AN EXCEPTIONAL CAMPAIGN: A COMPARATIVE POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CAMPAIGN SPEECHES BY HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
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2018-09-06
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en
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America’s history It includes a sense of mission to spread essentially American values, freedom and democracy, around the world. In doing so, it is an example for the world to follow, a America comes in fact close to being God’s Chosen Land. This concept has been the subject of debate, resulting in an immense body of literature about the truthfulness and the relevance of this concept for American society and history. Much less has been written about how politicians, in this case, presidential candidates, actually invoke this concept in their political rhetoric. This thesis aims to fill that lacuna. The focus of this research is on the campaign speeches by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections, which were compared to see how they both fit in the American exceptionalist framework. The research question was: How do Trump and Clinton compare in the way they use rhetoric concerning American exceptionalism in their 2016 election campaign speeches?It is shown that although Clinton actively emphasizes America’s exceptionalism, as is normal in political discourse, she does not fit the traditional exceptionalist framework per se. Trump also reverts traditions in the sense that he argues how America has been failed by his predecessors, leaving the country in ruins, rather than emphasizing America’s greatness unconditionally. His branch of exceptionalism is an underlying normative assumption about how America should be in the future, one that only Trump as president can make reality.
Keywords: American exceptionalism, Clinton, Trump, American Dream, campaign speeches, presidential elections, foreign policy, diversity
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