Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Speech: The Case of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’

This paper aims to provide a general idea of legitimization strategies within the framework of political discourse analysis (PDA). It will thus look at Trump’s Inaugural Address and the 2018 State of the Union Address and the ways in which ‘America First’ ideology is legitimized. In doing so, this paper is expected to help college students who are studying rhetoric or discourse analysis to understand and explain academically how and what methods politicians use to legitimize their message. In this paper, the categories of legitimization strategies proposed by Antonio Reyes were used in order to examine Trump’s Inaugural Address and the State of the Union Address. The findings of this analysis show that one of his prominent strategies is to create a dual identity of Americans: victims and heroes. The analysis also shows that foreign countries and previous governments are categorized as the ‘other (them)’ and immigrants are often regarded as the ‘other’ in his discourse. As for the we (us), the meaning is not explicitly clear enough since President Trump’s usage of the term ‘Americans’ include immigrants and sometimes it does not. (183 words)