ACTIVITY 1

(CDA SECTION – Final Exam – 15th October, 2020)

You will read part of President Trump’s remarks on Phase Four Negotiations (as regards
the covid-2 pandemic), retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-
statements/remarks-president-trump-phase-four-negotiations/
Analyse the way he portrays the US’ role and other countries’ roles, and the role of the
local news.
Make reference to the use of rhetorical devices and give examples from the text.

REMARKS

Remarks by President Trump on Phase Four

Negotiations

ECONOMY & JOBS

Issued on: July 20, 2020

Oval Office

11:07 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, well, thank you very much. You’ve asked to see what’s going on
at our meetings, so I figured let you come in. You’ll look and you’ll see we have a lot of — a
lot of good things happening. We have tremendous progress on vaccines and therapeutics.
We’re getting reports. We’re studying the reports very closely. I think people are going to be
very pleasantly surprised with what’s going on on the vaccine front and the therapeutic
front. And that, to us, is always the first topic.

Secondarily, but very importantly, we’re working and negotiating with the Democrats on
trying to get a plan that helps small businesses, helps people, helps this country. And I
think we’ve made a lot of progress on that. And the discussions are going on.
…

THE PRESIDENT: It came from China. It should have never been allowed to get out. They
could have stopped it. They could have stopped it easily. They chose not to. And we’ll have
further reports on that. But it came from China. They could have stopped it, but they didn’t.
They stopped it from going into China, but they didn’t stop it from going to the rest of the
world. It didn’t stop it from going to Europe, to us.

They should have stopped it. They could have stopped it. They weren’t transparent at all;
they were the opposite. It’s not good.

I spoke with the President of France this morning, and I spoke with — I spoke with the
President of Egypt, and we had a very, very good conversation, both of us. And all of us,
and all of us together — I’ve had many conversations with leaders all over the world over
the weekend, and over the last couple of weeks in particular. And this is a pandemic that is
flaring up all over the place. Countries thought they were in good shape and then, all of a
sudden, they have a big flare-up.

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I see that over the weekend — I guess on Friday — there was a worldwide number of
death — worldwide. Because when you watch the news — the local news — and you see
it, and it’s — it’s, like, all about the United States. They never like to talk about what’s going
on in the world. But you look at Mexico, Brazil, many countries in Europe, many countries
— all over — Russia. Russia has a got a tremendous problem. It’s — what’s going on is
terrible. It’s terrible. But this is a worldwide problem.

And we’re helping the world with ventilators. We’re helping a lot of countries. They don’t
have ventilators, and we’re sending thousands of ventilators to different countries. But I do
want people to understand this is a worldwide problem caused by China, but it’s a
worldwide problem.

Countries are going through hell, and it’s going to — we’re going to give you a lot of
briefings in the next week and over the next few weeks as to — I think it’s very important to
do it, the vaccines and the therapeutics. I think I’m going to bring some of the great
companies that are working, and very successfully in the past have worked on these things,
and they’re going to tell you very specifically what they’re doing and how they’re doing. But
we think we’re doing very well in that regard.

Those two items — I think, frankly, therapeutic, I like almost better at this point. You go in
and you make people better. Now, we have had some very good luck with remdesivir, and
that’s been successful. And others have been successful. The plasma has been
successful. But we are — we’re really coming up with some very good answers, meaning,
they are. All over the world, they’re working. And we’re working very closely all over the
world on the vaccines and the therapeutics.

So we’re going to have some of the heads of these great companies coming in. Johnson &
Johnson is doing very well, in particular. They seem to be doing very well. But numerous
are doing very well. It’s something that I really feel certain — I guess you can never use
“totally certain” but pretty damn certain that they’re going to have the vaccine, they’re going
to have therapeutics, and it’s going to start taking place very shortly, and that will be a great
thing. For the world, that will be a great thing.

But this is happening all over the world, not just the United States. And it’s a tough one. It’s
very tough. It’s very sad when you see the death. It’s all death that could have — could’ve
been stopped by China. If they wanted to stop it, they could’ve stopped it.

Okay, thank you very much, everybody. Please. Thank you. Thank you.

END 11:26 A.M. EDT

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MY ANALYSIS
Within the context of President Trump’s remarks on Phase Four Negotiations (as regards
the covid-2 pandemic), I will analyse the way in which he portrays America´s role and other
countries´ roles and the role of the local news. Moreover, I will refer to certain rhetorical
devices that can help show such portrayal to the mentioned entities.
In this extract I can see a positive framing of “us” and a negative framing of “them”. “US”
makes reference to “Americans” and “the United States” , who are suffering the
consequences of the virus. And “THEM” is China in the sense that they did nothing to
prevent the virus from spreading all throughout the world. It is clear in "They should have
stopped it. They could have stopped it. They weren’t transparent at all; they were the
opposite". Addressing China and America as “them” and “us” respectively, is motivated in
part by the purpose of showing China as the one to blame for the pandemic. President
Trump, who is in control of the given discourse have significant influence over constructing
the identity of those who did nothing to stop the virus and the Americans, who are now
suffering the consequences.
As regards the local news, I can mention that both political discourse and mass media are
powerful institutions and in such sense, President Trump confronts the media by accusing
them because they only show and only make reference to the effects of the virus within the
United States only, without taking into account other countries whose numbers of patients
and dead are much superior to the US, for example Brazil and Russia. This is clear when
Trump claims "it’s, like, all about the United States. They never like to talk about what’s
going on in the world. But you look at Mexico, Brazil, many countries in Europe, many
countries — all over — Russia"
Then president Trump exploits a deeply held and acutely valued notion of the American
work depicting “all” Americans as working hard towards the development of a vaccine to
prevent the virus.

· Throughout the following rhetorical devices, a persistent framing of “us” is clear that
held Americans as victimized by the “unstopped” Chinese virus:

a. The repetition of the parallel structures “we are helping..., we are helping..., we are
sending..." has the effect of making the text-producer´s standpoint salient and memorable,
which orients the reader to accept his arguments.
b. In the extract "people are going to be very pleasantly surprised with what’s going on on
the vaccine front and the therapeutic front" the presupposition is that there are news
regarding the vaccine.
c. The personal pronoun “we” makes reference to the Trump administration and the
pronouns “you” and “your” refer to the Americans. The choice of such pronouns has the
effect of constituting a close relationship between the Trump administration and the
American society and fosters the American identity and values of Americanism,
togetherness, protection, and hard work towards the end of the pandemic.
d. ‘Three-part statement’ has the aim of making information aesthetically pleasing and call
the attention of the audience. An example is "It’s very tough. It’s very sad when you see
the death. It’s all death that could have"·
All in all, through this analysis I aimed at showing how one of the core goals of political
discourse analysis , this is to use language and rhetorical devices for specific political
effects, is achieved by president Donald Trump.

Miriam Peralta