Linguistic Inquiries Into Donald Trump's Language - by Ulrike Schneider & Matthias Eitelmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From an abundance of intensifiers to frequent repetition and parallelisms, Donald Trump's idiolect is highly distinctive from that of other politicians and previous Presidents of the United States. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, this book identifies the characteristic features of Trump's language and argues that his speech style, often sensationalized by the media, differs from the usual political rhetoric on more levels than is immediately apparent.

Chapters examine Trump's tweets, inaugural address, political speeches, interviews, and presidential debates, revealing populist language traits that establish his idiolect as a direct reflection of changing social and political norms. The authors scrutinize Trump's conspicuous use of nicknames, the definite article, and conceptual metaphors as strategies of othering and antagonising his opponents. They further shed light on Trump's fake news agenda and his mutation of the conventional political apology which are strategically implemented for a political purpose.

Drawing on methods from corpus linguistics, conversation analysis, and critical discourse analysis, this book provides a multifaceted investigation of Trump's language use and addresses essential questions about Trump as a political phenomenon.

Review Quotes

"A timely and most insightful book about the power of language in populist regimes." --LINGUIST List

"The volume offers in-depth descriptions of Trump's linguistic style and discursive strategies ... drawing on both quantitative and qualitative linguistic analyses. The results of the analyses provide nuanced insight into Trump's communicative style and campaign strategy." --Journal of Pragmatics

"It is beyond doubt that this publication makes a timely contribution, with its full potential not only to appeal to researchers and students interested in the specifics of Trump's discourse, but to a much broader audience drawn to the volume's topic. The book represents a well-written and engaging read that is a credit to its contributors; defined by its solid, high-quality investigations ... [it] is the best study of Trump's discursive and communicative sills that can be found today." --Pragmatics and Society

"The papers in this thought-provoking volume explore Donald Trump's distinctive use of language from the perspectives of discourse and corpus studies. They reveal just how marked Trump's language is and suggest potential strategies underpinning it. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in political language or Trump's presidency." --Susan Hunston, Professor of English Language, University of Birmingham, UK

"This is a fascinating book that brings together leading experts from across linguistics to describe and explore Donald Trump's unique style of communication. These studies provide us with a new perspective on how Trump rose to the presidency of the United States and how he has governed since." --Jack Grieve, Professor of Corpus Linguistics, University of Birmingham, UK

"This intriguing collection of investigations into President Trump's language addresses popular (mis-)conceptions about his speech style by exploiting a wide variety of linguistics approaches from corpus linguistics to close reading. It discusses to what extent his idiolect links to political developments of the 21st century. All contributions proceed from media claims about Trump's language with the aim of testing whether these claims withstand vigorous linguistic testing." --Alan Scott Partington, Professor of Linguistics, University of Bologna at Forlì, Italy

About the Author

Ulrike Schneider is Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Mainz, Germany.

Matthias Eitelmann is Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Mainz, Germany.