Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 11:1 (2023) ► pp.1–24

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

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate”

An appraisal-based study of dichotomies in Trump’s tweets about Iran

ORCiD logo with link | University of New South Wales, Australia
ORCiD logo with link | University of Sydney, Australia
Published online: 30 August 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00069.mak
Abstract
The diplomatic relationship between the USA and Iran has long been fraught and is characterised by various conflicts and the implementation of economic sanctions. It can be argued that the relationship became even more hostile after Donald Trump was elected president of the US. Trump’s sentiments towards Iran were made public through his behavior on Twitter, both before and after he took over the Presidency. These sentiments have been a mix of negative and sometimes positive views and opinions. This study uses a corpus of Trump’s tweets that explicitly mention ‘Iran’ as the basis of a linguistic analysis and applies to it the analytical framework of appraisal from Systemic Functional Linguistics. More specifically, this study focuses on how he established an Us vs. Them dichotomy. While the analysis shows that Iran has been generally portrayed negatively by Trump, there were several tweets where the Iranian government was appraised positively, too. More interestingly, in those tweets, he seemed to target Obama and democrats and represent them negatively while Iran was assessed in positive terms.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background on Iran and US relations
    • 1.2Twitter and political communication
    • 1.3Aims and objectives
  • 2.appraisal: An overview
  • 3.Trump and Twitter
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Iranian government vs. the US government
    • 5.2Obama administration vs. Trump (administration)
      • 5.2.1Trump and Iran vs. Obama
    • 5.3Iranian government vs. Iranian people
    • 5.4Media vs. Trump administration
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (61)
References
Alba-Juez, Laura. 2018. “Emotion and Appraisal Processes in Language: How are they Related?” In The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction, edited by Maria de los Angeles Gomez Gonzalez and Lachlan Mackenzie, 227–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alba-Juez, Laura, and Geoff Thompson. 2014. “The Many Faces and Phases of Evaluation.” In Evaluation in Context, edited by Laura Alba-Juez and Geoff Thompson, 3–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Bryan. 2017. “Tweeter-in-Chief: a Content Analysis of President Trump’s Tweeting Habits.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 8 (2): 36–47. [URL]
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. “The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays”, edited by Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2006. Evaluation in Media Discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Edward Finegan. 1989. “Styles of Stance in English: Lexical and Grammatical Marking of Evidentiality and Affect.” Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 9 (1): 93–124. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blakemore, Erin. 8 January 2020. “U.S.-Iran Tensions: From Political Coup to Hostage Crisis to Drone Strikes.” [URL]. Accessed 9 January 2020. [URL]
Breeze, Ruth. 2017. “Tired of Nice People? An Appraisal-Based Approach to Trump’s Dichotomies.” Cultura, Lenguaje y RepresentacIón 181: 7–25. [URL]
. 2019. “Emotion in Politics: Affective-Discursive Practices in UKIP and Labour.” Discourse & Society 30 (1): 24–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. “Angry Tweets: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Anger in Populist Political Discourse.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8 (1): 118–145. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carroll, Oliver. 18 January 2020. “Russia Says Iran Shot Down Passenger Plane After US Jets were Sent to its Borders.” Independent. Accessed 18 January 2020. [URL]
Ceron, Andrea, and Giovanna d’Adda. 2016. “E-campaigning on Twitter: The Effectiveness of Distributive Promises and Negative Campaign in the 2013 Italian Election.” New Media & Society 18 (9): 1935–1955. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Sean. 14 January 2020. “Iran Makes Plane Crash Arrests, but Continues to Blame the US for the Disaster.” VOX. Accessed 19 January 2020. [URL]
Crockett, Zachery. 2016. What I Learned Analyzing 7 Months of Donald Trump’s Tweets. Vox. Accessed 23/7/2018 from [URL]
Duncombe, Constance. 2019. “The Politics of Twitter: Emotions and the Power of Social Media.” International Political Sociology 13 (4): 409–429. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enli, Gunn. 2017. “Twitter as Arena for the Authentic Outsider: Exploring the Social Media Campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election.” European Journal of Communication 32 (1): 50–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enli, Gunn, and Anja Aaheim Naper. 2015. “Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s Tweets in the 2012 US Presidential Election Campaign.” In The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, edited by Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof and Christian Christensen, 364–377. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuoli, Matteo. 2018. “A Stepwise Method for Annotating Appraisal.” Functions of Language 25 (2): 229–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gimenez, Elsa, and Natalie Schwarz. 2016. “The Visual Construction of ‘the People’ and ‘Proximity to the People’ on the Online Platforms of the National Front and Swiss People’s Party.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 41 (2): 213–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Christian R. 2018. “Crooked Hillary and Dumb Trump.” Internet Pragmatics 1 (1): 55–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hood, Susan. 2010. Appraising Research: Evaluation in Academic Discourse. London: Palgrave. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hood, Susan, and James Martin. 2005. “Invoking Attitude: The Play of Graduation in Appraising Discourse.” Revista Signos 37 (58): 195–220. [URL]
Hunston, Susan. 2000. “Evaluation and the Planes of Discourse: Status and Value in Persuasive Texts.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, edited by Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, 176–207. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan, and Geoffrey Thompson. 2000. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katzman, Kenneth, and Paul K. Kerr. 2016. Iran Nuclear Agreement. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kayam, Orly. 2018. “The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language.” Political Studies Review 16 (1): 73–88. 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
Kreiss, Daniel. 2016. “Seizing the Moment: The Presidential Campaigns’ Use of Twitter during the 2012 Electoral Cycle.” New Media & Society 18 (8): 1473–1490. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał, and Joshua A. Tucker. 2018. “Re/Constructing Politics through Social & Online Media: Discourses, Ideologies, and Mediated Political Practices.” Journal of Language and Politics 17 (2): 141–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Jasmine C., and Kevin Quealy. 2016. “The 282 People, Places and Things Donald Trump has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List.” The New York Times 251. [URL]
Liu, Dilin, and Lei Lei. 2018. “The Appeal to Political Sentiment: An Analysis of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s Speech Themes and Discourse Strategies in the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Discourse, Context & Media 251: 143–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, James, and Peter White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin. 2015. “How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism.” Government and Opposition 50 (2): 189–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Standford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin, and Simon Tormey. 2014. “Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style.” Political Studies 62 (2): 381–397. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Donnell, M. 2008. “UAM Corpus Tool”. Available to download from: [URL].”
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
Pain, Paromita, and Gina Masullo Chen. 2019. “The President is in: Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Twitter.” Social Media+ Society 5 (2): 1–12 Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pollack, Kenneth. 2004. The Persian Puzzle: Deciphering the Twenty-Five-Year Conflict between the United States and Iran. New York: Random House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reidel, Bruce. December 2017. “Who are the Houthis, and why are we at War with them?”. Brookings. [URL]
Ross, Andrew S., and David Caldwell. 2020. “‘Going Negative’: An APPRAISAL Analysis of the Rhetoric of Donald Trump on Twitter.” Language & Communication 701: 13–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew S., and Damian J. Rivers. 2018. “Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis-and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump.” Social Media+ Society 4 (2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. “Donald Trump, Legitimisation and a New Political Rhetoric.” World Englishes 39 (4): 623–637. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ross, Monique, and Annabelle Quince. 4 January 2020. “Why America and Iran Hate Each Other.” ABC News. [URL]
Samoilenko, Sergei A., E. Shiraev, J. Keohane, and M. Icks. 2016. “Character Assassination.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation 11: 115–118. [URL]
Trevisan, Piergiorgio. 2018. “‘Tweeting Engagement’. Strategies of Identity Construction and ‘Alignment-Disalignment’ in Donald Trump’s Use of Social Media.” Lingue e Linguaggi 281: 337–353. [URL]
Trump, Donald, and Tony Schwartz. 1987. The Art of the Deal. Random House: New York.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Twiplomacy Study. 2018. Retrieved from: [URL]. Accessed 10 January 2019.
van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press.” In Approaches to Media Discourse, edited by Allan Bell and Philip Garrett, 21–63. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004. “Politics, Ideology and Discourse.” In Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, edited by Ruth Wodak, 728–740. London: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. “Ideology and Discourse.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden, Lymen Tower Sargent and Marc Stears, 176–196. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. 2018. “Media Coverage of Shifting Emotional Eegimes: Donald Trump’s Angry Populism.” Media, Culture & Society 40 (5): 766–778. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wells, Chris, Dhavan V. Shah, Jon C. Pevehouse, Jung Hwan Yang, Ayellet Pelled, Frederick Boehm, Josephine Lukito, Shreenita Ghosh, and Jessica L. Schmidt. 2016. “How Trump Drove Coverage to the Nomination: Hybrid Media Campaigning.” Political Communication 33 (4): 669–676. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wignell, Peter, Kay O’Halloran, and Sabine Tan. 2019. “Semiotic Space Invasion: The Case of Donald Trump’s US Presidential Campaign.” Semiotica 2019 (226): 185–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wignell, Peter, Sabine Tan, Kay L. O’Halloran, and Kevin Chai. 2021. “The Twittering Presidents: An Analysis of Tweets from @BarackObama and @realDonaldTrump.” Journal of Language and Politics 20 (2): 197–225. [URL]. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

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

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. 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