Startseite Semiotic space invasion: The case of Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Semiotic space invasion: The case of Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign

  • Peter Wignell , Kay O’Halloran EMAIL logo und Sabine Tan
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 20. November 2018

Abstract

This paper uses a social semiotic perspective to analyze Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage of the US presidential campaign from 16 June 2015, when he announced his candidacy for nomination as the Republican candidate until 8 November 2016, when he was elected as President of the United States. The paper argues that one of the keys to Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage was that, in presenting himself and his agenda, he foregrounded interpersonal meaning by making himself the focus of attention of the campaign through strategies that invaded various semiotic spaces to form a “sub-semiosphere” of Trump dogma. The effects of this were that what he did and what he said captured the majority of media attention at the expense of his opponents, enabling him to win the election, despite his complete lack of background experience as a politician.

References

Bateman, John. 2014a. Looking for what counts in film analysis: A programme of empirical research. In David Machin (ed.), Visual communication, 301–329. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110255492.301Suche in Google Scholar

Bateman, John. 2014b. Text and image: A critical introduction to the visual/verbal divide. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315773971Suche in Google Scholar

Bayoumi, Moustafa. 2017. Donald Trump’s handshake: Never has such a strong grip looked so weak. The Guardian. 14 February 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/13/donald-trumps-handshake-strong-grip-weak (accessed 2 June 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Collinson, Stephen. 2016. Trump’s strange campaign gets stranger. CNN Politics, 3 August, 2016. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-john-mccain-election-2016/index.html (accessed 2 June 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Confessore, Nicholas & Karen Yourish. 2016. $2 billion worth of free media for Donald Trump. The New York Times, 15 March 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html (accessed 8 May, 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Continetti, Matthew. 2016. Donald Trump is making the mainstream media richer and more powerful. Commentary, 15 March 2016. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/donald-trump-making-mainstream-media-richer-powerful/(accessed 13 June, 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Fuchs, Christian. 2017. Donald Trump: A critical theory-perspective on authoritarian capitalism. TripleC 15(1). 1–72.10.31269/triplec.v15i1.835Suche in Google Scholar

The GDELT Project http://television.gdeltproject.org/cgi-bin/iatv_campaign2016/iatv_campaign2016 (accessed 8 May 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Grusin, Richard A. 2017. Donald Trump’s evil mediation. Theory & Event 20(1). 86–99.Suche in Google Scholar

Gupta, Prachi. 2016. Donald Trump hovers behind Hillary Clinton at debate and Twitter is creeped out. Cosmopolitan, 10 October 2016. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a5247168/trump-standing-behind-clinton-presidential-debate-2016/(accessed 6 June 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Hall, Edward T. 1966. The hidden dimension: Mans use of space in public and private. London: The Bodley Head.Suche in Google Scholar

Hall, Peter M. & Dee Ann Spencer Hall. 2009. The handshake as interaction. Semiotica 45(3–4). 249–264.10.1515/semi.1983.45.3-4.249Suche in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1978. Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.Suche in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1985. Spoken and written language. Waurn Ponds: Deakin University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1993. On the language of physical science. In Michael A. K. Halliday & James R. Martin (eds.), Writing science: Literacy and discursive power, 54–68. London: Falmer.Suche in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar, 2nd edn London: Arnold.Suche in Google Scholar

Halliday, Michael A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2014. Hallidays introduction to functional grammar. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203783771Suche in Google Scholar

Jewitt, Carey (ed.), 2014. The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Jewitt, Carey, Jeff Bezemer & Kay L. O’Halloran. 2016. Introducing multimodality. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315638027Suche in Google Scholar

Koffler, Jakob. 2015. Donald Trump’s presidential announcement sparks huge Facebook reaction. Time, June 17. http://time.com/3924626/donald-trumps-facebook-reaction/(accessed 30 October 2018).Suche in Google Scholar

Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication discourse. London: Arnold.Suche in Google Scholar

Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203619728Suche in Google Scholar

Lotman, Yuri. 2005 [1984]. On the semiosphere. Sign System Studies 33(1). 201–229.10.12697/SSS.2005.33.1.09Suche in Google Scholar

Manjoo, Farhad. 2017. I ignored Trump news for a week. Here’s what I learned. The New York Times, February 22 February, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/trump-news-media-ignore.html?ref=business (accessed 13 June, 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Martin, James R. 1992. English text: System and structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/z.59Suche in Google Scholar

Martin, James R. & David Rose. 2007. Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause, 2nd edn London: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar

Martin, James R. & Peter R. R. White. 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave MacMillan.10.1057/9780230511910Suche in Google Scholar

O’Halloran, Kay L. (ed.), 2004. Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives. London: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar

O’Halloran, Kay L. 2008. Systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis SF-MDA: Constructing ideational meaning using language and visual imagery. Visual Communication 7. 443–475.10.1177/1470357208096210Suche in Google Scholar

O’Toole, Michael. 2011. The language of displayed art, 2nd edn London & New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Page, Susan. 2015. This time, Donald Trump says he’s running. USA Today, 16 June 2015. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/06/16/donald-trump-announcement-president/28782433/(accessed 8 May 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Patterson, Thomas E. 2016. News coverage of the 2016 presidential primaries: Horse race reporting has consequences. Harvard Kennedy School, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, 11 July 2016. https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential-primaries/(accessed 8 May 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Peters, Michael A. 2017. The end of neoliberal globalisation and the rise of authoritarian populism. Educational Philosophy and Theory 50(4). 323–325.10.1080/00131857.2017.1305720Suche in Google Scholar

Royce, Terry. 2007. Intersemiotic complementarity: A framework for multimodal discourse analysis. In Terry Royce & Wendy Bowcher (eds.), New directions in the analysis of multimodal discourse, 63–110. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Suche in Google Scholar

Sanders, David, Thomas J. Scotto & Jason Reifler. 2016. The consequences of authoritarian populism in Britain. Essex: University of Essex.Suche in Google Scholar

Sandhu, Serina. 2016. Donald Trump’s use of grammar “typical of children aged 11 and under.” The Independent, Thursday 17 March http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-uses-language-typical-of-children-under-11-a6936256.html (accessed 19 May 2017).Suche in Google Scholar

Trump Twitter Archive. n.d. http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/archive (accessed 21 October 2018).Suche in Google Scholar

van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005. Introducing social semiotics. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203647028Suche in Google Scholar

van Leeuwen, Theo. 2012. The critical analysis of musical discourse. Critical Discourse Studies 9. 319–328.10.1080/17405904.2012.713204Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2018-11-20
Published in Print: 2019-01-08

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 17.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/sem-2017-0109/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen