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14 - Fake Alignments

from Part III - The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Sylvia Sierra  and
Natasha Shrikant
Edited by
Janet McIntosh  and
Norma Mendoza-Denton
Janet McIntosh
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Norma Mendoza-Denton
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

This chapter analyzes President Trump’s remarks at the 2017 Black History Month Listening Session, in particular his repeated discussion of the seemingly irrelevant subject of “fake news.” Through a framing analysis (Goffman 1974) of Trump’s language, we make sense of Trump’s seemingly non-sequitur topic shifts and illustrate how the actions he takes through these shifts function as strategic attempts to build relationships with African American participants in the session. Our analysis illustrates how Trump strives to build relationships with his African American interlocutors through first praising well-known African American figures and then shifting frames to commiserate about the news media. While praising such figures functions as Trump’s direct attempt to align with the broader African American community, making disparaging remarks about news media functions to indirectly align Trump with the politically conservative African Americans in this interaction, sometimes through their laughter at his jokes. Like many politicians, Trump elicits support as much from his implicit relational messages as from the content of what he says.

Keywords

Goffmanalignmentframingframesfake newsrelationalitymessaginglaughterracetopic shifts
Type
Chapter
Information
Language in the Trump Era
Scandals and Emergencies
 , pp. 203 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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