Lexical Choice and Populist Discursive Strategies in Javier Milei’s OralSpeeches: A Corpus-assisted discourse Studies based analysis

Abstract

Javier Milei’s electoral victory in 2023 has attracted significant attention in the social sciences and, in particular, in discourse studies. His trajectory, marked by a hybrid profile–as a university lecturer, media figure, and representative of so-called antipolitics–combines populist rhetoric with a liberallibertarian orientation. These features have raised questions about the extent to which his figure conforms to prototypical models of populist leadership. From a linguistic-discursive perspective, this article argues that Milei’s public interventions reproduce core features of populism identified in previous research, while his ideological framework introduces an atypical element into his discursive configuration. To support this argument, the analysis examines lexical choices in a corpus of oral speeches delivered between 2021, the year of his emergence in Argentine politics, and 2023, when he assumed the presidency. The study employs the approach of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) to observe strategies of in-group and out-group construction in a distinctive case of contemporary populism.