Critical discourse analysis of Trump across time

Abstract

This study explores the discourse of Trump as a businessman and as a president regarding the topic of immigration. Data for this research were gathered from four speeches and four interviews delivered by Trump in the eighties-nineties and four speeches and four interviews after being elected president. The analysis focuses on the way Trump represents US (ingroup) versus THEM (outgroup) at the local semantic level through the use of pronouns and implicatures and, at the local form through the use of syntax, that is, the formal relationship between clauses and sentences. In particular, I want to shed light on the following research questions: (1) How does Donald Trump represent the topic of immigration as a businessman? (2) How does Donald Trump represent the topic of immigration as a president? On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that the period in which the discourse was uttered seems to have a strong bearing on the discursive strategies employed by Trump. It should be also pointed out that nowadays, the linguistic analysis of Trump’s discourses area touchstone issue in political and social affairs. This paper contributes to this volume offering insights regarding the analysis of political discourse. More specifically, research on political discourse is considered as a branch within social science.