A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Speech: “Trump May Deploy Us Military to Cities”

Abstract

This thesis, entitled “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Speech: Trump May Deploy US Military to Cities” is a critical discourse analysis study with Trump’s speech text as the data. Throughout the 2015-2016 presidential election races, Trump with his speeches has always provoke outrage, controversy and enthusiasm across America and even the world. This thesis is focused on the analysis of macrostucture and ideology found on Trump’s speech. This research uses qualitative research method. The data is collected from uploaded transcript by Rev online in form of sentences and paragraphs. In analyzing the data, the writer applies van Dijk’s macrostructure and ideology theory. This thesis finds there are five macrostructure from the speech text, all lead to Trump emphasizing his position as the US President. The most dominant ideology that Trump represent in the speech are activity-description and self-identity description. Five counts and four counts, respectively. Both reveal Trump’s intention amid the chaotic situation.