A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Language Use in US Presidential Campaign, 2016

Mohammad Mohammadi, Javad Javadi

Abstract


The present study reports on the latest and newest hot topic in the world, the United States Presidential Election. So, this is the newest attempt to explore and discover interrelation of discourse structures and ideological structures of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech in the United States Presidential Election, 2016 as a good sample of his language use in presidential campaign. In so doing, the current study utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model to unmask the use of power and hidden strategies through language use. Also we analyze and uncover the experiential, relational and expressive values of the wordings, metaphors and grammatical structures of Trump’s language use.  Furthermore, this study tries to show that there are linguistic traces that depict the strategy and ideology in the text as well. The findings of the present study can be provocative for English foreign language learners to promote their analytical skills. Therefore, findings of the present article can be applied to English Reading Comprehension and Reading Journalistic Texts classes.

 


Keywords


Critical discourse analysis, Discourse structure, Ideological structure, Trump’s acceptance speech, Ideology

Full Text:

PDF

References


American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th edition, 2013).

Fairclough, N. (1992). Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis (1st edition). London: Longman

Fairclough, N. (1996). Language and Power, London: London

Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power, (2nd edition). London: London

Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis- The Critical Study of Language (2nd edition). UK. London: Longman

Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. &Trew, T. (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge and Keganpaul. ISBN 978-0-7100-0288-4

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Hussein, I. (2016). Critical Discourse Analysis of the Political Speech of the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, at the New Suez Canal Inauguration Ceremony. International Journal of Language and Literature Vol 4, No. 1, pp. 85-106 DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v4n1a10. URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v4n1a10.

Luke, A. (2000) ‘Introduction: Theory and Practice in Critical Discourse Analysis’, in L. Saha(ed) International Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Education, Elsevier Science Ltd. Article No. 504057

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

Rashidi, N. & Souzandehfar, N. (2010). A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Debates between Republicans and Democrats over the Continuation of War in Iraq (2010). Retrieve athttp://www.uab.ro/jolie/2010/4_rashidi-souzandehfar.pdf

Sarfo, E. & Agyeiwaa Krampa E. (2013). Language at War: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Speeches of Bush and Obama on Terrorism. International Journal of Soc. Sci. & Education 2013 Vol.3 Issue 2, ISSN: 2223-4934 E and 2227-393X Print

To Ehineni (2014). A Critical Discourse Analysis of Modals in Nigerian Political Manifestos, International Journal of Linguistics Vol. 6, no. 3 doi:10.5296/ijl.v6i3.558 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i3.5589

Vakili Lotfi, Sh. (2016). Discourse and Ideology Variation: A Critical Functional Approach to Mina Stampede News Reports, Iranian Journal of Applied Linguistics (IJAL). Vol.19, No.1, March 2016, 207-231

Van Dijk, T.A. (2004). Politics, Ideology and Discourse. Retrieved athttp://www.discourse-in-society.org/teun.html.

Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage ISBN 0-7619-6154-2.

www.merriam-webster.com

www.wikipedia.org.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.5p.1

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.