Donald Trump's strange speaking style as explained by linguists.

Donald triumph, a throwback to ancient oratory or an undiscipline rambler?

When Donald Trump goes off script,
transcribing him can be a challenge. As
someone covering him during this campaign, I
can attest to this. When he’s speaking off the
cuff, his rambling remarks can be full of
digressions and hard-to-follow tangents. He
often jumps to an entirely new thought before
finishing his previous one.
Consider this Trump comment on the Iran
nuclear deal during a campaign rally in South
Carolina on July 21, 2015. Try to follow the
train of thought here:
Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a
great professor and scientist and
engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good
genes, very good genes, okay, very
smart, the Wharton School of Finance,
very good, very smart — you know, if
you’re a conservative Republican, if I
were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as
a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm
one of the smartest people anywhere
in the world — it’s true! — but when
you're a conservative Republican they
try — oh, do they do a number — that’s
why I always start off: Went to Wharton,
was a good student, went there, went
there, did this, built a fortune — you
know I have to give my like credentials
all the time, because we’re a little
disadvantaged — but you look at the
nuclear deal, the thing that really
bothers me — it would have been so
easy, and it’s not as important as
these lives are (nuclear is powerful;
my uncle explained that to me many,
many years ago, the power and that
was 35 years ago; he would explain
the power of what's going to happen
and he was right — who would have
thought?), but when you look at what's
going on with the four prisoners — now
it used to be three, now it’s four — but
when it was three and even now, I
would have said it's all in the
messenger; fellas, and it is fellas
because, you know, they don't, they
haven’t figured that the women are
smarter right now than the men, so,
you know, it’s gonna take them about
another 150 years — but the Persians
are great negotiators, the Iranians are
great negotiators, so, and they, they
just killed, they just killed us.
Trump’s simple message — "the Iran deal is
bad for the United States" — was interrupted
by musings on his uncle’s education, his own
education, the power of nuclear energy,
prisoners, the intelligence of women, and the
negotiating prowess of Iranians, seemingly
without rhyme or reason. Slate even called on
the public to help diagram it .
Others have noticed this as well. "His
speeches are full of non sequiturs," says
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a Calvin College
historian who has done a comparative study
of Trump and Hillary Clinton’s speaking styles.
It’s a completely different style from nearly
any other politician you normally see on a big
stage.
So I was curious if professional linguists and
historians could help us figure out what
makes Trump unique. Are there any
precedents for this speaking style? Is it
coherent? Is there a reason it appeals to
certain people?
There were lots of disagreements on this
front, but one thing stood out: Trump’s
speeches aren’t meant to be read. Their
seeming incoherence stems from the big
difference between written and spoken
language. Trump’s style of speaking has its
roots in oral culture. He rallies people through
impassioned, targeted conversation — even if
it doesn’t always follow a clear arc. But is it
effective? That’s a much harder question.
Why Trump’s speeches are incomprehensible
to some — and make perfect sense to others
Only a few of Trump’s big speeches are
scripted. At many of his rallies, by contrast,
he speaks off the cuff. We get a lot of
unscripted moments, with fractured,
unfinished sentences, moving quickly from
thought to thought.
To some (or many), this style is completely
incoherent. But not everyone feels this way.
Many people clearly walk away from Trump
rallies having seemingly understood what he
said.
Why is that? It’s the difference between
reading Trump’s remarks and listening to
them in real time. University of Pennsylvania
linguist Mark Liberman has explained this in
more detail:
This apparent incoherence has two
main causes: false starts and
parentheticals. Both are effectively
signaled in speaking — by prosody
along with gesture, posture, and gaze
— and therefore largely factored out by
listeners. But in textual form the cues
are gone, and we lose the thread.
In other words, Trump’s digressions and
rambles are much easier to follow in person
thanks to subtle cues.
Trump’s style of speaking is conversational,
and may even stem from his New York City
upbringing. As George Lakoff, a linguist at UC
Berkeley, told me, "[The] thing about being a
New Yorker it is polite if you finish their
sentences for them. It’s a natural part of
conversation."
This may be why Trump’s sentences often
seem, in transcript form, to trail off with no
ending. "He knows his audience can finish his
sentences for him," Lakoff says.
Watching Trump, it’s easy to see how this
plays out. He makes vague implications with a
raised eyebrow or a shrug, allowing his
audience to reach their own conclusions. And
that conversational style can be effective. It’s
more intimate than a scripted speech. People
walk away from Trump feeling as though he
were casually talking to them, allowing them
to finish his thoughts.
Yet to many linguists, Trump stands out for
how often he deploys these conversational
tics. "Trump's frequency of divergence is
unusual," Liberman says. In other words, he
goes off topic way more often than the
average person in conversation.
Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist at University of
Edinburgh, argues that there’s more going on
than just a conversational, I’ll-let-you-fill-in-
the-gaps-style. Trump’s unorganized
sentences and short snippets might suggest
something about how his mind works. "His
speech suggests a man with scattered
thoughts, a short span of attention, and a lack
of intellectual discipline and analytical skills,"
Pullum says.
More sophisticated thinkers and speakers
(including many past presidents), Pullum
argues, are able to use "hypotaxis — that is,
embedding of clauses within clauses." Trump
can’t seem to do that.
Pullum explains further: "When you say
something like 'While Congress shows no
interest in doing X, I feel that the American
people believe it is essential,' the clause ‘it is
essential’ is inside the clause ‘the American
people believe it is essential’ which is inside
the clause ‘I feel that the American people
believe it is essential,’ and so on. You get no
such organized thoughts from Trump. It's
bursts of noun phrases, self-interruptions,
sudden departures from the theme, flashes of
memory, odd side remarks. ... It's the
disordered language of a person with a
concentration problem."
Trump’s speeches can be appealing because
he uses a lot of salesmen’s tricks
Lakoff, for his part, has an explanation for why
Trump’s style of speaking is so appealing to
many. Many of Trump’s most famous
catchphrases are actually versions of time-
tested speech mechanisms that salesmen
use. They’re powerful because they help
shape our unconscious.
Take, for example, Trump’s frequent use of
"Many people are saying..." or "Believe me" —
often right after saying something that is
baseless or untrue. This tends to sound more
trustworthy to listeners than just outright
stating the baseless claim, since Trump
implies that he has direct experience with
what he’s talking about. At a base level,
Lakoff argues, people are more inclined to
believe something that seems to have been
shared.
Or when Trump keeps calling Clinton
"crooked," or keeps referring to terrorists as
"radical Muslims," he’s strengthening the
association through repetition. He also calls
his supporters "folks," to show he is one of
them (though many politicians employ this
trick). Trump doesn’t repeat phrases and
adjectives because he is stalling for time,
Liberman says; for the most part, he’s
providing emphasis and strengthening the
association.
These are normal techniques, particularly in
conversational speech. "Is he reading
cognitive science? No. He has 50 years of
experience as a salesman who doesn’t care
who he is selling to," Lakoff says. On this
account, Trump uses similar methods in his
QVC-style pitch of steaks and vodka as when
he talks about his plan to stop ISIS.
"He has been doing this for a very long time
as a salesman — that’s what he is best at,"
Lakoff says.
People understand Trump on an emotional
level
To some extent, Trump's style has been
successful — Trump beat out a highly
competitive field of lifelong Republicans to
become the party’s nominee. He's confident
enough to address large crowds
conversationally and ad-lib on stage.
That said, his rise can’t be attributed purely to
his speaking style. It certainly has a lot to do
with what he is actually saying. "If the
content were different, I think it would come
across as rambling and flabby and
ineffective," Liberman says.
In other words, when Trump’s audience
finishes his sentences for him, the blanks are
filled with sentiments that resonate: fears of
joblessness, worries about the United States
losing its status as a major world power,
concerns about foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump validates their insecurities and justifies
their anger. He connects on an emotional
level, Du Mez says.
"For listeners who identify with Trump, there
is little they need to do but claim what they’re
entitled to," she says. "No need for sacrifice,
for compromise, for complexity. He taps into
fear and insecurity, but then enables his
audience to express that fear through anger.
And anger gives the illusion of
empowerment."
In style alone, however, this "emotional"
appeal may not be enough to portray a strong
leader. As much as the American people look
for authenticity and spontaneity in a president,
which Trump seems to have mastered, they
are also known to value discipline in their
leaders.
"Leadership is hard; it needs discipline,
concentration, and an ability to ignore what's
irrelevant or needless or personal or silly,"
Pullum says. "There is no sign of it from
Trump. This man talks honestly enough that
you can see what he's like: He's an
undisciplined narcissist who craves power but
doesn't have the intellectual capacity to
exercise it wisely."