Cultivating critical language awareness: unraveling populism in Trump’s inaugural address

1 Introduction

Facing growing political, financial, and social uncertainties in the twin processes of economic and cultural globalization, the world has seen a bourgeoning wave of populist rhetoric among politicians and media and its powerful appeal to the public (e.g., Bull and Simon-Vandenbergen 2014; Casado 2023; Demuru 2021; Grönegräs and Cleen 2022; Guardino 2018; Jones 2014; Maydell et al. 2022; Wignell et al. 2019; Wodak 2015, 2020). For example, the 2016 United States presidential election surprised the whole world when the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Once again, the world witnessed the power of populism. According to Oliver and Rahn (2016: 190), “populism is a type of political rhetoric that pits a virtuous ‘people’ against nefarious, parasitic elites who seek to undermine the rightful sovereignty of the common folk.” Throughout the election, Trump employed populism to appeal to the working class. He blamed liberals, foreign nations, immigrants, and certain races and ethnicities while promising to put “America first” and to “make America great again.” While Trump and his supporters were celebrating his success, anti-Trump protests broke out across the U.S., even on Inauguration Day. During his inauguration, six police officers were injured, and 217 protesters were arrested in Washington D.C.; anti-Trump protests also broke out in New York, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, and Portland (Krieg 2017). Facing a more divided society than ever before, how did Trump employ populism in his inaugural address to build solidarity among Americans?

Previous studies on presidential inaugural addresses often focus on analyzing the rhetorical, linguistic, or genre characteristics (e.g., Belisle et al. 2018; Chanturidze 2018; Frank 2011; Guitar 2021; Helal 2022; Lăpădat and Lăpădat 2022; Salek 2022; Salih 2020). However, little research has highlighted the importance of fostering citizens’ critical language awareness (CLA). In the same vein, although recent literature has revealed an upsurge of populism in political speeches across Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States (e.g., Banks 2022; Breeze 2023; Casado 2023; Guardino 2018; Way and Serafis 2023; Zappettini and Krzyżanowski 2019), few studies have raised awareness of the importance of cultivating critical language awareness among citizens in democracies. According to Fairclough (1992a: 90), in democracies, it is important to raise people’s critical awareness of ideological processes in discourse, “so that [they] can become more aware of their practice and be more critical of the ideologically invested discourse to which they are subjected.” Nowadays, living in a postmodern and increasingly globalized world – facing increasing cultural and linguistic diversity, extensive misinformation and disinformation from social media, as well as growing economic and political uncertainties worldwide – it has become especially crucial to raise citizens’ critical language awareness so that informed choices about political leaders can be made.

The purpose of this paper is to use Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze how Trump used meaning-making choices to construct a populist discourse to raise educators and social scientists’ awareness of the urgency of cultivating citizens’ critical language awareness through language education. Equipped with critical language awareness, citizens will know the mechanisms of semiotic manipulation and understand how politicians use linguistic resources to engage, persuade, or manipulate audiences to achieve their career goals. Therefore, they can make informed choices about political leaders in the future.

2 Theoretical frameworks and methodology

This study draws on Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Fairclough’s theory of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (e.g., Fairclough 1992a, 1992b, 2010, 2015 [1989]; Halliday and Hasan 1985; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004; Martin 1992; Martin and Rose 2008).

First, the theoretical framework adopted in this study is the model of SFL. According to Martin and Rose (2008), SFL is a theory of language describing how people use language – a functional social-semiotic system – to make meaning in certain contexts, including both the context of situation and the context of culture. The context of culture is the systems of beliefs, values, attitudes, and expectations that readers, writers, speakers, and listeners bring to any social interaction based on socialization (e.g., Malinowski 1935; Martin and Rose 2008). The context of culture is infused with ideologies that influence how people interact verbally and is reflected or manifested in genres (Martin and Rose 2008). According to Martin (1992: 505), genres are the “staged, goal-oriented social processes” used in everyday cultural practices to accomplish social goals. In SFL terms, this means that “genres are a recurrent configuration of meanings and that these recurrent configurations of meaning enact the social practices of a given culture” (Martin and Rose 2008: 6). Therefore, genres often have an expected organizational structure or set of moves as a result of language socialization. Section 3.1.1 compares the genre moves in Trump’s inaugural address with that in other inaugural addresses, demonstrating that Trump deviated from the common moves of an inaugural address across those examined in this study by employing an anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric.

The context of the situation is the immediate, extra-linguistic, and situational context that influences how an individual text unfolds through spoken, written, visual, or multimodal forms (e.g., Malinowski 1935; Martin and Rose 2008). The context of the situation is reflected or manifested in register choices, i.e., field, tenor, and mode choices (Martin and Rose 2008). Figure 1 demonstrates the relationship between social contexts and language choices in texts.

Figure 1:

The dynamic relationship between social contexts and texts.

Field choices are specific grammatical choices that construct ideas and experiences, including participants (who/what is involved), processes (what is happening), and circumstances (more details surrounding the process, including when, where, how, why, etc.). According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), participants can appear as an “actor” or as a “goal” affected by what is done. Participants, both “actor[s]” and “goal[s],” are often presented in nominal forms such as pronouns, nouns, and individual names. They can also be concealed, depending on whether an author intends to make the participants’ identities explicit or not. Processes conceptualize actions or states and are represented by verbs. Table 1 shows the types of verb processes in English. According to Charteris-Black (2018: 113), “verb processes are crucial in foregrounding or backgrounding actors and in highlighting or concealing agency.” Whether verbs are presented as active or passive and whether a transitive or intransitive verb is chosen will influence the audience’s attention and perception. Typically, agency is present when the active voice of verbs is used and absent when the passive voice is used (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 179–189). Section 3.1.2 analyzes and reveals how Trump skillfully manipulated agency through foregrounding the former establishment and backgrounding the people using a series of material verbs, depicting the former establishment as self-serving and the people as miserable and powerless to set the people against the former establishment.

Tenor choices are specific grammatical choices that construct social dynamics, including mood, modality, and appraisal. According to Derewianka (2011:110–113), the mood structure of clauses are specific language resources that realize various speech functions. Mood structure of clauses shows how information, goods, or services are exchanged or negotiated in discourse, and this can be presented by making statements (declarative clauses), asking questions (interrogative clauses), making commands (imperative clauses), offering to provide a service or goods (various clause types), etc. Modality can be realized through various linguistic choices that convey different levels of certainty and conviction, indicating an individual’s stance, attitude, or position toward what they are saying. Modality is often presented through modal verbs, adverbs, or nouns and demonstrates various degrees of commitment to the truth of a claim. A high degree of commitment to truth demonstrates a high degree of certainty, implying a speaker or writer is confident and authoritative about what they have said. A low degree of commitment to truth shows a degree of uncertainty, implying a speaker or writer is less sure. For instance, when debating the proposition that ‘All people are created equal,’ one may use a simple present tense to categorically assert it (‘All people are created equal’) or deny it (‘All people are not created equal’), but there are also various less categorical and less determinate degrees of commitment to it or against it: ‘All people may be/are possibly/are probably created equal,’ for example. Trump’s assertion that “We will make America great again” would sound differently to his supporters if he had said, “we should/can/could/may/might make America great again.” Table 2 shows modality: the various degrees of commitment and certainty realized through modal verbs. Writers make linguistic choices based on the level of truth or obligation that they want to convey. Modality “is very important in influencing perceptions of the truthfulness and rightfulness of utterances, as degree of certainty can be manipulated for rhetorical effect” (Charteris-Black 2018: 120).

One more resource related to tenor choices is appraisal, which refers to the linguistic choices that writers and speakers make to construct positive and negative evaluations of a range of phenomena. Appraisals can be divided into three categories: appreciation, affect, and judgment. They are used to assess the quality of objects (appreciation), express feelings and empathy (affect), and make moral judgements of people’s behaviors (judgement). Appraisal can be presented through adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and nouns. Appraisal can be negative or positive, direct, or indirect, and can have different intensities. Writers and speakers can use various appraisal resources to appeal to people’s emotions and sense of morality and to influence their feelings, judgements, and decisions. Trump’s preferences of categorical modality through declaratives in simple present tense and high modality through modal verbs as well as high appraisal language choices including nouns, verbs, and adjectives are analyzed and demonstrated throughout the section of the findings.

Mode choices are language choices that develop coherent and cohesive texts. For instance, text, paragraph, and sentence openers can help manage the flow of information, building coherence in the text structure, so that the text as a whole makes sense. Cohesive devices such as referring words (e.g., we, our, you, your, those, this), text connectives (e.g., therefore, in other words, meanwhile, first, additionally, even though), and word associations (e.g., repetition, collocation, synonyms, antonyms, word chains) can help make links between various items in the text, building cohesion between clauses and sentences (Derewianka 2011: 143–160). These various mode choices can be used to keep track of participants, processes, and circumstances within and across a text to build cohesion, to facilitate the flow of information, and to promote the understanding of a text. Trump’s mode choices such as referring words (e.g., first and second plural personal pronouns), lexical chains, and repetitions are examined in Sections 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 to show how he used these mode choices to build a populist discourse to appeal to the people’s ethos and pathos.

In addition to SFL, this paper is also informed by Fairclough’s theory of CDA (e.g., Fairclough 1992a, 1992b, 2010, 2015 [1989]), which “brings together linguistically-oriented discourse analysis and social and political thought relevant to discourse and language… in the study of social change” (Fairclough 1992a: 62). According to Fairclough, “any discourse ‘event’ (i.e., any instance of discourse) … [is] simultaneously a piece of text [spoken or written], an instance of discursive practice, and an instance of social practice” (1992a: 4). Discourse is a social practice “not just of representing the world but also of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning” (1992a: 64). Specifically, discourse has three aspects of constructive effects, which include the construction of “social identities,” “social relationships between people,” and “systems of knowledge and belief” (1992a: 64). Additionally, discourse has a dialectical relationship with social structures: on the one hand, discourse is shaped by social structures, relations of power, and the nature of social practices it is part of; on the other hand, discourse is politically and ideologically invested and has the power to contribute to reproducing society and/or transforming society (1992a: 64–73). As a political practice, discourse “establishes, sustains, and changes power relations and the collective entities (classes, blocs, communities, groups)”; as an ideological practice, discourse “constitutes, naturalizes, sustains, and changes significations of the world from diverse positions in power relations” (1992a: 67). See the dialectical relationship between social structure and discourse demonstrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2:

The dialectical relationship between social structure and discourse.

However, people are often unaware of the power of discourse and the power dynamic between their discursive practices and social structures. Therefore, it is important to investigate discursive changes in relation to social and cultural changes through CDA. It is also vital to raise people’s critical language awareness (CLA) through language education in schools, especially in democratic societies. As Fairclough argues,

CLA … help[s] [leaners] become more conscious of the practice they are involved in as producers and consumers of texts: of the social forces and interests that shape it; the power relations and ideologies that invest it; its effects upon social identities, social relations, knowledge, and beliefs; and the role of discourse in process of cultural and social change (including technologization of discourse). Through consciousness learners can become more aware of constraints upon their own practice, and of the possibilities, risks, and costs of individually or collectively challenging those constraints to engage in an ‘emancipatory’ language practice. (Fairclough 1992a: 239–240)

Therefore, aiming to raise educators’ and social scientists’ awareness of the urgency of equipping citizens with critical language awareness so that informed political choices may be made in the future, this paper employs SFL and CDA to critically analyze how Trump used various linguistic resources to construct a populist discourse to appeal to Americans in his inaugural address.

First, the transcription of Trump’s inaugural address was downloaded from the Archived Presidential White House Websites.^[1] Then, a register analysis was conducted, including performing clause breaks, and examining field, mode, and tenor choices. In addition, informed by Martin and Rose (2008), a genre analysis was performed to look for the genre stages and functional moves of each section of the address. To better interpret Trump’s genre stages and rhetorical strategies, sometimes Trump’s inaugural address was analyzed in comparison to other inaugural addresses, such as President Barack Obama’s and President George W. Bush’s, to look for the commonalities and departures among them. However, it is important to note that this qualitative study focuses on analyzing Trump’s populist meaning-making choices in his inaugural address to raise the urgency of cultivating citizens’ critical language awareness through language education. Although sometimes Trump’s inaugural address was analyzed in comparison to other presidents’ inaugural addresses to illustrate Trump’s genre moves and rhetorical strategies, this study is not a systematic comparative study that quantitatively analyzes multiple presidents’ inaugural addresses.

3 Findings

Based on the SFL analysis of Trump’s inaugural address, there are four predominate findings regarding how he used linguistic choices to construct a populist discourse to build solidarity among Americans. In discussing these findings, data from genre and register analyses will be presented.

3.1 Anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric: attack and alienate plus promise and align

3.1.1 The deviation from the genre conventions of an inaugural address

The genre of an inaugural address is an epideictic oratory. In other words, it is addressed to audiences that assemble to honor the new president and to celebrate the new establishment. According to the primary sources of this study (e.g., Bush 2001; Clinton 1993; Obama 2009) as well as existing literature on this genre (e.g., Campbell and Jamieson 1978; Charteris-Black 2018), there is a tendency for a new U.S. president to thank or salute the former president to appeal to potential political opponents as well as to supporters in order to heal division and develop rapport among the American people (e.g., Bush 2001; Clinton 1993; Obama 2009). Additionally, discussing a wide range of issues such as foreign policy or economic policy and reviewing important domestic and international decisions in a historical context is a practice that was observed across all considered speeches (e.g., Bush 2001; Clinton 1993; Obama 2009). Furthermore, there is a tendency for the incoming president to discuss his ideology and world view or highlight the shared beliefs and values between the president and audience to build trust and consensus and to inspire people to move forward (e.g., Bush 2001; Clinton 1993; Obama 2009). However, it is rare to attack former presidents in an inaugural address. Trump deviated from this tendency of not attacking former presidents by employing an anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric, as demonstrated in Figure 3. After a brief opening, declaring that the ceremony was special in that it was “transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to… the American People,” Trump began attacking the former president for both his domestic and foreign policies by providing narratives of “American carnage.” Each rebuke was followed by a promise of change and hope for the American people. By weaving the attacks and promises together in the first half of his inaugural speech, Trump was employing populism to appeal to the American people and to establish a backdrop for his performance as president, setting himself up as a man of change and as a savior. Figure 3 demonstrates the genre moves of the first part of Trump’s inaugural speech.

Figure 3:

The genre stages and functional moves in the first part of Trump’s inaugural address.

3.1.2 The attack-promise rhetorical strategy: the art of manipulating agency

Using the first round of Trump’s attack-promise strategy as an example, this section demonstrates how Trump employed anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric to build a populist discourse to appeal to his audience (see Figure 4). Material verbs are highlighted in green rectangles, relational verbs in red, existential verbs in yellow, behavioral verbs in purple, and mental verbs in blue.

Figure 4:

Excerpt 1, Trump 2017, inaugural address [White House Transcript]. Description: green rectangle: material verbs; red rectangle: relational verbs; yellow rectangle: existential verbs; blue rectangle: mental verbs; purple rectangle: behavioral verbs.

According to Charteris-Black (2018: 110–113), “agency can be manipulated in language to give such positive or negative representations of political actors” and “verb processes are crucial in foregrounding or backgrounding actors and in highlighting or concealing agency.” During the first round of attack and promise, Trump mainly used two kinds of verbs, material transitive verbs and relational verbs, to show the relationship between the people and the former establishment as well as his own government. He manipulated the agency through foregrounding the former establishment and backgrounding the people using a series of material verbs (in green rectangles). There are two lexical chains to represent the former establishment (in bold) and the people (underlined). The former establishment was foregrounded at the beginning of each sentence as an active agent with high appraisal verbs such as “reaped,” “flourished,” “protected,” and “prospered,” demonstrating that the previous establishment was a powerful, self-serving government. In contrast, “the people” were backgrounded into the second clause, either as a participant connected with negative verbs such as “have borne the cost” or verbs with negative polarity such as “didn’t share,” or as a patient or a client that suffered the impact of the establishment such as “there was little to celebrate,” demonstrating that the American people were powerless and had no control over their own lives under the former administration. In addition, the conjunctions such as “while” and “but” (in purple font) further strengthened the contrast between the former establishment and the people: A successful, self-serving government versus neglected, struggling people (see Figure 5).

Figure 5:

The successful, self-serving government versus a neglected, struggling people. Description: bold: lexical chains representing the former establishment; underlined: lexical chains representing the people; green rectangle: material verbs; yellow rectangle: existential verbs; purple font: conjunctions; blue font: marked theme.

Furthermore, Trump also used two relational verbs (in red rectangles) in negative polarity to highlight the attributes of the former establishment and to further alienate the people from the Obama administration (see Figure 6). The pronouns “their” and “your” (in bold green font) polarized the two sides and showed Trump’s stance: he was distant and different from the former establishment. The relational verbs in present perfect tense “have not been” demonstrated that the status quo had existed for a while: it continued from the past right up to the present. Additionally, the marked theme at the beginning of the first round of attack, “For too long” (in blue font) not only demonstrated Trump’s disapproval of the former government but also his empathy for the people.

Figure 6:

Alienating the people from the former government through relational verbs in negative polarity. Description: red rectangle: relational verbs; bold green font: plural pronouns.

On one hand, Trump was attacking the former establishment, trying to alienate it from the American people. On the other hand, he was trying to align with the people by immediately offering promises and hopes to appeal to their pathos and ethos. When he was attacking, he used declaratives in a simple past tense that realized a categorical modality (contrasting “Washington flourished” which categorially asserts the proposition with “Washington did not flourish” which categorically denies it, and “Washington probably/possibly flourished” which shows various less categorical and less determinate degrees of commitment to the proposition), making that narrative sound like a fact, not his opinion. After the attack, Trump used a declarative “That all changes–starting right here, and right now,” to demonstrate his power as well as his empathy for the people. He was the man who would bring the changes because his government would be “returning the power to the people.” By using the declarative in simple present tense which realizes a categorical modality, he was presenting his beliefs as objective facts and positioning himself as a savior of the people.

Interestingly, Trump also used relational verbs (in red rectangles) to describe the relationship between the American people and his government, but this time he was using the relational verbs with a positive polarity, such as “belongs to,” “is,” and “become” (see Figure 7). By doing so, he showed that contrary to the former government – which he portrayed as powerful and self-serving, and which neglected and forgot the American people – his government “[was] controlled by the people” and “exist[ed] to serve its citizens.” Thereby, everything “belong[ed] to” the American people, and the previously powerless people “became the rulers of this nation” under his administration. This strategy not only demonstrated that his government had completely different attributes from the former administration, but also further aligned his government with the American people. In addition, since Trump employed declaratives in simple present tense that categorically describe the attributes of his government, these attributes sounded like facts instead of promises, although his government had just started, and its attributes would be defined in the future.

Figure 7:

Aligning his administration with the people through relational verbs in positive polarity. Description: red rectangle: relational verbs.

Additionally, Trump used two mental verbs (in blue rectangles) in passive voice together with a great quantity of modal verbs “will be remembered” and “will be forgotten no longer” to convey a strong conviction that the moment, January 20th, 2017, was significant to the people and the fundamental changes he brought were historically crucial (see Figure 8).

Figure 8:

Demonstrating the significance of January 20th, 2017, through mental verbs in passive voice with a high degree modality modal verb. Description: blue rectangle: mental verbs.

Furthermore, at the very end of the excerpt, Trump depicted “the people” as active agents who “came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic moment,” and he claimed that they held the power; therefore, “everyone [was] listening to [the people]” in the Trump era (see Figure 9, material verbs in green and behavioral verbs in purple rectangles). This depiction is a considerable contrast to being described as powerless and living miserably under the previous establishment, further highlighting Trump’s role as a savior who would liberate the American people.

Figure 9:

Depicting the people as having agency. Description: green rectangle: material verbs; purple rectangle: behavioral verbs.

In a nutshell, Trump used anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric that attacked and alienated while also promising and aligning to build a populist discourse to appeal to people’s pathos and ethos and to align his government and himself with the people. This anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric is unique to Trump’s inaugural address, thereby distinguishing Trump from other presidents.

3.2 Populist collectivist rhetoric

Speech role pronouns (i.e., the first and second personal pronouns, such as I, me, my, we, us, our, you, and your) and terms of address are important resources that politicians often use to develop relationships with their audience. For instance, the first-person plural “we” is always a significant pronoun in persuasive language as “it is deliberately unclear as to whom it refers to exactly” (Charteris-Black 2018: 65). This section focuses on how Trump used plural speech role pronouns to establish a sense of solidarity with Americans in his inaugural address.

Trump used many plural pronouns in his inaugural speech to address Americans, especially the first-person plural pronouns “we” and “our,” to build a sense of collectivism (see Table 3).

Table 3:

The plural pronouns used to build collectivism.

Plural pronouns	We	Our	You	Your
Frequency	45	48	7	11

As shown in Table 3, Trump used “we” 45 times and “our” 48 times in his inaugural address. Sometimes “we” is used to refer to his party, the Republicans, but most of the time “we” is used to refer to “the citizens of America” by putting “We, the citizens of America” and “Together, we” at the beginning of the sentences, as demonstrated in the excerpt in Figure 10.

Figure 10:

Excerpt 2, Trump 2017, inaugural address [White House transcript]. Description: bold green font: plural pronouns and pronoun phrases; underlined and in green rectangle: high appraisal material verb phrases.

By using the inclusive pronouns “we” and “our,” Trump was inviting the audience, including both opponents and supporters, to ally themselves with him to “join in a great national effort” to “rebuild” America and to “retore its promise to all people.” The inclusive pronoun phrases such as “we, the citizens of America,” “our country,” “our people,” together with high appraisal and modality verb phrases, including “will determine,” “will thrive and prospers again,” not only described a bright, encouraging picture with a confident and authoritative tone, but also depicted Americans as having high effective and efficient agency under Trump’s administration, building a great sense of unity and pride among Americans. Furthermore, these high appraisal verb phrases “to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people” demonstrate that Trump’s administration “exists to serve its citizens,” further alienating the people from the former self-serving government and meanwhile aligning Trump’s administration with Americans.

Additionally, in addressing his audience, Trump also frequently used the second-person plural pronouns “you” and “your,” which are interchangeable with “the American people” to build rapport with his audience. Although other presidents also used plural speech pronouns to establish relationships with Americans, what makes Trump unique is that Trump skillfully used plural speech pronouns together with his anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric “attack and alienate plus promise and align” to appeal to Americans’ ethos and pathos. Besides the examples shown above, the remaining section uses the examples in Trump’s and Bush’s inaugural addresses to further illustrate this point (see Figure 11).

Figure 11:

Using plural pronouns to build collectivism: Trump versus Bush. Description: bold green font: plural pronouns and pronoun phrases.

As shown in the left column, using high appraisal second-person plural pronoun phrases such as “your voice, your hopes and your dreams,” “your courage and goodness and love” parallelly, together with the first-person plural pronouns “we,” “us,” and “our,” Trump aimed to build a strong sense of alignment and rapport between his government and the American people as well as a strong sense of pride among them, because under his government the power would be transferred to the “forgotten” people, the true rulers and leaders, whose voices, hope, and dreams “[would] define our American destiny” and whose “courage and goodness and love [would] forever guide” future generations. It is important to note that Trump used declaratives together with high appraisal nouns, and high modality and appraisal verb phrases such as “will define our American’s destiny” and “will forever guide us along the way” to offer the highest status and power to Americans, demonstrating his strong conviction and appreciation of the people to appeal to their ethos and pathos. In contrast, Bush used collective plural pronouns “you” and “our” repetitively to appeal to Americans’ ethos to request Americans to work with him and his government to “bring the values of [their] history to the care of [their] times” by being “responsible citizens,” as demonstrated in the right column. The power dynamic between Bush and Americans as well as the responsibilities that Bush asked Americans to fulfill to “[build] communities of service and a nation of character” are in dark contrast with the high power and agency that Trump promised to give Americans through his populist collective rhetoric.

To sum up, Trump used the collective pronouns to empower people, to increase the cohesion of the speech, to identify himself with the people, and to build a populist discourse to appeal to the people.

3.3 Pro-nationalist sentiments

To build a sense of unity among Americans in an ever more divided society, Trump also employed various linguistic resources to promote a nationalist sentiment and to create a new national identity and a sense of pride. One of the strategies was to use diverse lexical chains (highlighted in red) that neglect racial differences to build a populist discourse to appeal to the people’s ethos and pathos. As demonstrated in Figure 12, Trump used “America” 11 times, “citizens” 4 times, “Americans” 4 times, “national” 2 times, and “nation” 11 times throughout his inaugural address. These lexical chains were used not only to build cohesion, but also to create a sense of patriotism and to promote a new national identity, as can be seen in Excerpt 3 in Figure 13.

In Excerpt 3 (see Figure 13), Trump was trying to create a new sense of national pride and a new national identity, which in this case are colorblind and share the same values and patriotism, to unite the American people. The words “national” and “American,” together with the redundant use of the first-person plural pronouns “we” (4 times) and “our” (3 times), created a strong sense of belonging and wholeness. The modality was high: the modal verb “will” instead of “is going to” shows Trump’s high certainty and conviction. The high appraisal adjectives “glorious” and “great” combined with high appraisal nouns such as “freedoms” and “American flag” demonstrated a strong feeling of patriotism. In addition, Trump used declaratives in simple present tense to categorically describe the characteristics of the new national identity, making this sound like a fact, not an ideal.

Figure 12:

The lexical chains used to promote a new national identity and a nationalist sentiment. Description: red font: lexical chains.

Figure 13:

Excerpt 3, Trump 2017, inaugural address [White House transcript]. Description: red font: lexical chains; bold green font: plural pronouns.

In contrast, although other presidents such as Obama and Bush also used these kinds of lexical chains in their inaugural addresses (see Table 4), they used those linguistic resources for different purposes. For instance, in the excerpt in Figure 14, Bush used lexical chains including “American story” and “American promise” to highlight the American spirit and called Americans to “follow no other course” but to “enact this promise in [their] lives and [their] laws.” Bush’s emphasis on the traditional American ideals and request to enact American promises are quite different from Trump’s populist promises to “make America first/strong/wealthy/proud/safe/great again” to promote a nationalist sentiment and a new national identity and pride.

Table 4:

The lexical chains used in inaugural addresses: Trump, Obama, versus Bush.

	Nation (s)	National	America	American	Americans	Citizenship	Citizen (s)
Trump	11	2	11	11	4	0	4
Obama	11	0	10	2	3	1	1
Bush	13	1	11	3	5	1	9

Figure 14:

Excerpt 4, Bush 2001, inaugural address [White House transcript]. Description: red font: lexical chains; bold green font: plural pronouns.

3.4 Simplicity and repetition

Consistent with the populist rhetorical strategies revealed by other researchers (e.g., Laclau 2005), throughout the election, Trump employed a very plain rhetorical style, including using short words and sentences, less sentence variety, and less variety of word choice to appeal to common sense, to engage ordinary people, and to target the political elites. In addition to simplicity, he also consistently employed populist syntax filled with repetition. Because the inaugural address style is supposed to be elevated, his language style indeed appeared more formal than the language style he used on the campaign trail. However, his language was still very plain compared to other inaugural addresses, as demonstrated in the epilogue of his inaugural address. See the repetitive syntactic structure underlined and in bold and the lexical chains in red (Figure 15).

Figure 15:

Excerpt 5, Trump 2017, inaugural address [White House transcript]. Description: underlined and in bold: syntactic repetition; bold red font: lexical repetition and lexical chains.

Trump employed both syntactic repetition and lexical repetition to appeal to Americans in the epilogue. The reiteration of “Americans” and “America” and the repetition of “your” and “we” build a sense of cohesion and wholeness. He used the parallel syntax structure such as “near and far” and “small and large” as well as “from mountain to mountain” and “from ocean to ocean” to reach out to all Americans who lived in various locations across the country. The syntactic repetition of “Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams” and “your courage and goodness and love” highlighted that Americans are the true rulers of the nation. By replacing the adjective in the syntax of his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” with various adjectives, such as “strong,” “wealthy,” “proud,” and “safe,” Trump was able to build the feeling of patriotism to the climax through repetition. There were no complex syntactic structures and word choices in this inaugural address. Nevertheless, by employing the plain rhetorical style, Trump was able to build a populist discourse to appeal to common sense and develop solidarity among ordinary Americans.

The plain rhetorical style is especially apparent in contrast to the epilogue of Obama’s 2009 inaugural address in which Obama employed diverse syntactic structures which varied in length and used multiple metaphors such as “winter of hardship,” “icy currents” “storms” and “journey” to eloquently encourage Americans to carry forth with hope and virtue in a difficult time (see Figure 16).

Figure 16:

Excerpt 6, Obama 2009, inaugural address [White House transcript]. Description: superscript 1: simple sentences; superscript 2: compound sentences; superscript 3: compound-complex sentences.

Note that Obama used a simple sentence¹, a compound sentence², and a compound-complex sentence³ which contains multiple independent clauses and dependent clauses depicting an encouraging, victorious picture to inspire Americans. The diverse syntactic structures together with multiple vivid metaphors contribute to an elevated style of elegance and eloquence which is in stark contrast to Trump’s plain populist language style.

4 Conclusion and implications

Throughout the election, Trump employed populist language to appeal to the working class. During his inaugural address, he aimed to reach out to all Americans, both supporters and opponents, by employing a combination of populist rhetorical style including anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric, collectivist rhetoric, pro-nationalist sentiments, as well as simplicity and repetition. Drawing on both SFL and CDA, this study has analyzed how Trump used linguistic resources to build a populist discourse to engage the audience and endear himself to them. Through doing this, this study aims to raise educators’, social scientists’, and language professionals’ awareness of the urgency to develop critical language awareness among participants in democracies through language education. Equipped with critical language awareness, citizens can understand how politicians employ various meaning-making choices to exert influence over people’s political opinions to achieve their goals, and thereby become empowered to better exercise their voting power.

In democracies, it is important to raise citizens’ critical faculties, so that they have the capacity to challenge and change the existing social structures. This has become especially crucial in a world that has grown more and more interconnected and full of political and economic uncertainties. It is particularly relevant nowadays given the upsurge of populism in political and media discourses across the globe, as well as the fact that Trump is running again for the presidency of the U.S. and the upcoming U.S. elections will inevitably affect the whole world. Citizens have the right to be informed about the rhetorical strategies and types of misinformation that can be used for propaganda.

One way to raise citizens’ critical faculties is to cultivate their critical language awareness through language education in various levels of schools, including both compulsory education and higher education. Therefore, language educators and language professionals have the responsibility to teach students how language and other semiotic resources can be used to construct social reality, define identities, enact social relationships, and influence people’s perceptions, expectations, and actions, using specific examples such as the ones provided in this paper. Hence, students can be aware of the mechanisms of semiotic manipulation and “be more critical of the ideologically invested discourse to which they are subjected” (Fairclough 1992a: 90). Additionally, “literacy educators and students must see themselves as active participants in social change, as learners and students who can be active designers – makers of social futures” (New London Group 1996: 64). This entails the kind of language education that is about “developing [students’] critical consciousness of environment, critical self-consciousness, and capacity to contribute to the shaping and reshaping of the social world” (Fairclough 2015 [1989]: 233). This would require changes from just raising cultural awareness to developing critical cultural awareness and global consciousness, and from merely promoting linguistic articulation to cultivating critical language awareness and critical literacy.