Impoliteness and Power in U.S. Political Campaign Debates: The Case of Donald Trump

https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v5i1.41277

Ahmad Wijanarko(1*), Thomas Joko Priyo Sembodo(2)

(1) English Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada
(2) English Department, Universitas Gadjah Mada
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract


This research examines impoliteness strategies in the context of political campaign debates by the presidential candidates, particularly by Donald Trump against other candidates. The data used in this research, taken from the last three National Republican debates, were Donald Trump’s utterances in which he employed impoliteness strategies. The data were analyzed using Garcia-Pastor’s (2008) impoliteness strategies. The results show that Donald Trump employed the negative-face oriented strategies much more frequently (66.15%) than the positive-face oriented strategies (33.85%). The negative-face oriented strategy ‘state the communicative act(s) as common or shared knowledge’ was the most frequently used (30.38%). These results suggest that for the purposes of asserting power in the debates, Donald Trump tends to use negative-faced oriented impoliteness strategies in his political debates.

Keywords


Donald Trump; impoliteness strategies; political debates; power

Full Text:

28-37 PDF


References

Donald Trump Biography. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2016, from http://www.biography.com/people/donald-trump-9511238.

Culpeper, J. (1996). “Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness.” Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349-367. Print.

Diamond, Jeremy. “Donald Trump: Ban all Muslim travel to U.S.”. CNN Politics. 8 December 2015: Web. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump- muslim-ban-immigration/. Accessed in March 24, 2016.

Garcia-Pastor, M. D. (2008). Political campaign debates as zero-sum games: Impoliteness and power in candidates exchanges. In D. Bousfield and M. A. Locher (eds.), Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Itkowitz, C. (2015). “Donald Trump says we’re all too politically correct. But is that also a way to limit speech?” The Huffington Post 9 December 2015. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/12/09/donald-trump- says-were-all-too-politically-correct-but-is-that-also-a-way-to-limit-speech/ Accessed in February 28, 2016.

Klotz, P. (1999). “Politeness and Political Correctness: Ideological Impliciations.” Pragmatics 9 (1), pp. 155-161. Yule, George. (1996). Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.



DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v5i1.41277

Article Metrics

Abstract views : 1974 | views : 2646

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Ahmad Wijanarko, Thomas Joko Priyo Sembodo

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Lexicon Office

English Department
Faculty of Cultural Sciences,
Universitas Gadjah Mada
Soegondo Building, 3rd Floor, Room 306
Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281
Telephone: +62 274 513096
Email: lexicon.fib@ugm.ac.id

ISSN: 2746-2668 (Online)

Web Analytics View Stats

Creative Commons License
LEXICON is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Lexicon is indexed in

 
About UsSubmissionIssuePoliciesReview
Editorial Team
Journal History
Contact
Author Guidelines
Article Submission
Account Registration
Current Issue
All Issues
Upcoming Issue
Privacy Statement
Open Access
Publication Ethics
Review Process
Peer Reviewers
Reviewer Guidelines