Register Dynamics in Political Discourse: A Study of Donald Trump’s Speeches
Keywords:
Register, Donald Trump, SpeechAbstract
Abstrak
Penelitian ini menganalisis penggunaan variasi register dalam pidato kampanye Donald Trump dalam pemilihan presiden Amerika tahun 2024. Berdasarkan teori five level of formalities milik Martin Joos (1967): frozen, formal, consultative, casual, serta intimate. Berfokus pada identifikasii jenis-jenis register yang muncul dalam pidato politik Donald Trump yang sekaligus digunakan sebagai strategi retorika untuk membangun citra serta otoritas di mata public. Data yang dikumpulkan melalui transkrip serta rekaman video pidato yang diambil dari akun YouTube official milik Donald Trump dan dianalisa secara kualitatif menggunakan pendekatan sosiolinguistik. Hasil analisa menunjukkan bahwa Trump secara dominan menggunakan casual register untuk membangun kedekatan emosional dengan audiensnya, serta formal register untuk menyampaikan kebijakan dan memperkuat citra kepemimpinannya. Register intimate muncul dalam konteks dramatik untuk menggugah empati, sementara frozen register digunakan ketika mengutip konstitusi atau pernyataan legal guna menekankan otoritas institusional. Meskipun consultative register jarang ditemukan, kehadirannya tetap signifikan dalam interaksi bersifat dialogis.
Kata Kunci: Register, Donald Trump, Pidato
Abstract
This study analyzes the use of register variations in Donald Trump's campaign speeches in the 2024 American presidential election. Based on Martin Joos' (1967) five levels of formalities theory: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. Focuses on identifying the types of registers that appear in Donald Trump's political speeches which are also used as rhetorical strategies to build image and authority in the eyes of the public. The data collected through transcripts and video recordings of speeches taken from Donald Trump's official YouTube account and analyzed qualitatively using a sociolinguistic approach. The results of the analysis show that Trump predominantly uses casual register to build emotional closeness with his audience, as well as formal register to convey policies and strengthen his leadership image. Intimate register appears in dramatic contexts to evoke empathy, while frozen register is used when quoting the constitution or legal statements to emphasize institutional authority. Although consultative register is rare, its presence is still significant in dialogic interactions
Keywords: Register, Donald Trump, Speech
Downloads
References
Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations. In Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315213378-15
Cavazza, N., & Guidetti, M. (2014). Swearing in Political Discourse: Why Vulgarity Works. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(5), 537–547. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X14533198
Charteris-Black, J. (2011). Politicians and Rhetoric The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. In Sustainability (Switzerland) (Vol. 11, Issue 1).
Halliday, M. A. K. (1965). Speech and Situation. English in Education, 2(2 A), 14–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.1965.tb01331.x
Holmes, J., & Wilson, N. (2022). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Sixth Edition. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Sixth Edition, 1–710. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367821852
Joos, M. (1967). THE FIVE CLOCKS--A LINGUISTIC EXCURSION INTO THE FIVE STYLES OF ENGLISH USAGE.
Khajavi, Y., & Rasti, A. (2020). A discourse analytic investigation into politicians’ use of rhetorical and persuasive strategies: The case of US election speeches. Cogent Arts and Humanities, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2020.1740051
Li, H., Dunn, J., & Nini, A. (2023). Register variation remains stable across 60 languages. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 19(3), 397–426. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2021-0090
M.A.K. (2013). Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. In Materials Science (Vol. 38, Issue 3). Routledge.
Nordquist, R. (2020). Speech Act Theory. ThoughtCo.com/speech-act-theory-1691986.
Vainio, M., Suni, A., Šimko, J., & Kakouros, S. (2024). The Power of Prosody and Prosody of Power: An Acoustic Analysis of Finnish Parliamentary Speech. 662–666. https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2024-134
Wardaugh, R., & Fuller, J. M. (2015). AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS (7th ed.). In Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. http://scioteca.caf.com/bitstream/handle/123456789/1091/RED2017-Eng-8ene.pdf?sequence=12&isAllowed=y%0Ahttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2008.06.005%0Ahttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/305320484_
Yule, G. (2020). The Study of Language (George Yule) 7th edition. In Journal Article (p. 362).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Language Horizon: Journal of Language Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract views: 18
,
PDF Downloads: 3
1.png)
