Critical Discourse Analysis and Donald Trump’s Speech at the Davos Convention

Abstract

This study analyzes the ideological dimension of Trump’s discourse in the speech that he presented at the World Economic Forum on the 21^st of January, 2026. Critical Discourse Analysis or CDA will be used in this research not only to deconstruct language choices, but to uncover hidden ideologies that might be embedded and legitimized in the discourse. These assumptions can go unnoticed by a reader, but identified by a critical analyst who is aware of the strategies employed in speeches. This research utilized Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA framework where the examination goes from textual analysis, discursive practice, to sociocultural context. Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics was also incorporated at the textual level alongside Van Dijk’s ideological square. Combining these methods helped yield a more layered and comprehensive analytical results. By analyzing the pronouns, modality, transitivity processes, and genre types used in the speech, it was observed that several normalized presuppositions and hegemonic power relations are reproduced in the discourse. Recontextualizing the meanings and ideas present in the speech by media outlets assisted in re-enacting these legitimized sociocultural practices. The results showed that not only America was portrayed as the economy lead of all nations, but also other countries were framed as dependent on the success of the American nation. Trump, as well as the media, reproduced a deeper division within the American society between ingroups versus outgroups and Republicans versus Democrats.