Trump’s rhetoric at 100 days: contradictions within effective emotional narratives

Holland, Jack; Fermor, Ben

doi:10.1080/21624887.2017.1355157

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Key, then, to a narrative of nostalgia and redemption (e.g. Homolar and Scholz, 2019) was the (Jacksonian) emotion it stoked (Holland and Fermor, 2017):America is a nation that honors work. We honor grit.…”

Section: Constructing and Contesting Us National Identity 2016–2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

The discursive hegemony of Trump’s Jacksonian populism: Race, class, and gender in constructions and contestations of US national identity, 2016–2018

Holland

Fermor

2020

Politics

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Contributing to burgeoning studies of populism, this article conceptualises and contextualises Trump’s language as ‘Jacksonian populism’. We explore how this style of populist discourse influenced political debates before and after Trump’s election. Ours is the first article to analyse opposition and media responses to Trump’s construction of ‘real America’ as that of a Jacksonian, White, and male working class. To do so, the article analyses 1165 texts, from the government, opposition, newspapers, television coverage, and social media. In addition to locating Trump’s reification of a mythologised White working class within a broader Jacksonian tradition, we find that the Democratic opposition and mainstream media initially reproduced this construction, furthering Trump’s cause. Even where discursive challenges were subsequently developed, they often served to reproduce a distinct – and hitherto unspoken for – White (male) working-class America. In short, early resistance actively reinforced Trump’s discursive hegemony, which centred on reclaiming the primacy of working, White America in the national identity.

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Section: Constructing and Contesting Us National Identity 2016–2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

The discursive hegemony of Trump’s Jacksonian populism: Race, class, and gender in constructions and contestations of US national identity, 2016–2018

Holland

Fermor

2020

Politics

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“…As Holland & Fermor (2017) have argued, the Trump administration can be conceptualised as engaged in a war of position over the common sense of American diplomacy, against detractors both from the conventional Wilsonian/Hamiltonian foreign policy establishment and from a more radical wing of critics that could be grouped together under a relatively 'leftist' umbrella.…”

Section: Situating Securitisation Within the Discursive War Of Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Security and polarization in Trump’s America: securitization and the domestic politics of threatening others

Fermor

Holland

2020

Global Affairs

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This article explores the relationship of foreign policy and domestic politics under Trump by making use of two complementary theories. We employ Gramscian theory to make sense of US foreign policy structures, conceptualising the Trump administration as engaged in a discursive war of position with detractors over narratives of national identity and security.Second, we use securitisation theory to conceptualise agency, change, and continuity within this. We analyse 1200 official, opposition and media texts to identify discursive changes over the 20 months following Trump's election. First, we consider Trump's attempted securitisation of immigration. Second, we explore the counter-securitisation of Trump as a threat to (progressive) America. Third, we analyse how the Trump administration securitised the opposition, conflating the constructed threat posed by immigration with political elites. We show how this led to the further polarisation of US political debate, which became underwritten by securitised language, with competing actors, referent objects, and audiences. We note that security's referent differed for both groups, with Trump's ethnocentric 'real' America opposed to the values-based patriotism endorsed by his critics. This poses important implications for how we understand change in US foreign policy, not least because it creates a favourable discursive landscape for Trump's re-election.

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“…Of particular relevance here is scholarship on the adoption of Twitter in US presidential public diplomacy. For example, Holland and Fermor (2017) argue that Trump uses Twitter for public diplomacy as an outlet for his frustrations with political leaders. Elsewhere, questioning Trump’s diplomatic code of conduct, Šimunjak and Caliandro (2019) conclude that the language he uses on Twitter does not adhere to diplomatic norms.…”

Section: Soft Power: Presidencies Statecraft and Public Diplomacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without existing systematic analysis of the phenomenon, the classification of Trump’s Twitter as the principal tool for his presidential public diplomacy inevitably raises questions about his strategic approach to the practice. Trump’s Twitter, however, displays several clear features of public diplomacy: it has the ability to set news agenda on foreign policy issues (Holland and Fermor, 2017); it has wide public appeal and engages foreign publics (Cull, 2016); it has the power to build the inter-media agenda for foreign publics (Guo and Vargo, 2017); and, by the virtue of the interactive affordances of the platform, it possesses the relational dynamic central to ‘new’ and ‘digital’ public diplomacy (Manor, 2019; Melissen, 2005).…”

Section: Soft Power: Presidencies Statecraft and Public Diplomacymentioning

confidence: 99%

The populist style and public diplomacy: kayfabe as performative agonism in Trump’s Twitter posts

Surowiec

Miles

2020

Public Relations Inquiry

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This article theorises the interplay between public diplomacy and populism. Building on Baudrillard’s simulacra, we advance the hybridity approach to soft power statecraft by analysing a cultural shift in US presidential public diplomacy. Using discourse analysis, we uncover how, rather than aiding the building of relationship with foreign publics, Donald Trump has brought to the field cultural codes alien to public diplomacy, imploding the meanings central to the endogenous norms of diplomacy and turning towards an agonistic relational dynamic with foreign publics. This article reveals how digitalisation affords the expansion of Donald Trump’s populist style, and makes the populist cultural shift highly visible on his Twitter. To reveal this dynamic in granular detail, we propose ‘kayfabe’ as an epistemic lens for the interpretation of the populist style in the conduct of Trump’s ‘simulated public diplomacy’, a defining feature of the current US global leadership. As well as considering socialities re-shaping relational dynamics, this article unpacks tensions stemming from the expansion of populist style into presidential public diplomacy. Finally, we reflect on the epistemic crisis of US public diplomacy within the strategic landscape of political uncertainties associated with the proliferation of populism in the field.

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Trump’s rhetoric at 100 days: contradictions within effective emotional narratives

Abstract: This is a repository copy of Trump's rhetoric at 100 days: contradictions within effective emotional narratives.

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

The discursive hegemony of Trump’s Jacksonian populism: Race, class, and gender in constructions and contestations of US national identity, 2016–2018

The discursive hegemony of Trump’s Jacksonian populism: Race, class, and gender in constructions and contestations of US national identity, 2016–2018

Security and polarization in Trump’s America: securitization and the domestic politics of threatening others

The populist style and public diplomacy: kayfabe as performative agonism in Trump’s Twitter posts

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