A,corpus-assisted,discourse,study,of,Donald,Trump’s,we,identity,construction

Acorpus-assisteddiscoursestudyofDonaldTrump’swe identity construction

李鹏

广东金融学院 510521

Abstract

Itiswidelyacknowledgedthat pronouns playacrucial partintheconstructionof “self”and “other”, with its traditional grammatical meaning like expressing person and gender. However, inthecontextofinteraction, thepronounsmayperformvariouspurposesintermsofidentity. Inthispaper,itisarguedthatthepronounweachievesmultiplefunctionstoaccomplishthe identity work in Donald Trump’scampaignspeeches.Specifically,the promisingweidentity, theincompetentweidentityandtheobligatoryweidentityareexaminedaccordinglyby lookingatthewecollocationsintheself-builtcorpusinSketchEngine.Theresultsuggests thatthepromisingweidentityismorefrequentlyconstructedthantheothertwotypesof identityinDonaldTrump’scampaignspeeches.

Introduction

The construction ofvarious identities is fundamental topoliticians, which canbe achieved through their manipulation ofpersonalpronounsby talking about others and self(Allen, 2007). ThisisalsoconfirmedinDeFina, SchiffrinandBamberg(2006:4)andtheyclaimthat

pronounsaregoodmarkersofidentities.

In traditional grammar, pronouns are often analyzed in terms oftheir deictic oranaphoric function which fails to uncoverthesocialphenomenon.However,inreal-lifecontexts

especiallyinpoliticaldiscourse,thepronounstendtoraisedifficultyindisambiguatingthe

exactfigures represented.Wecan havea broader reference toincludetheaudienceandatthe sametime,wecanalsoindicatea narroweroneexcludingtheaudiencelike justthe political partythespeakerrepresents.Concerningthisaspect,scholarslikeFairclough(1989: 127); Wodak(2005)haveframedpronounsfromasocio-culturalperspective,theycontendthat English pronounscan presentrelationalvalueswhichenablehearerstointerpretthereferred

identity.

Inpoliticaldiscourse,itisfoundthatfirst-personpronounsareusuallyassociatedwith positive self-representation while third-personpronouns are normally related to negative other- representation(Wilson, 1990; Bramley,2001;Allen2007).That isunsurprisingsince

the purposeof campaignspeechesistogetmorevotesandthesimplemessageis: I am/weare

doinggood; she or he is/they are doing bad.

Whatisworthyofnoteistheuseofthefirst-personpluralpronounwebypoliticians,for itsambiguity,inotherwords, foritsdifferentreferents (Helmbrecht,2002).Asnotedin Goddard(1995:107)“Weatleastinvitestheaddresseetothinkof whoelsethanI isbeing talkedabout”.Thoughthatisthecase,thediscussiononweidentityisprovedfarfrom sufficientinthepoliticaldiscourses(Baumgarten,2008:414).Kranert(2017)hasillustrated theexclusiveweusedinpoliticalspeechestomanifestthepoliticians’ partystance.Onthe contrary, scholars like De Fina (1995) have proposed that politicians use first-person pronouns in an inclusivesense to construct leadershipandgroupidentity.We hasalsobeeninvestigated throughthelensof footingshifting(Goffman,1981).Bull&Fetzer(2006)havefoundthat thereisafrequentshiftbetweenIandweinpoliticalinterviewsandtheemploymentof collective we is for avoiding personal criticism, awkward choicesandappearingimmodest.

Thesestudiessuggestthatpoliticianscanusewetoachievevariouspurposesandthe crucial one is to serve persuasive political functions. Methodologically speaking,moststudies on identity construction take a qualitative perspective. However, as pronouns can be viewed asan identity marker, it isrational to measure them quantitatively (Alber et al., 2002).Meanwhile, moststudieson Donald Trump’sidentityconstruction restrict to theresearchonhislanguage styles mainly from the perspective ofhis tweets. His campaign speeches are rarely reached for examining his identity construction,possiblybecause his leadership identity is obvious in these speeches.

Taking account ofthe literature reviewed above, thefocusofthis paper isonthespecific use ofwe in Donald Trump’s campaignspeeches byusingacorpus-assistedapproach.Particularattentionwillbegiventothedifferenttypesof collectiveweidentityconstruction

(Wales,1996). Thus, the following question will be addressed:

What kind ofwe identity is constructed by Donald Trump?

DataandMethodology(具体)

Concerningthe researchquestionof thestudy,thestudyaimstoinvestigatetheidentity issue through a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysisapproach. Thecorpususedisaself- built one named DTC which consistsofDonald Trump’ssevenpresidentialelectionspeeches in2016(43,630 words)downloadedfrom ‘‘The AmericanPresidencyProject” website. The relatively small size ofthe corpus is suitable for this study since functional words likepronouns arefrequentlyemployedinspeechandcanbeinvestigatedusingasmallcorpus(Carter&

McCarthy,1995:154).

The specific steps regarding data collection and data analysis are manifested as following. Firstandforemost,SketchEngineisusedtopreparethecorpus.ThecorpusnamedDTCis constructed with the uploaded materialfromthewebsite.Tofindoutthefrequentuseofthe we identity in DTC, the weconcordance isexaminedforfurtheranalysis.Onselectingtheweconcordances, the frequency ofthe concordance tags regarding verb types is observed, like we+ VBP (verb be, present,non-3rdperson),we+MD(modalverbs).Thisway,thefrequency allows us tofocuson the mostcommonlinguisticfeaturesofthecorpus.Then,thefirstfive concordance tags are extracted forfurtherqualitativeanalysis. Next,ineachtag,thefirstfive wordcollocatesareextractedforcomparison.Throughtheobservationandanalysisof the concordance, the we identity is discussed accordingly.

Analysis and Results

Table1haspresentedthetop10personalpronounsinthecorpus. Apartfromtheusual grammaticalwordslikethe,to,and,andof,themostoccurredwordisweinDTC.The occurrenceof we918timesinacorpusofaround43,000wordscannotbeaccountedfor bearing onlygrammatical function.Fromthe collationalpatterns andthepurpose ofthe

campaignspeeches, it is argued that the inclusiveweisformulatedsincetheemotionalpower

oflanguage here is to win the voters’hearts.

Table1 Top10 personal pronouns in the DTC corpus

Toillustratethedifferentweidentities,

thewe+verbconcordancesarepresentedinthe following tables and the top 5 verb types have been identified in Table 2. Besides counting the frequencyofwe+verbcollocates, Log-likelihoodratioswhichpresentthecollocational strengthisalsoextractedaccordingly.Thethreetypesof weidentityrespectively promising,

incompetent and obligatory we identity are examined afterwardwiththe aid ofthe collocational

patterns.

Table 2. Top 5 verb types collocated withweinthe DTC

Promising we identity

ItisfoundthatinDonald Trump’scampaignspeechesthefuturetenseare goingtoand will are used most frequently indicated in Table 2 and Table 5. In Table 3, we find that after aregoing to the main verbs indicate the speaker’s motivation to changeAmerica in a positive way, especially his campaign slogan as presented in Example1: we will makeAmerica great again. Likewise, the main verbsafter willasshownin Table4indicatethathewillhelpthecountry getthroughthetoughproblemsandmakepositivechangesif heisinpower.Asshownin Example1, the speakerhas depicted apromising future fortheAmericanpeopleby announcing thathewillbringbackthejobs andwillbuild awall at theU. S.-Mexicobordertoreduce illegal

6

immigration.

Example1

We are going toputAmerica First, and we are going to MakeAmericaGreat again. We are going to bring back ourjobs to Pennsylvania.

We are going to build the wall, don't worry, we are going to build the wall.We will have lawand order.

We will stop these countriesfrom taking our companies.

Meanwhile, the frequent use ofthe modal verb can in Table 5 also indicates the speaker’s ability to change thesituation. This way, theintentionofDonaldTrump’sadministrationisto draw a wonderful blueprint for the whole group and make them believe that under his government everything will be better. Thus, a promising we group is shaped by influencing the

voters’ attitudes by making his commitments and leading the whole group to believe t

hat with

him they will have a brighter future.

Table 3 Top 5 collocatesofwe aregoing to…

Table 4 Main verbsafter will

Responsible we identity

In Table 5, we can find that must and should is employed bythespeaker witharelatively high frequency. It isworthy ofnotetheuse ofmustwhich isnormallyusedto express obligation.

ThecollocationsinFigure2indicatethatthespeakeristryingtoconvincetheaudiencethat

there are challenges waiting to be tackled, especially verbs like defeat, changeand shut down.Withtheuseof inclusivewe,DonaldTrumpispersuadingtheaudiencethatwiththeir joint efforts, the obligation to respond to thechallenges willbefulfilled.Inthiscase,anobligatory weidentityisconstructedhereforwinningthemindsof thevoters.Moreover,theverbsof mental process like want/need (Morley, 2000) are alsoemployedasshownin Table6.According toMorley(2000:95), the mental processverbsareemotionverbsthatarehelpful tocommunicatespeakers’beliefsandarouselisteners’ awareness.Thisway,thespeakercan create intimacy with the audience by voicing their needs and wants. Theinclusive responsible

we identity is thusconstructed.

Table 5 Top 5 collocatesofwe withMD verbtypes

Figure 2 Collocations with must

Table 6 Top 5 collocatesofwe with VVPverb types

Problematic we identity

Theproblematicweidentityisidentifiedthroughtheobservationof thecollocationsof we don’t+ verbs and we have+ nouns. From Table 6,itis notedthatweanddohasa highco- occurrence.Oncheckingthespecificconcordanceswithwordsafterdo,itisfoundthatnotappears37 times which means that do notisfrequentlyusedinthespeechafter

we. Asstated in Pennycook (1994), any construction ofa we implicitly assumes thepresence ofa they oryou. In Example 2, the collocations reveal that because oftheir government,America has lost great dealsanddoesn’twinanymore.Inthiscase,aproblematicweidentityisconstructedby referring to an incompetent they for they have failed to meet the group’s needs and have led the country in the wrong direction.

Example 2

We don’t make great deals any more.

We don’t win anymore.

We don’t know what they areplanning.

Moreover, on checking the concordances with we+ have+ noun, it is alsofoundthat the speakerisblamingthegovernmentforcausingproblemsandthusforitsincompetency. As showninExample3,DonaldTrumphasusedwordslikedysfunctionalandincompetentto

present a problematic government.

Example 3

We have a dysfunctional system.

We have unemployment.

We have emptyplants.

We have an incompetentpresident.

Consequently,hehaseffectivelyalertedtheaudiencetotheproblemstheyarefacing underthecurrentgovernment,whichthusenableshimtogainsupportfromthegroup.Itis interestingtonotethatthe problematicweidentityisoftenaccompanied bytheincompetent

they identity.

Conclusion

Inthismini-project,onexaminingtheverbconcordances,itisfoundthatconstructing who we are is a complicated process. From the above corpus analysis, we canconcludethatin these campaign speeches, Donald Trump has exerted influence on the audience through various typesof weidentity.Byinvestigatingtherelevantfrequencies,thepromisingweidentityis more frequently constructedthanproblematic andresponsiblewe identity.This isnot surprising since the speaker’s main purpose is to show his power to cope with the challenges in the futureand thusgaining more votes. Anotherimportantfindingis that theproblematicweidentityis normally co-occurred with the incompetent they identity. However, how do these we identities changefromtimetotime?Inotherwords,theshiftof verbtenses,personalpronounseven intonation will be meaningful for future analysis.

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