Friday, January 1, 2016

Linguistic analysis of Trump

See the video below, which starts with a clip of Trump answering a question followed by the analysis. Trump is not consciously manipulating his speech to achieve this 4th grade reading level; that's this "huckster saleman's" intellectual level. Sadly, it's also the general level of the American public, so sure, he connects with that. One solution is to invest in pubic education and teachers so that we are at least at a high school level in the general population and not prone to this unconscious manipulation. But that is exactly one of the regressive Republican strategies, defunding and dumbing down public education.

On the other hand, yes, I agree that even the 'smarter' progressive folks have to frame their language to connect with our emotional drives. Lakoff is expert in guiding progressives on that, and Obama has for the most part done an excellent job of it rhetorically. Which of course has to do with integrating (as in integral) the so-called higher and lower levels so that they can be connected via language.

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