Donald Trump Evaluative Language

The presidential administration in the United States use Twitter to communicate with the public. The two Twitter accounts which they use to relay information to the public are Donald Trump’s personal account as well as the official president of the United States account(POTUS). However, although the two accounts represent Donald Trump, they communicate to their audiences in very different ways. The differences between the ways both Donald Trump’s account and the POTUS account use Twitter to communicate with the public, can be seen through the ways in which they use evaluative language to position themselves in relation to their imagined audiences. This will be demonstrated through analysing how their use of evaluative language can be used to

The POTUS account and Donald Trump’s account’s use of evaluative language can be used to determine their imagined audiences; however, in order to analyse this, it is important to define the term imagined audience. The imagined audience can be defined as “the conceptualisation of the people with whom we are communicating, our audience (Litt, 2012:331).” In Donald Trump’s case, it is clear that his tweets are targeted at Americans, his followers and supporters. This is demonstrated in tweets 17-20, which use terms like ‘America first,’ ‘American spirit,’ ‘American people’ and “make America great again.” These tweets not only display the use of positive appreciation because he is explicitly stating his appreciation for America, but also demonstrates that the very few times Trump makes use of positive evaluative language to communicate with his imagined audience, is to assure the American public of their decision to elect him. However, when analysing both Trump’s followers on Twitter as well as the responses to his tweets, it is clear that he has a wider international audience in which his imagined audience fails to take into account. This is demonstrated in tweets 2, 11 and 13, which display Trump’s use of negative judgment

This is demonstrated in tweets 1,2,7-9 and 11, which display positive appreciation because they are communicating their positive opinions with regards to their country and people. These tweets highlight Americans as an incredibly large part of their imagined audience because they use terms like “American spirit,” “America First,” “American people” and “make America great again.” In contrast to Donald Trump’s imagined audience, it is clear that the POTUS account has taken into account the wider international audience, because they do not use negative evaluative language when referring to other countries; therefore, avoiding being offensive to followers that are not of American heritage. Furthermore, although there is only a slight difference between the imagined audiences of both accounts, it is clear that the POTUS account is a lot more professional than Donald Trump’s account. For instance, Donald Trump makes frequent use of negative evaluative language to position particular people and countries in a negative light, so that both himself and his administration are perceived in a positive light. On the other hand, the POTUS account positions their administration in a positive light, through a more professional way of using positive evaluative language, in order to communicate both their achievements and progress to the public. This is particularly evident in tweets 3 and 5 where the POTUS