As someone who loves books on language and linguistics, this was right up my street. The book does a great job of breaking down the specific ways Donald Trump uses language to connect to incite emotions, outright lie, and keep control of the conversation. It’s clear that a lot of research went into it—everything is very well sourced, and the analysis is both detailed and accessible. If you’re interested in understanding how language works in political rhetoric, this is definitely worth picking up.

A super interesting book, which is fully supported by the authors own research. I am currently doing a linguistic PhD myself (in a very different topic) and I found this piece incredibly well researched and referenced. Furthermore, I think it would manage to hold the interest of a wide range of people especially with the current political environment.

Thank you, Wayzgoose Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. No review was required in return for an advance reading copy and no review was promised.

I just finished Bad Language: Decoding Donald Trump, by Andy Curtis.

This book will be released to the public on September 13.

The author is an applied linguist, who analyzed five Trump speeches from late 2022 through 2024, studying nearly 60,000 words and this book is a result of that study. The author claimed, multiple times, that this is not a book about Donald Trump or about his lies, but rather a book about his use of language. I don’t think he is going to convince many readers, or reviewers, that it’s not about Trump’s lies.

There are already other excellent books that have looked at Trump’s lies and Trump’s use of rhetoric, but I don’t remember reading one that is organized by looking at a set of specific speeches. This book makes a very good addition to the already existing literature on those topics.

I give this book an A. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews. The book does not currently appear at Goodreads, but once it is added there, this review will also be posted there.

I finished reading this on August 31, 2024.