‘I felt great. Like better than I have in a long time…better than 20 years’ ago.’ he said on release from Walter Reed hospital. ‘ A fascinat

Trump talk – how Donald’s use of language may be smarter than it seems

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2024-11-06 19:00:07

‘I felt great. Like better than I have in a long time…better than 20 years’ ago.’ he said on release from Walter Reed hospital. ‘

A fascinating new book Linguistic Inquiries into Donald Trump’s Language (Bloomsbury, published 15 Oct 2020) scrutinises Trumps speeches, interviews, tweets and debates to investigate his language use.

It suggests his idiolect is utterly different from that of other politicians and from previous presidents of the US. The authors scrutinise exactly how he uses nicknames, the definite article, conceptual metaphors and strategies such as othering his opponents – hence ‘wicked Hillary‘ or ‘sleepy Joe’.

One of the first observations linguists make about Trump is that he sounds more like your uncle or neighbour talking than a president.

John McWhorter, a professor at Columbia University told the MSNBC news channel that Trump ‘is your Uncle, sitting by the pool with a beer, that beer is likely a Budweiser and he’s just running his mouth in a colourful way and enjoying the attention of his little nieces and the teenager from next door.’

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