From the point of view of communication as in other areas, Donald Trump is a phenomenon apart. Willingly bypassing the traditional means of addressing his fellow citizens, not hesitating to use rhetorical devices that the majority of the political class considers unworthy of the supreme office, deploying in his meetings a very personal style, a mixture of Aggression and deliberately crude humor, the former business mogul and reality TV star has created a discursive universe all his own. Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, specialist in American political discourseanalyzed countless speeches by the ex-president, whether on social networks, during gatherings of his supporters or during official ceremonies, to update, in “Trump’s words”which has just been published by Dalloz, the springs of a rhetoric which, for years, and even more so in the straight line of the current presidential campaign, has inflamed the country and even the world. Selected extracts.
“I went to an Ivy League school. I am very educated. I know the words. I have the best words…but there’s no better word than stupid, right? There isn’t one. There isn’t one. There is no word like that. » (Donald Trump, Hilton Head, South Carolina, Dec. 30, 2015)
(…)
If Donald Trump boasts of his very good command of the language, of having studied at a prestigious university and of being intelligent, it is because he is aware of being often ridiculed for his unusual language. . His simplistic and binary vocabulary, his disjointed sentences, his lies, his blunders and his repeated insults have been widely commented on, particularly by the press, which he accuses of reporting false news.
Even as he denies being misunderstood, his comments perfectly illustrate the break with the established norms of political and presidential discourse. He brings everything back to himself, speaks of himself in the third person, and chooses precisely a very simple word like “stupid” – both derogatory and insulting – as being the best word to talk about the political class and its predecessors.
(Already more than 120,000 newsletter subscriptions The Conversation. And you ? Subscribe today to better understand the world’s biggest issues.)
Breakup rhetoric
In reality, and despite what is often said, Donald Trump is fully aware of the power of words. If there is one thing that he understood very well, it is that he owes his success in large part to his extraordinary language. Through what we can call a real rhetorical break, Trump positions himself as an outsider outside the political field. For his supporters, his power is such that he would be subject neither to the rules of politics nor to the laws of ordinary grammar.
(…)
On this point, Donald Trump succeeds, even more than his predecessors, in being at the heart of the media. His presidency is also characterized by speeches very similar to those of his campaign and by a very small number of official speeches or press conferences. Even at formal events, he very often deviated from the norms of presidential rhetoric. Thus, from his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017, he set the tone by calling for the unity of the people, not around shared common values, but against the establishment and the American political class that he presented as an enemy.
Improvisation and authenticity
One of the characteristics of Donald Trump’s speeches is improvisation: much of it is the result of what is going through his head at the moment he speaks, or of his obsessions of the moment. This “stream of consciousness” is more or less structured (or rather unstructured) by discourse markers like “well”, or “by the way” which aim to redirect the discourse. This allows for many digressions, repetitions, messy syntax and often unfinished interrupted sentences.
(…)
It is also a conversational, relaxed style, more natural and very effective. When Trump goes off topic, he signals to his audience that he is not scripted and therefore authentic. As some linguists have noted, his unfinished sentences allow the audience to finish them for him, which increases the sense of intimacy his supporters feel.
Verbal violence and insults
Trump speaks, for example, of “beating the face” of the terrorist group ISIS (Milford, NH, Feb. 2, 2016), accuses Joe Biden of having “licked Barack Obama’s ass” (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oct. 2019) , and calls Michael Bloomberg a “poor bastard” (Newsmax, Oct. 14, 2020).
Another very telling example – and widely reported by the media – concerns the football players who knelt during the national anthem to protest against police violence against black people: Trump called them “sons of bitches that he we have to get off the field,” to the cheers of the crowd present at his meeting (Huntsville, Alabama, September 22, 2017).
Masculinity and the rhetoric of power
His accent and crudeness are traditionally attributes of masculinity, which, for his supporters, contrast with so-called “feminized left-wing” elites and “snowflakes,” a derogatory expression that denotes supposed fragility. emotional and the inability of some people on the left to tolerate contrary opinions.
Shocking social language in itself constitutes an act of masculinized power that denotes both an authentic and boorish side. Moreover, Donald Trump uses vocabulary and prosody that embody both real violence and the harsh policies he promises to enact against those he considers social threats – immigrants, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals in particular.
Editions Lefebvre-Dalloz
Media strategy and saturation
During his campaigns, he implemented a real communications strategy developed by his far-right (“alt. right”) advisor Steve Bannon. It consists of saturating the media landscape with ever more scandalous and misleading statements.
The goal is not to convince with political arguments but to create enough chaos, confusion and buzz to attract attention. It’s also about not giving the media time to keep up, and making fact-checking impossible. Today’s lies are immediately eclipsed by tomorrow’s lies.
Trump’s story
Like any good story, the story that Trump tells is made up of clearly identifiable characters: bad guys (a corrupt elite, threatening immigration), good guys who are victims (the people), and a savior hero (Donald Trump himself ).
At the heart of this drama, there must of course be an existential issue: a nation ravaged by crime and poverty, threatened in its fundamentals by an enemy both internal and external embodied by a so-called “radical”, “communist” left. “Marxist” and “fascist”, “traitorous” establishment Republicans, the so-called “deep state”, media described as “enemies of the people”, and immigrants presented exclusively as criminals.
