This book speaks for a unified approach to populism that sees it as a primarily rhetorical concept. It covers populist rhetoric in several countries, connecting rhetoric with other disciplines. The book looks at populist rhetoric historically as well as theoretically, and presents conceptual discussions as well as close readings and case studies.Populism is on the rise in many regions of the world, and populist leaders and movements are in power in multiple democracies. At the same time “populism” has emerged as a key term in political rhetoric, journalism, and scholarship. Typically, it is discussed as a topic that is as important as it is vexing due to its unwieldy, norm-defying forms and rapid spread. In some academic disciplines populism has been a key term for years. Remarkably, relatively little research on this topic has emerged from the field of rhetoric although populism as a phenomenon would seem to touch on perennial issues besetting Rhetoric (e.g. the charge of manipulation, of exclusive reliance on opinion over knowledge, and of abuse of emotional appeals). It is time, then, for a concerted interdisciplinary effort to investigate the theory and practice of populism under the heading of rhetoric — involving scholars in rhetoric as well as in neighboring disciplines, and representing a range of countries. The proposed volume will embody this effort and, in a wide-spanning set of case-based explorations, illustrate and critically test its underlying approach. weiterlesen