Populist Discourse in the Speeches of James David Vance: Lexico-Semantic Fields and Pragmatic Strategies

The subject of the study is the contemporary English-language populist political discourse based on the speeches of James David Vance, the Vice President of the United States, during the period from 2021 to 2025. The object of the study includes the texts of the politician's key speeches, including his address at the Republican National Convention ("A Night of Hope," 2024), his speech at the Munich Security Conference (2025), and his appearance at the "March for Life" event (January 2026). The subject of the study encompasses linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural-ideological aspects of contemporary American right-wing populism in English political language. The structure of the main fields shaping this type of discourse has been investigated; for each field, key lexemes have been identified. The analysis highlights and describes in detail the dominant lexical-semantic fields: "ruling class / elite," "people / forgotten Americans," "family," "work," "migration," "personal freedom," "threat from within," and "religious identity." It has been established that these fields form a stable binary opposition of "people – ruling class," which serves as the main semantic framework of the discourse. Leading pragmatic strategies have been identified: legitimization through autobiographical narrative, strategies for emotional mobilization, and transatlantic adaptation of rhetoric. The main methods employed include a discourse-rhetorical approach, content analysis, and semantic analysis. Based on content analysis, a thematic profile of the content of each speech has been created, allowing for the categorization of the main lexical-semantic fields. The novelty of the study lies in the proposal of a new comprehensive model of analysis that demonstrates how pragmatic strategies are reinforced by specific lexical fields, enriching the theory of contemporary political populism in English. Certain linguistic features of populist rhetoric in English have been identified. The study establishes a correlation between semantic fields and pragmatic strategies. Mechanisms for influencing the audience through various language means are described. The results can be utilized in political linguistics, discourse theory, rhetoric, as well as in the practice of political consulting, media monitoring, and teaching English as a foreign language (political English). The findings confirm that language remains one of the key tools for constructing contemporary political identity in the context of global polarization.