ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS AND IMPLICATIONS ON DONALD

TRUMP’S SPEECH OF PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

ANNOUNCEMENT, JUNE 16, 2015

The 4th Graduate Students Conference

By

Prabarini Dwi Pangestu 156332003

Ludmila Martha 156332014

F. Sabrina Cahyamitha 156332023

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA

2015

Abstract

In politic, we have to be critical to the language used by the politicians

particularly during the presidential campaigns. There are some aspects which

differentiate the political language from daily language. The language in politic is

very suggestive in term of the choice of the words functioned as the means to

persuade the people who will vote for the candidates. Often, we are not aware of

being persuaded because the language is very well-arranged that the intention of

the candidates could be covered. This study deals with an analysis of speech acts

and implications on Donald Trump’s speech of presidential campaign

announcement. It aims to explain the function of language in the campaign and to

uncover certain implications related to the language functions. This paper used

discourse analysis as the method of the study. The language found in the speech

served as representatives, directives, commissives, and expressives, and

declaratives functions. Whereas the implications, we found out a lot of violation

to the Grice’s four principles of maxims. Maxim of quantity has been the major

violation found in the speech since Donald Trump’s commonly used exaggerated

words emphasizing his good quality and discrediting others.

Keywords: Language functions, speech acts, implications, maxims

A. INTRODUCTION

1. Background of Study

In pragmatic, we have term speech events to describe “social activities in

which language play a particular important role” (Finegan, 2004, p. 305). One of

the speech events that we are interested in discussing on this paper is the political

speech delivered by one of the America’s presidential candidates in 2016

president’s election, Donald Trump. Political speech becomes a substantial

phenomenon since it involves a selected number of people as a team to prepare

the influential speeches for the candidates. Frequently, political speeches have

become significant in term that they are able to affect people, particularly in

determining their decisions. The change of the nation will be determined by how

the president candidates utilizing their political speeches.

The influential effects of the political speeches compel the president

candidates to prepare their public speeches as well as possible during their

campaigns. Their speeches are the representation of their political views,

ideologies, movements, future policies, and even their deliberately hidden

political agendas. It happens frequently that several candidates have failed to run

for president’s election since their speeches received negative responses. Because

of its power in determining the one who will hold the power, we are interested in

observing the ways it influences the people in the next America presidential

election, 2016.

In June 16, 2015, Donald Trump has announced his participation as one of

the president’s candidates in 2016. Donald Trump is one of the most influential

people in America, a master in gargantuan international business nets, and also an

overly familiar public figure. He is well-known for his business in real estates and

properties, as the main businesses, and the other branches businesses in which

they play an active role in the America’s economy. He is one of the richest, and he

has decided to run for the presidential candidate. This is a great event that should

be noticed by everyone in the world.

Trump launched his campaign declaring the official slogan, "we are going

to make our country great again" with a commitment to become the "greatest jobs

president that God ever created". In his announcement, he promised to focus his

works on reviving the American dreams by improving the economy of America,

returning its glory as the pioneer in economy and business. He also declared to

solve America’s financial problems and its dependency to other countries. He

criticized the old infrastructures of America and compared them to the third world

countries’ infrastructure. He noted that America was behind other countries like

China, Japan, and Mexico in the businesses and developments. He pointed the

problems of immigration, specifically addressed to the Mexican immigrants

whom he criticized of bringing more problems to America.

Analyzing his political speeches indeed will be very interesting in order to

unravel his campaign strategies and more importantly the content of his

campaigns. The ways he delivered his speech in his first announcement can be

analyzed using the implicatures and the speech acts’ theories. Following the

Grice’s theory of the cooperative principles, we are very eager to discover how far

Trump has violated the cooperative principles and for what purposes he did that

kind of violations.

It is commonly understood that in politic, the politicians often violate the

cooperative principles in order to gain public’s attentions. It is frequently

discovered in the form of violating the maxim of quantity and quality to

emphasize their achievements and great contributions. It has been done solely for

the sake of creating the great, capable, kind and positive images toward one’s self

and discrediting the images of the other politicians. In the case of presidential

candidates, it is also commonly discovered that the candidates often use

commissive and assertive techniques excessively to give promises and assurances

to the public.

2. Research Questions

There are three research questions discussed in this paper, namely:

a. What kinds of speech acts are mostly found in Donald Trump’s speech in

presidential campaign announcement, June 16, 2015?

b. What kinds of violation of maxims are found in his speech?

c. What are his implications in using the violation of maxims and certain kind of

speech acts?

B. LITERATURE REVIEW

In language, we have the term speech acts, “actions that are carried out

through language are called speech acts” (Finegan, 2004, p. 296). The general

language functions performed by speech acts are particularly categorized into

several types:

1. Representatives

This speech act represents a state of affairs: assertions, statements, claims,

hypotheses, descriptions, suggestions, and can generally be characterized as true

or false (Finegan, 2004, p. 296).

2. Commissives

It “commits a speaker to a course of action: promises, pledges, threats,

vows” (Finegan, 2004, p. 296).

3. Directives

Directives are “intended to get the addressee to carry out an action:

commands, requests, challenges, invitations, entreaties, dares” (Finegan, 2004, p.

296).

4. Declarations

Declarations “bring about the state of affairs they name: blessings, hirings,

firings, baptisms, marrying, declaring mistrials” (Finegan, 2004, p. 296).

5. Expressives

It indicates “the speaker’s psychological state or attitude: greetings,

apologies, congratulations, condolences, thanksgivings” (Finegan, 2004, p. 296).

6. Verdictives

This type of speech act makes assessments or judgments: ranking,

assessing, appraising, and condoning (Finegan, 2004, p. 296).

There are some principles which govern the interpretation of utterances.

The principles are diverse, complex, and differ from culture to culture, meaning

that what seems common sense to one group is not necessarily common sense to

all groups (Finegan, 2004, p. 299). However, people could manage to understand

utterances since they normally trust that they and their conversational partners are

honoring the same interpretive conventions, so that there is a convention that

people will cooperate in communicating with each other, and speakers rely on this

cooperation in order to make conversation efficient (Finegan, 2004, pp. 299-300).

Therefore, this is what refers to Grice’s cooperative principle; that is to “make

your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it

occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are

engaged” (Grice, 1975, p. 45).

The cooperative principle divides some general principles, which can be

described as maxims, into four categories of communication as follows:

1. Maxim of Quantity

In maxim of quantity, the speakers are expected to give as much

information as is necessary, but to give no more information than is necessary

(Finegan, 2004, p. 300). As stated by Grice (1975, p. 45), the category of quantity

relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and under it, falls the

following maxims:

a. Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purposes

of the exchange).

b. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

2. Maxim of Quality

Grice proposes maxim of quality so that the speakers or writers would say

only what they believe to be true and would have evidence for what they say

(Finegan, 2004, p. 302). Akmajian et al (2010, p. 401) states that in maxim of

quality, you are expected to try making contribution one that is true. As stated by

Grice (1975, p. 46), under the category of quality falls a super-maxim, “try to

make your contribution one that is true” and two more specific maxims:

a. Do not say what you believe to be false.

b. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

3. Maxim of Relevance

The next, which is maxim of relevance, directs speakers to organize the

utterances that they are relevant to the ongoing context (Finegan, 2004, p. 301). In

other words, speakers are expected to give contributions which are connected to

the subject or context of the conversation. Under the category of relation, Grice

places a single maxim, namely, “be relevant” (Grice, 1957, p. 46).

4. Maxim of Manner

This maxim refers to how speakers or writers avoid ambiguity and

obscurity and be orderly in their utterances (Finegan, 2004, p. 301). In other

words, this maxim is related to how something is being said or the way

information is provided in a conversation. Under the category of manner, which is

related to how what is said is to be said, Grice (1975, p. 46) includes the super-

maxim “be perspicuous” and various maxims such as:

a. Avoid obscurity of expression.

b. Avoid unnecessary ambiguity.

c. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

d. Be orderly.

C. METHODOLOGY

1. Research Object

The researchers used a speech as the object of the research. The speech

which was used is Donald Trump’s speech of the presidential campaign

announcement, June 16, 2015.

2. Type of Research

Generally, the researchers used content analysis as the research method.

Content or document analysis is defined as “a technique that enables writers to

study human behavior in an indirect way, through an analysis of their

communication” (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2008, p. 472). This content analysis was

also beneficially employed. As noted by Fraenkel & Wallen (2008), content

analysis is unobtrusive since the presence of the writer does not influence the data

which is analyzed (p. 483).

To be specific, discourse analysis was also used as a method because it is

an appropriate method to solve the research problems addressed in this study.

Discourse analysis is defined as (1) concerned with language use beyond the

boundaries of a sentence/utterance, (2) concerned with the interrelationships

between language and society and (3) as concerned with the interactive or dialogic

properties of everyday communication (Stubbs, 1983, p. 1). In this case, the

discourse is used in the form of a video accompanied by the video’s transcription.

3. Research Method

Firstly, the speech’s video and the transcription were downloaded from the

internet. The researchers then watched the video while reading the video’s

transcription in order to identify the language functions and implications which

are presented by Donald Trump’s speech. The sentences were noted and collected

as the data of the research. Afterwards, the data obtained were analyzed by the

researchers in order to find out the answers of the research questions in this study.

D. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The discussion is divided into two parts; the first is about the speech acts

and language functions found in Trump’s speech with the explanations of his

intentions in using speech acts, and the second is about the violation of maxims

and Trump’s aims of violating certain kinds of maxims. Thus, for the first step

leading into the discussion, we would like to answer the research question 1 and 2

by presenting the results of our analysis in the following tables:

Table 1: The Language Functions Occurring in Donald Trump’s speech.

Table 2: The Percentages of the Violation of the Maxims

No. Types of Maxim Number Percentages

1. Quantity 45 37,19%

2. Quality 32 26,45%

3. Manner 19 15,70%

4. Relevance 25 20,66%

Total 121 100%

1. The Discussions on Language Functions

As it has been stated before, speech acts or any actions resulting

throughout language could appear anytime, even in a campaign speech. In Donald

Trump’s speech, the result of representatives is the highest, 52,63%, with 50

No. Language Functions Number Percentages

1. Representatives 50 52,63%

2. Directives 3 3,16%

3. Commissives 17 17,90%

4. Expressives 24 25,26%

5. Declaratives 0 0%

6. Verdictives 1 1,05%

Total 95 100%

utterances. Most of them show how boastful Trump was and how he loved to

blame on everything. As it can be seen in the following utterance, “...And

remember the $5 billion website? $5 billion we spent on a website, and to this day

it doesn’t work. A $5 billion website. I have so many websites, I have them all

over the place. I hire people, they do a website. It costs me $3. $5 billion

website...” From this sentence, Trump showed one of many unsuccessful Obama

programmes that Trump complained. He compared it to his websites which spent

less money but could run well, because he thought he had a better management.

Trump also dared provocatively to persuade the audience with the

percentage of another Obama’s program which turned to fail, “…We have a

disaster called the big lie: Obamacare. Obamacare. Yesterday, it came out that

costs are going for people up 29, 39, 49, and even 55 percent, and deductibles are

through the roof. ...” The way he convinced the audiences with the percentages

that came out from unclear source was questionable. Surely, he was trying to

make the audience believed what he stated.

By claiming toward something is also part of representatives. Trump for

many times mentioned how great he was in doing anything and the utterance

below is one of them, “...I’m a private company, so nobody knows what I’m

worth. And the one thing is that when you run, you have to announce and certify

to all sorts of governmental authorities your net worth. So I said, “That’s OK.”

I’m proud of my net worth. I’ve done an amazing job....” Telling “I’ve done an

amazing job” to the audiences was his way to gain the attention and the most

important thing was gaining the votes.

Trump has used a lot of expressives in his presidential campaign

announcement speech. Mostly, he greeted and thanked people for their supports in

coming to his campaign: “So nice, thank you very much. That’s really nice. Thank

you…And it’s an honor to have everybody here….”, he praised his family for

doing a great job: “by the way, speaking of my family, Melania, Barron, Kai,

Donnie, Don, Vanessa, Tiffany, Evanka did a great job….”, and he also blamed

his political opponents, like Obama and Clinton for the degeneration of America

in many aspects: “Today I heard it. Through stupidity, in a very, very hard core

.

prison, interestingly named Clinton, two vicious murderers, two vicious people

escaped, and nobody knows where they are”.

He purposely used expressions like greeting and thanking to appreciate

people for coming and to show that he appreciated their supports and efforts for

him. Praising was also his way to appreciate people who wholly support him and

blaming was used to emphasize his political opponents’ mistakes and weaknesses

and on the contrary, to emphasize his greatness and strengths, so that people will

think again to support his political opponents and support him instead.

Trump also used commisives mostly to make promise of prosperity and

greatness to the people of America. He promised to bring back the prosperity to

America by referring to American dream: “Sadly, the American dream is dead.

But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger

than ever before, and we will make America great again”. He promised to be “the

greatest jobs president that God ever created” by his statement: “I’ll bring back

our jobs from China, from Japan, from so many places. I’ll bring back our jobs,

and I’ll bring back our money”.

Election promises are often used in political campaigns, aiming to

persuade people to vote for the candidates. We can have information about the

detail of their campaign programs and their ways to give contributions to the

country by observing their election promises. Observing meticulously their

election promises will give us the picture of the candidates’ qualities. Trump’s

promises give impression that he can make possible all the things that he has

promised. He has promised of several big things that seem impossible to achieve.

In our opinion, he is too confident in his ability of achieving everything with a

great success.

Trump also used some directives in his speech. An example of directives

would be: “Reduce our $18 trillion in debt, because, believe me, we’re in a

bubble. We have artificially low interest rates. We have a stock market that,

frankly, has been good to me, but I still hate to see what’s happening. We have a

stock market that is so bloated.” In this statement, Trump attempted to persuade

people to reduce the country’s debt due to certain reasons such as low interest

rates and the bloated stock market. This is a directives since Trump attempts to

make or invite the audience or the American people to perform an action, which is

to reduce the country’s debt.

The verdictives’ percentage is only 1,02%, which is the least number of

language function occurring in Donald Trump’s speech. In verdicitives, as the

name suggests (to verdict), the speaker has a value judgment on something, for

example when Trump said “You look at these airports, we are like a third world

country. And I come in from China and I come in from Qatar and I come in from

different places, and they have the most incredible airports in the world. You

come to back to this country and you have LAX, disaster. You have all of these

disastrous airports.” Therefore, this utterance is verdictive because Donald Trump

criticized the airports.

Meanwhile, there is no declaratives in the speech since declaratives tend to

change the external status of an object or a situation and performed by an

institutional role in a specific context (marriage, war, etc.).

2. The Discussions on Violation of Maxims

In using maxim of quantity, we have to be brief and clear in delivering our

speech. However, Trump often talked too much and repeated his words to

emphasize his ideas and his greatnesses “Brooklyn, I ventured into Manhattan and

did a lot of great deals—the Grand Hyatt Hotel. I was responsible for the

convention center on the west side. I did a lot of great deals, and I did them early

and young. And now I’m building all over the world, and I love what I’m doing”

and he also often gave to much information than necessary about his political

opponents and turned off to discredit his political opponents:

“I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using

a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of

negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable deal, who’s just

being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes

into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg.”

He purposely violated the maxim of quantity for the reason of creating the

good image of himself by repeating words that described his greatnesses and good

achievements and for creating bad images of his political opponents by

discrediting them.

Another maxim proposed by Grice is the maxim of quality. In Trump’s

speech, there were a lot of violations of this maxim such as when he said: “When

Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending

you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of

problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs.

They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people....”

The audience should had been wondering or thinking twice whether what Trump

said was legit. He could have mentioned the beneficial sources or percentages of

it. There is no limitiation to tell it was a lie because it had no evidences.

Another violation of the maxim of quality is shown when Trump stated

that he was not a believer but ended up taking evidence from economist, in the

utterance below.

“...According to the economists— who I’m not big believers in, but,

nevertheless, is what they’re saying— that $24 trillion— we’re very

close— that’s the point of no return. $24 trillion. We will be there soon.

That’s when we become Greece. That’s when we become a country

that’s unsalvageable. And we’re gonna be there very soon. We’re gonna

be there very soon....”

It is almost impossible to imagine how America, a super power country,

could have the same destiny as Greece recently. Besides, he did not mention

which economists he referred to. Everyone could claim himself as an economist,

and not to mention how big 24 trillion was, peculiarly the Americans were not

aware of losing it.

The maxim of relevance also belongs to maxim which was violated quite

often, 20,66 % with 25 utterances. The violation of this maxim is usually

characterized by the sense of context which differs radically. In Trump’s speech,

he mentioned some issues that happened to be irrelevant with what he intended to

say previously. Some examples of it can be seen as follows:

“So nice, thank you very much. That’s really nice. Thank you. It’s great

to be at Trump Tower. It’s great to be in a wonderful city, New York.

And it’s an honor to have everybody here. This is beyond anybody’s

expectations. There’s been no crowd like this. And, I can tell, some of

the candidates, they went in. They didn’t know the air-conditioner

didn’t work. They sweated like dogs. They didn’t know the room

was too big, because they didn’t have anybody there. How are they

going to beat ISIS? I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

The relation between the opening speech and how he moved to ISIS all of a

sudden was irrelevant. There was no sequences from greeting people, to air-

conditioner problem, to the ability of beating ISIS.

Another example of how irrelevant his speech can be seen in the following

sentence:

“...So I announced that I’m running for president. I would…… one of

the early things I would do, probably before I even got in— and I

wouldn’t even use— you know, I have— I know the smartest

negotiators in the world. I know the good ones. I know the bad ones. I

know the overrated ones...”

Trump was supposed to address what he would do if he was chosen to be

president, but in the utterance above he was talking about his knowledge of

‘smartest negotiators’ instead.

The last maxim found in Trump’s speech was the maxim of manner.

Generally, this maxim requires speakers to avoid obscurity of expression and

ambiguity and also demands the speaker to be brief and orderly. Thus, it was

exemplified in Trump’s utterance: “So, here’s a couple of stories happened

recently. A friend of mine is a great manufacturer. And, you know, China comes

over and they dump all their stuff, and I buy it. I buy it, because, frankly, I have

an obligation to buy it, because they devalue their currency so brilliantly, they just

did it recently, and nobody thought they could do it again.” It disobeys the maxim

of manner because the order of the story is not good. Firstly, he stated about his

friend, who is a manufacturer, but then he talked about the business or products of

China. In terms of the maxim of manner, Trump should state the story of his

friend first and then tell the story of China. However, he did not describe his

friend, instead jumped to the elaboration of buying China products.

E. CONCLUSIONS

The first research question is related to what kinds of language functions

are mostly found in Trump’s speech. From our research, we find that

representatives/assertives is the most type of speech acts occurring in Trump’s

speech, with 52,63% percentage in total utterances, followed by expressives with

25,26%, directives with 17,90%, and verdictives with 1,05%. There is no

declaratives occurring in the utterances. The second question, referring to the

violation of maxims, we find Trump’s speech violate four types of maxims. The

most maxim violated is the maxim of quantity with 37,19%, followed by maxim

of quality with 26,45%, and then maxim of relevance with 20,66%, and finally

maxim of manner with 15,70%.

In term of the last research question, we find the implications in Trump’s

speech in using the violation of maxims and speech acts. We could infer that

Trump mostly emphasizes his strengths, achievements, and greatness by repeating

certain words frequently which disobeys maxim of quantity. On the other hand,

Trump often told lies by not including certain sources or evident in his speech,

which violates maxim of quality. Trump also uses certain kind of speech acts,

such as commissive, which is shown by telling promises in order to gain public’s

attention to give votes for him.

F. REFERENCES

Akmajian, A. et al. (2010). Linguistics: An introduction to language and

communication (6th ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Finegan, D. 2004. Language: Its structure and use. Boston: Wadsworth.

Fraenkel, J. R. & Wallen, N. E. (2008). How to design and evaluate research in

education (7th ed.). Boston: McGraw–Hill Higher Education.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. L. Morgan (Eds.),

Syntax and semantics: Speech acts (vol. 3). New York: Academic Press.

Ma, M. (2014). Effectual linkages between campaign promises and electoral

accountability. Retrieved November 6th, from http://www.researchgate

.net/publication/272088049_Effectual_Linkages_Between_Campaign_Pr

omises_and_Electoral_Accountability

Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse Analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural

language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

G. ATTACHMENT

Table of Speech Acts and Violation of Maxims’ Analysis