Authority (de)legitimation in the border wall Twitter discourse of President Trump

Bibliographic Data

ID6084809
AuthorsDamian J Rivers (0000-0001-6624-5113), Andrew S Ro (0000-0001-7005-9962)
Year2020
Volume19
Issue5
Pages831-856
Publication date2020-09-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jlp.19105.riv
OpenAlexW3023959489
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited32

The construction of a wall along the US/Mexico border was one of the main political platforms upon which the 2016 US presidential election campaign was fought. Ahead of the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, and with the border wall still not yet built or funded, this article uses the authorisation component of Van Leeuwen’s (2007) framework for the discourse of legitimation to show how President Donald J. Trump has sought legitimacy for the construction of the border wall. Data is taken from Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter postings between October 18th, 2018 and February 3rd, 2019, a period inclusive of the longest federal government shutdown in US history. We show how Trump’s Twitter language is frequently accompanied by evidence-less attacks on sources of rival opinion or information, while the president tends to reaffirm himself as the exclusive source of credible and truthful information

Government (linguistics · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Presidential election · Presidential system · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Social Media and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Public Administration

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