1st Edition

Talking Donald Trump A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity

By Jennifer Sclafani Copyright 2018
    114 Pages
    by Routledge

    114 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Talking Donald Trump examines the language of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign from the perspective of sociocultural linguistics. This book offers an insight into the many stages of Trump’s political career, from his initial campaign for the Republican nomination, up to his presidency. Drawing from speeches, debates, and interviews, as well as parodies and public reactions to his language, Sclafani explores how Trump’s language has produced such polarized reactions among the electorate. In analysing the linguistic construction of Donald Trump’s political identity, Sclafani’s incisive study sheds light on the discursive construction of political identity and the conflicting language ideologies associated with the discourse of leadership in modern US society. Talking Donald Trump provides a crucial contemporary example of the interaction between sociolinguistics and political science, and is key reading for advanced students and researchers in the fields of sociolinguistics, language and politics, communication studies and rhetoric.

    Chapter 1 Language and political identity



    Chapter 2 Trump's idiolect: discourse-marking devices



    Chapter 3 Trump's idiolect: interactional devices



    Chapter 4 Parodies of Trump as metadiscourse



    Chapter 5 The sociolinguistic co-construction of political identity



    Biography

    Jennifer Sclafani is Associate Teaching Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, USA. She has also been on the faculty at Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece, since 2009.