Abstract

For government or leaders, public speaking is an important way to show the statesmanship and eloquence. It is a means of attracting groups of people who come from different classes. As the president of the United States, Donald Trump’s speaking talent plays an important role in the general election. Stylistics, which uses theories of modern linguistics to solve problems, aims at studying linguistic features and revealing the effect and function of pragmatic expression. This article selected Donald Trump’s three typical speeches, which studies from the perspective of stylistics on three major aspects—language description, textual analysis and contextual analysis. The analysis yielded the following results, 1) Language description consists of lexical analysis and syntactic analysis. On lexical level, Trump tends to use more abstract nouns and first person plural pronoun to make the addresses persuasive and more acceptable. Syntactically, for the sake of expressing information effectively and attracting more support, simple sentences and declarative sentences are prevailing in the speeches; 2) On the aspect of textual analysis, Trump employs topical division, problem-solution division and chronological division in an overlapping way in main body of speeches and creates crescendo in closure; 3) Contextual analysis shows that language varies from situations and they are formal and highly-structured. In a word, to analyze Donald Trump’s speech on stylistic features is significant for us on observing the features of his speeches and word-using habits.

Highlights

  • Among various genres of communication, public speaking is a common kind, it serves a significant role in many aspects of people’s daily life

  • The analysis yielded the following results, 1) Language description consists of lexical analysis and syntactic analysis

  • For the sake of expressing information effectively and attracting more support, simple sentences and declarative sentences are prevailing in the speeches; 2) On the aspect of textual analysis, Trump employs topical division, problem-solution division and chronological division in an overlapping way in main body of speeches and creates crescendo in closure; 3) Contextual analysis shows that language varies from situations and they are formal and highly-structured

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Summary

Introduction

Among various genres of communication, public speaking is a common kind, it serves a significant role in many aspects of people’s daily life. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, whose speeches are certainly not to be ignored as well Since he is more an excellent businessman than a politician in the past several decades, his performance, especially on the aspects of political talents and speech gifts are in great concern. Stylistics is defined as “the branch of linguistics that studies language style (Hu,2002). It explains the relationship between the text and its context.”. The article consists of several parts in total to give a detailed analysis about Trump’s three addresses with the help of basic theories of stylistics. They are linguistic descriptions, textual analysis and contextual analysis respectively. Field, tenor and mode of three speeches are studied in contextual analysis

Linguistic Descriptions
Lexical Analysis
Abstract Nouns
Personal Pronouns
Syntactic Analysis
Major Sentence
Declarative Sentence
Textual Analysis
The Body of the Speech
A Conclusion of the Speeches
Field of Discourse
Tenor of Discourse
Mode of Discourse
Conclusions
Full Text
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