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TRUMP’S LANGUAGE

Trump’s language is odd for a political leader, but it is familiar to his audience. It is the true

language of populism. He mirrors all the principles of populism, even though he cannot

certainly be identified with the underdog, nor with the underprivileged, since his life is and

has always been steeped into privilege.

Trump’s language is highly distinctive and related to common informal usages. In other

words, Donald Trump’s language appears to be designed to align him with non-politicians, to

assert his identity as a ‘common man’. He is the antithesis of the conventional politician, as

a matter of fact he himself repeats on several occasions that he’s not a politician, distancing

himself from the corrupted politicians, from the corrupt elite, in line with the populist binomial

“the pure people vs the corrupt elite”, “us vs them”, distancing himself even from his own

political party, calling the Republicans “RINO” – “Republicans In Name Only.”

Trump uses shorter words and a more restricted vocabulary, so that his language will appear

familiar to a larger proportion of people. His grammar is simple: his sentences are shorter,

and he uses fewer nouns proportional to verbs.

What we can say is that the policies of populist parties have the tendency of drawing up

the drawbridge, creating new walls, the tendency of closing ports, to keep specific people

out. What unites them is also the promise to break free of constraints, and the Paris

Agreement was seen as a constraint. Brexit, for instance, was seen as the liberation from a

trap.

Populism means putting into question the institutional order by constructing an underdog as

an historical agent – i.e. an agent which is another in relation to the way things stand. For

the many not the few. ‘The pure people’ vs ‘the corrupt elite’.

WALL OR BRIDGES IN THE UK AND IN THE US?

This paper was written in 2018 and it shows us a look at the British, Italian and the American

language of populism with a corpus-assisted approach.

The former Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, after being accused that the new

government is a populist government, admitted that “yes, if populism means the ruling class

listens to the needs of the people, yes, we have a populist government”.

The unpredictable success of populism in the US and Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 have

transformed anxieties into legitimate apprehension and fear, and as Marine Le Pen said, “the

British with the Brexit, then the Americans with the election of Donald Trump “made possible

the impossible”. Also, Matteo Salvini, made possible the impossible, by closing Italy’s ports

to a ship, Aquarius, carrying 629 people from Libya.

Marine Le Pen reacted with delight and welcomed Salvini’s veto, saying that only “a policy

of firmness” would stop the mass arrival of migrants.

“Raising your voice pays off”, Salvini declared, something Italy has not been doing for years.

And of course, this aggressive rhetoric and tough talk is a typical feature of populism.

This rude language, also offensive at times, is a feature of Donald Trump’s rhetoric as well.

Robin Tolmach Lakoff, in her paper The hollow man, says that people didn’t vote for Trump

because of his behavior.

The new Italian government has promised to block illegal immigration.

In fact, the migration panic has been shaking Europe since 2005 and it is seen as one of the

main causes that pushed Britain toward Brexit: immigration ended up playing an extremely

important role in the outcome of the referendum. It was fundamentally about regaining the

British identity which people felt they had lost.

Politicians’ agenda is a fear-driven agenda, a fear of the “Other”, of the stranger, of what

Wodak calls “the postmodern stranger”, i.e., migrants and refugees, fear of losing control, of

losing traditions and national identities.

Fear finds its expression in racist prejudices and hostility towards the unknown, and rather

than establishing a ‘fusion of horizons’ through dialogue, populism chooses to pull up the

drawbridge, close ports or build a wall, “a great and beautiful wall”.

The rise and success of populism probably started in the 1970s with Jean- Marie Le Pen, in

France, but the word is still confusing and it is difficult to describe it correctly, yet the term

'populism' is being increasingly used, sometimes also improperly. Cas Mudde suggested that

populist philosophy is a set of ideas that share three core features: anti- establishment,

authoritarianism, and nativism. We can certainly detect these features in the current

British, American and Italian government.

The world is divided into two, without any overtones: good and bad, friends and foes, the

'pure people' and the 'corrupt élite', us and them. This division is a salient characteristic of

populism.

Interestingly, Donald Trump avoids the word “populism” on purpose, but we can undoubtedly

identify aspects of authoritarian populism in his rhetoric.

Obama warns against the meaning of populism and he said that Trump’s policy is like a

successful mix of populism, nativism, xenophobia with a dollop of cynicism.

The referendum campaign in the UK in favour of leaving the EU anticipated many of Trump’s

themes: concern about immigration, anxiety about declining power and sovereignty, distrust

of élites and experts, all bundled together in the simple slogan of “take back control”. This is

a clear indication of a populist attempt in Britain to regain its national self as an autonomous

political body/person.

TO PULL UP THE DRAWBRIDGE

The metaphor pulling up the drawbridge refers to both immigration and the relationship

between the EU and the UK.

“Pull up the drawbridge” is often reformulated through other metaphors e.g., “close the

shutters, hunker down, ignore the interconnectedness of the world economy, shut ourselves

off from globalization, shutting off immigration altogether, pulling back from the world”.

Boris Johnson and David Davis, as well as Nigel Farage seem to recur to it on quite a few

occasions. The most frequent metaphor used by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown next to

“pull up the drawbridge” is “turn the clock back”: this expression refers to the traditional

values and the glorious past, in fact we have to remember that Britain was once the most

powerful country in the world, and at one point the UK was synonymous with the phrase “the

empire on which the sun never sets”.

As Charteris-Black has rightly observed, in the Brexit campaign, those who wanted to leave

the European Union promised to take back control, but those who wanted to remain were

lacking an effective counter metaphor. The same is true in the US election campaign, where

Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, and his opponents lacked an effective counter

metaphor. And we know well that it is not the side with 'the most' or 'the best' facts that wins

but the one that provides the most plausible and reliable scenarios, in simple terms.

Trump’s rhetoric proved to be so strong and politically efficient as to secure the US

presidency for a businessman and TV entertainer with no prior political experience.

Trump's rhetoric is certainly aggressive, unconventional and direct. His style is also laced

with other offensive recurring remarks, giving voice to feelings of anger and even hate.

But Trump's voice is regarded as an authentic voice and as the voice of the people. He has

said on several occasions "I like the poorly educated, I am with you, the American people, I

am your voice", but there seems to be a little irony here, because this is a man whose life

has been steeped in privilege, not poverty, just like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, who are

both privileged Brexiteers. It would of course have been different if Barack Obama had

uttered these words, given his past and his difficult life.

TO DRAIN THE SWAMP

It means originally “to get rid of the malaria-carrying mosquitoes by draining the swamp”.

But, in politics ‘drain the swamp’ means ‘to exterminate something that is harmful; something

like corruption or government waste. This term is especially attractive for politicians during

campaigns. The swamp Trump referred to is Washington’s political pond of people like Bill

and Hillary Clinton, who have been in politics for decades.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE EU. A metaphorical approach in post brexit UK

At the beginning, the EU 27 thought that the UK would have never left the European Union,

because everyone got used to the British policy of “wanting to have their cake and eat it, too”

and of “à la carte attitude”.

In the speech of the in/out referendum in 2013, David Cameron said that he would fight with

all his heart and soul for Britain to stay in the Union, because Britain's national interest is

best served in a flexible, adaptable and open European Union and that the European Union

itself is best with Britain in it. But then, the UK decided to leave it.

Now, what we know is that the United Kingdom today is a Disunited Kingdom, some people

have spoken of Little England rather than Great Britain, so we can say that this was a

tragic split.

Even in the emergency of Covid, the UK was on its own. The Uk decided to go it alone, first

talking of herd immunity and not taking into consideration the lessons from Europe and Asia

on isolation, and then with the race of the vaccine. In this situation, like Brexit, the UK

preferred to “pull up the drawbridge and close the shutters”, to “shut themselves off”,

“turning their back on Europe”.

The race metaphor, for example, is being extensively used more recently, with both climate

change and the covid-19 pandemic: we need to fight a war against climate change, we need

to win the race against climate change. So, there’s the race metaphor, and the war

metaphor, against climate change and against the pandemic.

If we think about it, the “BREXIT” itself is a metaphor, because Europe was regarded as a

“house without exit doors” (Musolff 2000), or with a locked door, now with Article 50 of the

Lisbon Treaty the Union is willing to allow member states to withdraw, and thus ‘exit’.

The pandemic has proved fertile ground for linguistic invention, and since the lockdown was

a new thing, and there were many knowledge gaps about the virus, scientists and politicians

used metaphors in order to explain the situation. We have looked at the traffic light system,

analyzing the meaning of the colors, red, amber and green, and we have looked at the word

wave, like the first wave and the second wave. Then we have the metaphor of the hammer,

which is related to the heavy social distancing, heavy isolations, en