The Voice of the People

Populism and Donald Trump's Use of Informal Voice

Bibliographic Data

ID2795482
AuthorsJ Kjeldgaard-Christiansen (0000-0002-5270-4531, Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume61
Issue3
Pages289-302
Publication date2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociety (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0147-2011 • E-ISSN: 1936-4725
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s12115-024-00969-7
OpenAlexW4392545187
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited95

Many studies have examined characteristic verbal aspects of Donald J. Trump's political communication, from his authoritarian rhetoric to his preference for short words and simple sentences, as expressions of his populism. This article focuses on his use of non-verbal voice quality. In analyzing the "Trump rallies" and other materials from his successful campaigning before the 2016 United States presidential election, I argue that Trump's evocative and meaningful uses of pitch, amplitude, speech rate, rhythm, and other vocal measures combine to make his paralanguage exceptionally and counter-normatively informal, and that this informality amplifies his explicitly populist messaging. I conclude by suggesting that Trump's informal voice solves an important problem for him: It allows him to express his populism with a deeply personal undertone, and thereby potentially to make his claims to popular identification ring intuitively true

Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · S Voice · Sociology · Computer Science · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Media and Politics

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