Presidential Manifestation of Verbal Dominance : A discourse analysis of conversational dominance strategies employed by Joe Biden and Donald Trump

Abstract: This study aims to observe linguistic disparities in the distribution of the conversational dominance strategies interruptions, amount of talk, and questions in the first U.S. 2020 presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Subsequently, these findings establish the evaluation of how the interactive phenomena relate to the masculinity conceptualizations of hegemonic masculinity and subordination. To examine the study objective, the methodology conducted was a discourse analysis of the debate transcript. Hence, the method intended to measure to which extent Biden and Trump employed interruptions, amount of talk, and questions during the debate. The outcome of the review established the discursive dominance framework used to discuss how the presidential candidates demonstrated adherence to diverse masculinities’ conceptualizations. The discourse analysis outcome revealed an asymmetrical distribution of the interactive phenomena across all variables measured in favor of Donald Trump. These results suggest that Trump’s discursive performance signaled adherence to hegemonic masculinity norms to a greater extent than Biden through employing more conversational dominance strategies during the debate. Consequently, Biden’s discursive performance indicated closer relations to masculine subordination than Trump’s performance.