Together in the Ordinary World: The Alignment between Populist Discourse and Lower-Middle-Class Discourse on Class and Socio-Economic Hierarchy

Together in the Ordinary World: The Alignment between Populist Discourse and Lower-Middle-Class Discourse on Class and Socio-Economic Hierarchy

Johana Chylíková

This study examined the alignment between meanings embedded in Czech populist discourse and those present in Czech lower-middle-class discourse on socio-economic hierarchy and social class. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the study integrated the political science conceptualizations of populism with the sociological framework of moral and cultural symbolic boundaries related to social class. Employing a qualitative methodology, it drew on in-depth interviews with lower-middle-class citizens of the Czech Republic. The findings confirmed the relevance of populist discourse’s emphasis on morality in the construction of the people, elites, and enemies, as well as the strategic use of associated meanings—namely, ordinariness, honesty, hard and honest work, enterprisingness, and responsibility. The study concluded that key meanings of populist discourse aligned with those found in Czech lower-middle-class discourse, suggesting the potential for cultural resonance between populist appeals and the worldviews of a lower-middle-class audience.

Johana Chylíková is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and a specialist in data management at the Czech Social Science Data Archive. She also lectures in sociology at the Technical University of Liberec. Her primary research interests lie in social science methodology and the assessment of survey data quality. In recent years, she has further extended her scholarly focus to encompass questions of cultural sociology.

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