Language

The language of Donald Trump's presidential announcement speech is very simple and informal…

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Choice of words

The choice of words reveals the speaker’s preference for conveying negative images, trying to use the audience’s frustrations to his advantage: “They're laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they're killing us economically.” (ll. 19-21). To this end, the speaker uses …

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Sentence structure

The sentence structure reveals the speaker either uses short sentences like “It sounds crass.” (l. 332) or very long ones which sometimes lack coherence as the speaker jumps from one idea to another and may pose some difficulties in grasping all the speaker’s ideas:

And in 19 — and I will tell you this, and I said it very strongly, years ago, I said— and I love the military, an…

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Tone

The tone of the speaker combines seriousness, determination, and sarcasm. Whenever the speaker talks about issues like the economic situation or terrorism, his tone is serious: “We spent $2 trillion in Iraq, $2 trillion. We lost thousands of lives, thousands in Iraq. We have wounded soldiers…” (ll. 52-53)

However, when he talks about politics and politicians, his tone often becomes sarcastic and critical: “A…

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Propaganda, anecdotes, and personal stories

The speech is also propagandistic, indicated by the numerous overstatements that the speaker makes to appear as the only person fit to lead the US: “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. I tell you that.” (ll. 179-180)

Here, the speaker greatly exaggerates his potential as future President to gain more support for his campaign. Many of Trump’s propagandistic statements have been proved to be inaccurate by t…