About Imaginary Borders (PDF)

Diploma Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck, language: English, abstract: Othering is a language process which does not only occur in spoken language, but also in written. Nowadays, such a negative portrayal and creation of the perfect other is often happening in a rather hidden and indirect manner. This paper explores whether Donald J. Trump indulged in the act of Othering in his Tweets, and whether this happened in a direct or indirect way. The findings lead to an understanding whether Othering is being accepted in politics or not.

What comes as a blessing has also its downsides, as not only positive but also negative opinions are omnipresent on the internet. This is due to the possibility to upload almost everything, as not every website has a way to censor inappropriate content. Furthermore, having a filter for written or pictured hate crime does not prevent it from happening as it is not always straight forward, and hateful messages can come in disguise.

An uncountable number of these more or less hidden hate crimes are a sort of 'Othering' as people tend to put themselves in opposition to others to create a sense of solidarity with those who share sameness and to have some excuse to keep up power relationships. With this, it becomes clear that language itself, in the case of this paper explicitly the written one, is a powerful tool to exert authority and domination on others, especially when used by people in power, like politicians.

Therefore, the question this paper tries to answer is how written discourse in the Tweets of Trump creates the feeling of separation and dominance that underlies the act of 'Othering' and whether this reflects a direct or indirect, and with this more subtle and normalized, use of power discourse. In this thesis, only those people Trump constantly portrays as dangerous foreigners, intruders, therefore not 'Americans', are included in the analysis, by looking at how he structures his discourse around them. These include Mexicans and Muslims, both to be found under the umbrella term of (illegal) immigrants.