Populism is a multi-disciplinary research issue, especially as politics is concerned, present both in the social sciences and linguistics. Examined from different angles, it exhibits its semantic ambiguity and lack of a single definition. It is essential for cross-disciplinary studies to determine the definition of populism, which will also make it possible to determine the scope of the phenomenon under research. Such a possibility is ensured by the syndromized understanding of populism and by taking into account its manifestations on different levels of political discourse, including linguistic exponents, sender-recipient relations and a specific image of the world created within the framework of this discourse. The application of cognitive methodology in studies offers one of many research perspectives allowing populist discourse to be characterized from an interdisciplinary perspective, including a political-linguistic approach.