Trump and the State of the Union (Address): Conforming or breaking the mold?

• In Event: The Bully Pulpit: Presidential Communication in an Uncertain Landscape

Abstract

President Trump has broken many presidential rhetorical conventions. His inaugural address eschewed the typical formulation of that genre of presidential speech. His use of informal rhetoric via Twitter is unprecedented and his campaign rallies are infamously unscripted. Even in the formal communications of the presidency, colloquialisms, typographical errors, and misspellings have occurred that may signal less importance given to vetting and/or a speed by which those documents are produced and released. The State of the Union Address (SUA), however, is a fairly formulaic speech in its modern form. While individual presidents have been able to adapt the speech to their style and circumstance, the reporting and recommending structure the Constitution stipulates has been shown to be fairly constraining for most presidents and their rhetoric. We analyze Trump’s SUAs as a genre of presidential rhetoric. First, we will put Trump’s SUAs into perspective by comparing them to other modern presidents’ SUAs. Is he utilizing the speech in the same way other modern presidents have, especially as it relates to claiming credit for accomplishments and proposing items for Congress’s consideration? Second, we will assess the degree to which his speech has conformed to the genre or carved out new rhetorical space. Of particular interest will be whether Trump’s misstatements and falsehoods that have become common in some aspects of his rhetoric have carried over to the SUA. We hypothesize that Trump’s SUAs will conform to the speech’s strictures, in part due to its Constitutional underpinnings and the collaborative nature of how the speech is constructed.

Authors

• Donna R. Hoffman, University of Northern Iowa

• Alison Howard, Dominican University of California