Political scientists have long asserted that populists use simpler language than their mainstream rivals to appeal to ordinary people and distance themselves from elites. However, there is little comparative evidence in support of that claim. In this study, we investigate the linguistic simplicity of four right-wing populists compared to their principal opponents in the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Italy. We do so by analysing a corpus of approximately one million words from leaders’ speeches, using a series of linguistics measures for evaluating simplicity. Contrary to expectations, we find that Donald Trump was only slightly simpler than Hillary Clinton, while Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France were more complex than their main rivals, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini was simpler on some measures but not others. We conclude that the simple language claim is not borne out and that other aspects of the received wisdom about populism should be re-examined.

Over 30 years after the publication of the list of 35 traits characterising the "medium [i.e., between formal and informal] register of Italian", this sociolinguistic label is commonly accepted, although many researchers have improved and modified its description. However, teachers in Italian schools have not proven to be particularly sensitive to the widening gap between norm and usage and still teach a variety of Italian that is not found anywhere else but in the classroom. Unfortunately, insufficient research has been conducted so far on the differences between the norms that Italian native speakers learn in their school years and their actual linguistic behaviour. Which traits of the IUM (italiano dell'uso medio) pass unnoticed, which are detected but considered acceptable, and which are classified as mistakes are still up for debate. This study illustrates a survey involving native speakers of Italian coming from different geographical areas and social backgrounds who were invited to comment on the language used in newspaper articles containing IUM traits. Of course, this survey is part of a larger research project and is not considered to be exhaustive; however, it proves useful in testing the most effective procedures to administer the questionnaires and select the informants. In addition, preliminary results show a strong influence of the linguistic norm taught at school on the assessment not only of IUM traits but also of a range of other traits contributing to the linguistic reference model used by Italian native speakers.

This paper describes a procedure to assess the acceptability of gender-inclusive linguistic structures. Informants were asked to provide an overall linguistic assessment of extracts from newspaper articles while unaware of the final objective of the survey, i.e. eliciting their opinions on the masculine and feminine forms of professions and titles. Although opinions varied, the results show an increase in the acceptability of feminine forms, probably strengthened by their frequent use in the media. Furthermore, those forms provide a solution to the morphological and syntactic inconsistencies considered by the informants as a violation of Italian grammar rules.

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