Trump's speech style: performing the exceptional everyman
A businessman and television personality long before he turned politician, US President Donald Trump has shattered the mould of how White House leaders typically act -- and talk.
On stage he often appears to be shooting from the hip, with his meandering digressions, catchphrases, blunt insults and constant use of superlatives.
But what stands out from a closer look at Trump's distinctive rhetoric style?
As he reaches the first 100 days of his second term, here is a roundup of findings from an AFP analysis of 433 hours of Trump's public speaking.
These are compared with millions of sentences of conversations and speeches from average Americans transcribed by the collaborative project American National Corpus.
- Winners and losers -
Competition-related rhetoric dominates, with the world frequently divided between "winners" and "losers", "us" and "them", those who are "very interesting" and those who are "pathetic".
The data shows that competition-related words are 5.4 times more present than in the speech of regular Americans.
Trump also uses superlative adjectives twice as much as average, and superlative adverbs 3.6 times more than average.
Descriptions of others are rarely neutral in Trump speak. They are rather depicted as enemies or insulted as animals or pollutants, often through schoolyard-type nicknames like "Sleepy Joe" Biden or "Crazy Kamala" Harris.
The demonizing simplifies issues -- or oversimplifies -- on purpose.
"Mapping politics onto warlike competition results in a problematic reduction in complexity," wrote linguist Anthony Koth from the Rice University, in his contribution to the 2022 book "Linguistic Inquiries into Donald Trump's Language."
Rules, referees, and opponents become "one and the same: the enemy or opposing force whose objective is to deny Trump".
Linguist Ulrike Schneider from the University of Mainz pointed to Trump's recent rhetoric on global tariffs.
Politics and the economy are a zero-sum game, "where one's perceived losses come about because of another's perceived illegitimate gain," he told AFP.
- Trump as exceptional -
Trump seeks to appeal to the common American while simultaneously emphasizing a vision of himself as an exceptional figure.
"I think that's what (his) language does, he performs being ordinary and he performs being extraordinary: strong and clear in his vision," said Schneider.
"You need to be perceived as the guy next door. But at the same time you also need to prove that you're this kind of messiah, this leader figure", said Schneider.
Trump uses a superlative every 19 adjectives -- twice as often as the average American (every 41 adjectives).
Among his favourites is "greatest." He insists he is there to beat records, his pledges and actions are "never seen", "never happened", "like never", preferably "in the history of our country".
The data finds that Trump says "in the history of our country" on average every five minutes.
- Businessman banter -
Before the White House Trump was a property developer and TV star on "The Apprentice," where he played a successful tycoon. He continues to talk in the same style, with repetitive, short sentences -- two words shorter than the standard -- and relentlessly self-promoting.
One of his most unusual traits is to refer to himself in the third person: Trump says the word "Trump" every six minutes.
For example, take the president's performance at an Oval Office meeting this April where he signed a decree ending protections for a large swath of ocean. At the ceremony, he boasted that he had previously ended the protections during his first term, only for his successor, Biden, to return the area to a no-fishing zone.
"I did it last time. And they undid it. That's why we have to stay president for a long time," Trump said, referring to himself as "we."
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