Have you ever wondered about the words Donald Trump uses on the campaign trail? He avoids multisyllabic words. He chooses short, simple words and forms short, simple sentences and paragraphs. His strategy is working and clearly appeals to his fanatical conservative base. He’s surging in the polls.
Think about that. He speaks to his base as if they are not intelligent and they lap it up with glee.
From Politico:
“In the August 6th Republican candidates debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th-grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th-grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th-grade level. John Kasich, the next-lowest after Trump, got a 5th-grade score.”
Trump’s comments from a news conference on August 11 in Michigan earned only a 3rd-grade score.
Another interesting observation: A friend of mine, who happens to be wealthy, noted that Trump likes to brag about how “rich” he is. My friend pointed out that people with money refer to themselves as “wealthy.” People who are not wealthy are more inclined to use the word “rich.” I mention this without insisting it’s fact – merely an observation from another wealthy individual. Trump chooses his words carefully and uses the term “rich” because he knows his audience. He’s an entertainer and he understands how to appeal the GOP base. Go ahead and draw your own conclusions about that.
When speaking without a script, Trump often relies heavily on words such as, “very,” and “great.” He counters his foes by referring to them as “losers,” “total losers,” “dumb,” “dummy,” and “stupid,” – much like a third grader would in a schoolyard fight. He’s certainly not trying to appeal to an educated electorate with these unsophisticated adjectives.
His carefully orchestrated monosyllabic messaging isn’t an indication that Trump is an uneducated simpleton. Quite the contrary, it’s indicative of the fact that his large fan base prefers to be addressed as if they are.
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