The business of building a wall: Donald Trump’s rhetorical signature

Abstract

This essay offers a metaphoric analysis of Donald J. Trump’s announcement speech. We argue that by focusing on two of his metaphors, the presidency as a business and his promise to build a wall, we are provided a better understanding of the symbolic structures that underlie his presidency, explaining both the nature of his support and the way he approaches his job as president.

Border-Crossing Being: A Theological Reflection on the Imago Dei in an Age of Migration

“…As "metaphors of infectious disease, criminal invasion, or 'flood waters' have been often deployed to describe migration, in order to cope with the challenges of the pandemic, Trump deliberately utilizes his rhetoric to replace the term 'Corona Virus' with 'Chinese virus.'" 44 The metaphor of the Chinese virus personifies the threat of a new virus by associating the infection with a particular ethnicity. 45 Through this metaphor, Trump spreads "the virus of hate" and instills social fear against Asian/Asian-American communities living in the U.S. As I belong to the Asian/Asian-American communities, it is painful to hear about many terrible experiences of various types of harassment and discrimination: physical assault (e.g., a woman wearing a mask was kicked and punched in a Manhattan subway station); verbal abuse (e.g., while crossing the street, a driver yelled to an Asian man, "Coronavirus, get the F-out of here"); and microaggression (e.g., people try to cover their nose and mouth with their shirts when they are near an Asian man).…”

Introduction to the special issue: Rhetorical approaches to contemporary political studies

“…In their contribution to the issue, Johnson and Stuckey (2020) propose that rhetorical analysis illuminates our understanding of the Trump presidency and the changes he has brought to it as a communicative institution. Approaching metaphorically rather than literally the two interlocking motifs that animated Trump's rhetoric in his announcement speech, namely the wall and the presidency as business, Johnson and Stuckey shift the emphasis from questions of policy (and therefore, questions of feasibility) to 'the symbolic structure' of Trump's campaign and presidency.…”