Bad Language: Decoding Donald Trump
by Andy Curtis
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Pub Date 13 Sep 2024 | Archive Date 30 Sep 2024
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Description
You’ve heard the speeches. Now see how they work—that is, how language can be used to convey information—or misinformation—to persuade, to rouse, to obfuscate. Linguist and researcher Dr. Andy Curtis deconstructs five major speeches by Donald Trump and examines them move by move, line by line, and explains how they function.
Thoroughly researched (citing well over 200 sources) and engagingly written, this book pulls back the curtain to show you how this kind of speechifying works. Words matter, whether you’re speaking them or hearing them. As a global citizen, you owe it to yourself to understand the deeper meaning of the messages targeted at you. With a better understanding of how language works, you’ll be better equipped to make sense of what you hear, and to distinguish fact from fiction.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
Although Curtis draws extensively on the work of political analysts, investigative reporters, psychologists, and fact-checkers, he also brings a new approach to understanding Trump’s surprising appeal to millions of US voters. Curtis decodes and deconstructs not just what the candidate says but how and why he says it. ... Curtis provides a compelling dissection of the candidate’s discourse and the opinions and confusion it conveys. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who cares about democracy, the future of the USA, and even the rest of the world.
--Kathleen Bailey, Professor Emerita, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781961953215 |
| PRICE | US$14.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 242 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Lee S, Reviewer
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.
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