Defying Logics and Leading the Deplorables: Making Rhetorical Sense of Ann Coulter’s Twitter

• In Event: On the Responsibility to Truth

Abstract

Ann Coulter’s online presentation and rhetorical style amalgamate into a seemingly incongruous mish-mash of educated femininity paired with blustering bullying, radical conservatism complemented by theatrical showmanship, political commentary laced with conspiracy theory. While most public commentators fall left of Coulter on the political spectrum, and a large percentage of them would consider Coulter’s Twitter as a radical exception, an aberration from everyday conservatism, I believe to dismiss Coulter’s rhetorical strategies as such misses the powerful implications of her online presence and occludes the deeply gendered nature of her rhetorical choices.

Analysis of Coulter’s seemingly discordant online presentation and her rhetorical tactics reveal that, although her strategy defies past logics concerning women’s engagement in national Republican politics, her cultivated amalgam of feminine presentation and masculine rhetorical style allows Coulter to sidestep the expected pitfalls such tactics risk and target a broad conservative audience. Futhermore, Coulter upends previous models of political pedagogy and offers audiences new ways to learn and engage with politics in online spaces while stoking dissent and discontent among her grassroots ultra-conservative followers.

Utilizing a feminist, social constructionist to analyzing the appearance, content, and rhetorical deployments in Ann Coulter’s Twitter presence during the 2016 presidential campaigns, I collected, documented, and coded each of Coulter’s original tweets over a twenty-five day period between September 6th (the day after Labor Day, a date commonly recognized as the beginning of the final stretch toward the November election) and the end of the month. I then used discourse analysis to qualitatively code each tweet’s content. Analysis reveals three ubiquitous themes: Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign; race, racism, and xenophobia; and media cover up and bias.

In addition to carving a space for herself at the intersecting spaces of masculine, alarmist, far-right political commentary and acceptable feminine participation in national politics, Coulter’s rhetoric allows her to accomplish four distinct, if interrelated, goals. First and immediately, Coulter’s rhetorical style allows her to blatantly and openly attempt to discredit the Clinton campaign while sidestepping accusations of sexism. Second, it allows her to present herself as a metaphorical stand-in for the outraged nation. Third, Coulter’s rhetoric situates the liberal agendas to which she responds as so frivolous, so silly, that sharp sarcasm, blunt dismissal, and scoffing mockery prove the only “reasonable” response. Finally, and most simply, she makes conservative women relevant.

This discussion provides a starting point for further investigation of Ann Coulter’s use of online media, the evolving rhetoric of radical conservative populism in a post-Obama America, and the very real influence of women in conservative politics. That Coulter managed to so thoroughly damage the foundations of the Clinton campaign, act as a metaphorical stand-in for an outraged nation, discredit and weaken liberal agendas in the eyes of her followers, and remind us all that conservative women matter to electoral politics should galvanize scholars interested in social justice, gendered politics, pedagogies of dissent, and the future of American politics to take a closer look at the rhetorical strategies employed by Coulter and others like her.

Author

• Samantha L. Vandermeade, Arizona State University