“Nasty Question” and “Fake News”: Metadiscourse as a Resource for Denying Accusations of Racism in Donald Trump’s Presidential Press Events

Abstract

This paper analyzes how Trump uses metadiscourse as a strategy for denying accusations of racism. We conduct a discourse analysis of press event interactions where Trump denies journalists’ accusations of racism or where Trump himself voices others’ accusations of racism and then denies these accusations. Analysis of 8 excerpts illustrates how Trump a) uses metadiscourse to reframe his own talk as “accurate” instead of “racist,” b) uses “fake news” as humor to delegitimize media and display amicable relationships with his African American supporters and c) labels questions from journalists who ask about his racist actions as “racist” or “nasty.” These metadiscursive strategies reproduce racist ideologies that position Trump as well intentioned, not racist, and thus not blame-worthy for racist actions and those who question Trump as unreasonable and sometimes, racist themselves. Thus, Trump uses his authority to control definitions of what counts as racism and is able to perpetuate racism while attempting to maintain a “not-racist” identity. Overall, we highlight how close analysis of forms of metadiscourse as used in particular interactional and relational contexts is consequential for understanding ways that racism is justified and maintained more broadly.

KEYTERMS::

• denials of racism
• face-work
• ideology
• metadiscourse
• Trump

Data availability statement

Data available within the article or its supplementary materials.

Notes

1 While Sclafani (2018) finds that metadiscourse about the language of Trump’s presidential campaign circulated in news reports, op-eds, commentaries from professional debate coaches, round-table style political talk shows, parodic impersonations on late-night talk shows, and various types of social media quoting in the form of retweets, memes, etc., we additionally find that metadiscourse about Trump once he was in office also appeared in press events such as those we analyze here.