The Sound of Populism: Distinct Linguistic Features Across Populist Variants

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the linguistic features of populist rhetoric in U.S. political speeches, revealing distinct emotional and stylistic patterns across different populist variants using advanced language models and linguistic analysis tools.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of LIWC features and a fine-tuned RoBERTa model to detect and compare populist language features across different political contexts.

Findings

Populist rhetoric is assertive and connects with 'the people'

Right-wing and people-centrism variants are more emotionally charged

Left-wing and anti-elitist speech are relatively restrained in emotional tone

Abstract

This study explores the sound of populism by integrating the classic Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features, which capture the emotional and stylistic tones of language, with a fine-tuned RoBERTa model, a state-of-the-art context-aware language model trained to detect nuanced expressions of populism. This approach allows us to uncover the auditory dimensions of political rhetoric in U.S. presidential inaugural and State of the Union addresses. We examine how four key populist dimensions (i.e., left-wing, right-wing, anti-elitism, and people-centrism) manifest in the linguistic markers of speech, drawing attention to both commonalities and distinct tonal shifts across these variants. Our findings reveal that populist rhetoric consistently features a direct, assertive ``sound" that forges a connection with ``the people'' and constructs a charismatic leadership persona. However, this sound is not simply informal but strategically calibrated. Notably, right-wing populism and people-centrism exhibit a more emotionally charged discourse, resonating with themes of identity, grievance, and crisis, in contrast to the relatively restrained emotional tones of left-wing and anti-elitist expressions.