Linguistic Deviations in Donald Trump’s Tweets: Critical Discourse Analysis

Document Type : Academic research papers

Author

Faculty of Women for Arts, Science, and Education - Ain Shams University - Cairo - Egypt

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how the language of Twitter users deviates from the Standard English language. Besides, it considers how those linguistic deviations and flouting of basic rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation could be made with intention as a way of destabilizing opponents. Other times, it could have been resulted from hasty fingers. However, leaving them uncorrected could be a trace of poor proofreading tweets. This paper examines Tweets posted by the 45th American president, Donald Trump, from a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective, adopted from Fairclough’s Three-dimensional model. Hence, this paper delves deep into the president’s tweets, during the election campaign and after taking office, by analyzing some linguistic deviations. The findings of the analyses have revealed that Trump’s deliberate sloppiness of the basic rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation rings true with his character. They are mainly a way of destabilizing his opponents. Instead of being ashamed, the US president looks proud of his slips; he hardly proofreads his words before pouring them into the Twittersphere.

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