"When You're a Star" : Analysing Accusations of Sexism and Misogyny against President Donald Trump
Abstract: Donald J. Trump is unarguably a controversial United States president for a number of reasons, and one of these is that he has attracted widespread criticism from the media and elsewhere with regard to comments he has made about specific women, or women in general. As a result, some commentators have claimed his statements are indicative that he is misogynistic and/or sexist. This essay will analyze a selection of some of what may be considered the most egregious examples from two linguistic perspectives: pragmatics and sociolinguistics. It is concluded in this essay that, while Trump may have been expressing bigoted views of women in the utterances analysed, the criticisms have, willfully or otherwise, failed to consider both social context and speaker intention. A linguistic analysis shows that, when accounting for such contextual factors, the possibility of less malign interpretations emerges. In addition, by presenting Trump in that manner, the commentators and the media outlets in which they are published or broadcast may be revealing more about their own political agendas, or hostility to Trump, than about the President's own prejudices. In order to understand and uncover media bias, linguistic approaches, such as pragmatics and sociolinguistics, are perceived as useful tools in order to achieve that.
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