Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/334719 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Citation: 
[Journal:] Government and Opposition [ISSN:] 1477-7053 [Volume:] 60 [Issue:] 4 [Publisher:] Cambridge University Press [Place:] Cambridge [Year:] 2025 [Pages:] 1336-1366
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Abstract: 
Do populist politicians use simpler language to get closer to ‘ordinary’ citizens? Current studies – both qualitative and quantitative – are divided on whether populist actors actually use simpler language. Analysing a large corpus of text of German parliamentary debates from January 1991 to September 2021, this article aims to resolve this controversy by measuring language complexity in parliamentary discourse. The article hypothesizes that populist actors use simpler language, following their ideal of a simplified world between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The analysis, however, positively refutes that, and instead shows that right-wing populist actors use the most complex language. Left-wing populists seem to use somewhat average language complexity. At the same time, the study finds that language complexity decreased significantly in the German parliament over time. Additionally, this article shows that language complexity is context-specific and people-dependent. As such, this article also discusses simple language as a tool for substantive and surrogate representation.
Subjects: 
populism
language complexity
parliamentary debates
language style
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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