Leiden University Student Repository

Mijnders, Hugo (2020)

The Dark Side of Dutch Politics: Exploring the Linguistic Properties of Geert Wilders’ Populist Discourse

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

This thesis examines the discursive strategies of Geert Wilders, who is a Dutch populist politician. I will review different definitions and suggested characteristics of populism and create an overarching definition in order to understand what populism is. In this study, I performed a quantitative research to analyze Wilders’ discourse by focusing on important elements in populist speeches. More specifically, this study focuses on the use of references concerning ‘the people’, what elements influence discursive strategies and the focus on different etymologies in order to arrive at a better understanding of the ideas and rhetorical tactics of populist parties. This led to the conclusions that Wilders’ discursive strategies are affected by the topic of a speech, the audience and the date when the speech takes place. Furthermore, I conclude that the etymologies of references concerning ‘the people’ and ‘the opposition’ are of importance to Wilders because of his preference to use...Show moreThis thesis examines the discursive strategies of Geert Wilders, who is a Dutch populist politician. I will review different definitions and suggested characteristics of populism and create an overarching definition in order to understand what populism is. In this study, I performed a quantitative research to analyze Wilders’ discourse by focusing on important elements in populist speeches. More specifically, this study focuses on the use of references concerning ‘the people’, what elements influence discursive strategies and the focus on different etymologies in order to arrive at a better understanding of the ideas and rhetorical tactics of populist parties. This led to the conclusions that Wilders’ discursive strategies are affected by the topic of a speech, the audience and the date when the speech takes place. Furthermore, I conclude that the etymologies of references concerning ‘the people’ and ‘the opposition’ are of importance to Wilders because of his preference to use Germanic words to refer to ‘the people’ and loanwords to address ‘the opposition’.Show less

Wilders

quantitative research

‘the people’

discursive strategies

etymologies

Author

Mijnders, Hugo

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language Acquisition

Supervisors

Fonteyn, Lauren

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en