Book contents
- Language in the Trump Era
- Language in the Trump Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transcription Conventions
- Note on Ethnonyms and Phenotypic Descriptors
- Introduction: The Trump Era as a Linguistic Emergency
- Part I Dividing the American Public
- Part II Performance and Falsehood
- Part III The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World
- Part IV Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump
- 15 Part IV Introduction: Language and Trump’s White Nationalist Strongman Politics
- 16 “Perfect English” and White Supremacy
- 17 Making Our Nation Fear the Powerless
- 18 We Latin Americans Know a Messianic Autocrat When We See One
- 19 Rejoinders from the Shithole
- 20 Muslim Enemies, Rich Arab Friends
- Index
- References
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
Book contents
- Language in the Trump Era
- Language in the Trump Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transcription Conventions
- Note on Ethnonyms and Phenotypic Descriptors
- Introduction: The Trump Era as a Linguistic Emergency
- Part I Dividing the American Public
- Part II Performance and Falsehood
- Part III The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World
- Part IV Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump
- 15 Part IV Introduction: Language and Trump’s White Nationalist Strongman Politics
- 16 “Perfect English” and White Supremacy
- 17 Making Our Nation Fear the Powerless
- 18 We Latin Americans Know a Messianic Autocrat When We See One
- 19 Rejoinders from the Shithole
- 20 Muslim Enemies, Rich Arab Friends
- Index
- References
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.
Keywords
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- Information
- Language in the Trump EraScandals and Emergencies, pp. 217 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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