Within the framework of its activities, the POPULISMUS research project has organized a three-day international methodological workshop aiming at an in-depth exploration of theoretical, methodological and analytical issues related to the analysis of populist discourse. The workshop took place at the Aristotle University Research Dissemination Centre from the 11th to the 13th of July 2014 with the participation of international and Greek scholars specializing in the area of the project and its methodology.

Yannis Stavrakakis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, PI of the POPULISMUS project) opened the workshop with the first orientation session, where he laid out the aims, methods and scope of the POPULISMUS project in a detailed presentation. His presentation included a brief review of the relevant literature, a historical account of the populist phenomenon (from the 19^th century onwards) in all its complexity and variability, and finally some proposals that aimed at overcoming the theoretical and analytical impasses affecting current research.

Following this introductory lecture, the first panel focused on linguistic and corpora-based methods of discourse analysis that could contribute in the empirical study of populist discourse. Periklis Politis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) offered an overview of corpus linguistics techniques and presented the advantages of an empirical bottom-up approach based on verbal and/or multimodal material. On a very similar track, Titika Dimitroulia and Dionysis Goutsos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and University of Athens) offered an introduction to corpora and corpus linguistics as a theoretical approach and a research method for the social sciences. Their theoretical presentation was enhanced with an empirical application of their quantitative method through an example of analysis that concerned populism in Greek-speaking corpora (namely the discourse of Alexis Tsipras, leader of the radical left opposition in Greece, considered to be a prime example of contemporary left-wing populism in Europe). Finally, Eliza Kitis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) reflected on what a linguistically inspired discourse analysis can contribute to the analysis of certain words or signifiers when it comes to analyzing public discourses. More specifically, she focused on the word ‘populism’ but also on its Greek ‘equivalent’ term ‘λαϊκισμός’ and its pejorative derivative verb, which is difficult to find in any other language and could be here translated as ‘populize’ (λαϊκίζω).

In the second panel the focus shifted from linguistic to post-structuralist methods of discourse analysis. Yannis Karagiannis (University of Crete) tried to offer a synthetic approach that borrowed elements from both Foucauldian and other post-structuralist and critical orientations of social research. Yannis Pechtelidis (University of Thessaly) presented an empirical examination of the conceptualization of the Greek ‘youth’ as a ‘subjects at risk’, by focusing on two prominent newspapers, one leaning to the left and one leaning to the right, through a methodological framework that combined Foucault’s method with the innovations of the ‘Essex School’ of discourse analysis as well as youth studies. Yvonne Kosma (American College of Thessaloniki) closed the panel with a practical application of the Foucauldian method of discourse analysis in the analysis of film, also drawing inspiration and additional theoretical/analytical tools from cultural studies.

This first day of the workshop was concluded with the second orientation session where Jason Glynos (Essex University) presented his ‘logics approach’ as a method of critical analysis inspired by the post-structuralist tradition, that combines both theoretical rigour and clarity and the potential for empirical application. After advancing his theoretical argument, he moved on to examine the UK financial crisis and reform process in order to illustrate the merits of what he termed a ‘nodal framework’.