Analisi critica del discorso di apertura della campagna politica per le elezioni presidenziali di Donald Trump

This dissertation aims to provide a critical analysis of Donlad Trump's linguistic strategies in political discourse. In particular, this thesis presents a critical discourse analyse of Donald Trump's presidential announcement. The analysis focused on the discursive strategies through which Donald Trump managed to create empathy with the American working and middle class during the 2016 presidential campaign. A particular attention was paid to the way in which Donald Trump managed to propose himself as an alternative to the political establishment, collecting the electorate's anger towards the ruling class as well as its desire for a radical change. The analysis was carried out using an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). According with the theoretical background provided by this method, Donald Trump's speech was analysed not only as a linguistic performance but also as a social practice. Therefore, the study took into account the social implications in the production and interpretation of the speech. Following the theoretical perspective of CDA, the main purpose of this analysis is to expose the relation between language use, ideology and relations of power within Donald Trump's speech.