Стилистический анализ инаугурационной речи Президента Трампа

• ЕГОРОВА Юлия Александровнакандидат филологических наук, доцент Центра лингвистики и профессиональной коммуникации ОАФ Президентской академииegorova-ya@ranepa.ru

Статья посвящена рассмотрению стилистических особенностей 2х инаугурационных речей Президента Трампа как в сравнительном плане, так и совокупно с целью определения черт уникального стиля говорящего. Описание речей включало широкий контекст, изучение языковых особенностей речей, сегментацию речей на логические части и средства выдвижения основных идей. Стилистический анализ сопровождается статистическими данными.

Ключевые слова: стилистика речи, инаугурационная речь, Президент Трамп

This article focuses on President Donald Trump’s two inaugural addresses of 2017 and of 2025 with the prevailing interest to the latter. The addresses are studied from the perspective of stylistics, which, quoting British linguist D. Crystal, systematizes “the features of situationally distinctive uses of language and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for particular choices made by individual and social groups” [4].

Our research will cover three major aspects of addresses: 1. contextual description, 2. language description, 3. textual analysis. The contextual description deals with the factors of the situation, for example, the facts about the speaker and the event itself, which affect the choice people make from the language system to meet their specific needs and help the audience to unveil and interpret their message. The linguistic description of inaugural address highlights the speaker’s selection of words and syntactic structures. Last but not least, is the textual analysis. It is about logical organisation of ideas presented in the text, the parts of the text creating one single whole, including the coherence of ideas and textual means to make an impact on the audience. The purpose of the research is to see the linguistic peculiarities of two speeches in comparison and consider their contribution to creating the unique style of the speaker.

Inaugural address is a type of public political speech made by elected presidents following a public ceremony in which they take the oath of office [7]. Public speech aims at persuading, entertaining and informing the audience and it usually tends to be more highly structured and more formal, what is more, the speaker of a public speech shall make detailed preparations, including the study of a target audience. Public speech is a time-honoured activity in western civilization, it plays a significant role in people’s daily lives [1].

As for teaching English to Russian students, the analysis of public speech is of great relevance. A text of a public speech is a piece of communication constructed for social purposes. Interpreting speeches and delivering speeches are special useful skills to be practiced by students.

This research is based on the perception that stylistics encompasses theories of the main branches of linguistics and aims at studying language features and contextual features revealing the connection between the language and the effect and function of pragmatic expression.

We shall start contextual description with a description of a wider context, including the events which preceded the inaugurations to unveil some of the peculiarities of the speaker – Donald Trump. First, we shall cover basic invariable features, which account for the specific manner of the speaker. It is worth to mention that unlike the majority of other presidents, Donald Trump is primarily a businessman. He has “set the standards of business and entrepreneurial excellence, especially in real estate, sports, and entertainment before he entered into politics and public service” [5]. On the campaign trail, Mr Trump quickly established himself as a political outsider, a common strategy among non-incumbent candidates at all levels, which, consequently, gave him moral right and freedom to ruthlessly criticise his opponents [3].

“In 2017 he remarkably won the Presidency in his first ever run for any political office” [5]. What is also important, Mr Trump is an accomplished author. He has written more than fourteen bestsellers. His first book, “ The Art of the Deal”, is considered a business classic [5].

As for a wider political picture of Mr Trump’s way to the office in 2017, it wasn’t without some pitfalls, but of great advantage was the fact that his opponent Democratic nominee former Secretary of State H. Clinton was under investigation (for the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and mishandling of State Department emails), so it cleared the way to the White House for Mr Trump [3]. Following the FBI announcement of H. Clinton’s actions to be “extremely careless” Mr Trump repeatedly promised to put H. Clinton in jail [3]. It was unprecedented and audacious for a presidential candidate, his supporters were pleased by his combativeness and his apparent willingness to say whatever came into his mind, a sign of honesty and courage in their estimation.

The situation on the political horizon during the election campaign paving the way to the White House in 2025 was drastically different from the one preceding the first term. The 2024 presidential election is unprecedented in many ways. This time Mr Trump was at the centre of at least four separate criminal cases and some civil cases, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers [8]. The cases he considered to be politically fabricated. After winning the elections “the pending legal proceedings against him were postponed or derailed altogether” [9]. Anyway, “the Trump case will possibly go down in history as one of the biggest political scandals in American history —even if the charges relate to the seemingly mundane offense of bookkeeping fraud” [8].

During July 2024, things got even more remarkable. The former President Trump was superficially wounded in an assassination attempt only days before the GOP Convention. Donald Trump saw it as an opportunity to be more persistent in his fight to the office and referred to this event in many of his speeches, including inaugural address.

The unpredictable array of toil and fight on the way to the Presidency shaped the form and reverberated the main messages of the inaugural address of 2025. And President Trump delivering his speech appeared as a shrewd highly-respected powerful political figure, unbending man with indomitable spirit and appreciation of all American, most of all, American people.

The speech made in January 2025 is twice as long as the one presented in January 2017, containing 2909 words and 1433 words correspondingly [5].

Both of the scripts are among the average in size, for example, President J. Biden made an address containing 2540 words in January 2021 [7].

The scripts of the speeches were taken from the official sites [10; 11] and were analysed both in comparison and in a complementary manner. We shall refer to them as S1 – inaugural speech 1 of 2017 and S2 - inaugural speech 2 of 2025.

Stylistic analysis of a public speech is generally concerned, on the one hand, with the typical features of any political speech but on the other, with the uniqueness of a concrete text, that is a peculiar use of the language by a certain speaker.

Language description specifies prevalence of certain lexical features and syntactic features in a given text. We have noticed a number of similarities and differences in two speeches as far as the use of nouns, pronouns and verbal forms are concerned. On the lexical level, President Trump uses both concrete and abstract nouns, with a certain dominance of abstract derivative nouns. A wide use of abstract nouns is one of the significant stylistic features of any public speech. These words will make the public speech more persuasive and credible, and the speaker will appear thoughtful and knowledgeable about many issues of running a country, for example: momentum, crisis, democracy, integrity, competency, loyalty, prosperity, safety, poverty, sovereignty, restoration, revolution, liberation, weaponiza- tion, betrayal, freedom, expression, censorship, establishment, sanctuary, emergency, confidence, defense, faith, wealth, strength, peace, dream, success, soil, disaster, love (S1, S2).

To show respect and keep friendly contact with the audience the speaker selects adjectives with positive connotation with reference to the American people, there are more of them in S2, for example: magnificent, law-abiding American citizens, wonderful people of North Carolina, one glorious nation.

What is a specific feature of Trump’s addresses is the abundance of first person plural pronouns (WE and OUR) to make the addresses persuasive and more inclusive. In 2017 speech, consisting of 90 sentences, first person plural pronouns WE is used 45 times, OUR -39, third person plural YOU-7, YOUR-9 and first person singular I - 3 times only. Consequently, the communicative centre of S1 are the American people, almost half of the speech is about the people, their past and future, verbally the President is seen as part of the nation. The speaker has to mention himself every now and then (I, MY) to express his views and to introduce the promises he makes. In 2025 speech containing 184 sentences first person plural pronoun WE is used 77 times, OUR - 50, first person singular I - 32 times. The use of WE and OUR demonstrates the unity of the speaker and his audience, enhancing this effect and shortening the distance between them. But in 2025 speech the President uses first person singular pronoun 32 times, displaying much more active position, speaking of his hard times and plans for the country. This strategy not only intensifies his leadership position but also distinguishes him as a person accountable for his actions and promises, the person you can trust.

“I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do.” The shift to action and progress is further emphasised by the frequent use of present or future continuous tense forms which are foregrounding the ongoing processes and create a picture of national events in motion. As a result, it sets an impressive description:

change is sweeping the country

we are watching fires still tragically burn we will also be designating the cartels ships are being severely overcharged Syntactically, while the complex and compound structures are twice less frequent (48 simple, 39 complex /compound sentences – S1; 112 simple and 68 complex/compound sentences - S2), simple sentences dominate in both speeches for the sake of expressing information in a clear, simple and effective manner and attracting more support. Besides, simple sentences are usually more inspiring, some of them convey the main slogans from the election campaign. Approximately 7 sentences (S1) and 20 sentences (S2) are complicated by enumeration, which is a useful linguistic tool to display a wider reach, sweep and magnitude of the described. Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the same position (homogeneous parts of speech), are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, for example, “We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny” (S1).

“They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward...” (S2) “They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny...” (S2) We shall start textual analyses with the division into parts and logical arrangement. It is clear, that all speeches are organised into three formal parts: introduction, body and conclusion. We will focus on the body and conclusion of inaugural addresses. In the body of a public speech, the speaker often develops his key points according to the chosen pattern or, quite frequently, a combination of patterns. There are several common patterns of organising the information in the body of the speech: temporal/chronological, cause-effect or reverse effect-cause, topical, contrast, etc. The main body of S1 contains 87 sentences.

The first part of it (sentences 1-41) is built on a combination of topical and cause-effect or effect-cause patterns to describe major problems American people faced at the moment of speech as a result of the previous administration mistakes. The president declared that “a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost”, pointing out that the government and some politicians have grabbed civil rights belonging to all American people. Past and present situations are both arranged from the chronological perspective.

The second part of the body (sentences 42-82) begins with the idea of hope for the future: “we are looking only to the future”, the speaker relies on topical foci. Further, continuous anaphoric repetition WE WILL and parallel constructions create the picture of a glorious future. Gradation is employed to mark a certain turning point in the speech:

“We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.”

The main body of S2 contains 180 sentences, its first and last sentences both highlight the idea of golden age making the listeners realise the general message of the speech.

“The golden age of America begins right now.”

“And our golden age has just begun.”

As far as its communicative foci are concerned, the main body of the speech can be split into six parts. Each part has different topical issues and stylistic means to reach the audience and realise the goals. The first part (sentences 1-14) includes twelve syntactically simple and two complex sentences to secure clarity and complete understanding, it is devoted to top priority tasks of a new government. Simple structures and parallel future passive constructions, accompanied by alliterations (will be reclaimed, will be restored, will be rebalanced / vicious, violent / proud and prosperous) keep the attention and reinforce the idea of change and readiness for action.

The second part (sentences 15-34) is about the crisis of trust employing effect - cause pattern of organisation, complex sentences for narrative and argumentation purposes become dominant here. The narration is accompanied by a metaphor “continuing catalog of catastrophic events” describing the inability of the previous government to deal with problems. There is a long list of problems, they are introduced with the help of anaphoric repetition and parallel constructions (we have +noun +that): we now have a government that cannot; we have a government that has given; we have a public health system that does not; we have an education system that...

The part ends with an optimistic promise: “From this moment on, America’s decline is over”.

The third and the fourth parts (sentences 35-96) cover the issues to be implemented by President Trump’ administration and their first orders. The structure of the sentences is varied, they are simple, complex or, as in the example below, complicated by two lists of enumerations, to stress the energy and urgency of the moment:

“We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.”

Part three ends with parallel constructions achieving crescendo, gradual increase in emotions reaching its highest point with the last component (God):

“We will not forget our country. We will not forget our Constitution. And we will not forget our God.” Part four prioritises the necessity of the orders of the new administration. Indeed, part four and five resemble coverage of a business plan or a business strategy, though there is a big variety of stylistic devices, mostly, apart from the repetition and parallel constructions we mentioned before, other stylistic devices are used once or twice for the right context. They help the interpretation and capture the attention without overloading the message lest the audience be confused with the ideas. For example, the use of chiasmus may slightly hinder the interpretation, it’s a device based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but the word order of one of the sentences being inverted as compared with that of the other, there is a shift in meaning and the ideas are seen the other way round. Its purpose in the example below is to foreground the changes (to tax foreign countries) and make the attention of the listeners linger on a simple fair decision.

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Part five describes next priority list of orders (sentences 97-120). Anaphoric repetition this week sets the feeling of urgency and schedules the implementation of changes.

Detachment is a traditional syntactical stylistic device used in speeches, it acts in the sentence as an isolated part. The detached part, being torn away from its referent, assumes a greater degree of significance and is given prominence in the context.

“That’s what I want to be. A peacemaker and a unifier.”

Part six (sentences 121-180) is the final message to American people. With the help of different types of repetition, parallel constructions, gradation, enumerations, inversion, negation and detachment the picture is created of a glorious past and even better future. This main message is further foregrounded by the repetition of never/ever before through the whole text:

“And we’re going to win like never before.”

“We will be strong and we will win like never before.”

“America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.”

“...confidence and pride is soaring like never before.”

“But we are going to bring it back and make it great again. Greater than ever before.”

Conclusions of both speeches are predictable, their prominent effect is achieved by gradation and climax:

“Together, we will make America strong again.

We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together we will make America great again.” (S1) “From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation. We will stand bravely. We will live proudly. We will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way.” (S2) In conclusion, it should be pointed out, that both speeches are masterfully written and presented. The second address of 2025 is twice as long as the first one, due to the circumstances, plans, attitudes the speaker wishes to convey. Describing lexical features both speeches contain a big number of abstract nouns to cover a magnitude of the country’s spheres and concerns to be addressed by the government.

The adjectives referring to American people display the speaker’s warm feelings and gratitude. The abundance of 1 st person plural pronouns WE / OUR make the audience the centre of the speech. While 1 st person singular pronoun “I” appears in S2 - 32 times in the parts when President Trump unwinds his plan of action.

The feeling of activity either good or bad is further emphasised by continuous tense forms to present a dynamic description. Simple sentences dominate in both speeches for the sake of expressing information in a clear, simple and effective manner and attracting more support. Besides, simple sentences are usually more inspiring. Stylistic devices are abundant in S1, but in S2 they specifically target certain sentence parts to foreground the message.

There is a clear textual division of the body of the speeches into parts. All the parts are clearly verbally demarcated, besides, there is a change in logical organisation of ideas. For example, cause-effect or effect-cause patterns are employed to speak about problems being the result of the activities of the previous administration.

Generally, President Trump uses topical organisation of ideas, cause and effect and chronological organisation in an overlapping way in the main body of speeches and creates crescendo in the end. The table below presents some of the statistical data. Speech Words Sentences Pronouns We/OUR Pronoun I Simple sentences Complex sentences S1 1433 90 45/39 3 48 39 S2 2909 184 77/50 32 112 68

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