Trauma Metaphor Use After Hillary Clinton’s Loss in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

Hillary Rodham Clinton was expected to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election, so her loss was hard to articulate for her supporters. This study examined the metaphors her supporters used to talk about her 2016 election loss. Two hundred Clinton supporters completed an online open-ended question survey about their feelings about the election. Participants relied on a number of violent and traumatic metaphors to make sense of Clinton's loss: betrayal, living in an alternate reality, large-scale disasters, wrecks, and crime. The implications of using violent and traumatic metaphors to explain the election loss are discussed.

Keywords:

• 2016 presidential election
• metaphors
• Hillary Clinton
• trauma
• communication

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather J. Carmack

Heather J. Carmack is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include communication about patient safety and communication about death and dying.

Jocelyn M. DeGroot

Jocelyn M. DeGroot is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her research interests are in communicative issues of death and dying.