Abstract
Covid-19 pandemic constitutes the greatest threat to the worldwide population and countries nowadays. Donald Trump, the president of the greatest country in the world, has frequently received heavy criticism as a result of his language use in the period of Covid-19. Therefore, the present paper examines dysphemistic expressions used in Trump’s discourse on Covid-19. A sample of dysphemistic examples adopted in Trump’s daily speeches in a crucial week of 11 th till 18 th of March 2020 was analysed. The researcher relied on the Critical-political Discourse Analysis by Van Dijk (1997; 2001), Conceptual Metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), and the concept of dysphemism by Allan and Burridge (2006). It has been found that Trump referred to strong language and war metaphors to defend himself and his point of view, to shape Americans’ thoughts and views, or to attack other countries or institutions. Several conceptual metaphors, including Covid-19 is a) an invisible enemy, b) a foreign enemy, c) a dangerous threat, and d) a global battle, were commonly used. The data analysis shows that Trump has a linguistic mastery of eloquent and persuasive devices in political discourse which permitted him to make a shift in Americans’ thoughts and opinions. For future research, the current paper suggests investigating Trump’s paralinguistic features in speeches, such as body language, facial expressions, tone and pitch of voice, eye movements, and hand gestures. Keywords: Dysphemism; Metaphor; Discourse Analysis; Covid-19; Donald Trump
Highlights
Language is a form of social practice used for influencing, persuading, and shaping people’s views and attitudes
The data analysis shows that Trump explicitly used a great number of dysphemistic expressions with pejorative connotations in his daily Covid-19 speeches for different goals, such as metaphorising Covid-19 pandemic, attacking China where the virus is thought to have first initiated, and defending political decisions on the U.S protective measures to reduce the global threat of Covid-19
Characterising Covid-19 as a ‘foreign virus’ by Trump is not a simple rhetorical flourish. He claims that Covid-19 is a foreign invader originated in China, which is a major strategic competitor of the U.S He intentionally used this lexical item on the same day of the official announcement of Covid-19 as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which is a widely accepted public health authority
Summary
Language is a form of social practice used for influencing, persuading, and shaping people’s views and attitudes. It is a communicative way for describing something, convincing someone, giving promise, making compliment and other social goals (Olimat, 2018; 2019a; 2019b). Presidents and politicians attempt to respond to Covid-19 pandemic in an unprecedented way. They have commonly addressed speeches and daily briefings about precautionary measures and plans formulated to reduce the global threat of the virus and make their fellow countrymen feel secure at such a difficult time. Televisions, newspapers, and social media channels remain dominant resources of breaking news in the era of Covid-19
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
