A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 2016 BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN VÕ Ý NHI A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 2016 BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP M.A THESIS IN ENGLISH Binh Dinh, 2019 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN VÕ Ý NHI M.A THESIS IN ENGLISH A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 2016 BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP FIELD : English Linguistics CODE : 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: TRẦN THỊ MINH KHÁNH, Ph.D Binh Dinh, 2019 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN VÕ Ý NHI SO SÁNH CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ TRONG TRANH LUẬN TRANH CỬ TỔNG THỐNG MỸ 2016 GIỮA HILLARY CLINTON VÀ DONALD TRUMP Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số : 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS TRẦN THỊ MINH KHÁNH Binh Dinh, 2019 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I honestly declare this thesis “A comparative study of politeness strategies in the presidential debate 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump” is my own work This thesis does not contain the work or parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references Quy Nhon, July 2019 Nguyễn Võ Ý Nhi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge my deep indebtedness to all of my teachers who have provided me with useful and interesting lectures, which have helped me to lay the foundation for this thesis I respectfully express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Trần Thị Minh Khánh, Ph.D., for her great guidance, valuable encouragement as well as comments on the thesis, which makes me possible to complete the thesis before the due date I would also like to send my gratutide to Quy Nhon University, Postgraduate Department, and Foreign Languages Department Finally, I would like to thank my beloved parents for my supports throught my life ABSTRACT The study focused on investigating linguistic politeness devices and providing a comparison of gender-related differences between between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in using politeness devices namely hedges, boosters and tag questions The paper is theoretically based on the view of gender-related politeness by Holmes (1995) The study was carried out through the adoption of quantitative, qualitative, analytic, synthetic, and descriptive methods The findings showed that linguistic politeness forms of hedges, boosters and tag questions were employed by both candidates However, there were differences in the use of linguistic realizations of politeness between the male and female The candidates tend to use more hedges than boosters and tag questions Hillary Clinton in the presidential debate tends to use more hedges than Donald Trump With regard to Boosters, the total amount of boosting devices produced by Trump is higher than that of Clinton Besides, Trump used the tag question in some cases, Clinton hardly used it This difference results from gender-related features of language usage TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim and objectives 1.2.1 Aim of the study 1.2.2 Objectives of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Definitions of terms in the study 1.7 Organization of the thesis CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Politeness and Gender 2.2 Gender-related differences in the use of linguistic politeness forms 2.2.1 Hedges 10 2.2.2 Boosters 16 2.2.3 Tag questions 17 2.2 Summary of hedges, boosters and tag questions 21 2.3 Previous research 23 2.4 Summary 25 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE 27 3.1 Research methods 27 3.2.The United States presidential debates of 2016 27 3.2.1.The candidates 28 3.2.2.The debates 30 3.3.Data collection 31 3.3.1 Sampling of the study 32 3.3.2 Population of the study 32 3.4 Data analysis 32 3.5 Research procedures 33 3.6 Summary 33 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 34 4.1 Overview of hedges, boosters and tag questions in presidential debates 34 4.2 Hedges in the presidential debates 36 4.2.1 Hedges in the first presidential debate 36 4.2.2 Hedges used in the second presidential debate 47 4.2.3 Hedges in the third presidential debate 55 4.2.4 Summary 63 4.3 Boosters used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the presidential debates 64 4.3.1 Boosters in the first presidential debate 64 4.3.2 Boosters in the second presidential debate 67 4.3.3 Boosters in the third presidential debate 69 4.3.4 Summary 71 4.4 Tag questions used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the presidential debates 71 4.4.1 Tag questions in the first presidential debate 72 4.4.2 Tag questions in the second presidential debate 74 4.4.3 Tag questions in the third presidential debate 75 4.4.4 Summary 75 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 77 5.1 Conclusions 77 5.2 Implications 79 5.3 Limitations 80 5.4 Suggestions for further research 80 REFERENCES 81 LIST OF TABLES Table Title number 4.1 Frequency of hedges, boosters and tag questions Page number 34 used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the presidential debates 4.2 Hedges in the first presidential debate 36 4.3 Modal auxiliaries in the first presidential debate 37 4.4 The adverbs (perhaps, conceivably, probably, 40 maybe) as hedging devices in the first presidential debate 4.5 The group of hedging devices (Um, Uh, Oh, Ah, 41 Well, Yeah, Yes) in the first presidential debate 4.6 Pragmatic particles in the first presidential debate 44 4.7 Hedges used in the second presidential debate 47 4.8 Modal auxiliaries in the second presidential debate 48 The adverbs (perhaps, conceivably, probably and 50 maybe) in the second presidential debate 4.10 The group of hedging devices (Um, Uh, Oh, Ah, 51 Well, Yeah, Yes) in the second presidential debate 4.11 Pragmatic particles in the second presidential debate 53 4.12 Hedges in the third presidential debate 55 4.13 Modal Auxiliaries in the third presidential debate 56 70 than female does The pragmatic particle just was the most produced modal by Hillary Clinton and pragmatic particle so is the most produced modal by Donald Trump In female’s speech, the pragmatic particle just ranks first at 50%, followed by so and really at 16.7% and like and quite at 8.3% Unlike the results of the female, after analyzing males’ utterances, we see that so comes first at 61.6%, just comes next at 28.2% and of course and really have low percentage, making up 5.1% Followings are the examples of boosting devices in the third presidential debate (4.60) TRUMP: The NAFTA deal signed by her husband is one of the worst deals ever made of any kind, signed by anybody It’s a disaster Hillary Clinton wanted the wall Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn’t built But Hillary Clinton wanted the wall In this example, Donald Trump used one form of booster so to emphasize the force of his utterance He wanted to emphasize that the wall was not built as natural However, he also criticized that Clinton wanted the wall Boosting device in this example expresses degrees of certainty (4.61) TRUMP: President Obama has moved millions of people out Nobody knows about it; nobody talks about it But under Obama, millions of people have been moved out of this country (…) Now, you can come back in and you can become a citizen But it’s very unfair We have millions of people that did it the right way They’re on line They’re waiting We’re going to speed up the process, big league, because it’s very inefficient (4.62) CLINTON: But you are very clearly quoting from WikiLeaks And what’s really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian 71 government has engaged in espionage against Americans They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet In the above examples, the speakers use the word “very” and “really” to intensify or emphasize the force 4.3.4 Summary In short, the males tend to use of boosting devices more frequently than female In both genders, pragmatic particles (i.e like, so and just) have the highest percentage Boosting devices may in themselves be the main locus of the expression of negative politeness in many different kinds of utterances In addition, Boosting devices employed by the male to emphasize the force of their utterances, whereas the female to make their statements stronger 4.4 Tag questions used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the presidential debates As mentioned in Holmes (1995), there are four distinct functions of tag questions: epistemic modal, challenging, facilitative and softening Not all are equally relevant in an analysis of linguistic politeness Epistemic modal tags express the speaker's uncertainty Challenging tags are confrontational strategies They may pressure a reluctant addressee to reply or aggressively boost the force of a negative speech act Facilitative tags are quite different in function They are examples of hedges which serve as positive politeness devices Softening tags are negative politeness devices, used to attenuate the force of negatively affective utterances such as directives The following table shows the distribution of tag questions in the presidential debate 72 Donald Trump Tag questions Hillary Clinton Instances Rate Instances Rate 100% 0% Table 20 Tag questions in the presidential debates The data analysis in the presidential debate shows that only Donald Trump used tag questions Donald Trump used tag questions in the presidential debate for the reason that he wants to motivate interaction, and he tends to use them as an important tool in his work 4.4.1 Tag questions in the first presidential debate Donald Trump Tag questions Hillary Clinton Instances Rate Instances Rate 100% 0% Table 21 Tag questions in the first presidential debate In the first presidential debate, the researcher found many functions of tag questions used in male speech that are applied in various situations as illustrated below: (4.63) TRUMP: I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don't maybe it was I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China It could also be lots of other people It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? You don't know who broke in to DNC This is Trump’s answer to Clinton's assumption that Russia attacked DNC hackers as well as when they arranged for the announcement of emails and 73 Donald Trump showed his willingness to back and support Putin He adds an epistemic modal tag to his statement wishing Hillary Clinton, to confirm his idea However, Donald dTrump does not expect Hillary Clinton to participate in the conversation, so in that sense his tag question is speaker-oriented: it only serves his own purposes (4.64) CLINTON: Obviously, as secretary of state, I had some of the most important secrets that we possess, such as going after bin Laden So I am very committed to taking classified information seriously And as I said, there is no evidence that any classified information ended up in the wrong hands TRUMP: And yet she didn't know the word the letter C on a document, right? She didn't even know what that word what that letter meant In the example, Democrat Hillary Clinton said that her use of a personal email server and email address was a mistake, but she also said there was no harm done, even though she “had some of the most important secrets that we possess.” Clinton, after admitting to a “mistake,” said she takes classified materials “very seriously and always have.” Donald Trump here is questioning Hillary Clinton Donald Trump uses a challenging tag question to force Clinton to answer Using an ordinary yes/no question would make the speaker sound more polite because an ordinary question would imply that he is, indeed, uncertain of the correct answer to the question, whereas the challenging tag also implies that he is certain that Clinton deleted 33,000 emails after getting a subpoena And he expressed disappointment in congressional Republicans for “allowing this to happen” By adding achallenging tag question at the end of the statement, the speaker also reinforces the negativity of the main clause 74 4.4.2 Tag questions in the second presidential debate Donald Trump Tag questions Hillary Clinton Instances Rate Instances Rate 100% 0% Table 22 Tag questions in the second presidential debate Consider the following examples (4.65) TRUMP: Because NAFTA, signed by her husband, is perhaps the greatest disaster trade deal in the history of the world Not in this country It stripped us of manufacturing jobs We lost our jobs We lost our money We lost our plants It is a disaster And now she wants to sign TPP, even though she says now she's for it She called it the gold standard And by the way, at the last debate, she lied, because it turned out that she did say the gold standard and she said she didn't say it They actually said that she lied, OK? And she lied But she's lied about a lot of things Here are all the terrible things Trump has said about NAFTA (NAFTA was actually negotiated and signed in 1992 by Bill Clinton's predecessor, George H W Bush, though it came into effect in 1994) Trump uses a challenging tag question and we can see that Trump does not necessarily need an answer By adding the tag question ok at the end of a criticizing statement, he strengthens the negativity of the main clause and may make it sound even quite threatening This explains why they are considered the least polite of the different kinds of tag questions 75 4.4.3 Tag questions in the third presidential debate Donald Trump Tag questions Hillary Clinton Instances Rate Instances Rate 100% 0% Table 23 Tag questions in the third presidential debate The following examples illustrate this (4.66) CLINTON: So I actually think the most important question of this evening,Chris, is, finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually encouraged in the past? Those are the questions we need answered We’ve never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before TRUMP: That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders, OK? How did we get on to Putin? Hillary Clinton called for Donald Trump to admit and condemn Russian espionage and interference in American elections Trump retorted, “That was a great pivot off of the fact that she wants open borders, okay? When did we get off to Putin?” By adding the tag question ok at the end of his statement, not only pressure the addressee to answer but, like all questions, the answer to a challenging tag should be relevant for the conversation They are thus a means of conducting the conversation 4.4.4 Summary Data analysis in the presidential shows that tag questions is employed by Donald Trump in his statements but it does not seem to function as a 76 politeness device It is interesting that no instances of tag questions are found Hillary’s speech Besides, the male tends to use challenging tag This data is not likely to support the claim by Holmes that men generally use canonical tag questions more often than women in order to express uncertainty and ask for confirmation, while women use tag questions more often than men in their facilitative positive politeness function (1995:85) 77 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This final chapter summarizes the outcomes of the research, and draws major conclusions from these in terms of comparing and contrasting the frequency of occurrence of linguistic politeness forms in the speeches of the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump On the basis of the conclusion, the study proposes some implications for teaching and learning English, especially, English used in comments The chapter ends with the limitations of the thesis and some suggestions for further studies 5.1 Conclusions As stated in the previous chapter, this research, A comparative study of politeness strategies in the presidential debate 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, focuses on the analysis of gender-related politeness devices including hedges, boosters and tag questions This study proves that there are indeed several differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the conversations where hedges, boosters and tag questions are concerned The research revealed that the results from this study may be quite limited, but it might indicate how male and female speakers perform differently when they use hedges, boosters and tag questions in formal and political situations In order to conduct the research successfully, the theoretical background of gender-related politeness by Holmes, related issues and relevant studies were thoroughly examined When it comes to the data collection, both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied for identifying linguistic politeness forms and finding out 78 the similarities and differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in terms of how linguistic politeness forms are used Following are the major conclusions drawn out in the findings and discussions under investigation The results reveales that linguistic politeness forms of hedges, boosters and tag questions were employed by both candidates However, the rate of distribution of politeness devices in the two genders is different The candidates tend to use more hedges than boosters and tag questions Regarding hedges, the findings show that there are some similarities and differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the way they employ hedging devices Particularly, the female in the presidential debate has a tendency to use more hedges to create a great effect on the other’s overall performance in the presidential debate than the male To begin with hedges, firstly, all of the sub-categories of hedges are used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton With respect to the first group of hedges namely can, could, etc, the male tends to use such modal forms much more frequently than the female Modal auxiliaries will and would are the most produced modal auxiliaries by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the presidential debate It can be concluded that epistemic modality is the modality as hedging device It can also be concluded that the politicians tend to use hedging device as evasive and defensive strategies to distance their claim to reality For the group of hedging devices, such the adverbs as perhaps, conceivably, probably and maybe are used much more frequently by the males The group of hedging devices (Um, Uh, Oh, Ah, Well, yeah, yes), are mostly employed by the female The female seems to sound more hesitant in their use of hedges in a mitigating way whereas the male tends to be more certain with 79 fewer filler words The data on the last group of hedging devices indicates the female uses more hedging devices namely sort of, you know and I think than the male With regard to Boosters, the total amount of boosting devices produced by the male is higher than that of the female In both genders, pragmatic particles (i.e like, so and just) have the highest percentage Boosting devices may in themselves be the main locus of the expression of negative politeness in many different kinds of utterances In addition, boosting devices employed by the male to emphasize the force of their utterances, whereas the female to make their statements stronger Unlike hedges and boosters, the rate of tag questions is used very little in the presidential debate While Trump used the tag question in some cases, Clinton hardly used it Tag questions is employed by Trump in his statements but it does not seem to function as a politeness device Besides, the male tends to use challenging tag This data is not likely to support the claim by Holmes that men generally use canonical tag questions more often than women in order to express uncertainty and ask for confirmation, while the female uses tag questions more often than the male does in their facilitative positive politeness function (1995:85) 5.2 Implications In the present, linguistic politeness forms, has been applied to analyze differences between males and females in the conversations We hope that findings from this investigation can be useful for learning English For English-majored students, this study will provide them with the knowledge of the theory of gender-related politeness and characteristics of language males and females in the conversations For students, this study is expected to 80 contribute to their understanding of gender-related politeness devices in social reality and its connection to language and interaction By studying the politeness strategy, people are more aware of and pay more attention to the application of politeness in their communication such as more carefulness in determining the choice of words, phrase, clause, and sentence in expression of ideas 5.3 Limitations Due to the limitation of time, reference materials and linguistic knowledge of the researcher, this study has certain restrictions Firstly, the data which are collected from one female and one male; therefore, the generalization of the findings cannot ignore the idiosyncrasy factor, as each informant tends to have individual strategies of politeness Besides, since the present study focuses on gender-related politeness devices including hedges, boosters and tag questions, this prevents it from reaching the expected depth as it should be Therefore, further research on gender-related politeness strategies based on a larger scale of statistical data is recommendable 5.4 Suggestions for further research The present study has only examined three linguistic features which have shown gender differences in a number of linguistic studies, namely hedges, boosters and tag questions It would also be interesting to investigate the use of other features, considered to be typical male traits in linguistics, such as non-standard use of verbs and expletives in debatable topics at presidential debates Furthermore, a further investigation into gender differences in debatable topics in other fields or occasions such as social interactions, friendship, peers, love, and other related situations would be most interesting 81 REFERENCES Ali, R M S (2018) A sociolinguistic study on the effect of gender onpoliteness and communication in the presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the year of 2016/2017 M.A Thesis, Middle East University Biber, D., et al (1999) Longman grammar of spoken and written English Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd Brown, P (1980) Women and language in literature Praeger: New York Brown, P & Levinson, S (1987) Politeness Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Cheshire, J (1981) Variation in the use of ain’t in an urban British English dialect Language in Society, 10(1), 365-388 Coates, J (1983) The semantics of modal auxiliaries London: Croom Helm Coates, J (1987) Epistemic modality and spoken discourse Transactions of the philological society, 85(1), 110-131 Coates, J (1998) Language and gender: a reader Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd Coates, J (2004) Women, men and language (3rd ed.) Harlow: Pearson Education Finegan, E (2008) Language: its structures and use (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Wadsworth Holmes, J (1985) Sex differences and miscommunication: some data from New Zealand In J.B Pride (Ed.), Cross-cultural encounters: communication and miscommunication Melbourne: River Seine 82 Holmes, J (1988a) Of course: a pragmatic particle in New Zealand women’s and men’s speech Australian Journal of Linguistics, 8(1), 49-74 Holmes, J (1989a) Sort of in New Zealand women’s and men’s speech Studia Linguistica, 42(2), 85-121 Holmes, J (1990a) Politeness strategies in New Zealand women's speech In Bell, A & Holmes, J (Eds.), New Zealand ways of speaking English Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 252-76 Home, J (1995) Women, men and politeness Longman: London House, J & Kasper, G (1981) Polietness markers in English and German The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter Huschová, P (2014) Exploring modal verbs conveying possibility in academic discourse Discourse and Interaction, 8(2), 35-47 Hyland, Ken (1998) Hedging in scientific research articles Amsterdam: John Benjamins James, A R (1983) Compromisers in english: A cross-disciplinary approach to their interpersonal significance Journal of Pragmatics, 7(2), 191206 Keikhaie, Y., & Mozaffari, Z (2013) A socio-linguistic survey on females' politeness strategies in the same gender and in the cross-gender relationship Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 51-82 Lakoff, R (1973) The logic of politeness: Or, minding your p’s and q’s Chicago Linguistic Society, 8, 292-305 Lakoff, R (1975) Language and woman’s place Harper and Row: New York 83 Meyer, F (1997) I think that perhaps you should: a study of hedges in written scientific discourse In Miller, T (Ed.), Functional approaches to written texts: classroom applications Washington: United States Information Agency, 105-118 Mills, S (2003) Gender and politeness Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Montogomery, M B (1998) Multiple modals in LAGS and LAMSAS in from the Gulf States and beyond: The legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Palmer, F (1990) Modality and the english modals (2nd ed.) London: Longman Preisler, B (1986) Linguistic sex roles in conversations Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Quirk et al (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language London: Pearson Longman Ramadhani, P (2014) Politeness strategies and gender differences in javanese indirect speech acts Jurnal Linguistik Terapan Pascasarjana Unimed,11(1), 24-33 Segal, E S (2004) Cultural constraints of gender in encyclopedia of sex and gender (Vol 1) Talbot, M (2010) Language and gender (2nd ed) Cambridge: Polity press Tannen, D (1984) Conversational style: analyzing talk among friends Norwood, NJ: Ablex Tannen, D (1991) You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation Contemporary, 21, 111-114 84 Thomas, J (1989) Discourse control in confrontational interaction In Hickey, L (Ed.), The pragmatics of style London: Croom Helm, 133156 Varttala, T (2001) Hedging in scientifically oriented discourse: exploring variation according to discipline and intended audience Tampere: The University of Tampere Wareing, T L., Singh, I., Peccei, J.S., Thornborrow, J., & Jones, J (Eds.) (2004) Language, society and power: An introduction (2nd ed.) London: Routledge Xia, J (2010) A case study of teacher’s politeness in EFL class Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1, 651-655 Yule, G (2006) The study of language (3rd ed.) Cambridge University Press ONLINE SOURCE https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/booster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_question https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016 presidential-debate-230063 ... used in the presidential debate 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and gender-related differences in the use politeness strategies in the debates and speeches of Donald Trump and Hillary. .. differences of frequencies and percentages in all categories and their items by males and females in the presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the year 2016/ 2017 The statistics... presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump The data was collected mainly from The Washington Post 3.3.1 Sampling of the study In this examination, the researcher depended on using a checklist