Fake News, Crooked Hillary, and Bad People: A Linguistic Analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults

Fake News, Crooked Hillary, and Bad People: A Linguistic Analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults

Shannon Mckeown

As political discourse shifts from traditional media to social platforms, understanding and navigating mass communication becomes increasingly important. This paper explores the correlation between Donald Trump’s Twitter insults and standard propaganda tactics in order to reasonably predict the reach and impact of his social communications. By analyzing Trump’s most retweeted insults, this paper reveals a direct engagement with the seven propaganda devices: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonials, plain folks, card stacking, and band wagon. The tweets reviewed come primarily from the New York Times’ database of Trump’s insults and are compared to a synthesized definition of “insult” derived from the Oxford English Dictionary, Don Rothwell, and Helen Daly. Similarly, the author’s definition of “propaganda” incorporates ideas from Alfred Lee and Elizabeth Lee. Initially this paper establishes what constitutes an insult and determines how Trump’s tweets exemplify that definition. Secondly, three tweets comprised of his most popular insults “fake”, “crooked”, and “bad” are likened to the seven devices of propaganda and their context explained. Finally, the author discusses the reach and impact of Trump’s tweets, noting how information, unmoderated by reputable organizations, can quickly devolve into dangerous, politically biased propaganda.  This paper challenges the veracity of political discourse through social media and highlights the danger of an unmoderated platform. Many value the ease of instantaneous information over the faithfulness of traditional source based reporting. This modern complacency has the potential to allow for more political figures to employ the same tactics, eventually to a greater, more destructive degree.