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Populism in the speeches of the Croatian representatives in the European parliament

Through history populism has been linked with right-oriented political parties. Because the ideological shifting and change of ideological orientation of the parties has happened, populism is no more linked with ideological orientation and heritage, and because of that is more present in the political discourse. This paper wants to explore the presence of populism in the speeches in the European parliament. Speeches that are analyzed are the ones held by eleven Croatian representatives during the period September 2013 to March 2014. The analysis had two goals. The first goal was to establish relative occurrence of the populisms in the speeches of all Croatian representatives in the European parliament. Results showed that, out of eleven Croatian representatives, five representative’s speeches are abundant with populisms. In the speeches of two representatives populisms are averagely present, and four representatives do not use populisms while forming their speeches. Usually, they form populisms as trivial claims, generalizations, stereotypes, topoi and argumentum ad populum. The second goal was to determine to which group of MEP do the speakers with the highest number of populisms belong to. In the European parliament Croatian representatives are distributed in five groups of MEPs: Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats), Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance and European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Results of the analysis showed that the highest number of populisms in their speeches have MEP's which are right-oriented, more precisely, members of the European People's Party and European Conservatives and Reformists. They are followed by members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. A high number of populisms might indicate that, while forming their speeches, Members of European parliament are thinking about the audience that is not in the European parliament, in other words – about their voters.

political discourse; European Parliament; speech performance; argumentation

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