Language in the Trump Era

Janet McIntosh is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Her work focuses on linguistic and sociocultural anthropology in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. Her 2016 book, Unsettled: Denial and Belonging among White Kenyans (University of California Press), received Honorable Mention in the 2018 American Ethnological Society Senior Book Prize and Honorable Mention in the 2017 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing. Her 2009 book, The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast (Duke University Press) won the 2010 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion. She has published articles in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language and Communication, Signs and Society, Journal of Pragmatics, and numerous journals in sociocultural anthropology. She is on the Editorial Boards of Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Language (Oxford University Press), the journal Cultural Anthropology, and Journal of Religion in Africa. Funded by an ACLS faculty fellowship, she has embarked on a study of language in the United States military. Norma Mendoza-Denton is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles. In her work at the intersection of language, youth subculture, ethnicity and politics, she has focused on topics ranging from gang members in California to Republican Town Hall meetings in Arizona. She has authored over 50 book chapters and journal articles in the fields of Linguistics, Anthropology, Communication, and Education. She received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship for the completion of her book Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice in Latina Youth Gangs (Wiley Blackwell, 2008); the second edition is slated to include a graphic novelette. Past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, she has served on the Executive Boards of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Visual Anthropology and currently for the Linguistic Society of America. Her other manuscript in progress, Citizen Rage, addresses the linguistic dynamics of town hall meetings and other public events in American politics.

• Introduction: A Linguistic Emergency Janet McIntosh; Part I. Dividing the American Public: 1. Part I Introduction: 'Ask the Gays': How to Use Language to Fragment and Redefine the Public Sphere Norma Mendoza-Denton; 2. The Significance of Trump's Incoherence James Slotta; 3. “Get 'Em Out!”: The Meaning of Ejecting Protestors Jack Sidnell; 4. Crybabies and Snowflakes Janet McIntosh; Part II. Performance and Falsehood: 5. Part II Introduction: The Show Must Go On: Hyperbole and Falsehood in Trump's Performance Norma Mendoza-Denton; 6. Trump's Comedic Gestures as Political Weapon Donna M. Goldstein, Kira Hall, and Matthew Bruce Ingram; 7. 45 as a Bullshit Artist: Straining for Charisma Marco Jacquemet; 8. Plausible Deniability Adam Hodges; Part III. The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World: 9. Part III Introduction: Collusion: On Playing Along with the President Janet McIntosh; 10. Banter, Male Bonding, and the Language of Donald Trump Deborah Cameron; 11. On Social Routines and That Access Hollywood Bus Bruce Mannheim; 12. 'Cocked and Loaded': Trump and the Gendered Discourse of National Security Carol Cohn; 13. Evaluator in Chief Brion van Over; 14. Fake Alignments Sylvia Sierra and Natasha Shrikant; Part IV. Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump: 15. Part IV Introduction: Language and Trump's White Nationalist Strongman Politics Janet McIntosh; 16. 'Perfect English' and White Supremacy H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman; 17. Making our Nation Fear the Powerless Otto Santa Ana, Marco Antonio Juárez, Magaly Reséndez, John Hernández, Oscar Gaytán, Kimberly Cerón, Celeste Gómez, and Roberto Solís; 18. We Latin Americans Know a Messianic Autocrat When We See One Norma Mendoza-Denton; 19. Rejoinders from the Shithole Quentin Williams; 20. Muslim Enemies, Rich Arab Friends Aomar Boum.

'An indispensable resource for anyone troubled by the polarizing and demagogic political discourse of the Trump era, this book illuminates many features of Trumpian rhetoric and shows how its flagrant misrepresentations, fractured syntax, torrential flow, racist metaphors, and misogyny appeal to some people, co-opt others, and prove resistant to critique. If you hope to counter these forms of current political rhetoric, start by understanding how they work - and start here.' Judith T. Irvine, Edward Sapir Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Linguistic Anthropology, University of Michigan