Up to date, the concept of political style is underdeveloped, obstructing a profound understanding of political performances. This article disentangles the components of political style by analyzing the concept systematically. It is argued that instead of one single style, it has to be regarded as a cooperation of three styles: rhetorical, social and ideological. While approaches to reviewing rhetorical and social style are available, it lacks a method to assess ideological style. In this article, such a method is provided in a set of tools based on critical discourse studies. It defines ideological style in five traits that can be styled in a populist, elitist or pluralist manner. As an example, an ideological style analysis of six speeches of US politicians Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is performed. The analysis shows Trump having a full populist style in these speeches, Sanders a populist-pluralist style and Clinton an elitist-pluralist style. Comparison of the three individual style profiles gives a clarification of otherwise unexplained differences and similarities between the three politicians.

This article clarifies how elitist elements are integrated into populist discourse by analyzing political speeches using this incongruent style. First, it introduces a method to identify populist, elitist, and pluralist discourse based on a shared logic, defining populism at an intercontextual level. Second, speeches by Donald Trump (US), Boris Johnson (UK), and Thierry Baudet (NL) are analyzed in their contexts to clarify their political styles and are then compared to see where these styles meet. The populism-elitism mix goes well with nationalism, as all three politicians combine the style with a nationalist ideology, which unites the people with the elite. Coalitions are created between the people and the “good” elite to fight the “bad” elite. Furthermore, the mix has rhetorical-strategic advantages, such as profiling oneself as unique on the political field. Overall, the blend shows political significance, justifying thoughtful academic consideration alongside the broad attention for full populism.

This article analyzes populism utilizing the semiotic theory of A.J. Greimas. This structural linguist offers a tool for uncovering links between manifestations of populism and the language structure that makes these manifestations possible in the first place. The (post-)structural analysis in this article brings together different approaches to populism, through revealing one shared underlying structure. This core-structure of populism connects three framings of populism that all come with different populist features. The core structure also sheds light on the dispute regarding whether or not a homogeneous people is integral to populism. The underlying structure precisely depicts the logical steps from individualism to populism that Laclau describes in his definition of populism as an act. Whereas Laclau's definition does not include a homogeneous people, the structure reveals a short-cut to populism, which does comprise a homogeneous people. Hence, the deep structure of language facilitates two versions of populism, one with a homogeneous people, and one with a notheterogeneous, unified people.

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