Abstract
In this chapter, Andrew McMurry identifies and deconstructs the idiolect (an individual’s unique communicative style) of Donald Trump. Through an analysis of what he calls “Trumpolect,” McMurry explains how Trump’s idiosyncratic speech style forms one of his chief political assets. McMurry further argues that Trumpolect’s persuasive logic aligns dangerously with the discourses of political extremism in the first half of the twentieth century.
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Notes
- 1.
It’s hardly worth noting that there has been in no living American’s memory less fit than Trump for the office of president. All the virtues Americans claim to value are missing: intelligence, honesty, fairness, self-discipline, curiosity, wit, loyalty, grace, poise, care, modesty, and faith. His one creditable quality is an ability to keep grinding, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, exclusively on behalf of his own interests. To draw attention, good or bad, to the Trump brand is his primary, and some might say only, ambition. Such indefatigable self-absorption is a rare thing and if not exactly to be admired it is a feature of the man that has to be respected.
- 2.
Burke, K. (1984). Permanence and change: An anatomy of purpose (3rd ed., with a new afterword. ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 232–233.
- 3.
Again, we cannot truly set aside the fact that his goals are centrally to keep his brand in the spotlight and to curry favor with his base.
- 4.
Many of my quotations from Trump are drawn from the indispensable Factbase (https://factba.se), which at this writing includes over 4.5 million his words, 850 of his speeches, and 33,900 of his tweets.
- 5.
It’s fascinating to imagine what the texture of the Trump presidency would be like without this social media platform. Twitter gives him the unhindered capacity to bruit out his endless stream of “irritable mental gestures” (as Lionel Trilling famously described reactionary thought). It is a match made in heaven for this garrulous braggart who craves constant attention and approval. But it may also be the case that Trump would have been much more successful—if only because we would have known less about him—had he been elected in a pre-Twitter media era.
- 6.
Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton U.P., 2005.
Frankfurt reflects on bullshit as follows: “When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose” (56). Essentially, bullshit is entirely fake news, to borrow one of Trump’s ironically self-damning coinages.
- 7.
Interview: Jeanine Pirro with Donald Trump on Justice With Judge Jeanine on Fox—February 24, 2018. Factbase.se
- 8.
Trump, Donald. Twitter post. January 10, 2017, 9:19 PM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/818990655418617856?tfw_creator=wxbase&tfw_site=wxbase&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffactba.se%2Fsearch.
- 9.
Trump, Donald. Twitter post. July 12, 2017, 8:19 AM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/885081181980590084.
- 10.
Interview: Press Gaggle with Donald Trump Aboard Air Force One—July 12, 2017. Factbase.se.
- 11.
Trump, Donald. Twitter post. January 10 2018. 10:14 AM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/951109942685126656?tfw_creator=wxbase&tfw_site=wxbase&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffactba.se%2Fsearch.
- 12.
To be sure, Trumpolect sounds unpracticed. But there is little doubt that he conducted extensive field testing of his favorite rhetorical nuggets via his stump speeches and rallies. It’s one of Trump’s greatest strengths as a rhetor that he actually does pay close attention to audience reactions and can adjust his content and delivery on the fly.
- 13.
Kauffman, Walter. The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Press, 1976. p. 46.
- 14.
Press Conference: Donald Trump Holds a Joint Press Conference With Baltic Leaders—April 3, 2018. Factbase.se.
- 15.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” Essays: First Series (1841). New York: Library of America, 1990, p. 35. It’s unlikely Trump has ever heard of Emerson, let alone read him. But he should; there is much in Emerson that speaks to Trump’s faith in his own instincts and whims. The full quotation reads as follows: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
- 16.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up. Ed. Edmund Wilson. New York: New Direction Books, 1945, p. 69.
- 17.
Interview: ITV’s Piers Morgan Interviews Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum—January 26, 2018. Factbase.se.
- 18.
Obama, Barack. Speech on new gun control measures. Time Magazine. Jan. 25, 2016. Online. Accessed March 30, 2018.
- 19.
Murdock, Zach. “Trump said what? Highlights from Trump’s visit to Hilton Head.” The Island Packet, Dec. 30, 2015. Online. Accessed March 30, 2018.
- 20.
Anderson, Kurt. “How To Talk Like Trump.” The Atlantic. March 2018. Online. Accessed April 14, 2018.
- 21.
“Trump calls for ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” Jenna Johnson, The Washington Post. December 7, 2015. Online. Accessed April 14, 2018.
- 22.
Trump, Donald. Twitter post. April 13, 2018, 5:01 AM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984763579210633216.
- 23.
Trump, Donald. Twitter post. July 1, 2017, 6:20 AM. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881140479454310401?tfw_creator=wxbase&tfw_site=wxbase&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffactba.se%2Fsearch.
- 24.
Booth, Wayne, “The Rhetorical Stance.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 14, No.3, Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, 1963: Toward a New Rhetoric. (Oct., 1963), p. 144.
- 25.
Burke, Kenneth. “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” in The Philosophy of Literary Form, New York: Vintage, 1957. p. 176.
- 26.
Homans. Charles. “The Post-campaign Campaign of Donald Trump.” New York Times Magazine. April 9, 2018. Online. Accessed April 14, 2018.
- 27.
Burke op. cit., p. 189.
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McMurry, A. (2019). Trumpolect: Donald Trump’s Distinctive Discourse and Its Functions. In: Kowalski, J. (eds) Reading Donald Trump. The Evolving American Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93179-1_3
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