The Normalization of Right-wing Populist and New Right Discourses in Japan and Germany

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Stephanie Evert; Professor Dr. Fabian Schäfer
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466328567

In this comparative research project we study different instances of political populism as a "thin ideology" (Mudde/Kaltwasser) in its respective ideological proximity to right-wing discourses in Japan and Germany from a discourse-analytical perspective. In particular, applying the methods of corpus and computational linguistics and corpus-based critical discourse analysis, we analyze the long-term effects of (new-)right-wing discursive strategies and right-wing populist politics on everyday language and political discourse. Our research design takes into account various media and types of text corpora, including social media (Twitter), two daily newspapers per country, and the parliamentary minutes of both countries, to study the normalization of new-right and right-wing populist discursive fragments (i.e. racism/nativism, anti-feminism and historical revisionism) in different public spheres and over the period of one decade (2012-2022).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Japan, United Kingdom
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Marco Bünte; Professor Dr. Georg Glasze; Professorin Dr. Ayaka Loeschke, Ph.D.
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Kaori Hayashi; Professor Dr. Naoto Higuchi; Professor Dr. Mamoru Ito; Professor Dr. Akihiro Kitada; Professor Dr. Tony McEnery; Professor Dr. Yukio Tono