In the theater of political style: Touches of populism, pluralism and elitism in speeches of politicians

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.