In this final chapter, I first provide a brief summary of the main results and findings
based on the research questions that this study addressed. In the second section, I discuss
some of the pedagogical implications for teachers and educators in relation to CDA in general
and political discourse and debate in particular. In the third section, I discuss some of the
limitations of the study and some weaknesses that may have affected analysis of the findings.
In the last section, I offer some suggestions for future research studies on this subject with
ideas on how this topic could be explored in greater depth in light of some of the limitations
in this study.
The linguistic strategy Trump employed, mainly the use of the discourse marker of
“believe me” functioned in Trump’s benefit, that is to say, they reinforced his positive face.
His shifts from undesirable topics with ‘by the way’ made his attempt to portray his political
persona as an informed and reliable one. Overall, the discourse markers analyzed in the
present study showed that Trump’s choice of discourse was beneficial to his presidential self
and helped him win the election in the end.
Summary of the Main Findings
During the debate, Trump was not daunted by the moderator and other question asking
correspondents from news media. Doubtlessly, the final presidential debate proved to the
pushing force that consisted of some of Trump’s linguistic features, and direct yet unique way
to address the debating issues with his stylish political discourse. as lots of spontaneous
speeches with succinct words that he previously uttered at his announcement for the
presidential campaign speech.
In this section, I would like to present my thoughts on the ways Trump applied discourse
strategies to win 2016 presidential election, after coming up with results of the final
presidential debate. The established theoretical framework of CDA in chapter three indicated
that in what ways political discourse influenced our lives, as political discourse can be seen
everywhere, no matter it was on TV, on the internet, or on the radio. If political discourse appeared that often in our lives, then it would be great for us to investigate for understanding
it. By investigate and analyze political discourse, the ideologies enshrined inside the political
discourse would be revealed. Critical discourse analysis had successfully marked the
discourse markers in Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton’s political personas. By investigation
of three chosen discourse markers in Trump’s and Clinton’s political discourse, we can reveal
the differences of their usage of discourse markers, and can even further see their differences in their ideologies.
As analysis results showed in previous chapter, it could be observed that ideologies
inside Trump’s discourse was a very force that encouraged audience after the debate to vote
for him. Trump’s simple and open way of discourse shaped his political image into an
open-minded politician with unique ideology to the public, and that was where he stood out from
the other opponent. Clinton, on the other hand, employed sentences with complex structures,
and covered a wide range of issues striving to win the audience. It could be observed that the
strategies in her discourse were unlike Trump. Trump’s way in the discourse was putting
himself openly in front of the audiences’ questions. He would use easy to grasp vocabularies
and easy to understand sentences to convince the audience that he was the very candidate that
they were looking for. Not to mention his way of thinking, were markers of his ideology that
made him stand out in the recent political field. Overall, through the debate, Trump presented
a distinct style in the political debate. The research done in the past also demonstrated that
Trump’s discourse was straight forward and based on brief sentences composed of short
words and verb phrases, with similar expressions reused many times (Mohammadi & Javadi,
2016). Though this distinction did not appear in Clinton’s case. Clinton preferred uttering
longer sentences with richer vocabularies. She also tried to cover much more topics than
Trump in the final presidential debate. In the debate, Trump appeared as a strong masculine
figure, talking like every American with energy, easy to understand with a businessman color.
His victory against the democrat can also be explained by other factors such as the uprising of
the people against Washington, the parties, the politicians, the news media, Hollywood, and
the academia.
In my opinion, Trump was a capable businessman and politician. He made the audience
get what he meant easily by his political discourse. Therefore, he was seen as a man who knew how to make good use political language to attain his goal. Trump also made himself
look like a politician qualified for presidential campaign. His ways of discourse did really pay
off and made him a leader of the United States in 2016. To sum up, Trump not only made an impact on current politics, but the ideologies of ‘all actions, no talks’ enshrined inside his
discourse shined brightly in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Pedagogical Implication
According to the research findings of this study, there were three implications of
pedagogy can be derived. First, the gender differences between Trump's and Clinton's
frequency of usage of pronouns can be explained further in the class. By reading other
transcript of Trump’s speeches, students can find out Trump’s way of usage of pronouns in
political speeches. And check whether the usage of his pronouns did function like the results
of the first finding. Students can also find out other pronouns in Trump’s speeches to see
whether there were other function beside uniting the audience by using “We”. They could
also figure out Clinton’s way of discourse, to see whether she employed more subjective
pronouns “You” than Trump, and find out the function of her other pronouns.
Second, with the finding of the differences between Trump's and Clinton's discourse
marker usage, it can be expanded for further interpretation and for students to find out extra
discourse markers. Such as, from another point of view, beside being labeled as uncertainty, the higher frequent usage of ‘well’ in Clinton’s discourse can also indicated her deliberately
thinking capability. Students can also dig into the usage of ‘Believe me’ phrase by Trump, to
see whether believe me had other meaning than literally to ask audience to believe him, when Trump was unable to give evidence about the claims and promises. Students can also find out
the frequency of using ‘By the way’ in Trump and Clinton’s other debate. The use of
turn-medial ‘by the way’ was only employed by Trump in the third debate, it would be interesting
to find ‘by the way’ in their other debates.
Third, students were encouraged to find out beside the ideological differences between
Trump’s and Clinton’s discourses, whether it would be influenced besides the differences of
their frequencies of usage of pronouns, and the differences of discourse marker usage.
Students were encouraged to find out the ideologies in their speeches that made them to be
the representatives of their party.
Limitations of the Study
Limitations were factors causing the restrictions on the methodology that would result in
different conclusions. In this research, the restrictions on the methodology were that the
adoption of CDA analyzing tools can be differential and be subjective to change depending
upon the perspectives different researchers held. By comparing Van Dijk’s approach of CDA
to Fairclough’s, we could find that there were some flaws in Fairclough’s model. The
approach Van Dijk (1995) applied in analyzing political discourse was based on the structures
of critical discourse by marking the factors the social approach in a cognitive way that
differed from Fairclough’s theory, which aimed at analyzing political discourse much
critically and in multi-dimensional ways with trans-disciplinary approach through context
addressing contemporary process of social changes.
Another limitation of this study was that only three discourse markers were analyzed.
The reason for choosing these three was because they were the ones that occurred most
frequently in the final debate between Trump and Clinton. Some of the others had much
lower frequency of usage. Ideally, it would be best if more discourse markers could be analyzed for greater variety and to make it easier to compare different uses of more discourse
markers. The other limitation with this study is that there is a lack of other research studies
about Trump’s political speeches using Fairclough’s (1992) CDA model. This is the case for limited genre of presidential debates which my study focused on. As a result, this factor made
it difficult for me to compare the findings of my study with other research data.
Suggestions for Future Research
Based on the results achieved in this research, I felt it necessary to give some
suggestions so that it can be used as the material for future researches. First, it be beneficial
for us to pay more attention to understand CDA. As CDA was closely related with
communication that frequently occurred in our daily lives such as media discourse, political
discourse, and academic discourse. Second, it was clear that this study talked about the
criticism of discourse, which also showed off the flaws of this study and that could be done better in the future studies. Since criticism was subjective, even I applied other discourse
analyst’s theory, the results would somehow seem subjective to the readers, and the results
might subject to change basing on the different views the readers held. I tried to be neutral in the use of words, as I would not like to make the impression that I was really criticized or
satirized certain party’s good or bad in this research.
To other researchers who might also be interested in critical discourse analysis, in my
opinion, I would suggest exploring more on different genres of discourse with other theories
such as Ruth Wodak’s historical approach, or Van Dijk’s multiple dimensional approach in an
effort to conduct CDA in the future. For instances, the next researchers could provide much
more data to see the differential usages of political discourse from democratic party and
republican party. Make sure that would be different from the previous research scope so as to
come up with a research with much overall comprehensiveness.
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APPENDIX
Chris Wallace: Good evening from the Thomas and Mack Center at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas. I'm Chris Wallace of Fox News and I welcome you to the third and final
of the 2016 presidential debates between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Donald J.
Trump. This debate is sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The
commission has designed the format. Six roughly 15-minute segments, with two minute
answers to the first question then open discussion for the rest of each segment. Both
campaigns have agreed to those rules. For the record, I decided the topics and the questions in
each topic. None of those questions has been shared with a commission or the two
candidates. The audience here in the hall has promised to remain silent. No cheers, boos or
other interruptions so we and you can focus on what the candidates have to say. No noise
except right now as we welcome the Democratic nominee for president, secretary Clinton,
and the Republican nominee for president, Mr. Trump.
Wallace: Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump, welcome. Let's get right to it. The first topic is the
Supreme Court. You both talked briefly about the court in the last debate, but I want to drill
down on this because the next president will almost certainly have at least one appointment
and likely or possibly two or three appointments which means that you will in effect
determine the balance of the court for what could be the next quarter century. First of all,
where do you want to see the court take the country? And secondly, what’s your view on how
the constitution should be interpreted? Do the founders' words mean what they say or is it a
living document to be applied flexibly, according to changing circumstances? In this
segment, secretary Clinton, you go first. You have two minutes.
Clinton: Thank you very much Chris and thanks to UNLV for hosting us. You know, I think
when we talk about the Supreme Court, it really raises the central issue in this election.
Namely, what kind of country are we going to be? What kind of opportunities will we
provide for our citizens? What kind of rights will Americans have? And I feel strongly that
the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people. Not on the side of the
powerful corporations and the wealthy. For me, that means that we need a Supreme Court
that will stand up on behalf of women's rights, on behalf of the rights of the LGBT
community, that will stand up and say no to Citizens United, a decision that has undermined
the election system in our country because of the way it permits dark, unaccountable money
to come into our electoral system. I have major disagreements with my opponent about these
issues and others that will be before the Supreme Court. But I feel that at this point in our
country's history, it is important that we not reverse marriage equality, that we not reverse
Roe v. Wade, that we stand up against Citizens United, we stand up for the rights of people in
the workplace, that we stand up and basically say, the Supreme Court should represent all of
us. That's how I see the court. And the kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to
the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing up on behalf
of our rights as Americans. And I look forward to having that opportunity. I would hope that
the Senate would do its job and confirm the nominee that President Obama has sent to them.
That's the way the constitution fundamentally should operate. The President nominates and
the Senate advises and consents or not. But they go forward with the process.
Wallace: Secretary Clinton, thank you. Mr. Trump, same question. Where do you want to see
the court take the country and how do you believe the constitution should be interpreted?
Trump: Well, first of all, it’s so great to be with you and thank you, everybody. The
Supreme Court, it is what it is all about. Our country is so, so, it is just so imperative that we
have the right justices. Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very
inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people. Many, many
millions of people that I represent and she was forced to apologize. And apologize she did.
But these were statements that should never, ever have been made. We need a Supreme Court
that in my opinion is going to uphold the second amendment and all amendments, but the
second amendment which is under absolute siege. I believe, if my opponent should win this
race, which I truly don't think will happen, we will have a second amendment which will be a
very, very small replica of what it is right now. But I feel that it is absolutely important that
we uphold because of the fact that it is under such trauma. I feel that the justices that I am
going to appoint, and I've named 20 of them. The justices that I am going to appoint will be
pro-life. They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the second amendment.
They are great scholars in all cases and they're people of tremendous respect. They will
interpret the constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted and I believe that’s very
important. I don't think we should have justices appointed that decide what they want to hear.
important. I don't think we should have justices appointed that decide what they want to hear.