Trump Speak

(I will be adding to this post as the semester progresses...)

For a sociolinguist, President Trump's tweets are a treasure trove of linguistic oddities. There are several traits he has become known for:

• the use of nicknames (I have a separate post on this)
• the use of superlatives (best, smartest, greatest, biggest, etc.)
• "Nobody has been tougher on Russia than me."
• "Nobody builds better wall than I do."
• “I know words...https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/01/19/one-year-trump-linguistics-expert-analyses-us-presidents-influence-language/https://qz.com/1153080/trump-tweets-analyzed-by-linguists-reveal-five-characteristics/I have the best words.”
• the use of negative hyperbole 
• "The worst FBI director in our history" 
• "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
• "The worst trade deal ever made."
• a lack of complex vocabulary, favoring a small set of words used over and over, such as the frequent use of "Sad!"
• the use of future progressive tense
• "You're going to be seeing..."
• "We're going to be looking at..."
• "They're going to be asking..."
• the use of hedges, or backtracking
•  “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment.” 
• "Certainly there was meddling. Probably there was meddling from other countries."
• the use of apophasis, which is a figure of speech typically used to bring up a taboo subject by either denying it or pretending to pass over it:
• “I was going to say ‘dummy’ Bush; I won’t say it. I won’t say it,”
• “I promised I would not say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, that she laid off tens of thousands of people and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say it, so I will not say it.” 
• the use of  parataxis and/or hyptotaxis, which is the stringing of simple clauses together in a jumble (a run-on sentence):
• "...my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at M.I.T.; good genes, very good genes, O.K., very smart, the Wharton School of finance, very good, very smart – you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world – it’s true! – but when you're a conservative Republican they try – oh, they do a number – that’s why I always start off: "Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune”– you know I have to give my life credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged – but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me …
• the use of vague sentences with no antecedent
• "When you look at what they've been doing, it's very unfair." (What exactly is he referring to? Who are THEY?)
• "When you see what they've been doing over there.." (who and what?)
•  "Everybody's saying it..." (who?)

MORE TO BE ADDED SOON...


Here are a few brief (some informative, some entertaining, some both) news stories focusing on his use of language, both spoken and written. (I'll be adding to this collection as the semester progresses.)

• Jeannie Moos of CNN: 
• Trump's Curious Case of Going with Uppercase: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/05/07/capital-trump-twitter-moos-pkg.cnn
• Trump's Typos: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/03/21/donald-trump-tweet-typos-moos-pkg-erin.cnn
• (from a guest on Anderson Cooper's 360) Trump's use of forceful and easy-to-remember phrases with two words, often mono-syllabic:
• "fake news"
• "witch hunt"
• "deep state"
• "Spy-gate"
• "not good"
• "fire & fury" 
• "believe me"
• NOTE: One study found that 78% of Trump's words are monosyllabic

More linguistic analysis you might find interesting:

• A fascinating set of "word clouds": https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald
• https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/11/14238274/trumps-speaking-style-press-conference-linguists-explaintrump-s-campaign-tweets-n593846
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/07/this-linguist-studied-the-way-trump-speaks-for-two-years-heres-what-she-found/?utm_term=.f9b6444f44f0 
• https://qz.com/1153080/trump-tweets-analyzed-by-linguists-reveal-five-characteristics/
• https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/politics/donald-trump-president-speeches-favorite-phrases-trnd/index.html
• Linguist George Lakoff: https://www.fastcompany.com/90155999/graphic-trumps-tweets-can-be-reduced-to-4-rhetorical-strategies (see graphic below)

Clever Commercials

I'm going to start a running list of interesting linguistic tidbits from television commercials:

• A commercial for cat litter ends with this line, "Don't change the litter; change the litter." Just seeing the words visually rather than hearing them gives no clue to the context, therefore making the statement ambiguous at best, and confusing at worst. In the commercial, however, the viewer gets to hear the voice-over speaker's changes in emphasis and volume, which are two important para-linguistic variables. When you hear the changes, it becomes clear that the intended meaning is "You don't have to change the cat litter so much (change = cleaning) if you switch to our brand of cat litter (change = switch.) When we are used to a phrase such as "change the litter," we usually have no problem determining meaning from the context. When the verb "change" is used in two distinct ways in one sentence, however, the para-linguistic variables are the key to comprehension. 

•  Another current commercial is sort of the opposite in how it works. The spoken words leave some ambiguity, while the written form that is put on the screen at the end reveals the meaning: "If you got a life, you gotta Swiffer." Pronounced quickly, "got a" and "gotta" are homophones (two words pronounced identically). The first, however, is a contraction of "got a" (also notice that the "you" is a shortened informal version of "you've"), while the other is a spoken contraction for "got to," as in "have to." The trick wouldn't work at all if the voice-over said, "If you have a life, you have to Swiffer." 

more to come...

Millenial Mode

Three truths:

1. Language is always changing, and nothing can stop it. 
2. Some of those changes may seem unnecessary or problematic to some people. 
3. Many times our issues are indefensible linguistically, but we have them nonetheless.

Millennials have created or adopted a few discourse "fillers" that are always marked to me, even though I cannot explain why. (Remember that we all have linguistic "pet peeves" that can't be justified through the lens of sociolinguistics. Still...we are all human!) Not only are my issues unfounded, they deal with fillers that are on their surface quite friendly and inclusive. Why would they bother me if they actually serve to make connections between the speaker and the interlocutor? I will continue to try to figure out what my problem is with them, but in the end, I know I must just get used to them. In time, I suspect they will no longer seemed marked at all.

Some millennial fillers:

1. Using "So..." to start a sentence. Example:
• Interviewer: "You've done a lot of research on gender and language. What do the latest studies tell us in regards to gender and the use of taboo language?
• Guest: "So...many studies find that the gap between men and women in this regard is rapidly lessening."
2. Using "I mean..." to start a sentence, especially when there is no need for clarification. Example:
• Professor: "Welcome to the class, Jessica. We're talking about African American English. Do you have any friends who speak this dialect?"
• Jessica (the first thing she ever says to this professor): "I mean...I do have some friends who speak it, but only in informal situations."
3.  Ending multiple sentences with the tag "right?" If I hear it in a setting where someone is trying to teach something to someone, or make sure they are following the conversation (known as a comprehension check in the education world), it doesn't stand out. It only gets my attention if it's a situation where a person is telling something to someone who doesn't have much (or any) prior knowledge of the topic. Example:
1. Speaker 1: "I want to tell you what I learned about the Appalachian dialect in class today. So, it turns out that the dialect traces its roots back to the British Isles, right?"
2. Speaker 2: "I don't know, you tell me...you're the one who learned about it!"

A lie by any other name...

Many newscasters, pundits, and and others speaking on television and radio about the president reference his apparent difficulties with the concept of truth. A few of the more creative ways it's been described:

• "strains credulity"
• "on-again, off-again relationship with the truth"
•  "demonstrable falsehood"
• "flagrant disregard for the truth"
• 
  

(more to come...)

You're Never Too Old To Learn...

Despite my having studied language and linguistics for decades, I'm always running across new words, or words that are new to me at least. A few recent examples:

• "Jurist" as a synonym for "juror"
• "falsity" as a synonym for "falsehood"
• "Usurper" is a word often used on Game of Thrones. I recently heard a related word for first time, however, which is "usurpation." Both are nouns, but one is a person, and the other is the action that person does. (The usurper practices usurpation.)
• The word "vog" as an actual word scientists use to describe volcanic smog

Miscellaneous (Probably) Never-Before-Uttered Phrases

(I'll be adding to this list as the semester progresses, so check back often!)

• Me while having difficulty shucking corn: "These corn silks had split ends."
• My husband, referring to our cat, Opal: "Her reactions aren't fight or flight, they're fight, flight, or flop."

• Anderson Cooper referring to Trump's "unrequited collusion"
• John Oliver in a report about how Facebook's stock dropped by a number that equals the entire world cheese industry's value, "Facebook stock dropped by the concept of cheese." 
• Jeffrey Toobin on CNN when someone defends Trump for just being Trump, "Federal law does not have an exception for people with colorful personalities."  
• Rudy Giuliani speaking about Michael Cohen on Cuomo Primetime on CNN, "Anyone can Judas." (referring to the act of betrayal) 
• Bill Browder on CNN, "Russia has a history of extra-territorial assassination." 
• Betsy DeVos, "I have never intentionally visited schools that are under-performing." (Have you done it unintentionally, Betsy???)

• Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory, "What it is is a cacophonous assault of eucalyptus, bayberry, cinnamon, and vanilla...it's as if my head were trapped inside the pijamas of a sultan."
• Gene on Bob's Burgers, "It's like Avenue Q meets Caligula meets a fight outside of a Dairy Queen." 
• Gene on Bob's Burgers speaking about a mansion, "I'm going to buy it as a vacation home for my ferrets!"
• Stewie on Family Guy speaking about making a commercial for an investment company, "We're there for you when your baby marries his dog dad."
• Homer Simpson on "The Simpsons": "Chewing your leg is not a yes...I learned that in a real estate deal."

• Chris Hardwick on the no-longer-running show "@midnight" about Taylor Swift: "You dance like an unattended fire hose."

 

Creative Morphology

A person in my life -- who shall remain unnamed -- has a very interesting way of combining words to make unconventional new words. For the vast majority of instances, it is not something done consciously, or to be clever. Some examples:

• "disconcerning" ( = concerning + disconcerting)
• "disparagy" (disparity + disparaging)
• referring to ferrets: "muscalins" ( = mustelids + musky? mescaline??)

This person also pronounces several words in a way I consider to be incorrect, as the result is actually an entirely different word. He points out that I teach about the importance of maintaining home dialects, but since these actually cause confusion, I maintain that it is more than just a different way to pronounce things. Some examples:

• "Dingo" Fever (for Dengue Fever) 
• "Robinson Road" (for Robison Road)
• "Darleks" (for the Daleks on Doctor Who)
• mixing up the word for the Brazilian liquor "Cachaça" with the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, "Kinshasa"

More examples to be posted soon...