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15 - Part IV Introduction: Language and Trump’s White Nationalist Strongman Politics

from Part IV - Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Janet McIntosh
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Norma Mendoza-Denton
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Though he may deny it, Trump’s statements and actions cumulatively point toward the notion that “making America great again” means bringing it back to an era of more overt White supremacy. And whiteness, for Trump, is mapped onto the English language and particular ways of speaking it, while White superiority is encoded in his word choices, his metaphors, and his mockery. Since several chapters in this section address the way language is weaponized in service of Trump’s authoritarian White nationalism, this section introduction furnishes some broader context from linguistic anthropology addressing how racism and xenophobia often play out in Trump’s language. These include his aversion to Arabic and Spanish, both of them stand-ins for native speakers; the covert and overt racism in his use of Mock Spanish (Hill 2008); and his dehumanizing word choice to describe immigrants as polluting and dangerous. All these techniques prove relevant as a backdrop to the chapters that follow.

Type
Chapter
Information
Language in the Trump Era
Scandals and Emergencies
, pp. 217 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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