Bad Language: Decoding Donald Trump

Book excerpt: 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.