In this chapter, the results of the qualitative analysis of Trump and Clinton’s final debate
based on Fairclough’s 3D model are given with a discussion of the findings in light of this
study’s research questions. As noted in chapter 2, Fairclough’s 3D model treated discourse more
as a consequent of social interaction than merely consisting of different units language. As such,
a political debate can be seen as an incarnation of social interaction because of its linguistic
structures but where candidates present their ideas through language.
To answer three research questions, textual analysis, discursive analysis, and
explanatory analysis would were conducted. As for textual analysis, I focused on the frequency
of usage of pronounces by Trump and Clinton in the description stage of Fairclough’s 3D
model. Discursive analysis was used to analyze Trump and Clinton’s different usage of
discourse markers in the interpretation stage of the 3D model. Explanatory analysis was
employed to analyze differences in Trump and Clinton’s ideologies based on their pronoun and
discourse marker usage in the model’s explanation stage.
Textual Analysis
In this section, the frequency of Trump and Clinton’s pronoun usage is given from the
standpoint of textual analysis. The candidates’ choice of pronouns did not only relate to their
preferred grammatical structures but was also related to their ideological differences as
reflected in their discourse. Pronouns can be viewed as linguistic devices that can be used to
indirectly transmuting power in discourse. Simpson (1993) argued that “language is not used
in a contextless vacuum; rather, it is used in a host of discourse contexts which are
impregnated with the ideology of social systems and institutions” (p. 6). According to Chilton
(2004), the choice of which linguistic devices to use is more convenient in political discourse,
as he says that politics is about “socialization of humans involving the formation of
coalitions, the signaling of group boundaries and all that these developments imply, including
the emergence of what is called reciprocal altruism” (p. 23).
The construction of political identity is very crucial in order for politicians to be
successful. Their political identity could determine how they deliver their speeches, and how
they distinguish themselves from their opponents with, for example, the use of us and them.
Besides, politicians’ usage of pronouns helps them evoke multiple political identities with different viewpoints. As Allen (2007) has pointed out that “it was in the politicians interest to
present themselves as multi-faceted in order to appeal to a diverse audience, and a careful
pronoun choice was one way of achieving this aim” (p. 4). The importance of pronouns in CDA of political discourse is paramount because how politicians use pronouns in their
discourse is instrumental in shaping politicians’ roles and ideologies.
Table 3
Table 3 shows that Trump is frequently of usage of various pronouns. As it can be seen,
he mentioned “I” 96 times and “we” 92 times. He strove to utilize “I” and “we” to give the
impression of unity and togetherness with the audience during the debate. By using “I” sp
heavily, a quite unusual way to directly address an audience, he kept the focus primarily on
himself, especially in his statements such as his abilities and accomplishments. For example,
he stated “I have 200 generals and admirals, 21 endorsing me. 21 congressional medal of
honor recipients,” and “Because when I said Japan and Germany and I'm not just singling
them out.” Trump portrayed his businessman persona but in the political sphere, sounding as
if he were trying to make a deal with the audience. Trump’s discourse also served to promote
him as the agent of the action, which can be seen in statements such as, “But when I started
this campaign, I started it very strongly.”
By using “we” so frequently in the debate, Trump intended to shorten the distance between the audience and himself. This can be seen in such example as, “We have the
greatest people on Earth in our military,” “We need law and order, but we need justice too,”
and We're going to make America great.” Along with heavy reliance on first person pronouns, Trump punctuated his discourse with emotion and would support them no matter what
difficulties they might face in the future.
Although used much less frequently, Trump used the third pronouns, “she” and “they” in
the debate, he primarily tried to highlight the negative side of his opponent, Clinton, as in
statements such as “She's raising the money from the people she wants to control,” “All she's
done is talk to the African-Americans and to the Latinos, but they get the vote and then they
come back,” and “Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn't built.” He
also used “they” to refer to Clinton to Russia in an attempt to give the impression that
Clinton had questionable or improper connections with Russia. Some examples include,
“Where they expanded and we didn't. 1,800 nuclear warheads. And she is playing chicken,”
“They create warheads and we can't”, and “They've taken over the Middle East. She has been
outsmarted and outplayed worse than anybody I've ever seen in any government whatsoever.”
Trump used third person singular and plural pronouns to directly connected Clinton with
Russia.
Table 4 summarizes Clinton’s frequency of pronoun usage in the debate. Unlike Trump,
Clinton only used “I” 65 times and “we” 46 times. She did not take a fierce discourse style
when facing Trump, as she only used I to refer to herself. Unlike Trump’s use of first person
pronouns in a more offensive stance, Clinton did not use “I” or “we” to aggressively attack
Trump but rather to acknowledge the validity of some of his stances before making a defense
of her own opinions. This can be seen in the following examples in response to Trump’s
questions about gun regulations, “I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership that
goes back to the founding of our country, but I also believe that there can be and must be
reasonable regulation,” “I think we need comprehensive background checks, need to close the
online loophole, close the gun show loophole,” and “So I see no conflict between saving
people's lives and defending the second amendment.” Here it can be seen that, Clinton took a
defensive stance rather than directly attack Trump’s views.
The same situation can be seen in Clinton’s use of “we” in her statements, “Of course
we're going to protect and defend the second amendment,” “But we're going to do it in a way
that tries to save some of these 33,000 lives that we lose every year,” and “We will not have
open borders. That is a rank mischaracterization. We will have secure borders.” Like Trump,
she strove to align the audience’s opinion to her side but did so in a defensive rather than
offensive way that generally avoided direct attack against Trump.
On the other hand, Clinton utilized subjective “you”, and objective “you” in order to
make an impression on the audience that Trump was the common enemy that she, her party
and the audience as a whole were facing. Some examples can be seen in the following
sentences: “You should meet with some of the women I've met with,” and “And I can tell you
the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in
accordance with their faith, with medical advice.” Though the use of “you” in these
statements, she tried to connect with her audience in opposition against Trump and give the
audience the sense that they were partners in the mutual goal of defeating Trump. The other
“in group” pronoun contrasted to “you” was “we”, which Clinton used 46 times. Trump, on the other hand, uttered “we” twice as many times (92) as Clinton. Although she mentioned
“we” only half as many times as Trump in her discourse, her attempts to express inclusively
with the audience in statements such as: “But we're going to do it in a way that tries to save some of these 33,000 lives that we lose every year,” and “and we would then to have put
them on trains, on buses to get them out of our country.”
Additionally, using the first person pronouns “I”, “we”, and “our” while addressing the
audience appeared to be a relatively new tendency in Trump’s political discourse. The
frequency of his use of pronouns was roughly similar. Among subjective pronouns, Trump
used “I” most often (96 times) followed by “we” (92 times). As for objective first person
pronouns, Trump uttered “me” most often (18 times), followed by “us” (8 times). What can
be concluded was that there were certain tendencies, as mentioned here that the usages of
pronouns seemed to be more frequent in the political discourse at the presidential debate field
than on the other political related fields.
The textual analysis results in this study reveal the major difference between Trump's
and Clinton's frequency usage of pronouns were that Trump employed the subjective pronouns “I” (92 times) and “we” (96 times) often than Clinton (65 times and 46 times)
respectively. This indicates that one of Trump’s key tactics in the debate was to show unity
with the audience as much as possible (“we”) while making himself stand out on the stage
(“I”).
On the other hand, Clinton used the second person singular “you” (74 times) than Trump (26
times). In doing so, Clinton likely was trying to make the audience believe that Trump was
the common enemy they faced together, by employing “you” so frequently when responding
to him. Whereas Trump employed “we” more frequently to create unity with the audience,
Clinton attempted to achieve the same goal by using plural “you” to address the audience and
thereby symbolize the unity with the audience. To Trump, interestingly, Trump did not use the
subjective second person plural “you” at all and only used the objective second person plural
“you” twice. Regardless of their different discourse features as seen from in the textual
analysis were, Trump and Clinton’s purpose was the same to persuade the audience to vote
for them.
While these were the patterns that had been observed in the debate, they were not entirely conclusive due to the limited scope of this study at this first stage. In the next section,
by discursive analysis, I would step up to a much-detailed analysis regarding text production
to cover more variables than pronouns to see the differences of their discourse styles in the
debate.
Discursive Analysis
In the discursive analysis stage, there were three discourse markers in the final debate that
were investigated. These discourse markers are “well”, “by the way” and “believe me”.
Examination of Trump and Clinton’s discourse markers usage can give insight into their
discourse style and behavior. In particular, the discursive analysis can give an indication of the
influence Trump’s and Clinton’s usage of discourse markers had on the audience. The discourse
markers they used (or did not use) revealed the usage of discourse markers themselves but also
in the different meanings each candidate implied by their choice to use them or not. In the
following analysis, I offered a discursive analysis of discourse markers with “well”, “by the
way” and “believe me” with their frequency on Trump and Clinton..
The use of turn-initial “well” as a discourse marker, it is seen as a “framing device,
presupposition canceller, a face-threat mitigator, and an indicator of an indirect, insufficient or
disagreeing response” (Sclafani, 2018, p. 36). As such, “well” is generally deemed as a
discourse marker that is likely to occur less frequently in political discourse and debate than in
daily conversation due to time limitations in debate. Since debates take place within time
constraints, the debaters are under time pressure and therefore more likely to make comments
and provide answers that are more direct and straightforward. As Fuller (2003) who suggested
that “it was predicted that turn initial 'well' will not be frequent in a debate format” (p. 26).
Nevertheless, political debates are “governed by the expectation of critical challenging
questions, disagreement, and frequent question evasion” (Clayman, 2001, p. 411). Clayman
pointed out that the none frequently used pattern of “well” proposed by Fuller was correct
(Sclafani, 2018). According to Clayman (2001), the use of ‘well’ occurs whenever debaters are
challenged by the opponents or when they have difficulties expressing their opinions coherently,
and consequently cannot answer in a direct way. As Clinton used “well” in the third debate:
“Well, it matters because he has not told the truth about that position,” “Well you should ask
Bernie Sanders who he is supporting for President,” and “Well, first of all, I support the second
amendment.”
Table 5
The results of the discursive analysis of the final presidential debate are illustrated in Table
5. Clinton’s frequency of usage of “well” (30 times) was greater than that of Trump (13 times.)
By using the discourse marker “well” more frequently at the beginning of her statements, it
made Clinton sound more indecisive than Trump. Clinton did not give straightforward answers
as often in her own discourse, making it more difficult for her to articulate clearly to the
moderator and audience. Her indecisiveness can be seen in the following examples: “Well, that
is not what happens in these cases,” “Well, I think the middle class thrives, America thrives,”
and “Well, you know, once again Donald is implying that he didn't support the invasion of
Iraq.” On the other hand, the usage of “well” by Trump “may contribute to views of his
discursive style as straightforward and unabashedly face-threatening” (Sclafani, 2018, p. 42).
Using “well” less than half the number of times Clinton used it seems indicate that Trump
sounded more confident during the debate, and came across to the audience as the more
decisive of the two candidates.
Trump’s less frequent use of “well” during the debate also suggests that he was a novice in terms of political discourse. Since the more experienced a politician is, the more he or she tends
to hesitate before making utterances by using a discourse marker such as turn initial “well”.
Clinton on the other hand, had been a “professional” politician for decades. As a result, it is not
surprising that she used “well” much more frequently than Trump.
The usage of “well” as a discourse marker suggests that a debater is being more deliberate
in answering a question or making comment. Therefore, the usage of well i a political discourse
can also be viewed as a politeness strategy. By using “well” wisely, a politician is able to create
a positive effect during a debate (Brown and Levinson, 1987). According to their theory, the
infrequent usage of ‘well’ indicates that a politician prefers using direct speech, while more
frequent usage of “well” indicated that a politician prefers using indirect speech seen as
containing some politeness in it (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
Table 5. also shows the frequency of usage of the discourse marker “believe me” in the
debate. As shown in Table 5, “believe me” was uttered three times by Trump, but not a single
time by Clinton. “Believe me” was one of Trump’s most iconic phrases that he expressed
throughout his campaign. Viser (2016) argued that “To voters who are puzzled by his
contradictory statements and well-documented predilection for exaggeration, he has the ready
response believe me” (Viser, 2016, para 1.). He also suggested that “Trump uses believe me far
more often when speaking than he does when writing” (Viser, 2016, para 15.). In a sense,
“Believe me” was like Trump’s trademark phrase. As Viser put it, “Even if the evidence isn’t
quite there — trust him, believe him — he’ll build a wall, deport immigrants, and ban Muslims.
And, of course, make America great again’ (Viser, 2016, para 6.)”. Therefore, Trump’s usage of
discourse marker “believe me” in the debate was a type of persuasive strategy politicians tend
to use in an effect to convince the audience when they are not less inclined to provide detailed
or concrete evidence to support what are primarily talking points or soundbites.
On the other hand, Clinton did not use discourse marker “believe me” even once
throughout the entire debate. Perhaps that was due to her persona as the much more
experienced and professional politician. She did not make claims or that she could not verify promises she could not keep. By refraining to use “believe me” in her discourse, Clinton also
showed that she was taking a defensive stance whereas Trump, who was more assertive in
taking a more offensive stance in attacking Clinton, used “believe me” as a way to reassure the audience that what he said was the truth. The following segment is one example: “The
problem is, you talk but you don't get anything done, Hillary. You don't. If you become
president, this country is going to be in some mess. Believe me.” By using “believe me” in the
discourse, Trump focuses on Clinton’s failure in her previous administration as post secretary
of the States (i.e. the emphasize their bad things principle), moreover by using “believe me”
at the end of this segment, Trump strove to assure the audience that what he said was
believable even though it was only based on his own point of view and without citing any
verifiable references or sources. That is to say, Trump’s use of “believe me” was part of his
strategy to convince the audiences even though he provided no direct evidence that his
statements were in fact truthful or not.
Apart from the argument that Trump’s use of “believe me” was at least partly
uncertainty in his own discourse, it could also be seen as being related to his political persona. In using “believe me”, he tried to sound like an atypical politician who could take
positive actions. That is to say in Trump’s usage of “believe me” he was signifying that what
he talked about was from his experience as a businessman, and father rather than simply a presidential campaign runner. In this way, Trump attempted to link his achievements in
business world to the realm of politics, in an effort to convince the audience that his would
translate into political success as president.
“Believe me” in Trump’s discourse also represented turn-initialing or turn-ending
function. He primarily used “Believe me” at the end of a sentence rather than at the
beginning. He also paused longer after using “Believe me” at the end of the sentence to give
the audience time to reflect or perhaps as a cue for the audience to applause. Thus, he seemed
to use this method as another strategy to get feedback from and have greater connection to the
audience.
In summary, the discursive marker “Believe me” was a prominent feature in which he
used to make him sound more credible than Clinton to the audience. Also, by using this
strategy, Trump distinguished himself from other politicians largely through his frequent use
of “Believe me” not only in the final debate but throughout his presidential campaign.
Table 5 also depicts Trump’s and Clinton’s frequency of usage of the discourse marker
“by the way” in the debate. As can be seen, Trump used “by the way” ten times while Clinton
“by the way” in the debate. As can be seen, Trump used “by the way” ten times while Clinton