Volume 42, Issue 2

Abstract

Abstract

This study explores the ways in which the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders formulates populist arguments, i.e. the argument by which it is claimed that if many people hold a certain standpoint, this standpoint should be accepted. A corpus study of 27 texts taken from the website of Wilders’ political party (www.pvv.nl) reveals four characteristics of this presentation, which show a significant deviation of the way this type of argument is described in the handbooks: 1) absence of indicators, 2) implicit standpoint, 3) a wide range of verbs to indicate what ‘the people’ think or belief, 4) use of a construction in which the speaker functions as a mouthpiece (‘in the name of the people I say’). We claim that these characteristics makes a populist argument hard to identify and hypothesize that they may function as a disguised way for presenting a fallacious populist argument.

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2020-07-01
2024-03-29
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Keyword(s): ad populum; appeal to the majority; context of deliberation; political discourse; populism; populist argument; stylistic device

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