetoric is indeed a fundamental aspect of demo-
cratic politics and, in particular, of debates in the parliamentary arena. Democratic poli-
tics involves the contestation of ideas, beliefs, and meanings, and rhetorical analysis
focuses on the arguments employed to discuss about such ‘bones of contention’ (Finlayson,
2007; Walter, 2017).
Political Science literature on rhetoric has addressed various phenomena, from politi-
cians’ references to relevant political events (Atkins, 2016), to appeals to authoritative
figures (Casiraghi and Testini, 2020), and to different psychoanalytical approaches to
political communication (Martin, 2016). As Finlayson (2007) argues, political rhetoric
can have (1) epideictic functions, when the speaker acclaims or blames something or
someone; (2) forensic objectives, when the speaker discusses the just or unjust character
of specific acts in the past; and (3) deliberative aims, when the speaker encourages to or
deters from following a specific action.
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