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A couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked me for an interview "to discuss the style of Donald Trump's campaign events, the role his rhetoric plays in them, and why they’ve been an effective tool for him".

I explained that I haven't held any focus groups or done any polls, so I don't have any empirical basis for opinions about the role that "the style of his campaign events" plays in making them "an effective tool for him". But over the past 8 years, many LLOG posts have analyzed several aspects of his rhetorical style, both the text and the delivery, which are strikingly different from other contemporary American politicians and public figures. Specifically, these posts have described his

• Repetition
• Informality
• Fluency
• Melody

This has nothing to do with the political and cultural orientation of his speeches — the same techniques could in principle be applied to the promotion of internationalism rather than nationalism, for example. No doubt the content is a large part of the reason for his appeal, but the rhetorical affinity with professional wrestling is probably the rest of it, as discussed in "The art of the promo", 10/31/2020.

You'll find the list of relevant past posts past the fold  — I invite you to look for one or more of the four features in each post.

But in a way, the most striking thing about the list is its length.

"Political pitch ranges", 4/22/2015
"Say what what?", 8/2/2015
"Trump's aphasia", 8/5/2015
"Trump's eloquence", 8/5/2015
"Did a blind squirrel happen to find a nut?", 8/8/2015
"Phenomenal to the women", 8/11/2015
"Back to the Bushisms industry?", 8/17/2015
"Trump on China", 8/29/2015
The most Trumpish (and Bushish) words", 9/5/2015
"Make America rather formidable again", 9/10/2015
"Political vocabulary display", 9/10/2015
"Political pitches", 9/17/2015
"Vocabulary display in the CNN debate", 9/18/2015
"More Flesch-Kincaid grade-level nonsense", 10/23/2015
"Donald Trump's repetitive rhetoric", 12/5/2015
"Shlonged", 12/25/2015
"Trump's rhetorical style", 12/26/2015
"Stark rhetoric", 1/24/2016
"Pussy and pusillanimous", 2/10/2016
"Trump's future conditional head-scratcher", 2/19/2016
"The Trump Insult Haiku", 2/19/2016
"The most Kasichoid, Cruzian, Trumpish, and Rubiositous words", 3/11/2016
"Trump's Gettysburg Address", 3/12/2016
"Trump reviews", 3/17/2016
"Trump the Thing Explainer?", 3/19/2016
"R2D2", 3/27/2016
"More political text analytics", 4/15/2016
"Rhetorical reviews", 4/16/2016
"Americanism", 4/23/2016
"Slowed speech", 4/26/2016
"They love him", 4/29/2016
"Believe me", 4/30/2016
"Political epistemics", 5/4/2016
"The world wants 'bigly'", 5/5/2016
"The shape of things to come?", 5/13/2016
"Adjectives and Adverbs", 5/16/2016
"Q. Pheevr's Law", 5/17/2016
"Elaborate interiors and plain language", 6/3/2016
"'Ask the gays'", 6/16/2016
"Gertrude Trump", 6/19/2016
"Trump's most mockable phrase: 'believe me'", 7/28/2016
"'Believe me': Prosodic differences", 7/28/2016
"'But I was going to say that but now I won't say it'", 7/30/2016
"Viciously", 8/1/2016
"Trump's prosody", 8/8/2016
"You know, I mean", 8/14/2016
"The em-dash candidate", 8/15/2016
"Internecine strife at Language Log?", 8/16/2016
"The rhetorical style of spontaneous speech", 8/16/2016
"The narrow end of the funnel", 8/18/2016
"The NOUNs", 9/5/2016
"And now the cyber is so big", 9/7/2016
"Sex, lies, and childishness; and insomnia", 9/27/2016
"Trump's debate denials", 9/27/2016
"Trump the hypernegator?", 9/27/2016
"Trumpchant in B flat", 10/2/2016
"Nevada: 'odd' or 'add'?", 10/6/2016
"A non-apology for the ages", 10/7/2016
"'Like a bitch'?", 10/8/2016
"The Donald's THE, again", 10/10/2016
"AND Trump's rhetorical style again", 10/17/2016
"'Big league' vs. 'bigly': a coda", 10/28/1016
"Debate quantification: How MAD did he get?", 10/29/2016
"How 'whopping' is 78 percent monosyllables?", 11/4/2016
"'On the difference between writing and speaking'", 12/23/2016
"One last (?) piece of nonsense", 1/20/2017
"Slow-talking the inaugural", 1/21/2017
"Only America first", 1/22/2017
"Inaugural embedding again", 1/22/2017
"American freedoms", 1/27/2017
"Tunes, political and geographical", 2/2/2917
"Inaugural addresses: SAD", 2/5/2017
"Quantifying Donald Trump's rhetoric", 2/7/2017
"Last night in Sweden", 2/19/2017
"Weak t", 4/6/2017
"More political text analytics", 415/2016
"Debate words", 4/19/2016
"'I want to God bless America'", 4/22/2017
"Everything, everything", 5/2/2017
"Trends in presidential pitch", 5/19/2017
"Trends in presidential pitch II", 5/21/2017
"-ist vs. -ic in Riyadh", 5/22/2017
"Donald Trump: Cognitive decline or TDS?", 5/23/2017
"Political sound and silence II", 5/30/2017
"Trends in presidential speaking rate", 6/1/2017
"A prosodic difference", 6/2/2017
"On the short periods of Trumpian time", 6/10/2017
"'I think it's a very mean life'", 6/7/2017
"'This is a whole new life for me now'", 6/8/2017
"Namibia, Nambia, whatever", 9/21/2017
"Transcripts not always accurate", 10/24/2017
"Presidential fluency", 10/31/2017
"Is our pundits counting?", 11/21/2017
"Dysarthria or dentures?", 12/7/2017
"Blues in Moore flat", 12/15/2017
"Trump: To'd or not to 'd?", 1/14/2018
"Opamacare", 1/31/2018
"SOTU interpolations", 2/6/2018
"Stoop to no lengths", 6/5/2018
"Ask Language Log: 'Incredible'?", 7/18/2018
"Clarification by misnegation", 7/18/2018
"Anonymous in Montana", 9/10/2018
"The holy day of [??]", 10/28/2018
"'The midtowm and midtern year'", 11/8/2018
"Reading problems?", 1/27/2019
"Emergency in B flat", 2/17/2019
"The battle of the airports", 7/7/2019
"Macronic and Trumpish prosody", 8/31/2019
"Trump's incoherence", 9/23/2019
"Useful terms from professional wrestling politics", 10/24/2019
"Oral vs. written rhetoric", 2/9/2020
"'Drunk in the club after covid'", 4/21/2020
"K-pop stans troll Trump", 6/22/2020
"'They're more mask into'?", 7/20/2020
"Before their time", 8/20/2020
"Word substitution of the month", 9/19/2020
"The art of the promo", 10/31/2020
"Donald Trump, now with more filled pauses", 1/3/2021
"Q song?", 9/19/2022
"'Mirrors' composer rejects Richard Feelgood and Donald Trump", 9/21/2022
"'Syllabolic'?", 6/15/2023
"Debate-night pronouns", 8/26/2023

January 5, 2024 @ 2:04 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and politics, Rhetoric

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