Tweets, Taunts, Tirades, and Tantrums: How America’s Donald Trump Transformed Transgressive Language into Political Power

Abstract

This chapter applies Murray Edelman’s concept of enemy/leader and opponent/enemy construction to analyze the ways in which Donald Trump’s use of debasing language helped him to gain and keep support. The chapter focuses on how debasing language affects the ways in which the person using the language is perceived, how the person or institution being attacked is perceived, and how the target audience of potential supporters perceives themselves. In particular, this chapter shows how in the context of the legitimacy crisis that gripped the U.S., Trump could use debasing language to distinguish himself from “establishment politicians,” thus gaining support. Analyzing one key example, the chapter shows how the crude, racist language in Trump’s announcement speech worked to define him as an outsider, and a populist, attracting supporters fed up with the existing system. The chapter then considers three questions: How did debasing language affect Trump’s relations with the mainstream media? How did debasing language affect his relations with rival candidates? What were the real-world consequences of Trump’s debasing language in terms of appealing to violence against minorities and in terms of violence against the American system of government. The chapter concludes by considering the ways in which Trump’s use of debasing language threatened the ability to perceive reality and even the concept of reality itself.