Book contents
- Language in the Trump Era
- Language in the Trump Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transcription Conventions
- Note on Ethnonyms and Phenotypic Descriptors
- Introduction: The Trump Era as a Linguistic Emergency
- Part I Dividing the American Public
- Part II Performance and Falsehood
- Part III The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World
- 9 Part III Introduction: Collusion: On Playing Along with the President
- 10 Banter, Male Bonding, and the Language of Donald Trump
- 11 On Social Routines and That Access Hollywood Bus
- 12 “Cocked and Loaded”: Trump and the Gendered Discourse of National Security
- 13 Evaluator in Chief
- 14 Fake Alignments
- Part IV Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump
- Index
- References
10 - Banter, Male Bonding, and the Language of Donald Trump
from Part III - The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
- Language in the Trump Era
- Language in the Trump Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transcription Conventions
- Note on Ethnonyms and Phenotypic Descriptors
- Introduction: The Trump Era as a Linguistic Emergency
- Part I Dividing the American Public
- Part II Performance and Falsehood
- Part III The Interactive Making of the Trumpian World
- 9 Part III Introduction: Collusion: On Playing Along with the President
- 10 Banter, Male Bonding, and the Language of Donald Trump
- 11 On Social Routines and That Access Hollywood Bus
- 12 “Cocked and Loaded”: Trump and the Gendered Discourse of National Security
- 13 Evaluator in Chief
- 14 Fake Alignments
- Part IV Language, White Nationalism, and International Responses to Trump
- Index
- References
Summary
Shortly before the presidential election, the Washington Post released a videotape from 2005 in which Donald Trump described “grabbing [women] by the pussy.” Trump dismissed the exchange as “locker-room banter,” meaning a non-serious, not necessarily truthful and thus essentially harmless exchange of a kind that is common when men talk among themselves. This chapter analyzes this type of “banter,” among (presumptively) heterosexual men talking about sex, as a ritualized social practice which helps to maintain and reproduce a “fratriarchal” form of structural male dominance. The chapter also considers what the videotape adds to our understanding of Trump’s communication style and his speaking persona, along lines of class and masculinity. Vulgarity and “lewdness” are among the linguistic resources the wealthy Trump has deployed in his bid to be seen by less privileged Americans, especially disaffected White working-class men, as a “man of the people.” While the language he used on the tape may have damaged his prospects with some voters, it made him seem more appealing to others.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language in the Trump EraScandals and Emergencies, pp. 158 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
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