Critical Discourse Analysis of President Donald Trump’s First White House Interview

Critical Discourse Analysis of President Donald Trump’s First White House Interview

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) exercises are meant to understand the processes of social practice from the perspective of discourse. Communication has a big role in many aspects of social practice through the establishment of societal power relations (Baranov, Mamychev and Ovchinnikov, 2015). CDAs are an important aspect of identifying the underlying impact of political speeches and interviews other than looking them at face value. Politicians are trained or themselves skilled in manipulating communications to suit their agendas. Unfortunately, some of these agendas might not be in the best interests of their electorate.

This CDA exercise targets one of the most studied presidents in the world in recent history. United States President Donald Trump has been the focus of various CDA and communication-oriented studies based on his reckless communication practices. He is rude, sometimes outright abusive, divisive, and prejudicial in terms of race and gender. The transcript from which this CDA exercise borrows shall be his first interview in the White House with famed ABC journalist David Muir.

With regards to representation, President Donald Trump represents the United States government in its incumbency. He also represents the Republican Party’s proponents as well as other non-political stakeholders in the business and social circles. David represents. Conversely, David represents the journalist society worldwide who wanted this monumental chance to interview POTUS. He also represents the non-supporters of Donald Trump, the American people as well as the rest of the world. Such representation is an important part of the CDA exercise because each side represents vested interests that are linked to distinct social practice and societal power relations (Brand, Görg and Wissen, 2011). Several parties are not represented in this discourse. First, the Democratic Party is not represented as one side is Republican while the other is non-partisan.

1.1 Medium and Intent

The main medium shall be an interview whose complete transcript is available and accurate. CDAs that target political discourse benefit immensely from interviews carried out in suitable environment and by seasoned interview or moderation personnel. These characteristics of the interview from which this CDA borrows make its context both relevant and accurate.

This essay is a CDA using part of the first interview President Donald Trump gave while in the White House. It will investigate the representation dynamics before venturing into the relevance of the transcript portion used. Afterwards, the CDA will analyze the normative and linguistic aspects of the discourse with a view to revealing its participants’ societal power relations.

1.2 Purpose and Argument

The purpose of this CDA is to analyze discourse between the President of the United States and an ABC journalist during his first interview in the White House. Several criterions will apply during the analysis; first, the CDA intends to investigate the linguistic and modal aspects of this discourse with a view of identifying the participants’ respective agendas. Thereafter, the actual societal power relations of each participant will come under scrutiny based on their communication strategies and performance.

Using the previous explanation of this CBA’s main purpose, one can easily identify the argument. This essay will cement the CDA’s intention of identifying and exemplifying the President’s lack of communication skills even when faced with critically sensitive international issues. It will demonstrate his distinct lack of respect for the journalistic community while laying bare the currently dire circumstances of the United States. That country is led by a rude man with no grasp of the leveraging and strategic capacity of discourse, more so in the journalistic and mass media environment.

2.0 ANALYSIS

2.1 Context of the Chosen Part

This CDA will focus on the first portion of the interview transcript between the two participants. The main themes identified in this portion include Donald’s reaction to being POTUS, his agenda for delivery of his campaign promises, and the Mexico wall issue. These issues provide a detailed context into the personality of the President of the United States while exposing a significant portion of his mindset on some of the most contentious issues in US politics.

2.2 Rationale for Choice

The main reasons for choosing this part of the discourse was to ensure the respondents and his interviewer were naturally inclined in their communications. First portions of interviews are about establishing the interests and mindset of each other. Herein, the responses and questions tend to be less affected by bias such as defensiveness and avoidance tactics (Brand, Görg and Wissen, 2011). Therefore, as David sets about establishing a link to the President, the POTUS would also be getting comfortable with the circumstances of his new role and first interview in that capacity.

Additionally, the POTUS would be more naturally inclined to communicating and reiterating his agenda after assuming office. This CDA was intent on establishing the societal power relations between David as a renowned journalist and the President of the United States. Therefore, establishing their roles in the discourse would be instrumental in the agenda. That usually happens in the first portion of any interview while each party settles in and begins preparing for their established roles.

2.3 Socio-linguistic Resources Used

Some of the socio-linguistic considerations that come into play when carrying out the CDA of President Donald Trump’s first interview in the White House include style, inequalities vis-à-vis domination, and omissions.  Such aspects of the discourse are best analyzed using pragmatic linguistic analysis that lends itself very well to CDAs (Romero-Trillo, 2018). The two parties involved had their own agenda even before meeting. Probably, the president had intentions of using the interview to demonstrate his commitment to the task ahead while thanking the voters for the opportunity. However, the journalist had intentions of exploiting the unique position to delve into an inexperienced politician who had found himself in the White House. As is the case with much of the current mainstream media outlets, David would be interested in getting the POTUS’s agenda first hand while exploring the communication and social practice dynamics of a harsh president who had demonstrated no inclination towards minding his words.

The aspect of style in the CDA comes to the limelight when David addresses the POTUS in a respectful manner at the onset of the interview. He addresses the POTUS as “Mr. President” in a lexical bid to show the politician that he recognizes the dynamics of power at play and recognizes his role relative to that of the president (Muir and Trump, 2018). Such tactics not only serve to elevate the respondent’s confidence, they also appease him and enable him to get comfortable by reminding him this is just another journalistic endeavor. However, David has another agenda.

The President of the United States responds rather casually reminding the journalist who exactly he is and what is about to take place. When Donald Trump addresses David by his first name, he applies a lexical tactic to relegate the journalist to the lower position where in fact David Muir was in the powerful position as the interviewer (Muir and Trump, 2018). Many politicians use this tactic to replace the power back into their side and remind the usually confident journalists that they are addressing political figures. Such a move has the effect of empowering Donald and relegating David back to the role of another journalist chosen or honored to get access into the White House to get a few minutes of the POTUS’s busy schedule. Such tactics change the use and possession of societal power relations.

David continues to exercise social practice aspects of communications in the discourse when he inquires if the POTUS has settled into his new role. This tactic seeks to reinstate himself as the interviewer with power as he guides the conversations in the interview. The process of establishing authority between journalists and politicians is one of the best examples of power dynamics (Baranov, Mamychev and Ovchinnikov, 2015). Initially, David attempted to be respectful to the POTUS who responded by relegating him to the status of another meager journalist. However, journalists are trained to establish control over their respondents in order to guide their interviews and discussions in a positive and informative manner.

While the two parties discuss other issues concerning the rejuvenation of America’s economy and job market, Donald Trump appears to be non-conversant with the finer details that an informed and curious audience would demand or desire. His response was full of grammar mistakes including incomplete sentences and misused phrases (Romero-Trillo, 2018). Unlike Obama who was fully conversant with all aspects of the issues plaguing the American people, Donald Trump lacks any political or lobbying experience. Therefore, most of the technical aspects of managing the national economy or job market would have to be learned or he would have to be furnished with the detail. His faltering communication techniques reveal ignorance and redundancy aimed at escaping the reality of an inexperienced politician who has become president.

Interestingly, David Muir uses the common journalistic style of self-destruction where he poses strategic questions for the president to use in revealing his ineptitude. The issue of the Mexican wall was too premature for the new president to even consider commenting about as authoritatively as he did. Forcing another country that is both sovereign and dignified to build part of the misled infrastructural projects one desires is reckless and unfair to say the least. However, Donald Trump proudly declares his intentions to follow up on these campaign promises once more demonstrating his lack of adequate political skill or communication prowess.

Inequalities and dominion are other aspects of the pragmatic sociolinguistic characteristics of the discourse between President Donald Trump and journalist David Muir. Each party of the discourse had their role which means that there were inherent inequalities. The respondent was the new president of the United States meaning he was potentially the most powerful man on the planet. Conversely, David Muir was just one of the seasoned and skilled journalists that ABC employs on special political assignments (Muir and Trump, 2018). Therefore, the level of inequality in this discourse was high, regardless of the fact that David was technically in charge of the interview while the POTUS was its respondent.

Dominion dynamics played out when the journalist tried to assert his technical role on the POTUS but was quickly relegated to the role of another journalist. Even before becoming POTUS, Donald Trump had a habit of making sure he had all the power in any social setting that focused on him or his achievements. He never minds being rude or harsh responses, but he prefers being in charge – which is not a good trait in terms of discourse as an international leader. However, David quickly realized the caliber of politician he was with who he was dealing and assumed his new role very well. He seemed keen to set up the new president to discredit himself by asking relatively technical economic questions related to American jobs and even geopolitics of Mexico’s border with the US.

Omission is one of the best aspects of discourse in the context of societal power relations or political exchange (Baranov, Mamychev and Ovchinnikov, 2015). Unfortunately, not many politicians know how to effectively use this aspect of the process. Donald Trump lacks skills in political discourse meaning he would not understand the use of omissions in a tactical manner. A political leader adept at the use of omissions would have left out the finer details of something that is not only sensitive but still under negotiation and discussion – the Mexican border issue. David also left out the subject of racial prejudice and immigrant in his questions in a strategic bid to avoid enticing the obviously inept and racist POTUS from making embarrassing or negative comments.

2.4 Ideology and Power

One cannot engage in discourse analysis with intentions of CDAs without venturing into the concept of ideology as it relates to power. Ideologies relate to the mental convictions that a person engaged in discourse has with regards to distinct issues in the society. These ideologies could be negative or positive and they relate to the connotation of us and them collectives differently. Such ideologies must be analyzed from the discourse participant’s perspective in order to better understand how they perform in pragmatic sociolinguistic analyses.

Discourses of a political nature such as that between David Muir and Donald Trump relate to the collectives of us and them differently. These differences are also influenced by the ideologies of the participants relative to their notion of power both as a concept, and whatever in their possession. Therefore, David will perceive of the ideology of power differently based on how it occurs in his job and how he uses it, while Donald Trump is subject to the same set of circumstances.

How each participant in this discourse uses the ideological collective of us or them differs. Based on the material used in this CDA, there are two distinct types of collective ideologies. The first one is a positive representation of us. This ideology formed the bulk of justification of Donald’s campaign and also his convictions while justifying the misled Mexican wall initiative (Muir and Trump, 2018). He was keen to demonstrate how the American people are unique and deserve better protection from modern issues such as uncontrolled influx of immigrants. The second collective ideology was the negative representation of them. Donald used this to define outsiders who were neither welcome to the United States nor subject to consideration in future development agenda. The two participants in this discourse handled these two collective ideologies differently. David Muir was seemingly non-partisan as was expected from a journalist of his caliber and his position. However, President Donald Trump wasted no time in elevating the American citizen’s stature and demeaning any and potential immigrants or refugees.

Several ideologies seem to exist and get application in the course of discourse between David and Donald. The first distinct ideology to be applied was the ideology as a tool of persuasion. When David asked President Donald Trump about his plans for the American job market, he was quick to point out how the big motor manufacturing companies that are synonymous with American greatness would bring employment opportunities back to America (Muir and Trump, 2018). He used the ideology that the United States is a great country to try and persuade David as well as the audience that the entire system was self-sustaining, which is technically impossible. The president was keen to convince his audience to trust in the greatness of American businesses to give them jobs, even when that was not economically feasible. Further along in the interview, President Donald tries to persuade the American people to believe in the ideology that its borders must be protected at all costs, even if it means bullying the neighboring country into paying the huge costs of such an exercise.

Another application of the relationship between ideology and power was the ideology of isolation and profiling. Since he announced his bid for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump has always demonstrated a lack of tolerance towards one of the defining characteristics of United State’s prosperity – diversity. The US owes much of if current greatness to its racial and cultural diversity. A large source of the same diversity is immigrants, either from politically unstable countries or economically-challenged ones. These people gain access to the enabling American socio-economic environment and build something up from nothing. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump believes that these immigrants and refugees are to blame for the jobless Americans and increased domestic insecurity. Therefore, he harbors an ideology of isolation and profiling. This ideology became evident when he suggested drugs were coming in from Mexico as well as unwanted immigrants.

Power too comes to the limelight in the CDA targeting President Donald Trump’s first interview with David Muir in the White House. He was quick to demonstrate the use of power as a tool of manipulation in power relations. He constantly asserted his role in realizing the ambitions he had constructed for the United States. Additionally, any attempt by David to assert authority as the interviewing party was shot down. The POTUS even talked over David when the journalist was reminding him about the Mexican president’s sentiments about the Mexican border wall initiative. Such practices are used to assert authority over members of a discourse deemed less important.

The President of the United States also seemed keen to apply the ideology of power as a mind control tool. He was marginally successful during campaign in convincing Americans that they needed a wall to stem the influx of narcotics and illegal immigrants from Mexico. However, he would achieve more success as POTUS because of the power and influence the role carried.

2.5 Multi-modal Aspects

There are two main multimodal aspects present in the material used within the CDA. The first one is epistemic modality, which mainly judges the confidence levels of a person in certain proposition within discourse (Vukovic, 2014). Applying this generalized meaning to President Trump’s responses and propositions to certain aspects of the interview, it is evident that he lacked both the information and adjunct confidence. He was not sure about the ability of GM companies to take up all the unemployed professionals in the United States as demonstrated by his stall techniques (Muir and Trump, 2018). Similar lack of confidence came up in the issue of financing the proposed Mexican border wall. Interestingly, he instigated the notion that Mexico would be out-negotiated into financing a wall that was not on their territory or in their desires and plans.

The second multimodality aspect present in the CDA was deontic modality. Herein, the social desires are expressed in discourses with regards to certain norms, speaker desire, or expectations (Vahid, 2017). The President of the United States was expected to reduce the national debt, but he suggested building an expensive wall for the sake of advancing his own racist agenda. Additionally, the society currently embraces diversity and has even formulated norms that support this initiative. However, the president came to power with a clear agenda to flush non-natives out of a country that continues to flourish in part because of these people, which is self-defeating.

3.0 CONCLUSION

The interview between David Muir and President Donald Trump revealed several aspects of socio-linguistic analysis, more so pragmatics. Using a part of the respective transcript, this essay carried out a CDA to expose the social practice characteristics of the participants. Certain aspects of the said analysis such as style, inequality and dominions, as well as omissions became evident. Additionally, both participants exuded grammar, lexical, and multi-modal characteristics in a bid to manipulating the societal power relations.

Evidently, the ability of people in leadership positions to communicate effectively is of paramount importance. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump lacks political leadership skills and experience. He is also in dire need of professional assistance in terms strategic and sensitive communications. However, this CDA revealed the role that communications plays in social power and the respective positions of the participants of discourse.

4.0 References

Baranov, P., Mamychev, A. and Ovchinnikov, A. (2015). The Legitimacy of Power and Power relations as a Multi-level Political and Legal Phenomenon: Approaches, Interpretation and Conceptualization. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(53), pp.209-215.

Brand, U., Görg, C. and Wissen, M. (2011). Second-Order Condensations of Societal Power Relations: Environmental Politics and the Internationalization of the State from a Neo-Poulantzian Perspective1. Antipode, 43(1), pp.149-175.

Muir, D. and Trump, D. (2018). ABC News anchor David Muir interviews President Trump.

Romero-Trillo, J. (2018). Prosodic modeling and position analysis of pragmatic markers in English conversation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 14(1), pp.169-195.

Vahid, H. (2017). Deontological Conservatism and Perceptual Justification. Theoria, 83(3), pp.206-224.

Vukovic, M. (2014). Strong epistemic modality in parliamentary discourse. Open Linguistics, 1(1).

Appendix 1

Transcript of the Interview

DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, it’s an honor to be here at the White House.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, David.

DAVID MUIR: Let me ask you, has the magnitude of this job hit you yet?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It has periodically hit me. And it is a tremendous magnitude. And where you really see it is when you’re talking to the generals about problems in the world. And we do have problems in the world. Big problems. The business also hits because the — the size of it. The size.

I was with the Ford yesterday. And with General Motors yesterday. The top representatives, great people. And they’re gonna do some tremendous work in the United States. They’re gonna build plants back in the United States. But when you see the size, even as a businessman, the size of the investment that these big companies are gonna make, it hits you even in that regard. But we’re gonna bring jobs back to America, like I promised on the campaign trail.

DAVID MUIR: And we’re gonna get to it all right here.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Good.

DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I want to start — we’re five days in. And your campaign promises. I know today you plan on signing the order to build the wall.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Correct.

DAVID MUIR: Are you going to direct U.S. funds to pay for this wall? Will American taxpayers pay for the wall?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Ultimately it’ll come out of what’s happening with Mexico. We’re gonna be starting those negotiations relatively soon. And we will be in a form reimbursed by Mexico which I will say …

DAVID MUIR: So, they’ll pay us back?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, absolutely, 100 percent.

DAVID MUIR: So, the American taxpayer will pay for the wall at first?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: All it is, is we’ll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico. Now, I could wait a year and I could hold off the wall. But I wanna build the wall. We have to build the wall. We have to stop drugs from pouring in. We have to stop people from just pouring into our country. We have no idea where they’re from. And I campaigned on the wall. And it’s very important. But that wall will cost us nothing.

DAVID MUIR: But you talked — often about Mexico paying for the wall. And you, again, say they’ll pay us back. Mexico’s president said in recent days that Mexico absolutely will not pay, adding that, “It goes against our dignity as a country and our dignity as Mexicans.” He says …

(OVERTALK)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: David, he has to say that. He has to say that. But I’m just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form. And you have to understand what I’m doing is good for the United States. It’s also going to be good for Mexico.

We wanna have a very stable, very solid Mexico. Even more solid than it is right now. And they need it also. Lots of things are coming across Mexico that they don’t want. I think it’s going to be a good thing for both countries. And I think the relationship will be better than ever before.

You know, when we had a prisoner in Mexico, as you know, two years ago, that we were trying to get out. And Mexico was not helping us, I will tell you, those days are over. I think we’re gonna end up with a much better relationship with Mexico. We will have the wall and in a very serious form Mexico will pay for the wall.