Language and political identity

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses several aspects Donald Trump&s;s discourse that set him apart from his opponents during the 2016 primaries and which distinguish him from other candidates in recent GOP primary history. It focuses on his idiosyncratic use of discourse-marking devices. The book provides a linguistic analysis of popular late-night parodies of Donald Trump as a form of metadiscourse during his presidential campaign. Building on past sociolinguistic work on language, identity, and parodic high performance, the analysis examines how writers and performers of Trump parodies manipulate language to highlight Trump&s;s style as an "indexical negative" of his political identity. The book concludes by suggesting how the sociolinguistic study of political discourse benefits from detailed case studies of language by and about individual political figures, and suggests avenues for further research integrating perspectives on sociolinguistic style, metadiscourse, and political identity.