Trump's Populist Ideology in American Policy: Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This research aims at knowing the impact of populist ideology propagated by Trump on American policy via critical discourse analysis of selected political speeches. Propounded by Fairclaugh, this paper provides an examination the impact of populist ideology embedded in Trump's political speeches at three levels; linguistic choices, interrelated context, practices. Concerning the linguistic choices, this paper spots light on how the ideology of populism is represented by specific linguistic choices. These linguistic choices include reference of lexical choices their ideological connotations in the text. Furthermore, it explores the pronoun's representation of the "Self" and the "other"; according to Dijk's model. At the interrelated contexts, this paper aims to look at how the ideology of populism is dug more in an audiences' mind by referring to past, which was bad due to the corrupted elite, and pushing towards good work, by pure people who love their home, in the future. By this ideology, Trump succeeds to gain American's sympathy, creating changes in American policy at both levels; locally and internationally.