How Donald Trump’s intentional mispronunciations of Kamala Harris’s first name support the hypothesis that loanwords exhibit distinct phonological properties

Dados Bibliográficos

ID17824879
AutoresPierre Fournier (0000-0002-5293-1283, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume21
Data de publicação2026-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAngles (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2274-2042 • E-ISSN: 2274-2042
EditoraOpenEdition Journals (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/1630c
OpenAlexW7154622670
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas21

This study shows how Donald Trump, by intentionally mispronouncing the first name of his opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris, supports the theory that the English lexicon is composed of subsystems. The words which belong to one subsystem share linguistic properties that distinguish them from the items of the other subsystems. Each subsystem arises from the interaction of specific phonetic, phonological, letter-to-sound, morphological, segmental, syntactic, semantic, and frequency-related properties, which makes it possible to distinguish the subsystems from each other. Native English speakers are sensitive to the different properties of sublexica and in particular to those of loanwords which are grouped in the §Foreign subsystem. The words of the §Foreign subsystem balance conforming to English-system principles with maintaining their own distinct features, as they often retain some properties of the source languages. This conflict gives them a specific status in English, especially from the point of view of pronunciation. By intentionally pronouncing Kamala Harris’s first name with phonetic and phonological principles that are typically attested in the words of foreign origin and which are detailed in the article (location of primary stress, pronunciation of stressed vowels with a “foreign value” and absence of vowel reduction in unstressed contexts), Donald Trump, as a political strategist, points to Kamala Harris’s origin and, by doing so, attempts to discredit the Democratic candidate in the eyes of the American electorate

Lexeme · Lexicon · Phonology · Presidential system · Pronunciation · Vowel · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism