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Polarization and Negative-Other “China” Presentation in US President Trump’s COVID-19 Tweets: A Critical Discourse Analysis

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Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Abstract

This study aims to carry out a critical discourse analysis of US President Donald Trump's tweets about China during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. It investigates Trump's negative-other presentation of China on Twitter, a platform which has recently become popular amongst political elites, and which unmasks significant political ideologies and affiliations. Thirty tweets about China by Trump across five months; from the beginning of March to the end of July 2020, are selected for the analysis. The tweets are analyzed using Van Dijk's (1998) Ideological Square. The cognitive binary opposition between negative-other presentation and positive-self presentation unravels Trump's negative stance against China in contrast to the US under his presidency which is portrayed as powerful and heroic. The study also exposes Trump's discourse strategies and how he utilizes them to create this positive-self presentation and negative-other presentation. The results reveal that the self-other polarization is strongly evident in Trump's China tweets and that he employs various linguistic and rhetorical techniques such as lexicalization, metaphors, presupposition, repetition, loaded words and deictic expressions to achieve this strict polarization. He presents China as guilty, incompetent, a liar, a conspirator, an enemy of the people, a manipulator, and in the same tweets he presents himself as powerful and tough on China, as a savior of the nation and as the source of economic stability.

DOI

10.21608/cse.2022.48320.1079

Keywords

Critical Discourse Analysis, ideology, social media, positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, Ideological Square Model

Authors

First Name

Mervat

Last Name

Ahmed

MiddleName

Mahmoud

Affiliation

Department of Language and Translation, College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria, Egypt.

Email

mervat.mah@aast.edu

City

Alexandria

Orcid

-

Volume

2021

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

30225

Issue Date

2021-12-01

Receive Date

2020-11-14

Publish Date

2021-12-01

Page Start

145

Page End

163

Print ISSN

0575-1624

Online ISSN

2682-2504

Article File

CSE_Volume 2021_Issue 2_Pages 145-163.pdf

PDF . 362.5kB

Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/article_217145.html

Detail API

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=217145

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9

Type

Original Article

Type Code

738

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Cairo Studies in English

Publication Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Polarization and Negative-Other “China” Presentation in US President Trump’s COVID-19 Tweets: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023