Cultivating critical language awareness: unraveling populism in Trump’s inaugural address

Recent literature has revealed the upsurge of populism in political and media discourses across the world. However, few studies have acknowledged the importance of cultivating critical language awareness among citizens in democracies. Drawing on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse, this study critically analyzes Trump’s populist meaning-making choices in his inaugural address through both genre and register analysis to raise the urgency of cultivating citizens’ critical language awareness through language education. To better illustrate Trump’s genre moves and rhetorical strategies, this study sometimes analyzes Trump’s inaugural address in comparison with other presidents’ inaugural addresses. The findings indicate that Trump employs a combination of populist rhetorical style, which includes anti-establishment, anti-elitism rhetoric; collectivist rhetoric; pro-nationalist sentiments; and linguistic choices of simplicity and repetition to appeal to both supporters and opponents in an attempt to build solidarity. The implications of this study center on raising educators’ and social scientists’ awareness of the urgency to cultivate critical language awareness among citizens through language education. Equipped with critical language awareness, citizens can understand how politicians use linguistic resources to engage, persuade, and manipulate their audiences to achieve their political goals, and thereby can make informed choices about political leaders in the future.