Donald J. Trump and the rhetoric of ressentiment

Abstract

This essay contributes to and reframes the preliminary scholarly assessments of President Donald J. Trump's appeals to rage, malice, and revenge by sketching the rhetorical dimensions of an underlying emotional-moral framework in which victimization, resentment, and revenge are inverted civic virtues. I elaborate on the concept of ressentiment (re-sentiment), a condition in which a subject is addled by rage and envy yet remains impotent, subjugated and unable to act on or adequately express frustration. Though anger and resentment capture part of Trump's affective register, I suggest that ressentiment accounts for the unique intersection where powerful sentiments and self-serving morality are coupled with feelings of powerlessness and ruminations on past injuries. Thus, shifting focus from the rhetoric of resentment to that of ressentiment explains how Trump is able to sustain the affective charge of animus without forfeiting the moral high ground of victimhood to his audience's "oppressors"-Democrats, the press, criminals, immigrants, foreign adversaries, welfare recipients, the Me Too movement, "globalists," and racial Others.

Interpersonal Function of Joe Biden’s Victory Speech (Systemic Functional Linguistics View)

“…Apparently, through these rhetorical questions, Biden successfully attracted the audience's attention emphasized that the audience thinks and rouse the passion for overcoming the current difficulties. This corroborates previous studies reporting that a prevailing way to frame political issues of political actors is and a rhetoric dimension (Kelly, 2020;Moragas-fernández, Calvo, & Capdevila, 2018;Nartey, 2018).…”

“…To add on, others concerned with figurative frames, cohesiveness, and structural pattern of a speech texts. Metaphor is regarded as a prevailing way and a rhetoric dimension to frame political issues of political actors in their speech (Kelly, 2020;Moragas-fernández, Calvo, & Capdevila, 2018;Nartey, 2018). Meanwhile, cohesion devices and other linguistics resources could differently contribute to frame a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of any kind of genre or text types (da Cunha, 2019;Xuan, 2017;Jitpranne, 2018;Martin Zappavigna, 2029;Schubert, 2019;Silke, Quinn, & Rieder, 2019;Zhan & Huang, 2018).…”

Measuring populism worldwide

“…And how can the conceptual framework of populism be operationalized using valid and reliable empirical evidence? Researchers have used several alternative techniques to classify political parties including (i) identifying “ party families ” according to shared names (Mair and Mudde, 1998); (ii) comparing members of transnational organizational affiliations; (iii) discourse analysis of the rhetorical language used in leadership speeches and social media (Aalberg et al, 2017; Bonikowski and Gidron, 2016; Duina and Carson, 2019; Hart, 2020; Hawkins, 2009; Hawkins et al, 2019a; Kelly, 2019; Kreis, 2017; Lamont et al, 2017); (iv) hand and digitalized content analysis of the texts of programmatic party platforms, exemplified by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) (Budge and Farlie, 1983; Budge et al, 2001; Klingemann et al, 2006; Laver, 2000; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011); (v) analysis of roll-call votes by legislators (Poole and Rosenthal, 2001); (vi) surveys of political elites such as elected representatives, parliamentary candidates, activists, and party members (Bailer, 2014; Katz and Wessels, 1999; van Haute and Gauja, 2015); (vii) mass surveys gathering citizen’s estimates of party issue positions and their own policy preferences, as well as measuring populist attitudes (Akkerman et al, 2014), and (viii) using expert surveys to identify party ideological values and issue positions (Bakker et al, 2015; Benoit and Laver, 2006; Castles and Mair, 1984; Meijers and Zaslove, 2020). Reviews suggest that each approach has different pros and cons (Laver, 2001; Mair, 2001; Ware, 1996).…”

We will be great again: Historical victimhood in populist discourse

“…They also want them to feel they have to do something about this historical wrong and so they portray the present as being as fateful as historic junctures were in the past. At the same time, populist leaders are interested in extending and sustaining that feeling of victimhood as much as possible in order to maintain their hold on power and that is why they present themselves as the embodiment of their supporters’ hijacked agency (Kelly, 2020).…”