"I" And "Others" From Trump's Point Of View

On November 9,2016,the Republican candidate,Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate,former Secretary of State,Hillary Clinton,thus becoming the 45th President of the United States.Being a newcomer to the national political arena,and considered one of the most(if not the most)rhetorically unconventional,controversial,and divisive candidates in US presidential history,Trump has been the center of attention ever since he announced candidacy for President in New York on June 16,2015.Trump's campaign speeches,to a certain extent,exerted influence on his final success.As a type of political speech,presidential campaign speeches play a unique role in creating candidates' personal images and in articulating their political ideas and policy concerns to voters.Therefore,it is well worth taking an in-depth look at how Donald Trump discursively constructs a presidential image for himself in his campaign speeches.In addition,various others,especially those campaign rivals,are included in the speeches,so how Trump linguistically constructs their images is a question worthy of exploration as well.Up till now,there have been few studies that explore how Trump represents and appraises different social actors to construct images of them in his campaign speeches.In light of this,by drawing on the transitivity system in Systemic Functional Linguistics,this thesis attempts to conduct a functional analysis of twenty of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign speeches to unravel how Trump linguistically constructs different images of various social actors and their interrelationships.The findings are as follows:(1)As far as the others are concerned,firstly,the foreign countries are,in the vast majority of cases,represented as the Actor in the material processes.They are demonized as enemies and held accountable for the problems confronting America.Secondly,other campaign rivals and politicians are consistently constructed an image of inadequate candidates or corrupt leaders,who are responsible for the problems as well.Thirdly,despite Trump's appraisal of American people as great and hard-working people,the use of relational processes(51.4%)characterizes America as a country that is plagued by dangerous things and American people as living in dire straits and suffering myriad hardships.As far as I am concerned.I am represented as the Actor in the material processes(40.3%),who has done a great job in many things,as the Carrier or Possessor of good attributes in the relational processes(24.6%),and as the Senser in the mental processes(23.9%)to show that I am more cognitively capable than others.Trump is appraised in a positive light and constructed an image as a perfect presidential candidate.Therefore,from Trump's point of view,only he can lead the American people out of the problems and make America great again.Some factors are responsible for these image constructions and any construction is bound to serve the purpose of the presidential campaign.(2)Trump's outspoken,blunt,and self-aggrandizing language makes him different from previous candidates(e.g.Obama).His labeling and extreme descriptions of foreign countries and his rivals indicate that the relations he intends to establish with them are totally confrontational,with no cooperation.This study can further prove the practicability and operability of SFL in analyzing political speeches so as to enrich the literature in this field.Secondly,by conducting a functional analysis of Trump's campaign discourse,this study can provide some pedagogical implications for English language teaching.Last but not least,this study is of value to the practitioners in the field of political communication.