The Common Sense of Donald J. Trump: A Gramscian Reading of Twenty-First Century Populist Rhetoric

Crehan, Kate

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74445-2_16

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…demonstrates this, and highlights that ‘theorising anger is vital to understanding Trump's distinctive brand of populism’ (Wahl‐Jorgensen, 2018, p. 767). As well as his own anger, Crehan (2018, p. 283) would argue that Trump, ‘honed by his years as a reality TV celebrity’, is also giving his supporters a voice in a rough, unpolished language they recognised, in what might be termed an act of political ventriloquism. Blankenship (2020) has related this to a form of ‘tactical populism’, whereby he communicates his raw emotions to the American people, and particularly his own supporters, through this new media channel.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has also been expressed by Kreis (2017, p. 610) who draws the connection between Trump and celebrity culture in positioning Trump as ‘not only the defender of the common people, but also the rich and famous idol that is already known and liked by the people and who does not depend on the patronage of the establishment’. In drawing on this celebrity culture and his own persona cultivated within the sociocultural context of the US, the influence on his rhetoric must be considered as Trump seeks to legitimise his policies, promises and worldview in a ‘rough and unpolished’ (Crehan, 2018, p. 283) language, perfected in his years as a reality TV star, that is easily understood and accepted by his base.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Donald Trump, legitimisation and a new political rhetoric

Ross

Rivers

2020

World Englishes

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The rise to the US Presidency of Donald Trump has been accompanied by the emergence of a new political rhetoric, one that is most frequently observed on the social media platform Twitter. Although Twitter has been a feature of political campaigns and communication for several years now, the public has not been exposed to the deprofessionalised, informal use demonstrated by Trump. The rhetoric of Trump can be said in large part to be influenced by his personal history, and his persona as a celebrity TV star, especially through the informality, insults inclusive of nicknaming, and framing himself as a winner and opponents as losers. Although this new rhetorical style is present in all his discourse on Twitter, we focus this study on Trump's pursuit of legitimacy for his proposed border wall on the US-Mexico border, and do so from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective by utilising Reyes' (2011) framework for legitimisation in political discourse. 1 INTRODUCTION Donald J. Trump's ascendency to the Presidency of the United States in 2016 heralded a new form of politician in conjunction with a new style of political rhetoric and communication. To understand Trump and his place within American and global politics, it is unwise to ignore his celebrity persona and background. King (2018, p. 2) states that where in the past 'politicians have sought to exploit the tropes and images of celebrity, the Trump Presidency marks the point where the President is a celebrity' (italics added). This is linked to both his past as a billionaire businessman, but most notably his role in the reality TV show The apprentice, which presented him with a kind of fame unique to reality TV show characters and different from the past, where 'fans are encouraged to feel that they know these people, not as fictional characters but as flesh and blood' (Von Drehle, 2016, p. 26). He has carried this fame and the influence of his celebrity into the political sphere, where the 'fact that he did not sound or behave like a typical politician won him points for authenticity' (Singer, 2016, p. 97), and this authenticity is evident in all of his political rhetoric, but particularly on his preferred mode of communication, the social media platform Twitter. Twitter has now been a prominent tool of political communication and participation for more than a decade, with politicians and political organisations engaging in what Maireder and Ausserhofer (2012, p. 306) describe as the

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Donald Trump, legitimisation and a new political rhetoric

Ross

Rivers

2020

World Englishes

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“…Trump's game is to keep his base in a state of perpetual anger, to replace formal ideology with an emotional attachment to him (Bostdorff, 2017). Trump also substitutes common sensibility for common sense, thereby dismissing the need for formal argumentation (Crehan, 2018). Trump constantly violates social conventions, giving his audience a sense of freedom, creativity, and wantonness (Gunn, 2018).…”

Section: But How?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Trump Lost and How? A Rhetorical Explanation

Hart

2021

American Behavioral Scientist

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Discovering why the 2020 election turned out as it did will, given the complexities of American politics, take considerable time. Discovering how Trump lost and how Biden won will take longer. This article presents an initial foray in the latter direction by subjecting the rhetoric of the campaign to computerized language analysis via the DICTION program. In doing so, this study is the most recent outgrowth of the Campaign Mapping Project, begun at the University of Texas in Austin in 1995 and designed to produce comparative rhetorical data about presidential campaigns from 1948 to the present. The argument being made here is that Donald Trump lost the election by making excessive use of what Richard Hofstadter calls the Paranoid Style. In addition, Trump made exaggerated claims about abstract and unprovable conspiracies, all of which seemed derivative to voters worried about their health and their jobs in 2020. Joe Biden, in contrast, stressed Commonality—the need for shared purpose during a dangerous and dispiriting time. Biden also spoke directly of and to the people, thereby taking a page out of Trump’s own 2016 playbook. In many ways, Donald Trump’s self-preoccupations made him blind to the needs of the electorate, a habit that developed over the course of his presidency and that ultimately cost him his job.

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What Would Gramsci Tweet?

Jeremic¹

2019

New Dir Adult Contin Educ

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The evolution of Web 2.0 user‐generated content has opened the door to new forms of collective action and social movement building. In asking if the benefits outweigh the risks, this paper brings Gramsci's theorization of activism into the twenty‐first century, where the newspaper has been replaced by social medial tools and the Organic Intellectual has gone virtual. Through the examples of #BlackLivesMatter, #IdleNoMore, and #MarchForOurLives, this paper argues that the digital age, despite limitations, has created unique opportunities for unprecedented social movement building. Activists are identified as key educators and passionate persuaders in these nonformal sites of learning, demonstrating how, through #hashtag activism, these virtual organic intellectuals are emerging to disrupt and challenge power in the digital age.

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The Common Sense of Donald J. Trump: A Gramscian Reading of Twenty-First Century Populist Rhetoric

Cited by 6 publications

References 3 publications

Donald Trump, legitimisation and a new political rhetoric

Donald Trump, legitimisation and a new political rhetoric

Why Trump Lost and How? A Rhetorical Explanation

What Would Gramsci Tweet?

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