Donald Trump's Tweets on the Border Wall: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Donald Trump’s use of Twitter was primarily to present his political agenda to the public. His project to build a wall on the southern borders was the most prominent twitterized proposal during and even after Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. This research aims at analyzing Trump’s Twitter discourse. It critically attempts to reveal the incentives behind Trump’s strategic tweeting on the issue of the border wall. A corpus of forty (40) tweets posted by President Trump between Dec 12th ,2018 and Mar 17th ,2019 on his official Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump) has been compiled to be studied with the use critical discourse analysis approach. The textual analysis checks the language used in terms of vocabulary and syntax, and the critical analysis detects elements of framing, ideology and racial discourse. The findings have shown that hostility and persecution towards Mexican people incentivized Trumpism to shape an ideology of a needed factor. Besides, platformed racism was identified through Trump’s provocative practices.