Files
Download Full Text (736.5 MB)
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
transgender, political rhetoric, Donald Trump, scapegoating, performative speech act theory
Description
Words are powerful. In an era where the words of political leaders evoke more attention than their policies, political rhetoric must be recognized for the powerful tool it is and its implications. The rhetoric of political leaders can greatly influence how a vulnerable community will be treated and viewed by society, with the choice language of the political leader signaling either inclusion or exclusion for the community. This study examines how President Donald Trump uses his political rhetoric to scapegoat the community of transgender Americans in the American political sphere. Limiting rhetorical media to speeches, interviews, remarks, rallies, and debates, transcribed by Roll Call, rhetoric mining is used to identify and analyze keywords, including “transgender”, “transitioned”, “sports”, “sex changes/operations”, “gender”, “hormone/puberty”, and “child sexual mutilation” to determine President Trump’s language pattern when referring to transgender Americans. Relying on J.L. Austin’s and John Searle’s speech act theory as a theoretical framework, this analysis explores how Trump’s political rhetoric functions as a performative act of scapegoating. With Excel being used to mine and analyze the repetition of the keywords, it is expected that the analysis will reveal that Trump’s performative act of scapegoating the transgender community can be seen through his purposeful stigmatizing language regarding transgender Americans, resulting in their political “otherness” and discrediting of their gender identity within the political sphere. Ultimately, this study seeks to raise awareness on how performative political rhetoric can contribute to the continued marginalization of vulnerable communities and emphasize the consequences of such rhetorical choices persisting.
Disciplines
American Politics | Gender and Sexuality | Rhetoric
Format
MOV
Medium
Video
Size or Duration
18 minutes 16 seconds
City
San Antonio, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Loading...