DISCOURSE ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVES OF DONALD TRUMP’S LINGUISTIC BEHAVIOUR
Abstract
The paper is an attempt to explore some of the most distinctive and unique characteristics that define the linguistic representation of Donald Trump's communicative behavior as it manifests itself during his 2016 presidential campaign rallies, press conferences and various TV appearances and official speeches (delivered prior to and after assuming presidency). By means of critical discourse analysis (CDA), the author tries to identify what linguistic means might contribute to making Trump appealing to his base. Since he is commonly believed to appeal to emotions in his electorate, the author examines instances where he persuades and manipulates the public by generating an emotional response in them. More specifically, the study explores such affective components of communicative behavior as repetitions, hyperbole, attaching labels and, finally, his use of implicit meaning and presuppositions. Our corpus suggests that activating the affective component is strategic for Trump, although it is also true that appeal to emotions is natural and often intuitive on his part. Repetitions and negative labeling make sure that certain ideas become permanent in the minds of prospective voters and that opponents are subconsciously associated with something negative. Hyperbole is revealed to take different forms and serve several functions in his speech. Finally, the paper discusses implicitness in Trump’s language, notably existential, propositional and value assumptions, which help 'unpack' ideas embedded in his propositions.
References
Burke, K. (1974). The rhetoric of Hitler’s battle. In: The philosophy of literary form: Studies in symbolic action. University of California Press.
Сlaridge, C. (2014). Hyperbole in English: A corpus-based study of exaggeration. Cambridge University Press.
Dijk, T. van (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In: R. Wodak and M. Meyer, eds. Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Hodder Arnold.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Routledge.
Fillmore, Ch. J. (1982). Frame semantics. In: Linguistics in the morning calm. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company, Linguistics Society of Korea.
Healy, P., and Haberman, M. (2015). 95,000 words, many of them ominous, from Donald Trump’s Tongue. The New York Times. [Accessed 23 February 2016]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/politics/95000-words-many-of-them-ominous-fromdonald-trumps-tongue.html?_r=0
Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse: Exploring interaction in writing. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Lakoff, G. (2008). The political mind: Why you can’t understand 21st-century American politics with an 18th-century brain. New York: Viking Penguin.
Lakoff, G. (2016 a). A minority president: Why the polls failed and what the majority can do. [Accessed 10 December 2016]. Available at: https://georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minoritypresident-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-can-do/#more-5389
Lakoff, G. (2016 b). How to help Trump. [Accessed 23 February 2017]. Available at: https://georgelakoff.com/2016/12/15/how-to-help-trump/
Lakoff, G. (2017 a). Understanding Trump’s use of language. The Huffington Post. August 25. [Accessed 2 September 2017]. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/understanding-trumps-use-_b_11675280.html
Lakoff, G. (2017 b). Trump’s Twitter distraction. [Accessed 8 March 2017]. Available at: https://georgelakoff.com/2017/03/07/trumps-twitter-distraction/
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Leeuwen, Th. Van (2008). Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Libit D. (2016). Transcribers’ agony: Frustrated not by what Trump says but how he says it [Accessed 2 September 2017] Available at: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/15/transcribers-agony-frustrated-not-by-what-trump-says-but-how-he-says-it.html
Mangan, D. (2017). Donald Trump says Obamacare repeal and replacement to come with confirmation of Price as HHS chief. [Accessed 20 January 2017] Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/11/donald-trump-addresses-obamacare-repeal-and-replacement-at-press-conference-in-new-york.html
Nichols, Ch. (2016). Donald Trump brings troublesome relationship with the truth to California. Politifact. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: http://www.politifact.com/california/article/2016/apr/26/donald-trump-candidate-profile/
Nossel, S. (2018). Trump’s attacks on the press are illegal. We’re suing. [Accessed 23 February 2019]. Available at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/16/trumps-attacks-onthe-press-are-illegal-were-suing-221312
Paradis, C. (2000). Reinforcing adjectives: A cognitive semantic perspective on grammaticalization. In: R. Bermúdez-Otero, D. Denison, R. Hogg, and C. B. McCully, eds. Generative Theory and Corpus Studies, vol. Topics in English linguistics, no. 31, Mouton de Gruyter.
Richardson, J.E. (2007). Analysing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis. Palgrave Macmillan.
Shamsian, J. (2015). Donald Trump opens the debate by bragging about ‘making billions of dollars’. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-opens-the-debate-by-bragging-about-makingbillions-of-dollars-2015-9
Stanley, B. (2008). The thin ideology of populism. In: Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 95-110.
Trump, D. (2015). Here’s Donald Trump’s presidential announcement speech. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: https://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/
Trump, D. (2016 a). Transcript of Donald Trump’s Immigration speech. 2016 a. The New York Times. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/transcript-trump-immigration-speech.html
Trump, D. (2016 b). Full Text: Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican National Convention Speech. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-text-donald-trumps-2016-republican-national-convention/story?id=40786529
Trump, D. (2016 c). Trump: The art of the deal. Random House.
Trump, D. (2017). The Inaugural address. [Accessed 13 October 2018]. Available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/
2016 presidential candidates on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In: Ballotpedia. [Accessed 2 February 2017]. Available at: https://ballotpedia.org/2016_presidential_candidates_on_the_Trans-Pacific_Partnership_trade_deal
Abstract views: 239 PDF Downloads: 225
