Cover not available

Article published In: Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 1:1 (2018) ► pp.55–87

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Crooked Hillary and Dumb Trump

The strategic use and effect of negative evaluations in US election campaign tweets

 | University of Augsburg, Germany
Published online: 28 May 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00004.hof
Abstract
While there is extensive research on the language of twitter, our knowledge of the pragmatics of particular twitter genres (and sub-genres) is still piecemeal. At the same time, in the past decades, political discourse analysis has widened our understanding of how language can be used instrumentally to alter or manipulate public interaction, meanings and opinions. However, it has seldom examined the evaluative load of political communication in much detail. To this end, the paper, on the one hand, serves to illuminate the pragmatics of political tweets as a twitter genre. On the other hand, the study brings to the fore the strategic use of negative evaluations in political online campaigning and discusses its potential (and actual) socio-political ramifications. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of negative evaluations largely draws on Martin and White’s Appraisal framework (Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and is based on a compatible study by Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Anna B., and Mercedes Díez-Prados. 2014. “Positive self-evaluation versus negative other-evaluation in the political genre of pre-election debates.” Discourse & Society 25(2): 159–185. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. I track down, classify and categorize the negative evaluations of a subset of twitter posts by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a self-compiled corpus of 1965 tweets, with a view to evaluation types, their relative frequencies and dispersion across the corpus, as well as objects and targets of evaluation. The quantitative analysis is then completed by a qualitative examination of the objects and targets of evaluation in both twitter profiles as well as a closer look at the recurrent language used to evaluate the political “other”. The results show that Trump makes more flexible (and strategic) use of negative evaluations (both in terms of types, frequency and distribution), while Clinton’s negative evaluations are less frequent, less diverse and, thus possibly, less convincing.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Using Twitter in election campaigns
  • 3.Scoping evaluation
  • 4.Previous research on evaluation in social media
  • 5.Corpus and method of analysis
  • 6.Negative evaluations in US-American election campaign tweets
    • 6.1On the campaign trail: Tracking negative evaluations across time
    • 6.2Targets of negative evaluation
    • 6.3Objects of negative evaluation
  • 7.Twitter-specific democractic and republican evaluation strategies
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (48)
References
Bednarek, Monika. 2006. Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cabrejas-Peñuelas, Anna B., and Mercedes Díez-Prados. 2014. “Positive self-evaluation versus negative other-evaluation in the political genre of pre-election debates.” Discourse & Society 25(2): 159–185. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Capp, Piotr, and Urszula Okulska (eds.). 2013. Analyzing Genres in Political Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chin, Delenn, Anna Zappone, and Jessica Zhao. 2015. “Analyzing Twitter sentiment of the 2016 presidential candidates.” [URL] (last accessed 07/11/2017).
Conway, Bethany A., Kate Kenski, and Di Wang. 2015. “The rise of Twitter in the political campaign: Searching for intermedia agenda‐setting effects in the presidential primary.” Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication 20(4): 363–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drasovean, Anda, and Caroline Tagg. 2015. “Evaluative language and its solidarity-building role on TED.com: An appraisal and corpus analysis.” Language @ Internet 121. [URL] (accessed 07/03/2017)
Dunmire, Patricia L. 2012. “Political discourse analysis: Exploring the language of politics and the politics of language” Language and Linguistics Compass 6 (11): 735–751. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eggins, Suzanne, and Diana Slade. 1997. Analysing Casual Conversation. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, and Peter Bull. 2012. “Doing leadership in political speech: semantic processes and pragmatic inferences.” Discourse & Society 23(2): 127–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger. 1996. Linguistic Criticism (2nd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenwood, Shannon, Andrew Perrin, and Maeve Duggan. 2016. “Social media update 2016.” [URL] (last accessed 07/11/2017).
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haarman, Louann, and Linda Lombardo (eds.). 2009. Evaluation and Stance in War News: A Linguistic Analysis of American, British and Italian Television News Reporting of the 2003 Iraqi War. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hood, Susan. 2010. Appraising Research: Evaluation in Academic Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 1993. “Evaluation and ideology in scientific writing.” In Register Analysis, ed. by Mohsen Ghadessy, 57–73. London: Pinter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “Evaluation and the planes of discourse: Status and value in persuasive texts.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoffrey Thompson, 176–207. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan, and Geoffrey Thompson (eds.). 2000. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kreis, Ramona. 2017. “The ‘Tweet politics’ of President Trump.” Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 607-618. .Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1997. “Some further steps in narrative analysis.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 71: 395–415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lauerbach, Gerda. 2006. “Discourse representation in political interviews: The construction of identities and relations through voicing and ventriloquizing.” Journal of Pragmatics 38(2): 196–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Donna R. 2004. “‘Truth, justice and the American Way’: The appraisal system of judgement in the US House debate on the impeachment of the President, 1998’. In Cross-cultural Perspectives on Parliamentary Discourse, ed. by Paul Bayley, 271–300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Donna R., and Jane H. Johnson. 2013. “‘Register idiosyncratic’ evaluative choice in Congressional debate: a corpus-assisted comparative study.” In Systematic-Functional Linguistics: Exploring Choice, ed. by Lise Fontaine, Tom Bartlett, and Gerard O’Grady, 432–453. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Mick. 2012. “Appraisal analysis and the computer.” Revista Canarias de Estudios Ingleses. 651: 115–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ott, Brian L. 2017. “The age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the politics of debasement.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34 (1): 59–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Page, Ruth. 2012. Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David D. 2008. “Political blogging and campaign 2008: A roundtable.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 13(2): 160–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Puschmann, Cornelius. 2009. “Lies at Wal-Mart. Style and the subversion of genre in the Life at Wal-Mart blog.” In Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre, ed. by Janet Giltrow, and Dieter Stein, 49–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reber, Elisabeth. 2014. “Constructing evidence at Prime Minister’s Question Time: An analysis of the grammar, semantics and pragmatics of the verb ‘see’.” Intercultural Pragmatics 11(3): 357–387. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reyes, Antonio. 2011. “Strategies of legitimization in political discourse: From words to actions.” Discourse & Society 22(6): 781–807. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schubert, Christoph. 2010. “Narrative sequences in political discourse: Forms and functions in speeches and hypertext frameworks.” In Narrative Revisited: Telling a Story in the Age of New Media, ed. by Christian R. Hoffmann, 143–162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie. 1996. “Image-building through modality: The case of political interviews.” Discourse & Society 71: 389–415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. “Modal (un)certainty in political discourse: A functional account.” Language Sciences 191: 341–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John M., and Malcolm Coulthard. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoffrey, and Laura Alba-Juez (eds.). 2014. Evaluation in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Towner, Terri, and David A. Dulio. 2012. “New media and political marketing in the United States: 2012 and beyond.” Journal of Political Marketing 11 (1–2): 95–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vásquez, Camilla. 2014. “‘Usually not one to complain but …’: Constructing identities in user-generated online reviews.” In The Language of Social Media. Identity and Community on the Internet, ed. by Philip Seargeant, and Caroline Tagg, 65–90. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walker Rettberg, Jill. 2008. Blogging. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiebe, Janyce, Theresa Wilson, and Claire Cardie. 2005. “Annotating expressions of opinions and emotions in language.” Language Resources and Evaluation 39(2–3): 165–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele. 2014. “Ambient affiliation in microblogging: Bonding around the Quotidian.” Media International Australia 1511: 97–103. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Searchable talk: the linguistic functions of hashtags.” Social Semiotics 25(3): 274–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Evaluation.” In The Pragmatics of Social Media, ed. by Christian R. Hoffmann, and Wolfram Bublitz, 435–459. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (15)

Cited by 15 other publications

Hoffmann, Christian R.
2025. Persuasive Politics. In Manipulation, Influence and Deception, ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Del Saz Rubio, María Milagros
2024. An Approach to the Rhetoric of Boebert and Díaz-Ayuso’s Political Tweets on X: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses :41 ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
Mortazavi, Seyed Mohammadreza, Hamed Zandi & Mohammad Makki
2024. “A history lesson, perhaps, for my novice counterpart”. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 12:2 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
Hansson, Sten & Ruth Page
2023. Legitimation in government social media communication: the case of the Brexit department. Critical Discourse Studies 20:4 ► pp. 361 ff. DOI logo
Makki, Mohammad & Andrew S. Ross
2023. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate”. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 11:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Sun, Jing & Zhenqian Liu
2023. Evaluation Mechanism of Political Discourse: A Holistic Approach. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 52:6 ► pp. 2143 ff. DOI logo
Makki, Mohammad & Michele Zappavigna
2022. Out-grouping and ambient affiliation in Donald Trump’s tweets about Iran. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 32:1 ► pp. 104 ff. DOI logo
O’Farrell, Kate
2022. “Completely incapable of logical thought”. Internet Pragmatics 5:2 ► pp. 291 ff. DOI logo
Palomino-Manjón, Patricia
2022. Feminist activism on Twitter. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 10:1 ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo
Yao, Le & Cindy Sing Bik Ngai
2022. Engaging social media users with attitudinal messages during health crisis communication. Lingua 268 ► pp. 103199 ff. DOI logo
Gruber, Helmut
2021. Candidates’ use of Twitter during the 2016 Austrian presidential campaign. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 259 ff. DOI logo
Kumar, Ritesh
2020. #shutdownjnu vs #standwithjnu. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Dayter, Daria
2019. Microblogging. In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2020. Trump’s Novelty. In Trump and Us, ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2025. Persuasion and (New) Contexts of Use. In Manipulation, Influence and Deception, ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue