Othering is a language process which does not only occur in spoken language, but also in written. Nowadays, such a negative portrayal and creation of the perfect other is often happening in a rather hidden and indirect manner. This paper explores whether Donald J. Trump indulged in the act of Othering in his Tweets, and whether this happened in a direct or indirect way. The findings lead to an understanding whether Othering is being accepted in politics or not.
What comes as a blessing has also its downsides, as not only positive but also negative opinions are omnipresent on the internet. This is due to the possibility to upload almost everything, as not every website has a way to censor inappropriate content. Furthermore, having a filter for written or pictured hate crime does not prevent it from happening as it is not always straight forward, and hateful messages can come in disguise.
An uncountable number of these more or less hidden hate crimes are a sort of 'Othering' as people tend to put themselves in opposition to others to create a sense of solidarity with those who share sameness and to have some excuse to keep up power relationships. With this, it becomes clear that language itself, in the case of this paper explicitly the written one, is a powerful tool to exert authority and domination on others, especially when used by people in power, like politicians.
Therefore, the question this paper tries to answer is how written discourse in the Tweets of Trump creates the feeling of separation and dominance that underlies the act of 'Othering' and whether this reflects a direct or indirect, and with this more subtle and normalized, use of power discourse. In this thesis, only those people Trump constantly portrays as dangerous foreigners, intruders, therefore not 'Americans', are included in the analysis, by looking at how he structures his discourse around them. These include Mexicans and Muslims, both to be found under the umbrella term of (illegal) immigrants.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Power of Language
2.1 The Connection between Language and Society
2.2 Written Discourse as a Specific Type of Discourse
2.3 Social Media and Twitter
3. Donald Trump
3.1 Donald J. Trump
3.2 A Short Overview on Trump’s Presidential Career
3.3 Trump’s Immigration Policy
4. Ideologies and Fears Surrounding Othering
4.1 Patriotism
4.2 American Exceptionalism
4.3 Islamophobia
5. Othering
5.1 Historical Background and Definition
5.2 Mechanisms of Othering
5.3 Reasons onto which Othering is being justified
5.4 Repercussions of Othering
6. Analysis Process explained
6.1 CDA
6.2 Software used
6.3 Three Levels of Analysis
6.3.1 Description Level Explained
6.3.2 Interpretation Level Explained
6.3.3 Explanation Level Explained
7. Analysis
7.1 Description Level
1.1 Immigrant, Illegals, Refugee: How Are Others Portrayed Linguistically
1.2 Immigrant, Illegals, Refugee: How Are the Others Divided Linguistically
1.3 Immigrant, Illegals, Refugee: How Are Power Relations Sustained
2.1 Hispanic, Mexican: How Are Others Portrayed Linguistically
2.2 Hispanic, Mexican: How Are the Others Divided Linguistically
2.3 Hispanic, Mexican: How Are Power Relations Sustained
3.1 Islam, Muslim: How Are Others Portrayed Linguistically
3.2 Islam, Muslim: How Are the Others Divided Linguistically
3.3 Islam, Muslim: How Are Power Relations Sustained
7.2 Interpretation Level
7.2.1 How Are the Others Portrayed Linguistically
7.2.2 How Are the Others Divided Linguistically
7.2.3 How Are Power Relations Sustained
7.3 Explanation Level
8. Conclusion
Didactic Approach
Tweet-Appendix
‘immigrant’
‘illegals’
‘refugee’
‘Mexican’
‘Hispanic’
‘Muslim’
‘Islam’
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Here some expressions of thanks for all those people who helped me through this last step of my studies.
To Konstantin Priol, for encouraging me to keep on writing, especially during the time of lock-down and for his endless emotional support.
To Lea Gasser, for being my role model when it comes to study- and work-life achievements, pushing me to do my very best and for being always by side, like a sister.
To Nora Hofer, for her precious advice and immense help when it came to the cyber stuff.
To my tutor Ulrich Pallua, for giving me the freedom to indulge in something so specific and peculiar.
To Bibi and Andreas Priol, for letting me live in Salzburg during the time of lock-down, providing me with the perfect place to spend time on my paper and for everything else they taught me in this short time.
Lastly, to my family, Silvana Lonardi, Alfred Dalvai, Alessio Dalvai, Selenia Dalvai and Kevin O’Brien, whom I owe everything I have achieved so far. I am immensely grateful for their inexhaustible support, for their precious life lessons and for believing in me.
1. Introduction
We live in a time where changes and developments are happening fast. Knowledge has never been so accessible thanks to electronic devices and communication tools. One of these is the Internet, which allows for all kinds of news to be shared. Through this fast exchange of information, human rights are put in the spotlight more than ever, as injustices are being uncovered. What seemed normal and harmless at first is being questioned and investigated online as it is possible for almost everyone to express their opinion. This has had the positive side effect of uniting people, as it unveils shared ideologies all around the globe instead of only those shared by the people close-by. With this, the Internet has made it easier for masses of people to come together to fight for their beliefs.
What comes as a blessing has also its downsides as not only positive but also negative opinions are omnipresent on the internet. This is due to the possibility to upload almost everything as not every website has a way to censor inappropriate content. Furthermore, having a filter for written or pictured hate crime does not prevent it from happening as it is not always straight forward, and hateful messages can come in disguise.
An uncountable number of these more or less hidden hate crimes are a sort of ‘Othering’ as people tend to put themselves in opposition to others to create a sense of solidarity with those who share sameness and to have some excuse to keep up power relationships. With this, it becomes clear that language itself, in the case of this paper explicitly the written one, is a powerful tool to exert authority and domination on others, especially when used by people in power, like politicians (cf. Fairclough 1). “In the United States, [for example,] politicians used to engage in what scholar Ian Haney-Lopez calls ‘dog whistles’ - they could make references to Others but only in a coded way; never saying ‘those Mexicans’ or ‘those Muslims’” (Powell 2017), therefore indulging in a rather indirect way of ‘Othering’ which should not be underestimated.
The act of ‘Othering’ is even more dangerous when done in a direct way as it creates the illusion that it is acceptable for people to indulge in it (cf. Powell 2017). This has become evident in the last century where politicians started to say whatever they want and with that ignoring the people who suffer under the act of being othered in such an open way. This has repercussions on what the population feels is acceptable and what not as it “has opened a space where people are emboldened to be more explicit (...) to exclude and dehumanize” (Powell 2017). This has had the effect of normalizing ‘Othering’ which per se is already dangerous enough when happening in disguise. “When Mexicans can be called ‘rapists and drug dealers’ in direct contradiction to the facts, it becomes a much easier step to call for their deportation, and for a literal wall to divide us” (Powell 2017).
This open accusation made by Donald J. Trump was all over the news for a long time as well as other straightforward offenses. Trump is known for his directness which some might call sheer stupidity. Sadly, as a person in power, his actions have immense repercussions and shape what is perceived as normal in our everyday language use. As the President of the United States, his word choice, in spoken as well as written discourse, should meet certain standards, which he simply did not and still does not meet, not even during his presidency. This can be seen in speeches, but also on his social media accounts, first and foremost on Twitter. His position of power as well as the absurd number of Tweets he posts on average and the fact that written discourse does not have to be transcribed before analysing it, makes his Twitter account the perfect source to analyse ‘Othering’.
Therefore, the question this paper tries to answer is how written discourse in the Tweets of Trump creates the feeling of separation and dominance that underlies the act of ‘Othering’ and whether this reflects a direct or indirect, and with this more subtle and normalized, use of power discourse. In this thesis, only those people Trump constantly portrays as dangerous foreigners, intruders, therefore not ‘Americans’, are included in the analysis, by looking at how he structures his discourse around them. These include Mexicans and Muslims, both to be found under the umbrella term of (illegal) immigrants.
To answer this question, the thesis provides an introductory chapter on the power of language in our society, with a focus on written discourse and twitter. This is followed by a chapter on Donald J. Trump and a chapter on ideologies and fears which are connected to both Trump as well as the act of ‘Othering’. Subsequently, a chapter on ‘Othering’ shed light on the term’s history and definition. Three further subchapters tackle the mechanisms of ‘Othering’, its reasons and repercussion. These are later included in chapter 7.3 of the analysis to draw conclusions on their presence or absence in Trump’s Tweets.
Chapter 6 provides an overview of the procedural stages of the analysis, with a subchapter on the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis, hereafter referred to as CDA as well as a subchapter on the Software being used. It ends with a subchapter that thoroughly exposes linguistic strategies which can reinforce power-relations and ‘Othering’. These will be taken into consideration when analysing the Tweets in chapter 7 by using them as codes to find and categorize language strategies which reinforce ‘Othering’.
To reduce the quantity of Tweets to only those needed, the website trumptwitterarchive.com is used. Here, Tweets containing the words ‘illegals’, ‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’, ‘Mexican’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ are extracted. These are then uploaded in the MAXQDA Software, which is a helpful tool to clearly define the occurrence of words, phrases, or grammatical features as well as the linguistic strategies mentioned above and to comprehensively structure the results in categories.
After having structured and evaluated the data with the help of the MAXQDA Software, the results are exposed in a table. In a second step, the most striking linguistic findings of the description level are exposed and explained. This part is of a quantitative nature as well as it is crucial to see whether patterns reoccur to understand the severity of the results and whether these pattern repetitions stopped over time. Lastly, the mechanisms of ‘Othering’ which happen in the Tweets are pinned down and explained with examples, as well as reasons which Trump might be using as an excuse to justify ‘Othering’.
In the last part, a conclusion outlines all the findings and give an answer to the research question. It will become apparent whether ‘Othering’ is happening in a direct or indirect way and what contributes the most to the act of Othering
The paper ends with a chapter that analyses this topic from a pedagogical perspective to show how it can be used to expand the students’ questioning and analysing skills.
2. The Power of Language
2.1 The Connection between Language and Society
Written or spoken sentences are not only singular utterances which happen in an empty space and are not shaped solely by the individual creating them. This misbelief was first purported by Ferdinand de Saussure, who interpreted parole as something “determined purely by individual choices, not socially at all” (Fairclough 20). The renowned Professor of Linguistics Norman Fairclough denies this by saying that language and social phenomena are not only connected, they are the same thing (cf. 20). To do this connection justice, the term discourse for language can be used and will be used throughout this paper. Fairclough describes discourse as “language [use] as a form of social practice” (41); in other words, utterances that are connected to life itself as they are socially determined and which in turn shape society (cf. Fairclough 20-23).
If language is indeed a social practice, it means that we express so much more than just words. Language is not only “determined by social structures” (Fairclough 17), but it also represents them and in turn affects them and changes them. Fairclough calls this a dialectical relationship in which both sides influence each other (cf. 37). With this, discourse is able to produce social structures and in return is determined by the latter. Social structures, on the other hand, “determine social practice (...) [and they] are also a product of” it (Fairclough 37-38). Therefore, when we emit an utterance, be it written or spoken, we mirror what is being accepted by society, so called “orders of discourse” a term used by the French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault. These are “sets of conventions associated with social institutions” (Fairclough 17) which determine the discourse. Therefore, individuals can only act within the boundaries of “the social conventions” (Fairclough 28) which are already set. Additionally, orders of discourse “are ideologically shaped by power relations in social institutions and in society as a whole” (Fairclough 17). With this, discourse as depending from these orders of discourse, helps to sustain certain social relationships (cf. Fairclough 20).
A key aspect of this interrelationship between language and society is that discourse is indeed “involved in power, and struggles for power” (Fairclough 17) and that it is mostly used by powerful participants who want to control and constrain what non-powerful participants want to say (cf. Fairclough 46). It is easy for the dominant part to exercise the discoursal power and set their conventions to which the minority is bound to adhere. This truth is often forgotten or dismissed or not recognized at all and with this its negative potential grows. Fairclough calls this unconsciousness of the power of discourse an “opacity of discourse” (41). Groups involved in this unequal relationship are mostly from different backgrounds or have some kind of visual difference. Fairclough calls those in power “gatekeepers” (47) as they are the ones who hold the power to assign jobs and therefore are able to close or open gates of possible futures.
All this becomes even more relevant when happening in a political context. The discussions about what is legit in political language and what not shapes the political landscape itself as it sets the boundaries of what can and what cannot be (cf. Fairclough 23). Fairclough again argues that disputes and discussions about language in politics “are [indeed] politics” (23). What is acceptable in this sphere of political discourse can change over time depending on the “changing relationships of power” (Fairclough 30). Here again it gets visible that not only is the outside reality able to change discourse, but also vice versa.
The boundaries of such political power are connected to what Fairclough calls ideology as well. These are non-questionable assumptions and idealized actions which claim to be the norm, a standard which has the authority to exercise power (Fairclough 33). This “ideological power” (Fairclough 33), the power to project one’s practices as universal and ‘common sense’, is a significant component of discourse as it creates consent which is not to be scrutinized. Consent is a legitimization of certain language use and through that certain social relations (cf. Fairclough 36). The importance of consent will be further discussed in chapter 5.1 about Othering. Through consent, ideology helps to maintain unequal power relations and with this “the position of the dominant class” (Fairclough 36).
Consent is double-sided. As discourse is not only about emitting but also receiving, it can be stated that the interpretation of utterances also has an impact on social standards. “The way people interpret features of texts depends upon which social - more specifically, discoursal - conventions they are assuming to hold”. (Fairclough 19). Therefore, whether discourse is being accepted or not is also a sign of acceptance and positive reinforcement of what it implies in the nonverbal world. This indicates that “the relationship between discourse and society is a dialectical one” as it is not only about domination by the elite, but also about the “acceptance and reproduction” (Teo 43) of discourse by the othered group.
In this regard, Fairclough distinguishes the process of production and the process of interpretation which happen in an interaction and the surrounding and constant context, which he calls social conditions of production and of interpretation (25). He states it is the social context which shapes what humans might and might not find as normal in a conversation and “which in turn shape[s] the way in which texts are produced and interpreted” (25). Therefore, both the imminent and the remote context of a discourse has to be considered when trying to grasp its full meaning (26).
With this it becomes clear that language is involved in the maintenance of power relationships. People can dominate other people through language and not only with sheer force as the purpose language has or can fulfill has grown dramatically, making it more complex (cf. Fairclough 1-3). Nevertheless, Fairclough warns against focusing too much on this one aspect of power as it is not is “just a matter of language” (3). There are others as well, but they will not be further discussed in this paper.
2.2 Written Discourse as a Specific Type of Discourse
Although the focus of this paper is on online texts, it is still referred to as discourse as it is still part of “the whole process of social interaction” (Fairclough 24), according to Fairclough. Still, there is a significant difference to the production of spoken discourse as it varies in time and mode. As Fairclough suggests, “a not inconsiderable proportion of discourse in contemporary society actually involves participants who are separated in place and time” (Fairclough 49). This concerns written language in general as well as mass media (cf. Fairclough 49). In producing written discourse, there is the opportunity of changing what has been produced and reconsidering certain formulations and vocabulary. One would think that this possibility should make written discourse easier to handle and consequently easier to avoid mistakes, but this is not always the case.
Additionally, written discourse differs from spoken in its “hidden ” potential to create unequal relations of power (cf. Fairclough 49). What becomes obvious in face-to-face conversations through interruption, direct orders, intonation etc. is not so straight forward in written discourse (cf. Fairclough 45-46). There is no way of responding directly and simultaneously to something that has been written. This is even true for online discourse although there is the possibility of writing back seconds after a comment has been published. The problem remains as the writer of the comment is not bound to answer and might not even look at the comments. With this, the constrains which written language can exercise on the non-powerful ones are not that direct as it is often a one-way discourse. But the controlling power on what the non-powerful can say or how they can react is still there as language holds power to create non-questionable realities as already discussed.
This all applies to the space of social media online as well, like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. of which the latter will be further discussed in the next chapter.
2.3 Social Media and Twitter
The power of social media lies in its fast-changing surface and dynamicity which mirrors human behaviour and interaction. Weller et al. described this as a “rich tapestry of everyday, real-time communication” (431). Opinions can be shared with millions of people and the simplest thought can be made known, transferring it from the “personal [sphere] to the global” (Veliu 1). This offers the opportunity of analysing individuals, groups or society as a whole, “measuring consumer behavior and attitudes [as well as] detecting and tracking complex real-time events such as natural disasters and disease propagation” (Veliu 13).
Social media networks differ in a lot of aspects, such as user number and type. For example, Facebook is ranked as the social network with the highest number of active users: about 2449 million as stated by the statistical portal Statista.com (cf. Clement), followed by YouTube and some instant messaging services such as WhatsApp and Messenger. In contrast to this, Twitter, which started out in 2006 as a niche service, is only on the 13th place, but with 340 million active users (cf. Clement; cf. Weller 29). Nevertheless, it differs from most of the other social networks in terms of the type of users as for example some politicians, like Donald J. Trump, Barack Obama, Matteo Salvini etc., and other celebrities, for example the Pope, tend to use it quite often. With this, Twitter “is increasingly used as a source of real-time information and a place for debate in news, politics, business, and entertainment” (Weller 30). This raises its potential for research, making it “increasingly important for academic communities” (Ross et al. 214) for it can function as a mass media tool in the dissemination of ideas, opinions and information and thus help “shaping and framing people’s perception of the world” (Udah 394). For this reason, Twitter was singled out for the analysis of the online presence of Donald J. Trump.
Through the exploitation of its disseminative potential, it is possible to use twitter for good, as well as bad purposes. A good usage of it was shown in the “2007 Nigerian election protests, the 2008-2009 Iranian protests, the 2011 Arab Spring protests” in which it was “used as a powerful tool for communication and coordination during [these] global political and social protests (Veliu 12-13). People feel connected and endorsed in their everyday struggles through this process of microblogging, which Ross et al. define as “a variant of blogging which allows users to quickly post short updates, providing an innovative communication method that can be seen as a hybrid of blogging, instant messaging, social networking and status notifications” (214). By discussing political topics online and the possibility to directly see the opinion of politicians, Twitter has opened up the otherwise so confined space of politics which in the past only allowed its closest members to indulge in debates of any kind of topic (cf. Weller 305).
Nevertheless, as already mentioned, there is also a downside to it. Brian L. Ott argues that Twitter is changing the way we talk to each other as did the rise of the television before it, and not in a good way (cf. 59). He claims that it “promotes public discourse that is simple, impetuous, and frequently denigrating and dehumanizing” (60). This can be put down to the character limitation of Twitter, which allows only up to 140 characters per Tweet (cf. Ott 60).
This simplifying nature of Twitter is not dangerous in every case, but only in those instances in which discourse should remain more complex and informative, like in the discourse of politicians or in discourse about “issues of social, cultural, and political import” (Ott 60). For this reason, the overpresence of politicians on twitter can only result in something negative, especially when they have an extremely high number of followers and write about their subjective views instead of objective political facts. This self-revelatory aspect can result in an oversharing of unnecessary and subjective thoughts which might have better stayed silent. With this, a politician on twitter holds the power to control the discourse flow by generalizing statements as if they were objective.
Another dangerous aspect of twitter is the fact that there is no stop to the number of Tweets and Retweets one can post during a day. With this feature, it becomes possible for one single person “to re-present, over and over, some groups, some identities, some imaginings [and with this] (...) marginalize or even exclude others, and thereby make them seem unfamiliar or even threatening” (Udah 394).
All these features of twitter get exploited on a rather worrisome scale by Donald J. Trump, one of the most prominent users. At the time of writing this thesis, February/May 2020, Trump has up to the writing of this paper, May 2020, 77.2 Million followers on his account, @realDonaldTrump. Although more than half of it are believed to be fake or inactive, it is still a huge number of followers (cf. Campoy). Another high number is the total of his Tweets since the opening of his account on May 4, 2009, which amounts to 50 678 Tweets, an average of 12,9 Tweets a day (cf. Socialbakers). The at times extreme usage of Twitter and his central position of power, make him the perfect subject for analysis.
3. Donald Trump
3.1 Donald J. Trump
When reading this paper, it is important to understand and keep in mind that no information given in the theoretical part as well as in the analysis itself, can be completely free of subjectivity. Fairclough insists that especially in the stage of interpretation, no text is safe from “the social orders” (27), attitudes, personal experiences, political beliefs, values and expectations the interpreter brings to the analysis. These limit the way a discourse can be analysed as “situations may be differently interpreted if different social orders are being drawn upon” (Fairclough 151). With this, Fairclough regards interpretation as a double-edged sword as it does not entirely depend on “what is in the text [but mostly on] (...) what is ‘in’ the interpreter” (141).
It becomes clear that, in an analysis of Othering in Trump’s Tweets, a certain stance has already been taken by the researcher and that a certain reputation precedes the researched. This implies that the interpretation happens on a top-down level, meaning that the opinion of a reader about the writer or about a topic influences the way a text is being analysed (cf. Fairclough 145). The subjectivity of the research can be minimized by trying to look at a text in a bottom-up way and by this applying an objective lens when looking at discourse, but only to some extent (cf. Fairclough 145).
Objectivity seems even less achievable in written discourse, such as this one, than in spoken one as there is a significant difference between the two. Spoken discourse “is interwoven with gestures, facial expression, movement, posture” (Fairclough 27), so called visuals, which enrich and, in most cases, narrow down the possibilities of interpretation. Written discourse, on the other hand, leaves the readers to their imagination of how the writer really has acted when composing a text and what he/she has meant to convey.
Therefore, the analyst’s opinion on Donald J. Trump must be made clear as it is important to “be sensitive to what resources [the analysist is] (.) relying upon to do analysis” (Fairclough 167) and, with this, being fair to the integrity of the analysis and to the reader’s understanding of this paper. I have been following Trump’s political career since the start of his presidential campaign. I cannot deny that I was hoping for Hilary Clinton to win the race and become the first female President of the United States. When this did not happen, I got really interested in the reasons that led to Trump’s victory and so I started watching The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on YouTube almost every day, as his main topic happens to be exactly Trump, whom he discusses in both a serious as well as a funny tone. It fascinated me that so many people liked him and that they did not seem to be bothered by some of his actions and opinions, for example his handling of the abortion laws, gun control laws as well as his hatred towards other cultures and the way he talks about women. With all the new information on Trump, my rather negative opinion on him did not really change but got solidified. Nevertheless, the outcome of the analysis will not be influenced by my previous assumptions on Trump as I will let the Tweets be the ultimate judges in the end, by either confirming or disproving my ideas.
3.2 A Short Overview on Trump’s Presidential Career
Trump started his presidential campaign as an outsider who claimed to be a Republican, although some of his principles and actions do not completely mirror the traditional interests of that party. For example, in contrast to him, most of the Republicans believe in free trade and cooperation with the rest of the world (cf. Horst 1-2). He literally hijacked the republican party to succeed in winning the 58th quadrennial presidential race against the ex-secretary of the State and Democratic nominee, Hilary Clinton, held on November 8, 2016. He became the 45th president on January 20, 2017.
Notwithstanding his political victory, Trump’s popularity has always been doubtful. This was first shown/This became obvious when he won the election not through the popular vote but by 77 electoral colleges’ votes. Never had an approval rating been so low as in Trump’s case, both when he started his presidency (45%) as well as at the check-up at half time, in 2019 with only 37% Americans approving of his administration (cf. Horst 3). This can be traced to the sharpened polarisation his political conduct has triggered, widening the gap between Republicans and Democrats (cf. Horst 3). Albeit this evidently negative reputation, Horst argues that he could still be re-elected this year, 2020, as his popularity amongst Republicans has been and still is high, amounting on average to over 80% (cf. 4). Therefore, he could again bypass the popular vote and win through the Electoral College.
His stances and beliefs are an essential part of this thesis as they possess the power to shape reality. During his campaign as well during his presidency, he followed some main goals, which were and still are ubiquitous in the news all around the globe, for instance tax cuts, doing away with Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, stopping illegal immigration, building a wall at the Mexican border and many others (cf. Horst 7). Some of these goals he only partly achieved as the abrogation of ‘ObamaCare’; others, like the drilling of arctic soil for oil, were brought through (cf. Horst 9). He undid some of the decrees carried through by the Obama administration, for example the act which compelled every state to economically support healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood, providing appropriate counsel to pregnant women who want to abort (cf. Horst 11).
3.3 Trump’s Immigration Policy
Although all these laws would be worth a closer examination, what is most central to this thesis is Trump’s immigration policy as it is key to the Tweets concerned. In this regard, his main goals were and still are imposing import tariffs to achieve his America First policy, building a wall at the Mexican border and stopping illegal immigration and terrorism not only through the erection of the wall, but also by signing executive orders, like the ‘Muslim Ban’ (cf. Horst 12-13). He did not accomplish to achieve these and other initiatives, at least not in the way and length he had intended to (cf. Horst 13). Still, they are symbolic for his wish to exclude people from his inner circle.
The first is his stance towards the Muslim community and the actions with which he thinks he can handle the problems he connects with them, for example terrorism. Trump spread his opinion on the Muslim community through “anti-Muslim invectives” (Khan et al. 2) during his electoral campaign. He did not and still does not possess the affinity to distinguish between terrorism and Islam or Muslims in his discourse, which poses a great danger. Through this Islamophobic rhetoric and the use of discursive strategies which emphasize differences and negative qualities, he was able to win over an unpredictable number of voters which had already started fostering such negative stereotypes since 9/11 (cf. Khan et al. 2). More on Islamophobia in chapter 4.3.
Political actions followed on January 27, 2017, when Trump released an executive order formally titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States but overall known as Muslim Ban. The name of this travel embargo speaks for itself as it associates terrorists with Muslims, banning people of Muslim-majority countries which Trump’s administration regarded as dangerous. Its Islamophobic overtone and content did not pass unnoticed and had to be revised three times before being accepted by the Supreme Court (cf. Horst 13). In the end, the ban applies to people arriving to the USA from ‘only’ seven countries (Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela) (cf. Horst 13).
Not only did Trump’s open hatred have consequences in politics, but also in the public sphere itself. It gave people cause to let out their own fear and anger without restriction, resulting in an increase of anti-Muslim incidents all around the country. During Trump’s election year, such incidents increased by about 57 percent in contrast to the previous year and “more than 700 Islamophobic and racist harassment or intimidation incidents were reported” in the OIC (2017) report (15). Furthermore, “a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center mentioned that anti-Muslim hate groups nearly triple in US since 2016, from 34 to more than 100” (OIC 15). This resulted in an increase of fear amongst “the 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States” (OIC 14). It is important to keep in mind that all these changes had been triggered by Trump’s discourse and what he regarded as acceptable to say out loud. This is a perfect example for the power of language already mentioned.
Another policy worth mentioning is Trump’s family separation policy, which is part of his plan to deter immigrants coming from Central America. His administration was already considering this move two months after Trump’s presidential inauguration, in March 2017 (cf. Ainsley 2017). One year later, CNN reported “that about 700 migrant children had been taken away from their parents at the southern border since October. More than 100 were younger than 4. Department of Homeland Security officials said the agency did not split families apart to deter illegal immigration, but rather to”(Reyes) protect the children. Furthermore, legal teams visiting the holding facilities uncovered the unacceptable conditions infants, children as well as youngsters had to live in, denouncing a general overcrowdedness, “inadequate food, water and sanitation” (Attanasio). Moreover, instances were recounted in which children had to take care of younger children, infants so young they would not have been able to give information on who their parents are (cf. Attanasio).
On June 20, 2018, Trump had to revoke the policy as it was met by a loud public outcry, leading to demonstrations and protests all around the nation (cf. Arango). However, separations did not stop immediately, and his zero-tolerance policy was kept running, making sure whole families would be detained from coming in the USA (cf. Pena 156). It is not clear to what numbers the then separated and still separated children amounts to as it is difficult to find a reliable source online and “because of the government’s negligence in keeping records” (Pena 156). The available sources are rather contradictory and therefore, no further speculations shall be made as the severity of this policy is already tangible enough even though it is safe to say that the number of separated children certainly exceeded the 700 mentioned before.
The second policy worth mentioning in regard to ‘Othering’ is his wish to erect a wall at the Mexican border in order to stop illegal immigration. He made it “a centerpiece of his 2016 election campaign” (Hesson}, professing he wanted to make Mexico pay for it. In the end, the plan did not go through as he wished. Mexico did not fund the paying, instead military funds as well as other sources of diverted money were used to finance the replacement or reinforcement of already existing border parts. So far, 129 miles have been built, according to a Tweet of the President on March 5, 2020 at 10:27:23 PM. This is not even close to the 400 miles promised by Trump in his campaign; nevertheless, the impact of it is not to be underestimated.
First of all, there is an expected ecological damage going along with the building of the wall. Melissa W. Wright argued that the wall “will slice through several national parks, conservation areas, and wildlife refuges and will create a hazard for some ninety-three endangered animal species with the potential of directly contributing to the extinction of the jaguar and pygmy owl” (512).
Besides this ecological damage, a sociological one is expected as well. The wall will be “a monument to racism” as it legitimizes ‘border-thinking’ (Sierra Club 2018 in Wright 512). This way of seeing the world nourishes ideologies that favour the separation of people. With this, even just the discourse around building such a wall can pose a danger to people’s way of thinking as it is the acceptance of open verbal discrimination that gives way to the physical action. For this reason, it is necessary to address the problem at its source, which in most cases is grounded on an ideology, a way of thinking that is so present and imperturbable in people’s lives that it can distort their perception on different topics.
4. Ideologies and Fears Surrounding Othering
4.1 Patriotism
The acceptance of Trump’s immigration policy can be traced back to the ideologies of American exceptionalism as well as patriotism. Patriotism is an ideology as the -ism discloses, to be found in almost every nation at some level and therefore does not only appear in the context of the USA. It reflects a love and deep pride for one’s nation, at least for some selected parts, for example the nation’s history, “particular triumphs, sacrifices, and sufferings” (McClay 40). Exactly these peculiarities make a nation’s individuality shine through and with this helps to reinforce the feeling of patriotism.
Patriotism is certainly not the only ideology that ‘American’ people hold. On the contrary, it is rather like the psychologist Erik Erikson once said: “Whatever one may come to consider a truly American trait can be shown to have its equally characteristic opposite” (258). This makes the USA a country with extreme polarities and contrasts, creating “tensions between individualism and conformity, internationalism and isolationism, open-mindedness and closed- mindedness, cosmopolitanism and localism, generosity and xenophobia, secularity and religiosity, (...) idealism and materialism--to name but a few such examples” (McClay 37). The fact that people with such divergent stances can live almost peacefully alongside each other without having to choose between them “has been one of the greatest of American [political and social] achievements” (McClay 41) and it reflects what the notion of being American actually means for most of its population, that is a sharing of subordinated universal ideas, like the right of freedom and equality. On this basis, immigrants have been welcomed for centuries and later accepted as Americans as one does not have to be born on American soil to share its views (cf. McClay 38-39).
Albeit this variety of ideologies, patriotism has not experienced the abatement some might have expected and prevised with the start of this new century (cf. McClay 37). This may result from various reasons and occurrences which could have ignited the fear for outside threats again, for example 9/11 (cf. McClay 37). McClay explains that in such perilous times a nation tries to focus its energy “on more clearly defined and proximate goals (...) [which do not allow for diverging opinions as] there is less time, or willingness, to engage in the kinds of open-ended debate and endless dithering that are the glory of peacetime democracy” (McClay 37). Because of this, multiculturalism in America is not seen as unifying different cultures in one single nation, but rather “an uneasy collection of incommensurable subcultures” (McClay 37) living alongside each other. This reinforces the sense of us versus them, creating an ingroup and various other outgroups.
Another reason for the invariable situation that leads to patriotism is the way ‘Americans’ deal with news. McClay argues that ‘Americans’ tend to sentimentalise events instead of discussing them in an appropriate manner as they lack the knowledge and “the intellectual wherewithal to engage in such discussions” (38). This might as well have to do with the fact that the matters have indeed become more complex. With this, patriotism has become a fashionable way to give reason to their simple arguments.
However, this does not only concern the general public; even politicians do not shy away from using the term. Within America’s politics it is not clear cut who indulges in patriotism and who does not. For example, it is incorrect and therefore also dangerous to say that only Republicans are patriotic. This was shown in a study done by Gilmore and Rowling (2019) who suggested “that Democrats, particularly in the post-Cold War era, have strategically sought to at least level the playing field on ownership of patriotism and American exceptionalism” (410). This gets visible for example in a quote of John F. Kerry, a Democrat who run for President in the 2004 election, saying: “We know that they [Republicans] don’t own the flag: they don’t own patriotism; they don’t own strength. All of these values belong to all of America” (para. 12). Barack Obama also tried to dismiss the idea in 2008 that Democrats are not enough patriotic by saying “So let us agree that patriotism has no party” (para. 67). So it seems that patriotism is an ideology one should aspire to follow and which is not entirely negative. This certainly reflects the truth depending on the level and usage of patriotic feelings.
4.2 American Exceptionalism
For example, extremer forms of patriotism can be linked to the ideology of American exceptionalism, in which Americans see themselves as a “superior and unique civilization destined to guide the world” (Tyrrell 2016; Gilmore and Rowling 2019). This concept was first posed “as a coherent doctrine” by academics “in the post-1945 age” (Tyrrell) and has since then changed its shape becoming the definition mentioned above at the start of the 21st century, especially with George W. Bush and 9/11.
Although Trump is not so fond of the ideology of American exceptionalism as he invokes it “significantly less often than his Democratic contemporaries” (Gilmore and Rowling 410), it was still linked to his presidential campaign. This became visible in his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” which was regarded by many as meaning “Make America Exceptional Again”. Furthermore, his catchphrase “America First” reflects what exceptionalism and, to some extent, patriotism want to finally achieve: elevating one’s nation and downgrading all the others by ignoring the concept of fraternity and benevolence (cf. Gilmore and Rowling 399).
4.3 Islamophobia
These ideologies often occur in connection to fears fostered against those which do not belong to the same ‘group’. One of these fears is Islamophobia, which is a “’fear of Islam’, or in other words ‘hatred towards Muslims’” (Khan et al. 2). Mainstream media and politics do their bit in promoting anxiety by highlighting differences, for example the inaccurate notion that Muslims are “distinctly sexist and extremists in nature” (Khan et al. 3). Studies (Terman 2017; Sides and Gross 2013) have shown that a great number of Americans associate such and other negative attributes with Muslim people, making them the perfect ‘other’. It is no wonder that Americans fostering such anti-Muslim sentiments are afraid that Muslims will force them or trick them into adopting “Islamic law or [their] ways of life” (Considine 2017 in Khan et al. 3).
This fear of an Islamification may have restarted with 9/11 but is now even more present in Europe as well as in America through the refugee flood, which started in 2015. Naikita Foroutan (2016) compared Islamophobia to the anxiety surrounding a possible invasion of Jews at the beginning of the 19th century, to which also a rather heterogenous group of people gave credit to (98). The opinions which surrounded the nature of Jews mirror the opinions Islamophobic people foster as for example that Muslims are arrogant, cause a high birth-rate as well as a large-scale immigration, and with this put a strain onto the economy of the respective nation (Foroutan 98).
As the blame for antisemitic sentiments were put on Jews themselves, so are Muslims held at fault for the fear and hate ‘they’ create in Europeans, who feel compelled to respond with a strong national sentiment, such as patriotism is, to withstand the troubles ‘they’ cause (Foroutan 98). This was shown in a survey held by the “Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes” in the year 2014, in which 51% of people asked regarded the hostility around Muslim people as the fault of the latter (78). Foroutan (2016) argues that little if nothing has been done to ‘educate’ or ‘integrate’ these types of people, but a lot has been done to integrate foreigners into the nation’s cultural and social system (100). This turns out to be the core of Islamophobia as well as other unfounded hatred as right-wing extremist parties seem to be allowed to say anything that comes into their mind.
Foroutan (2016) regards Islamophobia as connected to a certain policy politics seems to be working with, which is the right of the public to express their own thoughts, sorrows as well as fears and the politician’s duty to take them seriously in any case (103). This is dangerous as more than often such fears are unfounded and based upon nothing problematic (104). Therefore, they should be regarded as paranoia and treated as such by politicians. Instead of endorsing and fostering such assumptions, politicians should investigate and address the causes of such paranoia, which can be poor education as well as latent racism, and try to solve these (Foroutan 104).
Politicians more than often do not care to change this situation. Instead they do anything they can to keep these false fears alive on purpose. This again is linked to the act of Othering as such ideologies and fears nourish themselves from the perspective of having a negative and subordinated counterpart.
5. Othering
5.1 Historical Background and Definition
The concept of Othering was first found in feminist theory of the 1950s with writers like de Beauvoir who wrote “On the Nature of Men and Women”, addressing the differences between men and women and how they were kept running by patriarchal society (cf. Johnson et al. 254). Later on in 1981, Griffin discussed how the process of Othering happens through the attribution of negative aspects onto a chosen other (cf. Johnson et al. 254). In the 90s: scholars have used the notion of othering to examine the issues of racism, identity, and difference (Ahmad, 1993; Fine, 1994; S. Hall, 1991; Weis, 1995). () In recent years, othering practices have been examined in relation to the experiences of numerous groups including African American women (Taylor, 1999), lesbians (J.M. Hall et al., 1994), immigrant groups (Anderson e Reimer Kirkham, 1998), people with disabilities (Wendell, 1996), and clerical workers (Stevens et al., 1992). (Johnson et al. 254-5)
With this, it becomes transparent that Othering is connected to the creation of one’s identity through the separation to other identities. This process of differentiation to others and “categorising is natural, however the categories themselves are (socially) constructed (Hall 1997; Crang 1998; Tilly 1999 in Strani & Szczepaniak-Kozak 164). As this fact poses a great danger, it is important to have a clear understanding of what ‘Othering’ is.
Here the sociological definition given in Krumer-Nevo & Sidi, taken from Schwalbe et al., 2000, comes in handy as it sums up the essence of ‘Othering’ in a few words: Othering as “the attribution of inferiority to difference” (307). This differs from the more general psychological definition in which ‘Othering’ is merely an act of understanding one’s own persona by finding differences to others (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 307). It is obvious that the second definition diminishes the effects this process has on the ones being othered and instead focuses on the person who indulges in ‘Othering’.
To restrict it to this latter definition is dangerous as the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ created through this process are not always positive. Indeed, the projected attributes are mostly negative as it is usually “that which is undesirable in ourselves or repressed and buried in our unconscious” (Kristeva, 1991 in Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300) which is being projected onto the othered person or group of people. This “symbolic exile” (Hall 1997 in Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300) in which the Others are being sent is being held up by the constant attribution of differences which create the boundary and through which they “are reduced to objects which can be shaped to one’s will” (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 299). This assignment of inferiority creates an invisible hierarchy (cf. Strani & Szczepaniak-Kozak 164-5). Van Dijk (2001) goes a step further suggesting that it is not only the negativity of the Other’s representation which plays a role, but also the positive self-presentation of the dominant group, always to be found in this process. Micheal Billig assigned these two processes the names of outgroup derogation and ingroup favouritism.
This duality is indeed central to ‘Othering’ as it is all about the interests of the dominant group that have to do with the upholding and exploitation of power relationships by using a so-called ‘standard’, which can be referred to as ideology, and by categorizing other people in groups (cf. Strani & Szczepaniak-Kozak 164-165). These groups are made up of people the dominant party has selected, even though they sometimes might not even be from the same country, for example to the group of so called ‘immigrants’ (cf. Boréus 409). These groupings are passed down to the people who might not be in a power position, but who readily accept these categories to escape from the position of the second class citizen, assigning this position to migrants and with this becoming a full member of what is perceived as the state (cf. Foroutan 101).
With this, ‘Othering’ is about “discursive discrimination” as the dominant group is mistreating “members of an (alleged) group on account of their membership of that group” (Boréus 408) through language. It is central to understand this connection of such power games with language as discourse is the very starting point of it. There are two ways through which ‘Othering’ can happen in discourse as stated by Van Dijk (in Hällgren, 2005: 324-325). In the first, the discourse happens between people of the dominant group, who juxtapose their apparently ‘good’ qualities with the bad ones of the othered group. The second way involves both dominant and dominated members and often happens in a more subtle way, leaving the othered member wondering if this really happened. Both forms are a major issue and threat for the quality of life of those being othered as it “produces a sense of isolation, of apartness, of disconnectedness and alienation, including a feeling of being on the edges, on the margins, or on the periphery” (Udah 387), not being in control and instead losing one’s power.
Fairclough calls out two different ways to uphold these power relations, of which the latter is closely connected to discourse: coercion and consent (cf. 33) . Both are used to maximize “the profits and power of one[‘s] class” through the “exploitation and domination of another” (Fairclough 35). The former, coercion, is the excision of physical power over a person, “with the ultimate sanctions of physical violence or death” (Fairclough 33). Teo would call this part of the “old racism” as was to be found in the times of “racial segregation (...) in South Africa’s Apartheid policy or even [in the] genocide as we saw in Nazi Germany” (7).
Nevertheless, some traces of physical coercion are to be found in Trump’s way of ‘Othering’ as well. This shines through his desire to create real walls around the USA, which is at least somewhat similar to nonverbal violence. It becomes clear that Trump tries to achieve the final outcome of ‘Othering’ through the physical erection of a symbolic wall as “walls suggest division and danger; whatever lies beyond a wall is different and to be feared. Walls claim possession” (Andaya) of space and are therefore a symbol for separation. This increasing readiness to act out what first people only dared to think or suggest, like the erection of a wall, happens amongst normal people as well through hate crimes and attacks on people perceived as the other (cf. Foroutan 102). This proneness to act and to deny rights to the othered people is stronger in subject who have a deep feeling of national affiliation and identity (cf. Foroutan 103).
The latter, consent, has already been mentioned in chapter 3 as it plays an important role in the connection between society and language, embodying the acceptance of a certain state of power, and therefore is connected to ‘Othering’ as well. In this case, Barker (cf. 1981 in Teo 2000) suggests the term ‘new racism’ for this type of power relation. People in power trying to make others indulge in consent are not readily identifiable as racists (cf. Van Dijk, 1993). Nevertheless, they would speak or act in such a way that distances themselves from the ethnic minority, engaging in discursive strategies that blame the victims for their circumstances in their own social, economic and even cultural disadvantage and which reinforce the “dichotomous ‘Us’ versus “Them’ reality” which lies at the core of ‘Othering’ (Teo 8, 23). It is necessary to point out that in the last centuries a shift has happened in regard to how people or groups are being dominated and how this process is being sustained. Nowadays “social control is increasingly practiced (...) through consent” (Fairclough 32) and not through coercion. In these instances, consent is given by every participant in a discourse, even by those being othered if they do not protest.
The problem is that protesting is seldom an easy task as in most cases we are not only talking about a wide gap of social power, but of a significant difference of quantity between the two groupings as well. It is always the minority who gets othered and the majority who creates and determines the discourse and the associations perceived as acceptable as for example is the case of white Europeans. With this it becomes clear that the danger of ‘Othering’ does not lie in the singular person indulging in it, but in the collective. Writing about a certain issue or problem which has happened for real, as for example writing about a young immigrant doing something negative, is not per se wrong. However, if many people write about young immigrants only in connection with issues “and if that kind of article is the only kind” (Polite, 1998 in Borèus 411) they write about, then a lie is produced as it gives the impression that people with the same traits are prone to do the same things.
This could be compared to news about murder and rape when we are almost invariably told that the culprit is a man. This probably leads one to believe that almost all such crimes are committed by men; but it is unlikely to create the stereotype of men as rapists and murderers, since men appear in the news in a myriad of other contexts, neutral as well as positive. (Borèus 412)
This calls for the need to see people in different facets to stop generalizing facts. Kristina Borèus has summed up this issue in this table, to be found in her article “Discursive Discrimination: A Typology” (413). In this table, ‘Othering’ has to do with quantity as well as quality of the discriminatory, depending on how many times information is being repeated, how many people are being addressed and how factual the statement really is.
Table 2 Discriminatory negative attributions
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
5.2 Mechanisms of Othering
Power relations, as those upheld by using language, must be sustained and constantly defended (cf. Fairclough 35). This calls for mechanisms which do this purpose justice. These are not always easy to locate as the act of Othering can come in disguise and hide behind words which at first glance might appear politically correct and which generate easy consent. In this respect, “O’Barr (...) claims that today, when language is supposed to be tolerant of diversity, lexical terms tend to mitigate and disguise Othering, and it is harder to find explicit lexical strategies that are evidence of hierarchy, subordination, and dominance” (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300). Fairclough states for example that “indirect command or requests (.) may occur (.) where power relations are so clear that it is not necessary for the (.) [person] to be direct” (156-157).
Still there is a bunch of mechanisms which can be singled out as happening regularly when having to do with direct or indirect ‘Othering’. All of them problematize in one way or another the difference of the other’s culture or identity, which can be called an “over-emphasis on difference” (Essed 185).
One of these mechanisms is the creation of stereotypes, also known as topoi in Siegfried Jäger’s and Maier’s article “Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis” (Teo 41). Stereotypes are a form of standardized thoughts which have become normal, used and understood by many over time. By this, stereotypes create mental sets or scripts, which are used to construct realities as described in chapter 6.3.1 (cf. Jäger and Maier 2009, 47). Such constructed realities define and delimit what humans perceive as possible even though they do not necessarily bear much relation to the truth.
Exactly in this delimiting and simplifying nature lies the danger of stereotyping as stereotyped people are seen “as less variable but also as less complex” (Teo 16-17). It is in the nature of humans to “rearrange information to minimise or eliminate the inconsistency” by viewing “another person as consistent” (Freedman et al. 89) and with this, not only simplifying the handling of a situation, but the person or group itself. This can lead to prejudice towards a group of people as change and exceptions to the rule seem unlikely, which in turn makes it impossible for stereotyped people to proof themselves as it affects how other people act and behave towards them (cf. Teo 17). This perilous aspect of overgeneralization can be exploited by people and is extremely dangerous when imposed by those in control as they often have the power to reach a wide number of people with their opinion (cf. Fairclough 22). Having such a broad definition, stereotyping can be connected to all other mechanisms further mentioned.
This close connection applies for example to the mechanism of objectification of the research participants (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300). In this case, people are othered through the repression and denial “of their common humanity and their individual complexity and by ignoring (...) their personal perspectives” (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300). This mechanism results in stereotypical features, which seem simple, negative and inferior (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300).
Objectification is in close relation to the mechanism of deauthorization. In this process, the author of a discourse sample gets erased which gives the impression of complete objectivity with no subjective view. By making selective interpretations seem objective, creators of an utterance gain the power to shape reality, including the perception of people who are downgraded to malleable objects (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300).
Another mechanism of ‘Othering’ is called decontextualization. In this, the behaviour of othered people gets “abstracted from the context in which” it actually happened (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300). Consequently, the behaviour appears as having no sound reason or rationality. Instead, other reasons are used, which often mirror some kind of stereotype; for example, when communication problems due to some sort of language impairment are put down to race (cf. Johnson et al. 264). With this, behaviours become “generalized features of many rather than specific characteristics or specific responses to particular circumstances” (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300).
A mechanism which is closely connected to decontextualization is that of dehistorization as it bears a close resemblance to it (cf. Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300). In this process, the historical implications accompanying the acts of the othered people are ignored. These do not obligatorily have to do with the close context as this would fall into the mechanism mentioned before, but have to do with the overall historical background of people. With this, the dominant group is able to distort or completely neglect possible reasons and details behind actions by neglecting the frame in which all of the actions happen.
One more mechanism is the act of exclusion or separation , which runs through almost every act of ‘Othering’ as it is central to its definition. Different discursive strategies, further explained in chapter 6.3.1, can create outgroup and ingroup membership. This implies that a collective us is being created as opposed to an excluded them, the Other (cf. Becker 145). The us as well as the them can be of different sizes, including a different amount of people which do often amount to a whole nation.
5.3 Reasons onto which Othering is being justified
As explained in chapter 5.1, the reasons behind performing ‘Othering’ have always to do with the upholding of power relations. Nevertheless, there is a wish for this motivation to remain hidden. To achieve this, other reasons have to be given, which shift the focus on the othered person or group, making ‘Othering’ look as their fault. People are being othered for different reasons, drawn from differences which are portrayed as being the root of the problem and which can overlap at times or even merge in each other, making it difficult to separate them. Nevertheless, it is possible to pin down these reasons in different ways, two of them further described here.
The first way to categorise these at times invented reasons for Othering is given by Krumer-Nevo & Sidi. It involves three differentiation levels: “value judgments (the Other is perceived as good/bad [and therefore othered]), social distance (the Other is perceived as distant psychologically and physically), and knowledge (the history and culture of the Other is relatively unknown)” (Krumer-Nevo & Sidi 300).
It is to be noted that there is a direct connection between the first two as explained by Tzvetan Todorov. His findings can be summed up in two axes, here demonstrated in figure 1, which shows in what relation subjects stand to the Other. On the horizontal axe, the amount of identification with the Other is portrayed, whereas on the vertical axe the attribution of goodness or badness of the Other is pinned down. The former displays how probable it is for the subject to be othered as people one identifies with are not that easily othered, whereas the latter expresses the degree between a positive and a negative presentation of the Other. Here it is important to keep in mind that “to see ‘the other’ as good does not imply identification, and vice versa” and can still lead to ‘Othering’ (Boréus 421). The combination in which the connection can be found or not found varies from context to context.
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Figure 1
The second way involves a further/broader separation of reasons which are taken as an excuse for ‘Othering’. Each base can be incorporated in one of the differentiation categories mentioned before, which implies that people can get othered for more than one of these reasons here listed and explained. Nevertheless, not all the existing reasons are mentioned as this paper only focuses on three different generalized groupings, which are Muslims, Mexicans and immigrants, and therefore will not necessitate more reasons than the one here described.
The first reason worth mentioning why people are othered is religion. With this, differences which might exist between religious beliefs of one group in contrast to another get emphasised and touted as reason for the impossibility of a peaceful coexistence. For example, the hijab which has become a sign for the Muslim religion, serves as visual element which might trigger ‘Othering’ based on religious discrepancies.
The second reason which is used to justify or give reason to ‘Othering’ is race. For the integrity of this paper, it is important to note that the written or spoken use of the term race “has been banned and avoided” (Strani & Szczepaniak-Kozak 166) in recent years, a solution to which people of colour themselves came. “France banned the term ‘race’ from its legal texts in 2013 and the term is also banned in Germany. Italian scholars and anti-racist activists have also tended to avoid the term (see Hawthorne and Piccolo 2016) and have also called for banning it from official texts” (Strani & Szczepaniak-Kozak 166). But this does not solve the problem of racism; instead, it makes things more difficult as there is no term to describe what even without the use of the term happens on a daily basis all around the world (cf. Gunaratnam 2013). Warmington put it this way: “[R]ace, despite its unscientific status, remains real: a real practice, with its own inner workings, enacted by real subjects with consequences that reach way beyond rates of GCSE achievement or school exclusions.” (281282). To do justice to both my own rejection of this term and to the fact that it is not socially accepted anymore, I will cross it out each time I have to use it, a technique suggested by Jacques Derrida which signifies inadequacy yet necessity of a word (cf. Sarup 33).
Race “is a socially constructed concept that has been used to create distinctions between people based on perceived biological markers or characteristics” (Johnson et al 255). This includes differences regarding skin colour and physical or facial features. Skin colour can be a significant factor that puts people being othered because of this “at a disadvantage which in turn can have a remarkable impact on their socioeconomic outcomes”. (Udah 390). This is because skin colour can be associated with certain features. For example, in the following studies, the colour of dark-skinned people living in Australia “got associated with being crime prone (Arthur, 2009), mentally inferior (Bashi, 2004) and undisciplined (Waters, 1999)” (Udah 395). The associations which the use of race concepts create are a mirror to the domination and subordination of people, in which the white population constitutes the “unmarked norm” (Appiah et al. 2018) and therefore is in control of these categories.
The third base onto which people are othered can be summed up under the term ethnicity. In contrast to race, it has multiple facets, such as culture and nationality, as well as ancestry and language, under which point differences in accent are found as well. This makes ethnicity a multidimensional justification for ‘Othering’. For example, differences in culture are more than often used as a justification for the behaviour of people and with this used as a reason for treating people differently. This mirrors what can be called culturalism, which is what Eriksen & Stjernfelt described as follows: the idea that individuals are determined by their culture, that these cultures form closed, organic wholes, and that the individual is unable to leave his or her own culture but rather can only realise him or herself within it. Culturalism also maintains that cultures have a claim to special rights and protections - even if at the same time they violate individual rights. (n.p.)
This notion is dangerous as it promotes the justification of ‘Othering’ without looking closely at the real reason behind it, which is the sustainment of power relations. These are instead obfuscated by giving other reasons for the separation of people. For example, an immense importance is given to the national language and to the mastering of it. Its importance and status get visible when national languages are represented through national flags, instead of the term itself (cf. Becker 146-8). This implies a close connection of that certain language with the notion of belonging to a certain state, evoking the idea of ‘one nation, one language’ (cf. Becker 145). A lot of people are othered for the sole reason of not achieving this standard.
These reasons onto which ‘Othering’ is being justified and which try to give a reason for the necessity of it as well as the mechanisms mentioned in chapter 5.2 are going to be included in the interpretation level of the analysis to further categorize possible acts of ‘Othering’ in the Tweets of Trump.
5.4 Repercussions of Othering
Repercussions apply especially when ‘Othering’ happens in the field of politics where discourse is often bound to be followed by actions. Therefore, it can be claimed that the act of verbal Othering results in the sanction of physical Othering. This transferring into reality has shown itself in different instances, but most remarkably in Trump’s discourse surrounding ‘illegal immigrants’, as the erection of a real wall at the Mexican border is the personification of separation. Other examples for this transferring into reality were the Muslim Ban and the family separation policy, already tackled in chapter 3.3. These are examples of what can happen if Othering is being left unquestioned and thus accepted.
Nonetheless, there are also other repercussions to be expected when looking at those ‘Othering’ is already known to cause. Even though these will be visible and analysable only in a few years’ time, it is of importance to this paper to include them. These are of a more individual nature, as they do not concern the political field, but can certainly be caused by the latter.
Two of the consequences of Othering are certainly the feelings of discrimination and marginalization (cf. Udah 387). People who are othered are given an identity they cannot cast off and with this they are limited in their actions as they must act within the given boundaries. This can lead to further feelings, like ‘bitterness and anger (...), frustration” (Udah 393), which again can lead to aggression used as a means to deal with Othering (cf. Udah 393).
Done in the long run, ‘Othering’ can affect the way the othered people see themselves and with that again how other people perceive them. At some stage, they “come to accept their marginalized position, lose self-esteem, confidence, and morale and fail to integrate and participate” (Udah 397). Some go to great lengths to avoid the feeling of being out of place and change what makes them different, be it actions or appearances in order to fit in (cf. Johnson et al. 264-265). Additionally, it can even happen that the othered people themselves start complaining about what is perceived as negative in their culture, in order to give the appearance of compliance with the people who other them (Johnson et al. 264-265).
‘Othering’ does not only have an impact on feelings and personal perception, but also on socioeconomic advancement. These opportunities are minimized because of how people perceive them and, as already stated, how they perceive themselves in some cases, as they might even start to “lower their expectations to brace themselves against disappointments” (Johnson et al. 264-265) and through this give up aiming high at all. “That Othering often motivates differential treatment seems clear enough: the more different the others are, the more differently they can be treated” (Boréus 421).
Other repercussions proven to arise from unquestioned ‘Othering’ are health issues (Johnson et al. 255). Health problems found in studies by Krieger, 1999; Krieger and Sidney, 1996, Littleford and Wright O’Daugherty, 1998; Noh et al., 1999 ranged from “shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and hypertension (..) depression and stress” (Johnson et al. 255). Such health issues might arise because of the negative feelings othered people are confronted with day after day, but also because of the reduced possibility to make full use of the healthcare system, as “those who feel unwelcome are less likely” (Johnson et al. 255) to make good use of it. This again creates a false narrative as people might put down the distance to the health care system to other reasons, as for example “shyness, folk beliefs” and other cultural reasons (Johnson et al 256).
Health issues will also be a consequence of Trump’s family separation policy, which again resulted from a sanction of Othering. This can be predicted with certainty because of preexisting examples of instances in which family members were separated and the research conducted on this topic (Abrego 2014; Dreby 2010; Suarez-Orozco et al. 2002 in Gubernskaya & Dreby 420).
The weeks of family separation (...) will cause levels of trauma for these parents and children that will take years to undo. (...) The long-term effects of internment on the Japanese in the 1940s led them to being twice as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned. (Aranda and Vaquera 210)
In the case of the USA, the problem stems from various mistakes that such laws had and still have, as for example the narrow view on who is and who is not part of the closest kinship ties eligible to get a visa for reuniting purposes. “US immigrants are unable to reunite with certain relatives who may be extremely important for their family but fall outside of the defined set of eligible relatives (.) [as for example] familial relationships that are not officially documented (.), godparents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents” (Gubernskaya and Dreby 421).
6. Analysis Process explained
For the analysis, a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods is used. On the one hand, a method of quantitative nature is incorporated in the analysis as frequency and changes in time are central to the understanding of ‘Othering’. With such quantitative data it will be possible to see whether the instances of ‘Othering’ have decreased or increased. On the other hand, a qualitative research method is used to collect and systematically analyse the quality of ‘Othering’ happening in Trump’s Tweets. This is done so as “qualitative methodology is well suited for studies investigating how people experience the world and how they make sense of the world. (..) [allowing] an in-depth examination of participants’ subjective perceptions (..) [and the capturing of their often so subtle] cultural differences” (Udah 388). For this purpose, the method of CDA is used, here further explained.
6.1 CDA
As the purpose of this paper is to understand how ‘Othering’ is happening in written language and how the separation of people gets established using certain words, a connection to linguistics is inevitable. This calls for the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an analysis type which is to be found in the domain of linguistics and which “has its roots in critical linguistics” (Teo 11). “The term ‘critical linguistics’ was first used by Fowler et al. (1979) and Kress and Hodge (1979), who believe that discourse does not merely reflect social processes and structures, but affirms, consolidates and, in this way, reproduces existing social structures” (Teo 11). The word ‘critical’ is key to this theory as it “signals the need for (...) [an analysis] of discourse[s] that have become so naturalized over time that we begin to treat them as common, acceptable and natural features of discourse” (Teo 12). With this, manipulative strategies which seem normal at first glance and the inequality of discourse participants are unveiled (cf. Teo 12). This inequality is expressed in most approaches to CDA through the “‘ self- other’ schema, which highlights the ‘ us versus them’ binary [which again is the base of Othering]” (Khan et al. 5).
In order to do so, CDA pays “close attention to the linguistic features of texts” (Taylor 435) and acknowledges the co-constitution of language and social structures which has already been described in chapter 3. CDA has therefore the task to “trace the relationship between words and things: how the words we use to conceptualise and communicate end up producing the very ‘things’ or objects of which we speak” (Graham 668), connecting the micro with the macro level. The use of CDA is important as it can shed light on such mechanisms unaware to people and with that raise their awareness of the “production and reproduction of power abuse and domination” (Van Dijk, 2001, 96) in discourse. Fairclough calls this a critical language awareness, which is necessary to investigate “the relationship of language to other social processes, and of how language works within power relations” (Taylor 436). CDA provides a framework for the analysis of discursive strategies used by the elites to enact, sustain, legitimate and reproduce social, particularly, racial inequality, in the media as well as other public domains (cf. Teo 43). Because of this, CDA is good to explore the “self-other schema” (Khan et al. 5) of ‘Othering’.
The social theory of critical discourse analysis has influenced various linguists, amongst others Norman Fairclough, who shares the above-mentioned theory that discourse is central to the construction of “social-political or socio-cultural ideologies” (Teo 12). For this reason, his book “Language and Power” and the therein described use of CDA will be used to analyse the Tweets, but in an adapted way to fit the needs of the paper. Furthermore, Siegfried Jaeger’s focus on the reoccurrence of words and patterns to identify a heavy and therefore possibly dangerous misuse of language will be added and analysed closely to understand whether these messages themselves influence the discourse in general.
These repeated discourses are what Jäger and Mayer (2009) describe as discursive events as they are events which appear “on the discourse planes of politics and the media, extensively and for a prolonged period of time [and] they influence the development of the discourse” (48). Therefore, it is important to look at the number of times certain words are used.
6.2 Software used
As the amount of Tweets Trump posts on average a day is too high and the content not always relevant to the topic of this paper, a way to find the pertinent Tweets is needed. For this purpose, the website trumptwitterarchive.com is used as it is a search engine for all Tweets and re-Tweets Trump has posted ever since he started his account. A set of premeditated words are searched for, and the Tweets containing them are extracted and copied in different Word documents. The words are the following, here further divided into the three groups which are of importance to this paper:
a. illegals, immigrant, refugee
b. Mexican, Hispanics
c. Muslim, Islam
These Tweets are then uploaded in the qualitative analysis software MAXQDA to evaluate and categorise the data even further. This software has the task to facilitate the analysis of the Tweets on the linguistic level, making repeating patterns visible and, first and foremost, simplify the creation of categories, called codes, further described in chapter 6.3.1. Here, the software also shows codes which overlap or words and sentences which can be assigned to the same code. Without this software it would take up a lot of time to assess the value of the words found in the Tweets and it would not be that coherent and structured. Fairclough’s application of CDA is used for the linguistic analysis, here further explained.
6.3 Three Levels of Analysis
Fairclough suggests making sure three steps are being looked at when applying CDA to a discourse. These are “description of text, interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context” (Fairclough 109). These have been modified to fit the needs of the analysis in this paper.
6.3.1 Description Level Explained
To get to a conclusion about the directness or indirectness of ‘Othering’ in Trump’s Tweets, it is necessary to look at linguistic features of a text which activate certain images in the reader and therefore act as trigger for ‘Othering’. Here, Fairclough makes a point to look at both vocabulary and grammar. Such formal features are here divided in three chapters, each chapter trying to answer a different question concerning ‘Othering’ and the upholding of power relations. The formal features described are being looked for in the MAXQDA Software and subsequently its most striking findings are exposed to answer these three questions in the first part of the Interpretation Level.
6.3.1.1 How are the Others portrayed linguistically?
This first question is answered by looking mostly at features concerning vocabulary as it is about how the physique and character of the othered people is depicted to be and therefore the choice and placement of vocabulary is crucial (cf. Fairclough 113). The occurrence of certain vocabulary has the power to “ideologically ‘place’ a text” (Fairclough 113) and to evoke images. There might for example be instances, in which Trump choses to use a certain word instead of another possible word, which gives away how he perceives the world around him (cf. Fairclough 113-114). For this reason, in the analysis of the corpora, different types of lexical choices concerning vocabulary are looked at to answer this question.
The first lexical choice evolves around all types of vocabulary, except adjectives, which concern the othered person or people and which have a negative connotation or a pejorative overtone. To collect as much data as possible but in a still differentiated manner, five different codes are used in the analysis to give credit to these lexical choices.
The first one is named ‘other=criminal/terrorist’ in the Software. In this code, all words or parts of sentences which portray the other as a criminal or a dangerous person are collected. The second code is called ‘negative words background’. It distinguishes itself from the third category, ‘negative words foreground’, as it collects words and sentences with a negative connotation and message which do not necessarily have to do with the othered person or people but rather with the state or religion which they belong to. The fourth and fifth code evolve around two rhetorical devices, here shortly described.
The first rhetorical device worth mentioning, as it could be used to intentionally evoke or sustain ‘Othering’ through the negative representation of the other, is the dysphemism, labelled like this in the software as well. Its counterpart, the euphemism, will be described in chapter 6.3.1.3 as it has to do with the hidden sustainment of power relations. Dysphemism describes the use of a harsh, more offensive word instead of one considered less harsh and with this possesses the ability to underline and highlight differences or at least negative attributes with its pejorative overtone. With this, the use of a dysphemism is a rather direct way of ‘Othering’ a person or a group. If single people or groups of people are constantly depicted in connection to undesirable traits and harmful actions, it will segregate them even further from what is perceived as the opposite and standard. These negative traits are almost always set in contrast to the speaker’s own attitudes and characteristics, which therefore appear to be better. Therefore, it is also important to examine the words quality regarding positive or negative juxtaposition, which is mentioned in chapter 6.3.1.2.
The second and last rhetorical device which could play a big role in the creation and depiction of the Other is the conceptual metaphor. Here, meanings of one domain of use are transcribed into another domain, creating a network between words which would not have been linked otherwise. Hereby, it is important to recognize the fact that words do not have a single meaning but that they can be twisted and used for one’s purpose and need, for example to disguise hidden messages (cf. Fairclough 114). Conceptual metaphors are a direct result of this process. In contrast to the ‘standard’ terminus of metaphor, conceptual metaphors contain the on the surface different simile as well. The difference can be explained with an example given by Peter Stockwell: “‘That man is a shark’ would be seen as a metaphor whereas ‘That man is like a shark’ would be seen as a simile” (105) but both are to be found under the same name of conceptual metaphor as they have the same underlying core.
Such conceptual metaphors are of great importance in the corpora being analysed, as it shows how the producer of an utterance connects things and people. These associations might then be linked to the act of ‘Othering’, depending on the images evoked. For example, a person who is perceived as not belonging to one’s own group can be degraded to an animal-like state through language by using metaphors which evoke such images. The discriminatory use of metaphors has been analysed in a number of studies, as for example in Flowerdew et al. in which “it was shown how immigrants from mainland China to Hong Kong were conceptualized with the help of metaphors such as influx, flood, and burden. In Swedish debates, refugees applying for asylum have also been referred to with metaphors drawn from the domain of natural disasters, such as big waves or floods” (330-1 in Boréus 413).
The second lexical choice are adjectives, which are described as being separate from the other vocabulary as it is the form class which best modifies the noun, used “to denote a quality of the thing named, to indicate its quantity or extent, or to specify a thing as distinct from something else” (cf. adjective). Here, both negative as well as positive adjectives which are to be found in connection to the othered person are looked at and collected with two different codes, ‘positive adjectives’ and ‘negative adjectives’, to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Nevertheless, the influence adjectives exercise is not only given through the quality they express, but also through the quantity of their occurrence. This lexical strategy to infer or take power is what Fowler et al. call “over- lexicalization” (1979, in Teo 2000, 20). He states “that powerless people are over-lexicalized” (Teo 20) when being described. This occurs, for example, in the usage of the term “‘female lawyer’ instead of just ‘lawyer’, or ‘male nurse’ (...) as it signals a kind of deviation from social convention or expectations” (Teo 20). With this, both quality and quantity of adjectives have to be looked at to understand which purpose could lie behind the use of them.
All this information is analysed to understand how Trump sees or wants to portray the three groups concerned. The data collected in this chapter mirrors the scripts Trump works with when thinking about the three groups. For example, he might have a certain script for ‘Mexicans’, which shows what in his opinion implies to be Mexican. Here, a short definition of scripts is given, as they will be mentioned in the interpretation level when summarizing the findings which answer the question of how the Others are portrayed.
Scripts are the mental representation of something or someone in someone’s head, be it the writer or the reader, and therefore come with attributes which enrich what has been said or written without making themselves noticed by the person using them (cf. Fairclough 160). Their use does not have to be bad in every case, but in some instances, it poses a threat to the way people are described. In these cases, the labels assigned are mostly of a derogative nature, instead of the “more neutral words” (Borèus 410-411) and exclude people from groups and, with this, elicit ‘Othering’. Even such negative scripts are hard to let go off as they represent the “familiar patterns” (Fairclough 160) which have become naturalized and accepted over time.
6.3.1.2 How are the Others divided linguistically?
This second question is answered by looking at diverse features which have the quality of separating and, with this, creating opposites. One of them is the juxtaposition of good qualities or actions of the dominant group against the seemingly bad qualities or actions of the othered group. This strategy makes it easy to other people into another group as they are divided visibly from the dominant group. In the software, this code is given therefore the name ‘good vs. bad juxtaposition’.
Other linguistic features which add to the separation of people into different groups can be summarized under the umbrella term of surrogate words as they are words which are used instead of more specific and circumscribed terminologies. These are nouns as well as pronouns, whose classification is crucial to the application of CDA and which therefore will be shortly described (cf. Jäger 182).
What is important when it comes to nouns which substitute other terminologies is the use of “abstract nouns, or nominalizations” (Fairclough 124). The former, ‘being for example ‘the Muslims’ or ‘the people’, and the latter being adjectives used as nouns, for example ‘the deaf’. Both are found under the same code in the analysis and are so called “standard expressions” which give the impression that what is said must be a defining characteristic of the person being described. With this, it presents “a stronger way of stressing differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ than if less standardized expressions are used to make the distinctions” (Boréus 420). For example, the nominalization example of ‘the deaf’ is stronger in its defining and delimiting nature than the less standardized expression of ‘a person or people who is or are deaf’, as the latter leaves place for other defining characteristics of such people, whereas the former does not (cf. Boréus 420). Such generalizations can be used to spare the reader the endorsement of further tedious details, but it can also hint “at an underlying ideology that might have motivated the choice in the first place” (Teo 16). Van Dijk (1987 in Teo 2000) creates a parallel of such generalization to the act of stereotyping and prejudice as they portray people as being the same and unchangeable. Fairclough states that such grammatical choices can be used consciously to “highlight or background agency” (122), calling the latter purpose an “obfuscation of agency” (123).
The last feature is the use of generalizing pronouns, such as we and you, or us and them, dividable even further in inclusive and exclusive pronouns (cf. Fairclough 127). Writers of newspaper articles often use the inclusive we, as it creates a connection between the writer and the reader and gives a sense of inclusion and unity of people and with this sometimes disguises the wish to exclude others (cf. Fairclough 127). This is different to the exclusive we, which refers to the writer and a small amount of other people, but not the reader (cf. Fairclough 127-128). The problem lies within the power the inclusive and exclusive we exercise: the writer is giving him- or herself the authority to speak for others and to exclude others. It is crucial to understand that the boundaries between the two types of we are malleable as the excluded can become included, depending on time and place, and therefore are not used in the analysis (cf. Becker 143). Instead, the term ‘team trump’ is used for all the pronouns which seem to include only himself and the people he regards as being part of his group. All the pronouns used to address the othered people are instead found under the code ‘the other’. To be fair to the analysis outcome, a third code called ‘both’ has been added. In this, pronouns which include both the othered and the group of which Trump is part of are included.
It is not inherently problematic to make use of these differentiating pronouns, as they are needed to show belonging and not belonging to everyday categories like “organizations, cultures, genders, professions, or generations” (Ashforth & Mael, 1989 in Vinkenburg 384). It is senseless to act as though these groups do not exist and pretend that we are all the same. “However, implying outgroup membership can be problematic if it is not purposeful, owing to the tendency to then view” (Vinkenburg 384) one group inferior to another. With this, it is not only important to single out such pronouns in Trump’s Tweets, but also to look at which associations go along with them to find out if either one of the groups is down- or upgraded in contrast to the other. This becomes evident through the use of negative connotations which are described in the previous chapter.
6.3.1.3 How are power relations sustained?
This third question is needed as power relations are central to the topic of ‘Othering’ and the use of CDA, as already described in the chapters 5.1 and 6.1. Therefore, it is vital to look at how linguistic features can sustain such gaps of power. Here, the lexical choices as well as grammatical features which are collected in different codes in the analysis are listed and shortly described.
The first code is labelled ‘overgeneralization’. It is used to collect linguistic choices which emphasize the actions of the othered group in an unproportioned way, giving the impression of something being overly great or too small or not enough. Here, numbers are collected of which facticity the reader cannot be sure of. Trump might use such overgeneralizations of facts to win over people who are not aware of the falsehood of his statements.
Another way of manipulating people and with this asserting one’s power position is the purposefully use of informal language (cf. Fairclough 117). This has the hidden power of making discourse and its creator more “personal and palpable” (Teo 16). It is known that Trump does not possess the eloquent and complex vocabulary expected from a President of the United States, as for example analysed by Jennifer Sclafani in her book “Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity”. This could just mirror Trump’s real nature or a good strategy with which he is able to show linguistic belonging to ‘the people’ and give the feeling of popular solidarity. For this reason, vocabulary which might be part of some slang and not be that formal are picked out in the analysis and collected in the code ‘informal language’. Only the most striking findings are going to be included, as the amount of expressions which are atypical to political language used by Trump is almost certainly enormous and would amount to too much data, comprising also his well-known use of repetitions and hyperboles, as well as other ways of expression.
Another feature which is of importance is the usage of different quotation types. In the analysis, three codes are used to distinguish and collect them. The first two concern direct and indirect quotations and are labeled as such in the analysis. These mirror the verbal reactions of certain people towards certain events (cf. Teo 37). Teo suggests that it is not far-fetched to claim that the use of quotations is involved in the upholding of power relations, as they are used to give the discourse a feeling of “’facticity’ and authenticity, (...) [so to say to portray it as an] incontrovertible fact” (18). This presents itself as a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, whatever might be quoted does not have to be true in every case, as quotation marks could be used to give the impression of facticity and with this lending “weight to a news event” (Teo 37). This ever so often political gimmick is even more dangerous in the case of Donald Trump, as he is the current President of the United States and should therefore not mix real news with personal opinions and label each of it as such when making use of it.
On the other hand, quotations often reflect only what people in power say and not the “perspectives of those deemed by society to be powerless” (Teo 18). Minorities remain silent “and are hardly quoted or quoted with suspicion or distance” (Teo 18) while people in power often are quoted in detail. With this, quoting involves/poses the danger of further empowering the latter as well as disempowering the former (cf. Teo 18). This topic of direct quotes in connection to Tweets presents itself as a vast research field, of which only a small part is going to be included in this paper. This vastness makes it possible for future studies to carry out further analyses on this specific topic.
Another grammatical feature to infer power is the use of modal verbs, as they express “authority of one participant in relation to others” (Fairclough 126). Such modal verbs are “modal auxiliary verbs like may, might, must, should, can, can’t, ought” (Fairclough 127). They either grant or deny permission and oblige the recipient to do or not do something and are therefore strongly connected to imperative sentences. By using modal auxiliary verbs, these orders are somehow hidden and not as direct, as they often imply a certain level of formality and with that authority. Fairclough calls these “implicit authority claims and implicit power relations” (127) which possess the ability to fortify the boundaries between the two groups created in the ‘Othering’ process and are therefore collected in the code called ‘modal verbs’ in the analysis.
One of these features involved in the sustainment of power relations is the rhetoric device of euphemism. Euphemism “is a word which is substituted for a more conventional or familiar one as a way of avoiding negative values” (Fairclough 117). This is linked to the act of ‘Othering’, as euphemisms can hide the true nature of an utterance, for example an insult, through the embellishment of words. In the analysis, the code is labelled with the name ‘euphemism/positive statements’, as it is important to include also positive statements Trump might make when referring to the othered people. Therefore, both the negative as well as the positive nature of euphemism and positive statements is included in this code.
One last way to highlight or hide agency is the use of unanimated participants instead of animated ones. This is in strong connection to the already described use of abstract nouns and other forms of generalization, albeit this has nothing to do with the division of groups, but with the sustainment of this very division. When unanimated instead of animated participants are used, it is often done so to hide the culprits and, with this, diminish the crime (cf. Fairclough). Another reason for the use of unanimated participants can be to dehumanize the patient and, with this, lessen the sympathy or empathy the reader could feel (cf. Fairclough).
6.3.2 Interpretation Level Explained
In the interpretation part, a summary of the most important information found on the descriptive level is given, trying to answer the three questions mentioned before. Because this has already been described, no further chapter, except the one in the analysis itself, is dedicated to this.
6.3.3 Explanation Level Explained
The explanation level serves to understand the overall quality of ‘Othering’ in Trump’s Tweets, as for example the directness or indirectness. To get to this answer, the already analysed data of the Interpretation level is looked at from two perspectives. These are the ones already described in chapter 5.2 and 5.3, meaning the mechanisms of ‘Othering’ happening in the Tweets and the reasons with which ‘Othering’ is being justified. This is all enriched with the overall context of the Tweets.
7. Analysis
7.1 Description Level
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
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