Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald Trump's Speech

In Donald Trump’s recent Nashville midterm election rally speech, he uses flattery to unethically appeal to the audience. In the fallacies guidebook, this form of manipulation is covered by dirty trick #21; here is example of flattering the audience used by Paul and Elder (2012, p. 27): “It’s good talking to an audience of people with good old fashion common sense and real insights into our social problems.” In Trump’s speech he makes extremely similar comments, calling the Nashville and Tennessee Republicans hard workers and true patriots in the opening of his speech. Towards the end in his closing remarks, he further flatters the audience by saying that Tennessee is a great state where the progress of America will continue to speed ahead

This breakdown in critical thinking represents consent to self-persuasion; because the audience likes the speaker’s message, they become much more likely to engage in the persuasive process (Larson, 1998). The audience’s support and appreciation of the speaker’s message represents ethos being strengthened, which is the most effective Aristotelian artistic appeal in persuading an audience (Simons et. al., 2001). Part of the reason this unethical tactic works so well results from the subtlety of its use; Trump makes flattering comments toward the beginning and end of his speech to build common ground with the audience, but he doesn’t go over the top because he knows that it wouldn’t work as effectively. For example, when my little cousin tries to convince his mom to buy him a toy by telling her how pretty and nice she is, this persuasion is much less likely to work because the intent is more obvious. Trump’s subtle schmoozing rallies the audience behind him by unethically increasing the audience’s desire to listen to his message rather than by using reasoning and

This strategy of sanitizing a personal stance and demonizing or vilifying the “other’s” stance represents dirty trick #19 in the fallacies guidebook (Paul and Elder, 2012). This concept applies closely with the idea of God and Devil terms, which asserts that some language carries such intensely positive or negative connotations that saying it immediately impacts the viewer’s perception (Duck & McMahan, 2015). For example, the term “terrorist” is a devil term that when used designates someone as an immediate threat to the American culture. Conversely, Trump’s use of words for Republicans such as candidate Marsha Blackburn, he describes her using the God term “patriot”. He calls her a hard working woman who’s doing great things for the state of Tennessee and her constituents in an attempt to immediately build up her credibility (ethos) so that the audience feels called to action in voting for her in the upcoming election (Simons et. al., 2001). I have noticed that sometimes when I give friends advice, I subconsciously make one option look unattractive and make the option that I’m in favor of appear much more pleasant and enticing. Similarly, by presenting the liberals as incompetent and against the conservative American way of life, Trump is both creating cognitive dissonance and implementing pluralism and creating cognitive dissonance to make the