THEORIZING CRITICAL POPULIST DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: A NEW PLAUSIBLE PARADIGM

Abstract

As deeply related to Critical Theory, CDA has been established to deconstruct the hegemonic objective reasoning of elites and to construct an influential subjective rationality that contributes to generating a free human sense. Though CDA impartially centers on revealing power relations, its agenda is still politically detained. Discourse- historical approach, for example, has been employed by Wodak (2015) in the analysis of right-wing populist ideology in Europe; it proves to be deconstructive, revealing only those radical discursive strategies existing in the right-wing populist discourses. Thus, it is essential to initiate a new paradigm in CDA which constructs a comprehensive framework that critically studies the different forms of populist discourses through analyzing their innate ideologies, emancipatory tactics, anti-elitist values, and sentimental attitudes toward people. This newly suggested paradigm, namely critical populist discourse analysis (CPDA) is expected to cause a ground-breaking step in critical studies as it provides a critical mapping for the multi arguments in populist discourses. This article, thus aims to argue about this proposed paradigm in CDA that provides a critical account on the insights of populist projects of emancipation. The article also highlights the interest of CPDA in interpreting the transformation of populist discourses from rationalism into radicalism. This suggested paradigm addresses all populist movements in the world, including those in Nusantara territories as CPDA’s main interest is to objectively analyze and value the core concepts of emancipatory discourses. This paradigm is also applicable to analyze the discourses of liberation movements against the colonial power in these territories. Key words: Critical realism, critical theory, discourse analysis, methods in qualitative inquiry, qualitative evaluation Cite as: Al-Ramahi, R. A. & Ab Rashid, R. (2019). Theorizing critical populist discourse analysis: A new plausible paradigm. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 4 (1), 422-446. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol4iss1pp422-444