The US election campaign through a language lens

As the campaigning reached its climax and the polling-stations began to open, I spoke to Kate O’Connell and Gemma Chatwin of the Corporate Communications Team at King’s College London about the language used by the rival candidates, their aides and their supporters during the twelve months since the election process began. Kate and Gemma’s questions are below with my replies…

• As a language specialist, what have you observed/found interesting about the US election?

One thing that strikes an outsider – British or European, I suggest – is the different  nature of the vocabulary and rhetoric employed in US campaigning: the seemingly chaotic and unrestrained messaging, pivoting and veering unexpectedly into new areas sometimes, showing a lack of consistency, except in tone (Trump’s particularly). There is actually less reliance on a narrow range of repeated specific keywords, slogans and soundbites than has been the case in UK political campaigning – for Brexit, during the pandemic and in the recent election: (‘Take back control’, ‘Brexit means Brexit’, ‘Eat out to help out’, ‘Stop the Boats’ etc.). The Republicans’ messages have been more consistent in emphasising a few key ‘wedge’ issues while Democrats seemed to take a long time to decide on their priorities in terms of focus.

• How has the language used by both candidates differed? What does their language tell us about their campaign strategy/ voter base?

Linguists – myself included – have tried to track the formulations (not so much genuinely new language as reworking of familiar tropes) used by each side and measure the frequency with which particular topics and particular trigger-words recur. Donald Trump has employed a vocabulary containing many examples of the language of fear and violence, and much intemperate language throughout: ‘vermin’, ‘criminal migrants’, ‘the enemy from within’, ‘radical left lunatics’, and words evoking existential threats: ‘invaded’, ‘conquered’, ‘occupied’, ‘deportation’ and violence: ‘kill’, ‘death’, ‘blood’, ‘nuclear war’, ‘guns trained on her face’. One analysis concluded that Trump had used more violent language than any other recent political orator except Fidel Castro!

Trump has consistently favoured the use of ‘I’ and ‘they’, Harris more often emphasising ‘we’. The Democrats on the other hand, while perhaps favouring less inflammatory language have possibly failed, until the closing days of the campaign (‘neighbors not enemies’ is a last-minute exception), to find memorable, resonant phrases to inspire and motivate. While initially hesitant, and despite Kamala Harris being accused in the more distant past of ‘word salads’ the Democrats, apart from Joe Biden, have been measurably more coherent, while many of Trump’s recent performances have been criticised as meandering if not incomprehensible. His justification for this being that he is practising ‘the weave’, a sort of improvisational incantation that his followers appreciate.

• We have seen a lot of name-calling in the 2024 election, has it been effective?

A famous example of a slur which seems to have worked is Tim Walz’s characterising of Trump and the Republicans as ‘weird’. This is effective since the word is not especially offensive or toxic but frames the opposition as odd, eccentric, unstable in worrying ways, by implication disturbing – a relatively casual criticism of a community that is old and out of touch with reality. The Republicans accusing ‘immigrants’ of eating pet dogs and cats and likening Puerto Rico to a ‘floating island of garbage’ outraged their opponents, though Joe Biden also came unstuck when he reached for the same metaphor. It’s notable that both sides have used proxies to deliver some of the most stinging criticisms of the leaders, rather than have them delivered by the candidates themselves: ‘childless cat lady’ for example, or ‘unhinged, unstable, unchecked’ – words supplied by former Trump aides and reposted by the Democrats. One rather surprising blip in the unfolding news cycle occurred when Harris suddenly approved the f-word, agreeing when it was suggested to her that Donald Trump was a ‘fascist’. He quickly returned the insult, adding the ‘N-word’ which everyone had so far avoided: ‘I’m the opposite of a Nazi’. Both sides seem to have tacitly put those words aside for the final phase of the campaigning, though tellingly, in a final peroration J.D Vance urged followers to ‘take out the trash’ in reference to the Vice-President.

I think that outsiders listening in bemusement or horror at the campaign rhetoric misunderstand the nature of the voter bases involved. Doom-laden warnings and threats and angry braggadocio can be effective, reassuring and motivating to an audience for whom ‘make America great again’ carries a conviction that the country is at the mercy of hostile forces and on the edge of social breakdown. Conversely Kamala Harris’s more upbeat, feelgood emphasis attempts to instil a cheerful positivity which may not always have been backed up with hard facts or firm commitments (apart perhaps where reproductive rights are concerned).

• Could this be the first election won on TikTok?

Kamala Harris’s folksy reference, early in the campaign, to having ‘fallen out of the coconut tree’ cleverly appealed to a family audience and referenced her own potentially controversial heritage in a positive way. She has also tried, seemingly with some success, to tap into the female and feminine constituency and the relatively youthful energy  displayed by users of TikTok, a platform which avoids threats and displays of anger and relies on self-promotion, performances of success and – crucially – an element of self-mockery and humour that is entirely missing from Donald Trump’s repertoire. TikTok currently occupies the high-ground of the social media landscape and is a valuable channel by which to reach millennials and GenZ (the latter voting for the first time) millions of whom are potential democrat supporters. It does not reach, however the middle-aged or elderly undecided. Celebrity endorsements apparently can motivate potential non-voters to change their minds and vote, but unsurprisingly probably only affect a demographic which is already on-side anyway (‘Swifties’ for example who are said to have added 400,000 votes to Harris’s tally). Elon Musk’s embracing of Donald Trump is more difficult to assess, as Musk’s own fanbase – tech bros, startup promoters and bitcoin traders among them – aren’t necessarily effective multipliers or influencers on his behalf or Trump’s and perhaps less likely to sway the undecided.

• How did brat summer and ‘vibes’ benefit Kamala Harris’s campaign?

When pop icon Charli XCX posted her endorsement on X, ‘Kamala IS brat’, young women flooded social media with pro-Harris ‘brat’ memes, kickstarting her takeover from Biden and effectively labelling her as endearingly ‘messy, honest and volatile.’ The democrat campaign switched up to make good use of the tropes and tendencies of pop culture and entertainment media, receiving endorsements from many musicians and Hollywood names, culminating in their candidate’s surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live in which she launched viral versions of her own name -‘End the drama-la’, ‘Cool new step mom-ala’ and returned to that conflicted keyword, asserting that she would be able to open the ‘doors of the garbage truck’ that Trump had fumbled with. This confident banter in the very last moments of the campaign, along with her pivot, after Bill Clinton’s disastrous intervention, to promising some sort of support for Gaza, can only help the democrats’ chances, and these messages are featuring in places that Trump cannot usually access. Nevertheless the Republican candidate is doubling down on his insurrectionist rhetoric, welcomed by his base, saying now that he ‘should never have left the White House in the first place’.

My friend Serena Smith wrote perceptively for Dazed magazine about the role of celebrities in the presidential race…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/64995/1/will-pop-culture-impact-the-result-of-the-2024-us-election

Once the race was over the avalanche of post-mortems and recriminations began. Among them were a few which focused, as I had tried to, on the discourse of division. In the New Yorker Joshua Rothman considered the very different flavour of the two parties’ language…

“Id been spending a lot of time watching interviews with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – conversations that tended to be below average. On shows like “60 Minutes” and in her CNN town tall, Harris had been charming and trenchant but also repetitive and inflexible. Restrained by her determination to stay on message, she often failed to answer questions directly. Trump, for his part, lied, rambled and spouted nonsense as usual. And yet his lack of constraint at least made him entertaining…

…Harris and Trump’s flawed performances were typical of the duelling communications styles now wielded by Democrats and Republicans. Broadly, Democrats preach while Republicans riff; Democrats stick to their messages while Republicans let loose with whatever comes into their heads.”

In the Guardian Nesrine Malik convincingly dismantled the lazy consensus that held that the result was a defeat for the Democrats’ supposedly embracing ‘woke’ policies and relying on endorsement by ‘woke’ celebrities…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/25/woke-lost-us-election-patrician-class-identity-politics