Analysis Of Donald Trump's Tweets

In terms of communicating with the public, as a politician, President Donald Trump is an outlier compared with past presidents before him and his political peers.

Social media was an integral part to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump has profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, and even Snapchat. All of these platforms allowed him to reach the hearts and minds of millions of potential voters. But one social media outlet in particular allowed him to manipulate, control, and build his political profile in ways never seen before by a presidential candidate. Sometimes with the help of a trusted social media team and often times personally, Trump has made Twitter to be one of his most powerful and Machiavellian weapons. At the time of writing, Trump has amassed 53.3 million Twitter followers, which means he can get his message across to an enormous amount of people, instantaneously. Furthermore, supporters of Trump can then do a lot of media work for him and give him additional exposure by retweeting and sharing his message even further. All of this allows him to dominate and control the online political landscape. Donald Trump knows very well how to gain the attention of the media. While other presidential candidates expected to attract public and media attention through their political experience and knowledge, Trump stole the spotlight through his use of belligerent and provocative discourse, influencing all of social media and traditional media outlets. Trump intentionally invites negative press onto himself through absurd, vulgar and condeming remarks, knowing the media will report on him and will in turn make him more popular. All press is good press and Trump understands this.

Trump seizes the opportunity when he can to attack his political opponents, labeling Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton as 'weak' and 'improper'. He also gives his rivals humiliating nicknames such as 'crooked Hillary', 'Lying Ted', 'Low energy Jeb', and so on.

These are short, quick and relatively easy to evoke the emotional side of the American public and voters. These nicknames undermine his opposition and are purposefully short and obvious so that the general public can understand and sympathize with his humor. From the birth of these nicknames Trump went on to refer them often as he mentioned his opposition on Twitter. This is an intentional rhetorical metaphor as it ensures the nickname sticks and the negative image deepens in the public's memory. When voters next see the name Ted Cruz they will associate it with 'lying'. For a person with zero political experience, Trump uses excellent language rhetoric, as shown when he turns his opponents strengths into weaknesses.

Ted Cruz, amongst other presidential candidates, has been a beneficiary on the receiving end of Trump's tweets in which he plays semantic roles. For example, 'Ted Cruz is failing in the polls. He is nervous. People are worried about his place of birth and his failure to report his loans from banks!'. Here in Trump's tweet Ted Cruz is being used as Manner as Trump's semantic role. Ted cruz is not the only candidate to be the affected or the undergoer in Trump's negative tweets. Here Marco Rubio is the affected: 'Marco Rubio is a member of the Gang Of Eight or, very weak on stopping illegal immigration. Only changed when poll numbers crashed'.

His campaign slogan 'Make American Great Again' become the discourse Trump repeated almost every day on Twitter. It is important to note that he would often type it in complete capital letters, this is the stress the point clearly and firmly, in cohesion with Trump's regular rhetoric.

Moreover, and most importantly, at the end of these tweets which end with a slogan or a strong statement, Trump would add an exclamation point and add a central word in the tweet which is capitalized. This is to add energy and strengthen the message in the memory of the public. For example: On 5 November 2016 he wrote: 'Thank you Reno, Nevada. NOTHING will stop us in our quest to MAKE AMERICA SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN!'. As shown Trump uses a lot of exclamation points at the end of his tweets, as if to show spoken emotion, his tweets are often very speech like. While other presidential candidates write through twitter, Donald Trump speaks through it.

Moreover, disparate from other presidential candidates, Trump's vocabulary when he is writing on Twitter (when he personally tweets) is akin to that of a high school student or somebody with low education. Amongst all political candidates his language is the most simple and straightforward. This is by linguistic design, as Trump's campaign is aimed at the general public who are low educated and often find it difficult and overwhelming to understand complex language and policies. There are only a small minority of people who have appropraite political knowledge and will not be persuaded by him, but Trump's language use and campaign is not directed at them. The repeated simple words and phrases that are easy to understand are aimed at the general public who are easily influenced emotionally rather than logically. The public are more likely to listen and respond to extreme and wild tweets, rather than rational and carefully considered tweets. This is Donald Trump's main linguistic feature in representing and endearing himself to the people by using language which they can easily understand and relate to.

Trump's tweets mostly consist of monosyllabic words and his tweets are very simple in general. He rarely uses complex clauses. His tweets are typically filled with imperative sentences written in the second person. Trump is trying to convey a relatable dialogue, knowing that his audience are going to listen to his opinion if he speaks this way. For example: on 2 November 2016 he wrote 'Thank you Orlando, Florida! We are just six days away from delivering justice for every forgotten man, woman and child in this country!' and on 7 November 2016 writing 'Starting tomorrow it's going to be #AmericaFirst! Thank you for a great morning Sarasota, Florida!'. We can see the similarity in the sentence style and that they both end with an exclamation point, intending so that his audience can hear and feel Trump's excitement and enthusiasm. Furthermore, the use of the pronoun 'us' is supposed to make us consolidate with his view or ideas.