A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF THE VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION OF TRUMP IN SOME SELECTED NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

This article pragmatically studies the verbal and non-verbal communication of Trump who is one of the most controversial characters in terms of showing power and dominance through his social interactions. The article attempts to study and analyze the way in which Trump exploits  spoken language and the sign language to convey his ideas and ideologies both verbally and nonverbally. This talented way of communication contributes to a great extent to the  succession of Trump in his presidential elections of 2016. This article provides a creative explanation of how rhetoric (verbal) or non-verbal can be used to show a high extreme of power, political and social status over other political leaders or candidates. Austin’s speech act theory and Grice’s four cooperative maxims are usedfor the analysis of the reports selected from the three newspapers. Speech act theory is crucial for the analysis of the verbal and  nonverbal communication because effective communication needs a high-level of interactions and speech act theory (SAT) aims to understand how these interactions can be used to achieve actions. While the maxims show the extent in which the speaker obeys or violates the rules of the cooperative interaction. Based on data analysis, the researcher finds out that Trump often employs a unique verbal and nonverbal communication to make his point and influence people’s emotions. Such kinds of communications shows control and power rather than a more collaborative method. The article recommends that we should not focus only on the verbal uses of language, instead we have to consider both verbal and nonverbal communication because they are essential to decode a message.