Trump's Misogynistic Linguistic Elements and His Rhetorical Device

Trump's Misogynistic Linguistic Elements and His Rhetorical Device

This paper analyzes the misogynistic linguistic elements of Donald Trump, from the first GOP debate (6 Aug. 2015) on a FOX channel and a CNN interview (7 Aug. 2015) concerning Fox News anchor and the debate moderator Megyn Kelly. His Twitter comments and live interview comments concerning women were projected to show his misogyny. If we consider that Trump became the American Republican presidential candidate at that time, these misogynistic linguistic elements seemed to be of little importance to Trump's supporters. Trump projected a smart image in terms of his linguistic strategy; justifying himself through the use of membership categorization, rhetorical use of mitigation and lexical cohesion such as anaphoric, exophoric references, and repetition as a rhetorical device. In his remarks, he showed a hierarchical structure on the importance of misogyny. For him and his supporters, the misogynistic characteristics seemed to be less important than other important issues facing the United States. Despite misogynistic controversies in Trump’s speeches, he succeeded in his path toward the election.