Copyright by Matthew Bruce Ingram 2018

Matthew Bruce Ingram

2018

The Dissertation Committee for Matthew Bruce Ingram Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation:

The Mimesis of Character in Political Rally Speeches: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Committee:

Jürgen Streeck, Supervisor

Madeline Maxwell

Barry Brummett

Kira Hall

The Mimesis of Character in Political Rally Speeches: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Matthew Bruce Ingram

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin December 2018

iii

Acknowledgments

I carefully crafted and revised this dissertation over several years, and it would not have been possible without the endearing support of my colleagues, friends, and family. I am grateful to those of you who have helped me foster my academic creativity, pushed me to better my scholarship and writing, and empowered me by sharing their own research and lives with me on this journey. I am indebted to Dr. Jürgen Streeck for continuing to support me and my ideas throughout my time at The University of Texas at Austin. As my dissertation supervisor, Jürgen, and his rigorous scholarship and poetic writing continue to inspire me as a scholar. I am most thankful for Jürgen's patience and understanding of the writing process, as well as our philosophical and research conversations that have ignited various courses of inquiry. His unwavering support for my research and his constructive criticism have made my scholarship possible and have fomented in me a deep passion for the study of social interaction. I am tremendously thankful to my mentor and supervisor at The University of Colorado at Boulder, Dr. Kira Hall, who helped me develop as a scholar throughout all of our inspiring conversations and collaborations. Her advice on valuing the critiques of other researchers has been invaluable and has certainly helped me to become a well-rounded scholar. She has always believed in my scholarship and academic abilities, and for that, I am grateful. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Madeline Maxwell for all she has helped me to achieve here at The University of Texas at Austin. Because of Dr. Maxwell and her mentorship through The University of Texas Project on Conflict Resolution (UTPCR), I was involved in UT organizations and conferences, met various scholars around the world, and developed my professional communication skills. I am so thankful for her encouragement to pursue interdisciplinary projects that have broadened the scope of my scholarship. Finally, I am grateful to Dr. Barry Brummett, who has mentored me in rhetorical theories throughout my transition from linguistics to communication studies. This transition would not have been possible–nor nearly as smooth–without your expert guidance. The depth of his scholarship and eloquent writing style serves as an exemplary model for all aspiring writers. Beyond my committee members, I cannot stress how appreciative I am of the Communication Studies staff and other faculty members. I could not have completed this dissertation without the advice of Jennifer Betancourt, Lisa Moseley, Aida Gonzalez, and Dr. Sharon Jarvis, all of whom aided me along the way. I want to extend my thanks to the Moody College of Communication Technology Services and custodial staff, both of whom provided me with the necessary space and equipment to accomplish long writing sessions. Special thanks are also due to my research and data session group whose input included fantastic voices from Jürgen Streeck, Elizabeth Keating, Katie Bradford, Julia Katila, Evgenia Wilkins, Wen Hu, Eryn Whitworth, Niaz Aziz, and Enhua Guo. And finally, I am thankful to my colleagues, friends, family, and partner. Writing a dissertation can be a very isolating process, but my father, stepfather, mother, and brothers have all continued to cheer me on. I would also like to give special thanks to Dr. Allison Alford, a friend and colleague, who, no matter how tough times were, continued to text and call me, kindheartedly demanding updates. Also, I am incredibly grateful to my friend and colleagues, Ian Wallace, who illustrated all the images for my data examples, as well as, Marvanna Avery-Cash, who provided me with her expertise in theater and performance studies. And to my partner, Peter Koester, I could

iv not have written this dissertation without your support, understanding, and continued belief in me and my work.

Thank you to all those who made this dissertation possible.

Abstract

The Mimesis of Character in Political Rally Speeches: Hillary Clinton and

Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Matthew Bruce Ingram, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

Supervisor: Jürgen Streeck

Compelling microanalytic studies of audio-visual recordings of speeches have shown that political orators share culturally recognizable rhetorical techniques to invite an audience to respond favorably. Of these message formats (contrasts, lists, puzzle-solution, headline punch line, and pursuits), quotations are rarely discussed, despite their significance in politics. Although interaction-based scholars have researched how politicians quote the voice and bodies of characters in their speeches, these interaction-based studies exclude embodied communication. This dissertation aims to contribute to microanalytic studies of political communication by analyzing the rhetorical delivery methods and skillfulness of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as they take on the role of characters in their 2016 presidential campaign speeches. When delivering speeches, these two competitors evoked voices and bodies of others, using different mimetic devices to establish intimacy, create depictive vividness of characters, and to denigrate the moral character of their opponents. An investigative analysis of one hundred randomly-sampled speeches exposes the significance of the visual rhetoric employed by Trump and Clinton in their storytelling which enabled them to adopt, enact, and construct moralized worldviews. I build on Herbert Clark’s (1996, 2010) theory of quotations as demonstrations, arguing that politicians use mimetic acts to depict characters, keep audiences engaged, and collaboratively spoil the image of their adversaries. To substantiate my argument, I examine several empirical extracts that illustrate the moment-to-moment performances of Clinton and Trump as they animate and individuate characters through quoting practices. Interaction-based methods (microanalysis and conversation analytic techniques) enabled me to compare and scrutinize the rhetorical skillfulness of Clinton and Trump’s animation techniques and repeated stories, providing a more comprehensive picture for why more mimetic techniques of animating or demonstrating a character’s personality can be beneficial to orators. My finding suggests that Clinton utilizes more diegetic, descriptive tactics of storytelling intended to create to the illusion that she is objectively reporting the words and actions of heroic or authority figures as a means of lending credibility to her attack on adversaries. While

Trump creates intelligible caricatures of his adversaries alongside his audiences to discredit the American political system.

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... VIII LIST OF TABLES ...... X LIST OF FIGURES ...... XI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 OVERVIEW ...... 1 RHETORICAL THEORIES OF SPEAKER-AUDIENCE INTERACTIONS AND THE ORATOR’S USE OF MIMESIS ...... 3 OUTLINE OF THE DISSERTATION ...... 12 CHAPTER 2: CREATING CHARACTERS IN SOCIAL INTERACTION ...... 15 INTRODUCTION ...... 15 SOME INITIAL CAUTIONS IN EXPLORING MIMESIS ...... 17 THE TRADITION OF MIMESIS AT FIRST GLANCE...... 19 CLASSICAL NOTIONS OF MIMESIS ...... 19 Plato’s Prescriptive Philosophy of Dramatic Impersonation in Poetry ...... 19 Aristotle’s Descriptive Philosophy of Mimetic Enactments ...... 25 HOW DO ACTORS MAKE CHARACTERS “HEARABLE?” ...... 28 Quoting as an Act of Mimesis ...... 29 Perspectival (Mimetic) Montages ...... 33 Constructed Dialogue, Imagination, and Involvement...... 37 Quotations as Demonstrations ...... 39 Replaying Experience of the Cited Figure ...... 45 HOW DO ACTORS MAKE CHARACTERS “VISIBLE?” ...... 48 Embodied “Iconicity” ...... 49 Bodily Quotes: Mimetic Enactment and Animation ...... 52 The Role of Depiction in Quoting a Character ...... 61 SUMMARY ...... 72 CHAPTER 3: A MICROANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ...... 74 INTRODUCTION ...... 74 METHOD ...... 75 Participants ...... 75 The Speeches ...... 75 MICROANALYTIC PROCEDURES ...... 78 STUDY LIMITATIONS AND SUMMARY ...... 89 CHAPTER 4: HILLARY CLINTON AND HER DOCUMENTING USE OF QUOTATIONS TO “OBJECTIVELY REPORT” THE WORDS AND ACTIONS OF POLITICAL CHARACTERS ...... 91 INTRODUCTION ...... 91 viii

ANIMATING THE VOICES AND BODIES OF EVERYDAY PEOPLE AND POLITICAL ADVERSARIES ... 94 Gay Maintenance Worker Harassed at Trump Golf Club”...... 94 “My Dad was a Small Businessman” Version 1 ...... 100 “My Dad was a Small Businessman” Version 2 ...... 112 “Trump Stiffs Drapery Workers” ...... 122 “Pay Inequality at a Local Pizzeria” ...... 131 “102-year-old Voter Being Suppressed”...... 146 “Republicans Don’t Believe in Climate Change” ...... 151 “Trump Lurks over Clinton at Presidential Debates” ...... 160 SUMMARY ...... 169 CHAPTER 5: DONALD TRUMP AND HIS USE OF CARICATURED DEMONSTRATIONS TO DRAMATIZE, EXAGGERATE, AND SIMPLIFY POLITICAL CHARACTERS ...... 173 INTRODUCTION ...... 173 MANUFACTURING CARICATURED DEMONSTRATIONS OF VARIOUS POLITICAL ACTORS ...... 175 “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (a)” ...... 176 “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (b)” ...... 185 “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (c)” ...... 194 “The Guy on the Maps Announcing the Election Results” ...... 202 “An Interview with Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd” ...... 211 “Kasich the Disgusting Eater” ...... 228 “Lyin’ Ted and the Stupid Politicians” ...... 239 “Collapsing Hillary”...... 246 SUMMARY ...... 256 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 259 OVERVIEW ...... 259 KEY FINDINGS ...... 260 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 267 APPENDICES ...... 270 APPENDIX A: TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS ...... 270 Orator’s Talk...... 270 Orator’s Gestures ...... 270 Audience’s Responses ...... 271 APPENDIX B: COPYRIGHT ASSIGNMENT ...... 272 REFERENCES ...... 273

List of Tables

Table 1. Definitions of mimesis, enactment, and depiction in gesture studies scholarship……...... 51-52 Table 2. Basic definitions of gestural depiction, animation, and enactment………………….....71 Table 3. Basic definitions of quotation type and delivery methods……………………………...83 Table 4. Repeated discourse segments in Clinton’s story………………………………………111 Table 5. Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (a)………………………....181 Table 6. Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (b)………………………....191 Table 7. Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (c)………………………....199

List of Figures

Figure 1. Written fieldnotes. The picture is taken from my collection of notebook pages containing details summaries of the political speeches, including speech content and context, rhetorical devices, multimodal quotations, and iterative story skits………………………………………………………………..82 Figure 2. Problem-solution rhetorical device with a three-part solution. Clinton uses a problem-solution and three-part list format to attack Trump and invite the audience to applaud her resolve……………………………………………..126 Figure 3. Role shifting. The illustration shows the general bodily postures Clinton assumes when animating Jensen Walcott and Jake Reed……………………………………….140 Figure 4. Praat Pitch Tracker. This illustration was taken from Praat and shows the pitch contour, segmented utterances, the amplitude, and duration……...... 155 Figure 5. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton using the low-high metaphor. On the left is Michelle Obama’s original utterance and gestural performance of her low-high metaphor. On the right is Hillary Clinton quoting Michelle Obama at this moment……………167 Figure 6. Contrastive pair: Puzzle-solution format……………………………………………...198

Chapter 1: Introduction

Overview

The present chapter defines the scope of this dissertation, explains the relevance and distinctiveness of my interdisciplinary approach, situates my specific interest in rhetorical studies of political oratory, and provides a framework to illuminate how quotations operate in campaign speeches. In this dissertation, I investigate the oratorical skillfulness of the 2016 presidential nominees, Democrat, Hillary Clinton, and Republican, Donald Trump. For my empirical analysis,

I scrutinize one hundred, randomly selected political rallies (fifty from each candidate). Trump and Clinton told stories and evoked the voices and bodies of others (Keevallik, 2010; Streeck,

2002), using different mimetic devices to establish intimacy, create vivid characters, and denigrate the moral character of their opponents. I expose the significance of the visual rhetoric employed by Trump and Clinton in their storytelling, which enabled them to adopt, enact, and construct discernable (moralized) worldviews (Jarvis, 2005; Lakoff, 1996). In the process of quoting and performing characters, these candidates persuade audiences of dissimilar and unequal versions of reality fitted to their agendas.

My scholarship builds on microanalytic studies of politician-audience interactions

(Atkinson, 1984a, 1984b, 1985; Bull, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015,

2016; Bull & Feldman, 2011; Bull & Miskinis, 2015; Bull & Noordhuizen, 2000; Bull & Wells,

2002; Choi & Bull, 2016; Clayman, 1992, 1993; Duranti, 2006; Feldman & Bull, 2012; Fetzer &

Bull, 2012; Heritage & Greatbatch 1986; Wells & Bull, 2007). I investigate: (i) the characters

Clinton and Trump quote in their rally speeches, (ii) the rhetorical delivery styles (i.e., gestures or vocal registers) used to animate and individuate citable figures (Goffman, 1974), (iii) the oratorical

1 goals these political contenders tried to achieve (e.g., discrediting an opponent or lending credibility to their image), and (iv) the speaker-audience interactions that occur at these narrative moments. Taken together, these components of the study illustrate how political candidates use quotations to “depict” or “demonstrate” (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996) their referents.

Quotations enabled Trump and Clinton to create “hearable,” “seeable,” and therefore, “imaginable” characters whom the orator invites the audience to take a stance towards. These candidates effectively acted out character roles (Koven, 2007) to persuade voters. Clinton preferred to employ common rhetorical tactics and indirect quotes, while Trump manufactured direct, full-bodied caricatures. While there are many contributing factors in assessing each candidates’ oratorical skillfulness (and subsequent political win and defeat), I confine the analysis to the scrutiny of their mimetic performances of characters.

Like the political communication scholars Max Atkinson (1983, 1984a, 1984b, 1985),

Peter Bull (2003, 2008, 2011, 2012), and the ancient rhetoricians before them, I believe we can scrutinize the oral and gestural performances of politicians and carry out an empirical analysis of their rhetorical delivery strengths and weaknesses. I present a unique case study of two pointedly different personae that command diverse storytelling abilities: one is an entertainer-turned- politician (Trump), and the other is a politician-turned-celebrity (Clinton). A discussion of mimesis, as it has been defined throughout history, will help in constructing a framework for understanding why one political candidate may be more successful in acting out characters, animating their personalities, and inviting audiences to respond to these mimetic moments. In this chapter, I will define mimesis and explore issues surrounding the term as it relates to speechmaking. I reserve most of my discussion of mimesis for Chapter 2.

For my purposes, I am using mimesis of character to refer to the way politicians assume the role of a persona, presenting themselves as different social actors through modulations of their voice and body. Storytellers use mimesis for a wide variety of rhetorical purposes, including (a) evoking stereotyped voices, bodily actions, and personae

(Reyes, 2011); (b) depicting positive images of the self and negative representations of the other (Kuo, 2001; Lane-Mercier, 1991); (c) distancing oneself from the performative enactment or quoting of a character (Goffman, 1974), and (d) positioning the politician and his or her audience in relation to a adversary or group of adversaries (Bamberg, 1997;

Holsanova, 2006; Kotthoff, 1998). This investigation considers how speakers use mimetic quotations or enactments as strategies to carry out their respective agendas (Kuo, 2001;

Reyes, 2011).

I (1) describe my methodological approach, (2) define mimesis of character and its tenuous relationship to oratory, (3) stress the need for the study in academic scholarship, and (4) outline each of the chapters in this dissertation.

Rhetorical theories of speaker-audience interactions and the orator’s use of mimesis

In this section, I locate my dissertation in microanalytic studies of political communication (cf.

Aldrete, 2003; Bull, 2003) that treat rallies as actual speaker-audience interactions, not pre-planned, unidirectional monologues (Ochs, 1979). I briefly describe the language of political rhetoric from the perspective of conversation analysis and microanalysis as it relates to the study of quotations.

Later, I discuss how various rhetorical educators have scorned the mimetic arts. This line of argumentation will enable me to assert that similar communicative restrictions are placed on the

American politician.

In my study, I conceptualize political speeches using interaction-based methods.

Conversation analysis, a methodological approach to studying the orderliness and sequential organization of everyday talk in naturally occurring settings (see Clift, 2016; Heritage, 1984;

Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Psathas, 1995; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Sidnell, 2010; Ten

Have, 2007), enables researchers to observe, compare, and describe re-occurring patterns of social actors as they make sense of the world. Microanalysts Max Atkinson, Steven Clayman, John

Heritage, and David Greatbatch were among the first to recuperate the long-standing rhetorical study of oratory as speaker-audience interaction with a focus on U.S. and British English political speeches.

Interaction-based scholars treat speeches as a form of social discourse where speakers and spectators are considered equally contributing participants. Video-based researchers of political communication have shown that politicians use different rhetorical ploys and formats to invite audience responses: booing, laughing, chanting, and applauding (see Bull, 2003 for a review).

From my perspective, political speeches are institutional forms of interaction (Drew & Heritage,

1992) that involve specialized turn-taking and speakership rules (Sacks et al., 1974). Rallies, like other social encounters, comprise systematically organized forms of participation and empirically observable practices. And in our high mediatized society, studying the multimodal actions of

American orators is easily accessible given video and audio recording equipment.

To say political speeches are interactions has significant consequences, since, one might be quick to describe audience members as mere spectators. Speechmaking, however, is a vibrant craft with a substantive history dating back to antiquity, and communication scholars owe much of how they understand political speeches to the Greek and Romans, who had a nuanced vocabulary for describing and critiquing rhetorical ploys and vocal and gestural tactics used to

4 engage the masses (see Aldrete, 2003). Contemporary rhetorical theorists continue the Greek and

Roman tradition by studying the stylized, embodied methods of delivery used to aid the orator in persuading audiences.

Conversation analyst and public speaking scholar, Max Atkinson (1983, 1984a, 1984b,

1985), revived Greek and Roman practices of scrutinizing politician-audience interactions, starting with British politicians. In his most distinguished work on the subject, “Our master’s voices:

Language and body-language of politics,” Atkinson (1984a) showed that British politicians use a small subset of shared delivery devices (three part-lists, contrastive pairs, and projecting a name, among others) to invite audiences to applaud the speaker and his or her message. Focusing on rhetorical forms and performance types, not so much the content of the speeches, Atkinson (1984a) found that politicians use carefully timed moments to invite audiences to respond. According to

Atkinson, viewers learn and come to expect rhetorical devices and formats through iterative performances.

Politicians use rhetorical maneuvers to project a point of completion for his or her talk

(Sacks et al., 1974), and they use these optimal moments to encourage viewers to laugh, cheer or boo. If a politician is successful at mastering and combining conventional rhetorical devices and formats, then they are, as Atkinson (1984a) argues, likely to be seen as “charismatic” speakers.

Atkinson introduced the careful use of audio-visual data to observe politicians, transcribe their embodied conduct, and document the re-occurring rhetorical tactics. In the process of researching speechmaking, Atkinson used conversation analytic methods to confirm his hypothesis: audiences are persuaded by shared devices and formats that invite applause. Since Atkinson’s earlier works

(1983, 1984a, 1984b, 1985), several scholars have built upon his methods and rhetorical strategies.

Clayman (1992, 1993), for instance, studied the anatomy of dissafiliative responses.

Audiences boo and laugh derisively to sanction the actions of a politician. Audiences can mark a politician’s message as impious or inappropriate for political discourse (Clayman, 1992, 1993).

Disaffiliation takes on different forms of social organization; however, though these actions still follow the normative preference structures of everyday discourses. When an audiences boos a politician, they typically delay their responses and carefully monitor each other to avoid the embarrassment of uncoordinated outbursts (Clayman, 1992, 1993). “Public speeches,” as Clayman

(1992) writes, “are necessarily, interactional events. The copresent audience has the first opportunity to comment publically on what is being said, and their collective assessments may be supportive or damaging” (p. 55).

Likewise, Heritage and Greatbatch (1986) made noteworthy contributions to Atkinson’s rhetorical theories by providing a comprehensive statistical analysis of 476 political speeches and different audience responses. Heritage et al. analyzed British speeches for their rhetorical devices

(adding a few rhetorical maneuvers to the list) and speech content. Whether a politician is performing an external attack of other political parties or making a general statement to approve of his or her own political party, Heritage and Greatbatch (1986) argue that the message content appears just as vital as the rhetorical form in terms of persuading audiences.

Since the 1980s, only a few scholars, notably Peter Bull, have proposed new qualitative and quantitative measures for using microanalysis to study political communication. In a handful of studies, Bull developed rigorous coding procedures to explore different aspects of speaker- audience interactions. Bull has examined the coordination of gesture and vocal stress (Bull, 1986;

Bull & Connelly, 1985), the distinction between uninvited versus invited audience responses (Bull

& Wells, 2002), the identification of a variety of rhetorical formats (Bull, 2016), and the

6 similarities between comedic skits and political speeches (Wells & Bull, 2007). Also, Bull and

Miskins (2015) have used large datasets to make cross-cultural comparisons between British,

American, and Japanese politicians, and they found that American audiences are less restricted in their collective responses. Each of these studies contributes to my methodological and theoretical understanding of political oratory as a form of interaction between speaker and audience. As

Heritage and Greatbatch (1986) so eloquently wrote:

Speakers wish to ensure that, as far as possible, audience support for their statements takes the form of an immediate, substantial, and hence hearable enthusiastic burst of applause. Similarly, audience members desire to express their support for certain statements with some degree of security that they will not find themselves to clapping alone. The needs of both speakers and audiences are most likely to be satisfied through the use of statements embodying the kinds of structural features reported in this study (p. 152).

Politicians deliver speeches to persuade their viewers of a particular worldview by using rhetorical devices and message types to invite a response. Each audience response type has its own unique societal organization that is centered on showing affiliation or disaffiliation, approving or disapproving of the figure and his or her message. To understand how mimesis operates and conveys messages in rallies, we need to keep this interaction-based framework in mind.

Informative as the studies above are, there remains comparatively little scholarship on how politicians use body language to craft their messages (see Atkinson,

1984a; Hall, Goldstein, & Ingram, 2016; Lempert, 2011; Lempert & Silverstein, 2012;

Maricchiolo, Bonaiuto & Snisci, 2014; Streeck, 2008). Of these body language studies, scholars have yet to adopt empirical methods to analyze diegetic and mimetic narrative techniques involved in animating human figures, despite the well-documented rhetorical practices of quoting in Greek and Roman oratory (Bers, 1997; O’Connell, 2017; Serafim,

2017). And, contemporary studies rarely connect their scholarship to Greek and Roman

7 studies of oratory, which I believe has a bearing on modern understandings of political speech-making.

In Greek and Roman antiquity, orators were highly versed in “visual demonstrations” (cf. O’Connell, 2017). O’Connell (2017), for instance, argues Greek forensic orators understood the power of demonstrating characters. To make a character visible and hearable is to bring proof of what someone said or how they acted and perform this scene for the judges and audience (O’Connell, 2017). Roman orators were also quite familiar with standard techniques for miming the foibles and quirks of one’s opponent and using quotations to discredit the cited target (Corbeill, 1996, 2004). Before we examine mimesis in rally speeches, it is essential to understand how bodily imitation has had a tenuous relationship to oratory.

Orators quoted or mime the bodies of their opponents but exercised caution in their performances (Bers, 1997). In Greek oratory, mimesis referred to the bodily imitation of respected authority figures and their styles of oratorical delivery (see Kennedy, 1999, pp.

132-136). Scholars of antiquity advised public speakers to avoid miming the voices and bodies of other social actors who did not fall in line with acceptable cultural models of behavior (Aldrete, 2003).

In ancient Rome, intellectuals were explicitly critical of the role of theatrical versions of mimesis in oratory. Cicero, in De Oratore, for example, devotes an entire section to how orators use mimetic humor in their speeches (Cicero, trans, 2001, pp. 187-

191). Of these humorous devices, mimesis of character is one that should be used with caution. Referring to a joke told by Crassus, Cicero (trans, 2001) writes:

The good thing about this type is that you describe the actions in such a way, that the character, the manner of speaking, and all the facial expression of the person whom you are telling the story are portrayed so that it seems to the audience that all action and events are taking place right there and then…Now while this category is humorous in itself, it must be handled with the greatest caution. For taking imitation too far, just like being obscene, is something that actors in mimes and mimics do. The orator should employ imitation slyly, so that the hearer imagines more than he actually sees. In addition, the orator must give proof of his own good manners and modesty by avoiding dishonorable words and obscene subjects (pp. 188-189).

While mimetic techniques of narration can “enliven” the characters and the scene of a story, these types of depictive performances are unbecoming for an orator. The performer who derides their adversaries can make themselves appear “vulgar” or “buffoonish” (Cicero, trans, 2001). Likewise, in book eleven of Institutio Oratoria, Quintilian instructs orators to avoid miming gestures. For Romans, mimetic gestures resembled bodily conventions used by actors in the theater. In his section “Gestures which mimic action,” Quintilian scorns the orator who uses excessive depictive gestures to mime the actions or characteristics of a person.

There are others [referring to gestures] however which express things by mimicry. For example, you can suggest a sick man by imitating a doctor feeling the pulse, or a lyre-player by shaping your hands as if you were striking the strings. You should refrain altogether from such things in pleading. An oratory has to be different from a dancer; he must adapt his Gesture to his sense of more than to his words—which indeed was the practice of more serious actors too. I would readily let him move his hand towards himself, or towards a person whom he wishes to point out, and a few things like that; but I do not approve of his miming attitudes and making a visual display of whatever he says (Quintilian, trans, 2001).

Orators in both Greek and Roman antiquity were educated to abide by strict vocal, gestural, and gendered codes, all of which restrict the speaker’s conduct (see Aldrete, 2003; Gleason,

1995; Gunderson, 2000). Restrictions placed on the orator’s body included limited excessive gesturing which resembled acting. I cannot explore the class and gendered divisions between orators and actors in Greek and Roman oratory in this analysis; however, plenty of scholars have examined the performative similarities and differences between oratory and theater (see Aldrete, 2003).

An orator’s body was limited in their stylistic range; gesture and prosodic devices accompanied the performative force of speech.

Quintilian assumed that speech and mimesis are incompatible modes of communication, at least as far as public oratory is concerned. Speech is the realm of truth; mimesis is the realm of imitation. Mimesis is exemplified by the art of the mime, but also by iconic gesture, seeks to bring the world itself to the fore—it signifies by imitation—and thereby undermines the self-sufficiency of speech. Mime, moreover, is entertainment, unbecoming of the search for truth that public discourse is meant to be. By supplementing oratory with mimetic and depictive gestures, the speaker undermines the moral imperative of his oratory, namely, to persuade the audience by the force of language alone (Streeck, 2008, pp. 177-178).

In much of its history, the mimetic arts (dance, painting, and poetry) have been considered imitations of reality, not veridical renditions (see Potolsky, 2006). In politics, the semiotic modality of gesture is expected to accompany the rhetorical force of speech (see Kendon,

2004).

Contemporary politicians also limit their use of mimesis. For instance, in his microanalytic study of Democratic political candidates, Streeck (2008) argues that “The consensus [between Roman orators and American politicians] involves (a) avoidance of gestural depiction or mimesis; (b) use of gestures to mark pragmatic speech functions; and

Streeck (2008) illustrate how politicians adhere to “shared codes” of political behavior.

American political classes use more pragmatic or interactive gestures (Bavelas, Chovil,

Lawrie, & Wade, 1992) that work synchronously with speech and prosody to structure and regulate their messages. In preferring rhythmic, discourse-structuring gestures, politicians avoid or limit their use of depictive gestures to create imaginable scenes, characters, or objects for audiences (see Bull, 1986; Maricchiolo, et al., 2014).

To my knowledge, no comprehensive study has, as of 2018, examined how English- speaking politicians use gestures, posture shifts, or bodily movements to animate citable

10 figures at their rally speeches (my collaboration, Hall et al., 2016) being an exception).

Only a handful of studies carefully examined quotations in a political rally discourse (see

Sclafani, 2017; Holsanova, 2006; Kuo, 2001; Reyes, 2011); however, previous investigations focused exclusively on how politicians strategically animate character

“voices,” not their entire body.

This exploratory study fills in some gaps in academic scholarship. I investigate how politicians use quotations as strategic, multimodal stratagems in their stories to manufacture and dramatize imaginable characters, attribute moral qualities to the cited figures they conjure up, and position their rally spectators. I am concerned with the way politicians harness the rhetorical power of visual and kinesthetic dimension of quotations through their storytelling abilities. To understand the diverse forms of visual rhetoric used by a politician-turned-celebrity and a celebrity-turned-politician, I examine “quotations as demonstrations” (cf. Clark, 1996, 2004, 2016; Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark & Van Der

Wedge, 2015; Wade & Clark, 1993), and I argue that depictive communication can serve as a persuasive device to engage audiences in co-creating a shared moral worldview

(Osborn, 1976, 1986, 2018). When Trump and Clinton tell stories about others, they use the depictive power of quotations to manufacture a version of reality and the characters that inhabit these stories.

Orators used the power of sight to point to, show, and make damaging inferences about the characters they depict. Renditions of characters offered to audiences are controlled by the speakers who co-opt the voices and physical actions of others (Lane-

Mercier, 1991). The current study tries to understand the rhetorical prowess of mimesis of characters’ voices and bodies as speakers fashions inferences about one’s opponent. As

11 narrators, these two political contenders recount the discourse of others and transform the mimesis of bodily action into a mimesis of character (Ricoeur, 1986).

Outline of the Dissertation This chapter has set out the basic ideas and arguments of the dissertation. Now, I will provide a brief synopsis of each chapter.

Chapter 2: Creating Characters in Social Interaction, reviews three disciplinary fields which have their own understanding of the role mimesis plays in quoting citable figures (Goffman (1974). I start by exploring the classical rhetorical arguments of Greek scholars, particularly Plato and Aristotle. This leads to a discussion of controversies surrounding the use of mimesis of character. After providing a rhetorical background, I investigate contemporary literary and interaction-based theories. Namely, I examine spoken quotations and the ventriloquizing practices described in the Bakhtinian literary canon. In this section, I show the complexities of quoting a person to make them hearable and imaginable. I also explore some debates about the validity, veracity, and authenticity of quoting characters. I devote the last section of the chapter to understanding how mimesis has been talked about as a visual and kinesthetic practice, and I argue that gesture studies scholars focus on mimesis of bodily action, not mimesis or animation of characters and their presumed personality traits or habits. The literature review tries to survey a broad set of scholarship, while at the same time, I narrow my focus to Clark’s (1996, 2016) theory of quotations as demonstrations.

Chapter 3: A Microanalysis of Political Communication locates my study in interaction-based scholarship and explains the analytic steps and theories used to construct a working model to study political campaign rallies. Told in a narrative style, the

12 methodology chapter details each step of the process, including data collection, observations, coding, data storage, and the software used to analyze and assess the dataset.

The point of this chapter is to provide transparency so readers can develop an appreciation for quotations and the rationale for why I think it deemed necessary for an academic scholarship to study these practices in a political context. For this reason, the method chapter also offers insights into the primary investigator’s analytic process.

Chapter 4: Hillary Clinton and her Documenting use of Quotations to “Objectively

Report” the Words and Actions of Political Characters is an empirical chapter dedicated to the storytelling abilities of Hillary Clinton and her repertoire of quoting characters. In this chapter, I critique how Clinton distances herself from dramatizing her stories and individuating different character roles. In telling repeated moralized vignettes, Clinton tries to animate “authority” and “heroic” figures to add credibility to her arguments. An examination of several examples reveals that Clinton’s character enactments lack vivid personalities.

The second empirical chapter, Chapter 5: Donald Trump and His Use of

Caricatured Demonstrations to Dramatize, Exaggerate, and Simplify Political Characters, outlines the storytelling abilities of Donald Trump and his repertoire of animating characters. In this chapter, I show that Trump uses a dramatically different method of spoiling the image of his adversaries by caricaturing their foibles and bodily habits. While

Clinton tells stories using common storytelling devices and formats, Trump harnesses the power of the media to reanimate already talked-about scandals and weaknesses, and therefore, he co-opts gossiping anecdotes which are then transformed into caricatured demonstrations of his adversaries. I argue that caricatured demonstrations are robust

13 mechanisms for depicting and damaging the images of adversaries. Embodied caricatures produce speaker-audience interaction and empower the speaker’s message. However, these depictive performances come at the price of deflecting actual arguments, policies, and verifiable proof.

Last, in Chapter 7: Conclusion, I summarize my results and comparisons between the candidates concerning their strengths and weaknesses in animating characters in their stories. I discuss the limitations of the study and future directions for scrutinizing political communication through my microanalytic lens.

Chapter 2: Creating Characters in Social Interaction

Introduction In this chapter, I summarize several facets of bodily mimesis that span several disciplines from rhetorical studies to cognitive science. Mimesis of character enables researchers to see how everyday social actors create and maintain citable figures in face-to-face dialogue. Conceived of in social constructivist terms, mimesis is an umbrella term that encompasses: (i) mimetic methods

(pantomime, imitation, mimicry, impersonation, and embodied caricature), (ii) modalities (tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, eye gaze, postural shifts, and full-bodied movements), and

(iii) performative illocution and perlocutionary effects (irony, parody, satire, and humor). I start with a blanket definition of mimesis and then refine it to the purposes of studying how Donald

Trump and Hillary Clinton enact different characters in political speeches. Chapter 2 is a thematic overview of the diverse strands of research traditions on mimesis and focuses on mimetic acts used to dramatize and engross audiences in a created story-world. Politicians adopt narrative practices as part of their political repertoire, and then they use these mimetic and diegetic forms of character narration to persuade audiences. Part of the reason these imitative acts are so persuasive is that politics is about entrenched moral worldviews (Lakoff, 1996). Political actors evoke complex ethical systems that reflect differences between conservatives and liberals. In forthcoming chapters,

I will explore story morals and show how the mimesis of human bodies becomes wrapped up in what I call moralizing vignettes. This literature review, in conjunction with examples in the preceding chapters, allows me to make claims about the persuasive skillfulness of animating characters in political stories. Although cultural, social, and cognitive lines of research vary in no small degree, I argue that each of them adds to our understanding of how performers reflexively embody shared values that contribute to representations of an interactionally-fashioned political reality.

When a performer mimes another person’s habits, he or she evokes a mimetic schema

(Zlatev, 2005, 2007, 2014, 2016) which enables crowds to engage in collective imagining and shared empathy (Kemp, 2012; Tannen, 2007). Diegetic or verbalized enactments of others distance the audience from the ability to envision or imagine themselves as active participants in the conjured up scene. Mimetic forms of storytelling create dramatized narratives (cf. Jamieson, 1988;

Jamieson & Waldman, 2004), and therefore, they are useful for contemporary political orators.

Mimesis, at least for politicians, is about making a political world visible through the use of one’s body. As the philosopher Frank Ankersmit argues, humans forge political realities through manufactured representations.

(Political) representation, is often said, is making something present that is absent. The thought and actions of the people not present are made present by the representative body. In the political representation process, a depiction of a political will that exists in one medium (the people) is made visible in the present in another medium (the representative body)….The political reality is not first given to us and subsequently represented; political reality only comes into being after and due to representation” (Ankersmit, 1996, pp. 45-47).

Mimesis is a fundamental activity of contemporary human living. Children role-play the voices and actions of adults who they admire or scorn. Also, television shows employ actors to re-enact crimes or historical events to show the emotive intensity of the scene. Mimetic performances, however, do not replicate events and characters; rather, they involve the creation of first-person and third-person presentations of the perceivable world. In American politics, audiences and campaigns place a high value on bodily dramatization as a mode of showing not merely telling.

I now step back and lay the theoretical and methodological grounding in traditional rhetorical theories of mimesis. Then, I review contemporary social and cognitive methods used to study mimesis. Developing a wide range of knowledge on the topic, I discuss why theatrical dramatization that is inherent in mimetic performances of characters is critical to understanding the “storytelling skillfulness” of Clinton and Trump in their 2016 political speeches.

I use the definitions forged in this chapter to explore a variety of different mimetic and diegetic acts Trump and Clinton use in political rallies to dramatize, moralize, magnify, or demean other political actors. The goal in this chapter is to capture how everyday speakers take up a character role. By acting out character roles, speakers produce stimulating figurations or representations of someone who is not present.

Some Initial Cautions in Exploring Mimesis Scholars who have studied mimesis have been unsuccessful in devising a transhistorical definition that combines different social, cognitive, and rhetorical functions, partly because mimesis has too many cultural connotations. Although it can be quite useful to find reoccurring themes in studies of mimesis, it appears more realistic for scholars who investigate moment-to-moment social interactions to avoid a set of cross-historical assumptions. The word mimesis has a complicated history dating back to Greek and Roman antiquity. For this reason, the notion has been in and out of academic currency for a long time. While theorists (despite their socio-historical prerogatives) do agree that mimesis is a human-specific cultural adaptation that allows us to present a perceptual reality (Donald, 1991), there are still many disagreements among scholars. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that mimesis is a socio-historically variable notion that changes alongside human evolution. Many well-versed scholars have already tried to classify, taxonomize, and reconceptualize mimesis, including classic studies and contemporary reinventions (see Gebauer &

Wulf, 1995; Halliwell, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2012a, 2012b; Melberg, 1995; Woodruff, 1992,

2008, 2015). To delimit what mimesis is before examining actual data-driven examples would obscure the essential features of mimesis regarding a given communicative situation.

To address these issues, I locate mimesis in the moral vignettes that came about after watching countless hours of Clinton and Trump political rallies in the 2016 election (see Chapter

3). The theatrical framing of visual scenes, characters, events, and ethical outcomes is what interests me (Goffman, 1974). My approach is more akin to philosopher Nelson Goodman’s (1985) study architectural buildings, in which he purports to “consider how such works may mean, how we determine what they mean, how they work, and why it matters” (p. 644).

As a microanalyst and rhetorical critic, I examine the socially constructed products of political actors who performatively craft iterable vignettes to entertain audiences. I evaluate the storytelling effectiveness of each performer through the examination of empirical examples and supplement my discussion with the substantive literature on mimesis and diegesis. As will be made evident in this chapter, mimesis is a means of bringing characters to life on the makeshift stage in the here-and-now discourse. Mimetic narratives are valorized as more rhetorically authoritative than the purely diegetic or verbal counterpart, though the two sets of practices can work in tandem.

Acts of mimicry are used to dramatize and enact a vision for the audiences to experiences. Diegetic acts are verbalized character productions that poignantly turn the audience's attention to the contrived nature of the character’s presence and words (Longacre, 1983). For now, we start with a classical grounding of mimesis and characterization in dramas, and then, I use these studies to build up to more contemporary interaction-based frameworks appropriate to the study of character animation in face-to-face dialogue.

A grounding of mimesis in the Greek (Plato and Aristotle) rhetorical tradition suggests that rhetoricians have long documented the problematic relationship between mimesis as an (artistic) representational practice and political oratory. In classical rhetoric, theorists have conceptualized mimesis as a persuasive device to engross audiences in the makeshift (visible) theater of the narrator’s choosing. Mimetic forms animate characters by making them appear visible and audible to viewers; while, diegetic forms of presentation tell or narrate a character’s actions and attitudes.

The age-old narrative distinction between diegesis and mimesis has played out in many academic debates; however, the division between telling or showing what a character said or did, has always appeared to matter in oratory.

The Tradition of Mimesis at First Glance

The mimetic arts have always had an ambiguous relationship to notions of “truth,” “reality,” and

“authenticity.” In Greek antiquity, scholars argued that mimetic performances either mirrored human lived existence or distorted it. Scholars give credit to Plato and Aristotle for systematically analyzing imitative arts, even though there were pre-Platonic definitions of mimesis (see Golden,

1994; Keuls, 1978).

In the history of rhetoric, we find several debates and cautionary tales about the way mimesis shapes how humans view the world. One of the most documented problems in scholarly reviews of mimesis is that the term is translated as “imitation.” However, imitation in Greek and

Latin refers to a wide variety of concepts and theories ranging from a pedagogical method of learning to the impersonation of human character (see Kennedy, 1999, p. 133). I will try to reconcile a few of these issues while constructing a workable notion of mimesis and diegesis.

Classical Notions of Mimesis

Plato’s Prescriptive Philosophy of Dramatic Impersonation in Poetry

Greek philosopher, Plato, is most commonly associated with the mimetic arts. Plato’s conception of mimesis is hardly clear-cut, and to date, researchers are hesitant to agree on the definitions and interpretations throughout his vast scholarship (see Gebuer & Wulf, 1995; Halliwell, 2009). This chapter does not promise to provide a comprehensive account of Plato or Aristotle’s works; instead, I focus on significant relationships between the dramatic character creation, image-

19 making, and culture-specific morals. Mimesis contributes our knowledge of how actors (meaning both career actors and everyday interlocutors) voice and embody characters.

In Plato’s Republic, he discusses aspects of mimesis that would be appropriate for understanding more contemporary political situations. In Book III and Book X, Plato touches on the arts and mimetic practices directly, and he switches between mimesis as a form of dramatic impersonation or image-making (see Woodruff, 1992). The issue that Plato—through the voice of

Socrates—takes up in Book III is concerned with the way poets construct oral narratives and the performative impact that these literary forms can have on Greek society. Plato differentiates forms of storytelling into categories of diegesis (narrative or telling) and mimesis (imitation, representation, or dramatic impersonation; Halliwell, 2012, p. 129). Since Plato, the dichotomy between diegesis and mimesis has been played out substantively in narrative and literary studies

(see, Fludernik, 2002, 2003, 2009).

Traditionally, this oppositional pair is used to characterize the difference between *telling and *showing, particularly in the discussion of representation of speech and thought. Thus, for instance, speech report is more diegetic than *free indirect discourse (or the latter is more mimetic than speech report or indirect speech. *Interior monologue and direct speech are the most mimetic. The terms mimesis and diegesis are used in this way by Plato in Book III of the Republic (392D394D) when he says the narrator of Homeric epics speaks ‘in his own voice’ (diegesis), or lets the characters speak (mimesis) […]Plato sees pure diegesis as the only legitimate mode and condemns dramatists and epic poetry for their theatrical bent (the imitation of speech of characters as mimesis (Fludernik, 2009, p. 151).

In the Greek tradition, poets told stories so they could dictate how the past, present, or future unfolded in front of audiences. Poets either communicated a message by reporting the events and actions of characters, or they acted them out in the presence of the audience. In his theories of mimesis, Plato remains mostly ambivalent towards poetry because a poet can exaggerate aspects of lived reality without concern for maintaining fidelity to the events as they already occurred.

Since poets were held in high regard in rhetorical education as wise men (see Murray, 1996), Plato worried they could corrupt the core values of youth and distort people’s understanding of Greek

20 society. In his perspective, poets claim to be knowledgeable in many subjects, but in reality, they are only working with surface appearances. Poets or artists can portray skilled aspects of human experience, even though they have very little exposure or expertise in a given craft, ability, or form of knowledge. Plato does not entirely dismiss the benefits of poetry, on the contrary, he believes it can do a great deal for Greek society, so long as it follows specific prescriptive guidelines. Thus,

Plato is highly skeptical about situations where poets pretended to act like characters or speak on their behalf.

The ideal society, according to Plato, includes poetry as a beneficial practice for youth, if and only if, they emulate the best virtues of Greek culture. If poetry can provide ethical models for young men, then true virtues such as courage and justice can be impressed by the youth’s everyday habits. Mimetic performances blur the line between integrity and fiction, since poets do not necessarily visualize or emulate the best models of human dignity. Poetry can present the gods as evil or youth as corrupt, and if young men and women imitate these habits, it is thought to be dangerous for society.

To put this in a modern context, imagine a television show about politics such as West

Wing or Veep. While these shows attempt to capture the day-to-day experiences of how politicians act in real life, they only produce a particular dramatized version, that is, a reduced fiction of

American politics. Ethnographic studies of politicians show that their identities vary from their public and private lives (Wodak, 2009). Scholar of ancient of aesthetic theories, Paul Woodruff

(2008), refers to this mimetic effect of “duplicity,” in the sense that the television show produces an appearance of criminal investigators or politicians without the need for realistic representation.

Plato is arguing that poetry is in the business of fiction-making.

Throughout the Republic, Plato, via Socrates and his fellow dialogic partners, recounts how a poet can use dramatic impersonation to liken “himself to someone else, either in voice or looks”

(Rep. 392c). Bodily mimesis is “faulty,” according to Plato because these acts intentionally or unintentionally deceive the audience with regards to everyday virtuous characters. Poets create characters and attribute qualities to them that may disrupt normative cultural values. The story world of poetry, therefore, creates villains and heroes, unjust or just actors, and citizens who emulate all kinds of people. Plato cautions the reader against a poet’s attempt to sway audiences by miming a human’s utterances and dispositions. In one example, Socrates refers to Homer trying to impersonate Chryses, a priest of Apollo.

The poet himself speaks and doesn’t attempt to turn our thought elsewhere, as though someone other than he were speaking. But, in what follows, he speaks as though he himself were Chryses and tries as hard as he can to make it seem to us that it’s not Homer speaking, but the priest, an old man (Rep. 393a).

In dramatic impersonation, the audience does not need to entertain an “authentic” rendering of a character; instead, the poet can create a highly subjective perceptual experience. The audience is inclined to take Homer’s word that he is appropriately animating the old priest (Woodruff, 2015, p. 332). Plato seems paradoxically in awe of what poetry can accomplish, and at the same time, it troubles him. He does not see Greek audiences as passive, unquestioning viewers, instead, he has reservations about the way mimed characters take on a life of their own. The interpretative evaluation of Chryses becomes a spectacle for the audiences to enjoy at face value. The audience’s

“complicity” (cf. Woodruff, 2008) is thought to hinder their rational minds because they find pleasure in poeticized fiction and voluntary participation in its creation.

Plato’s distrust of mimesis continues in later chapters. In Book X, he provides a modified account of mimesis, though his understanding still involves a discussion of dramaturgical arts.

Scholars have shown that the most common definitions in Book X are “pretending,” “pleasure-

22 seeking,” and “image-making” (cf. Woodruff, 1992, 2015). Plato’s criticism of poetry falls more along the lines of what types of knowledge can or cannot be produced by poets. The poet—like a painter or other kinds of performers—works from preconceived notions of objects two or three times removed from the inherent truth of an object. Woodruff (2008) summarizes Plato’s position succinctly:

Plato holds that we can achieve knowledge only by focusing on our minds on what is most real. Because what is most real is not accessible to our senses, we must shut off our seeing and hearing in order to approach what is real purely through our minds. His complaint about poetry is that it presents mimetic images in place of their originals, so that poetry lovers try to learn from images instead of reality (p. 131).

Unlike God, the poet can only reproduce phantom appearances of objects, but cannot capture the

“original essence” of an object’s actual form (Plato, 589c).

This ambivalence arises partly from the fact that the products of mimesis can be evaluated in two distinct ways, either in terms of the objects imitated (whether they are good or bad), or in terms of the quality of the imitation (how good the likeness is). As far as P. is concerned, existing poetry fails on both counts: poets imitate the wrong kind of behavior and therefore corrupt the souls of their listeners (605c10-608b2); but they are also incapable of producing a true likeness of goodness and the other moral qualities because they do not know what goodness is (598d7-600e6) (Murray, 1996, p. 6).

Nehamas (1988) notes that Plato’s treatment of poetry is somewhat analogous to modern criticisms of television. Poetry and television are popular mediums in their own respective socio- historical times. Television, like poetry, “convinces us on many occasions that what we see in it is precisely what we see through it. This is precisely why it presents such a challenge to our morality sensibility” (Nehamas, 1988, p. 227). We see Plato’s arguments disguised in political discourses concerning visuality, technology, and authenticity. Scholars have claimed the boundaries between entertainment and politics have become so intertwined that politicians are encouraged to become more licensed to use popular entertainment (Hall et al., 2016; Street, 2004; West & Orman, 2003;

Wheeler, 2013). Just as poetry is said to deceive audiences by enticing them to be complicit, we 23 might wonder whether the characters who populate politician’s stories work under similar entertainment logics.

Political communication scholar Kathleen Jamieson (1988) offers an intriguing Platonic- oriented argument. Jamieson traces the way American politicians deliver speeches since the inception of radio and television. While the Greek and Roman oratorical tradition depended on speakers who build arguments on data and warrants, Jamieson finds that contemporary political communication focuses more on the dramatization of visual narratives.

In general, visual dramatization can increase the immediacy and resonance of a synoptic phrase but rarely can stand as an effective argument in its own right. Sacrificed in the move to show without telling is the capacity to redeem, redefine, contravene, and extend basic premises. Most often the visual moment is an assertion. Because we lack a grammar to test whether a visual assertion can function as an argument, we are particularly vulnerable to its use as a substitute for the reasoned invitation to judgment (Jamieson, 1988, p. 116).

According to Jamieson, visuality and dramatization have become two significant resources for politicians to make damaging assertions about their opponents. The persuasive impact of stories on audiences lie not in their argumentative logic, but the narrative coherence and imagistic immediacy. In an age of fast-paced media consumption, viewers perceive the world through the inundation of visualized narrative coherence (Kendrowicz & Taylor, 2016).

While we should keep Plato’s advice in mind when thinking about the “dangers” of persuading through mimetic acts, it is also essential we pursue the study of political storytelling from an inductive and descriptive method, not a prescriptive one. After Plato, rhetoricians of antiquity would advise the philosophers and orators to avoid dramatizing acts in their own speeches because they resembled too much frivolity of low-class actors (see Aldrete, 2003 and

Austin, 1806/1966).

Moving away from a prescriptive conception of dramatization, Plato’s student Aristotle viewed mimesis to be a universal human faculty. Concerned less about authoritarian aspects,

Aristotle provided an anthropological account of poetry and literature. According to Aristotle, mimesis refers to a human propensity to craft perceivable and enjoyable dramas. Before moving on to more present-day accounts of mimesis, I explore Aristotle’s idea of character creation through direct speech or enactment in the dramatic arts (see Halliwell, 2006). Aristotle’s aesthetic perspective for studying poetry provides foundations for contemporary interactional and dramaturgical perspectives on mimesis.

Aristotle’s Descriptive Philosophy of Mimetic Enactments

While mimesis posed a problem for Plato, Aristotle thought the term reflects our human artistic ability to act out the visible world. In Poetics, Aristotle does not concern himself with the fidelity of mimetic character performance. Instead, he provides a template of the different mimetic forms present to a given literary genre (tragedy and comedy). According to Aristotle, the artist does not mirror the world so much as he or she creates a version through the semiotic materials and genre conventions. Aristotle argues that mimesis can offer an idealized representation of a known figure.

Tragedy is a mimesis of men better than ourselves, the example set by good portrait-painters should be followed: they, while rendering the individual physique realistically, improve on their subjects’ beauty. Similarly, the poet, while portraying men who are irascible or lazy or who have other such faults, ought to give them, despite such traits, goodness of character (Aristotle, trans, 2006, p. 48).

From Aristotle’s perspective, acts of mimesis improve the representations of different characters they purport to present. In doing so, the poet or painter fashions intelligible aesthetic depictions attempting to better the world. Poets are masters of producing artistic effects by creating pleasure for the audience through the complex coordination of literary conventions and normative bodily behavior. The dramatic plot-structure organizes the fictional world, and the genre provides the audience with a sense of familiarity and prescriptive expectations of what is emerging in the story.

Mimetic acts are “theatrical spectacles” (Aristotle, trans, 2006, p. 45) governed by believability and not veracity.

In the genre of tragedy, Aristotle notes that plot-structures should present characters who purposely make sound ethical decisions (see Aristotle, trans, 2006, pp. 44-48). Actors can portray characters better than they are, overlooking their faults and beautifying their characteristic virtues.

For Aristotle, mimesis can have the ability “to make a recognition depend on the audience’s false reasoning” (Aristotle, trans, 2006, p. 49). Aristotle tries to construct a descriptive account of what comedies and tragedies offer the audience regarding the characters they create and the actions these characters take. In tracing our mimetic faculty, Aristotle devises a detailed set of categories that allows the researcher to see how performances become meaningful in their context of use, rather than placing prescriptions on art. Aristotle identifies three underlying categories: “media,”

“objects,” and “mode.” Each of these terms as defined differently depending on the mimetic art in question or the author's translation of the mimetic object. Halliwell (2012) provides a concise definition of these Aristotelian terms:

media qua materials of representation (language, visual forms, musical patterns etc.); objects qua aspects of human experience (actions, emotions, ethical qualities) as conveyed by the use of those materials; and modes qua (re)presentational techniques (such as different narrative voices or points of view) (p.4).

Aristotle creates an aesthetic framework that describes the human capacity for the mimetic portrayal of characters. Mimetic acts are artistic and inventive rhetorical practices that shape our worlds. A simple analogy is enough to make this point clear.

Envision a painter who at his or her disposal has different tools (the brush, the paint, the canvas) which play into how an object is portrayed, along with various representational techniques or conventions (foreshortening or linear-perspective) which help shape how an audience perceives

26 the object. The painter also conveys human perceptual experiences such as feeling, movement, or even ethical dispositions (Langer, 1953). At every dramatic turn, mimesis involves an interplay among these three dimensions. The restricted interpretation of a performance is dependent on the affordances of a given communicative medium.

We can an Aristotelian model to explore the tools, techniques, and rhetorical styles relevant to American political speechmaking. Politicians, for example, craft experiential messages through various semiotic materials (the voice, body, and dress) and representational techniques. Aristotle’s theory of mimesis implies that scholars can approach the concept from a detailed, theatrical perspective, one that inductively uncovers the different modes, media, and objects present in the production of representational acts. Aristotle reminds us that mimetic arts are fashioned to intrigue and entertain audiences. Imitative actions create openings for the audience to empathize with the established characters, their motives, and the situations built on everyday human experiences.

Aristotle gives us a sense of how we might look at the reoccurring, mimetic patterns as they become established conventions for audiences.

If we apply Aristotle’s work to the contemporary political scene, we may best see mimetic artifacts as conceptual structures or rhetorical strategies to keep viewers engaged (Atkinson, 2004).

Both Aristotle and Plato attend to imitative arts, ethical decision-making, and the presentation of a human personage. This rhetorical tradition highlights the theatrical and dramatic practice of creating, voicing, and embodying characters in the arts has always been fraught with ethical considerations. Skipping ahead in the timeline, I will now explore how contemporary scholarship of spoken quotations find similar concerns when it comes to the in-situ voicing of characters in face-to-face dialogue.

How Do Actors Make Characters “Hearable?”

When politicians talk in front of rally audiences, they quote the words and actions of their competitors and create an imagined dialogue with their absent interlocutors. Occasionally, politicians simulate characteristics of the pictured person. While the literature on spoken quotations is vast, only a handful of scholarly work has dealt with mimetic forms such as the impersonations of political figures (see Flowers & Young, 2010; Holsanova, 2006; Jones, 2009;

Reyes, 2011; Young, 2011).

Political communication scholar Jeffrey Jones (2009), for example, traces the history of

American televised political impersonations in sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live.

“But such caricatures,” Jones (2009) writes, “are typically missing any form of meaningful political critique, instead, depending largely on impersonation humor that is focused more on personal mannerisms and political style than politics” (p. 38). Reminiscent of Plato’s definitions of mimesis, Jones takes issues with dramatic impersonations in popular culture because of the effects they may have on (political) audiences:

As impersonations, though, the routines provided to be political in the sense of critiquing the politician’s policies or responses to world events or even showing how such personal characteristics could prove dangerous. Instead, the skits are about them as people more than leaders. Viewers are led to laugh but not disdain, to appreciate affectionately but not really criticize. These are portrayals of human foibles, not sketches that suggest some inherent weakness in the person as a leader, weaknesses that viewers should consider before selecting him as president (Jones, 2009, p. 43).

Comedic impersonations on television, Jones remarks, only became popular in the 1970s and were not dependent on sharing a likenesses between the performers and the impersonated figure (p. 42).

In one instance, Jones discusses Chevy Chase’s famous portrayal of Gerald Ford as an impersonation that audiences found humorous, and yet, the imitation had very little to do with

Chase looking or appearing like President Ford. Jones (2009) hypothesizes that “The lack of

28 physical resemblance, however, did not mean the portrayal was necessarily off mark or unfunny.

Perhaps the inability to impersonate with accuracy gave the performances special power or leeway for political commentary” (p. 41).

In stark contrast to these early examples of mimesis, contemporary impersonations depend on capturing the look, utterances, or gestures of these characters with varying degrees of precision

(Drew, 2003). Modern audiences seem comfortable with entertainers and everyday people animating political entities. However, how common is it for politicians to mime or act as other political figures in their speeches? What do audiences expect narrative performances to accomplish in political discourse? When politicians pretend to act as other figures, do they concern themselves with the authenticity of the politician’s identity and their policies or merely depict their foibles?

These questions are ones that can be inspected from an inductive, microanalysis of political communication. The point of this research then is to understand how politicians use their voices and bodies to develop characters in political stories and make them matter to audiences.

Quoting as an Act of Mimesis The mimetic act of quoting a person is a complex, dense, and paradoxical practice that has been at the subject of many debates in the philosophy of language (see Lane-Mercier, 1991).

Conversation analysts Clift and Holt (2007) argue that “Across this diversity it is nonetheless possible to identify three central concerns in the literature: that with forms of reported speech; with its authenticity, and with what it does [emphasis original]” (p. 3). The same issues Plato and

Aristotle were concerned with centuries ago resurface in recent debates. To pretend to be a character in dialogue, social actors need to engage an audience’s collective imagination (Clark &

Van Der Wege, 2014; Tannen, 2007). When politicians tell stories to audiences, they enact or create a conversation involving the voices of different characters: political figures, voters, media

29 professionals, or even themselves. The act of quoting another person is, therefore, one way of conveying to an audience how someone spoke or what they thought.

For our purposes, I stick to dramaturgically oriented theories of quotations because they enable us to see how politicians, like comedians, manufacture representations of others within their utterances and gestures. Quotations - whether direct, indirect or free indirect - purport to recall the actions of other social figures within the speaker’s statement or movements. In the example below,

Clinton quotes the voices of Republican candidates during a speech in Arkansas. It is important to note that extracts in this chapter are abbreviated snippets. Also, I use an intuitive transcription format to convey these examples.

Extract 1: “Republicans on climate change” [Pine Bluff, Arkansas, February 28, 2016] Animating the Voice of Character

Clin: Now, I gotta tell you. You’ve probably have heard (pause) the Republican candidates be asked about it. And you know what they always say. (crowd member goes “ugh.”) They always say, [“Well I am not a scientist” (Voices Republicans-as dull-witted).] (Clinton shrugs shoulders.) (crowd slightly chuckles.) (Returns to normal voice) Well, I’ll tell you what, there is an easy answer to that. Why don’t you talk to a scientist? (interspersed shouting and clapping from the audience). You could come to UAPB and talk to scientists right here. And they would explain climate change. I have concluded (pause) that the Republican candidates for president don’t really believe what they are saying, they’re saying what they are told to say by the Koch brothers. (crowd slightly laughs, claps, and nods heads). So, instead of embracing opportunities for clean renewable energy, they are walking away. What a loss!

Clinton quotes the speech of Republicans as they talk about climate change. She does not cite their discourse; she slightly animates their voices so they can be heard in a particular way. Clinton

30 prefaces the quoted speech with a verb of speaking (to say) and launches into “parodic stylization”

(Bakhtin, 1981) of Republicans. Changes in prosody and voice quality enable Clinton to imagine herself as the Republicans. A slow, drawn-out manner of speaking provides the indexical weaponry for her to characterize Republicans as uneducated about climate change issues. When she takes up the voices of Republicans, Clinton widens her eyes, gestures with her right hand, and rounds her lips. Her facial portrayals and prosodic stylings make evident her negative stance towards the Republicans. The upshot of her short narrative suggests that special interests are instructing Republicans on how they should think. As evidenced in her talk, Clinton does not believe they have opinions of their own, and therefore, she weakens the image of Republican Party and their credibility. The performative effect appears to damage the integrity of the Republicans for an already sympathetic, Democratic audience. The example demonstrates some exciting features about quotations that literary scholar V.N. Vološinov (1973) noted early in his work.

Reported speech is speech within speech, utterance within utterance, and at the same time also speech about speech, utterance about utterance…Reported regarded by the speaker as an utterance belonging to someone else, an utterance that was originally totally independent, complete in construction, and laying outside the given context (Vološinov, 1973, pp. 115-116).

Literary scholars like Vološinov (1973) and Bakhtin (1981) argue that quotations are hardly veridical; the more we analyze a quotation, the easier it is to see that the reported discourses represent a highly perspectival viewpoint. Clinton may be describing the sentiments Republicans have towards climate change, but the way she is performing their habits is scarcely objective. Audiences will be hard-pressed to find a quotation from a

Republican that fits Clinton's prosodic stylings.

Clinton performs Republicans by analyzing and critiquing them. When she imagines herself as the Republicans, she changes her voice in a polyphonic act that is more

31 akin to indirect forms of discourse. The audience gets a limited characterization of how

Republicans speak and their stances towards climate change.

Bakhtin (1981) captures the complex voicing dynamics involved in the context of the novel. In any given utterance, a character’s voice is part of their own and as well as the narrator’s. The narrator does not retell the events of the characters; rather, he or she overflows the characters talk with their own moral worldviews. The figures of a novel do not reflect a pre-given reality; instead, they are “refracting the author’s intentions” (Bakhtin,

1981, p. 315). Characters are the creation of the narrator; it is not humanly possible for someone to become another person. The best a narrator can do is try to disguise their voice when acting as or voicing a character.

Vološinov, like Bakhtin, locates language in the social world. For Vološinov, language is a subjective refraction of reality, not an objective reflection. Summarizing

Vološinov, Marxist philosopher Lecercle (2009) suggests that “refraction implies distortion, meaning that language cannot be a mere representation of reality external to it.

Refraction is not a simple image, mere representation; and the action of language is a mixture of representation and intervention: the image of the world conveyed through language is not only deformed, but it is also transformed and, in return, transformative” (p.

110). I find this to be a compelling description of how language represents and transforms aspects of our lived experiences.

Mimetic acts in Bakhtin’s schema are “double-voiced” images of speaking personas that performers enact in discourse. Bakhtin (1981) mentions that quotations can involve performative effects like a parody or satire which attempt to destroy the image of the object being stylized (p. 362). Double-voiced performances are creative acts, which 32 depend on generating different performative effects. Vološinov and Bakhtin lay the groundwork for several dramaturgical theories of mimesis, emphasizing how voices are construed through the belief systems of the present utterer. Several contemporary theories capture how mimetic performances are not simple reproductions, but dramatizations that pertain to highly exaggerated enactments in their own right.

Perspectival (Mimetic) Montages

When someone acts in character as someone else, he or she cannot replicate what a person said or did. Performers use grammar, prosodic devices, and gestures to construct representations of others in the talked-about world. Quotation shape our perceptual experience; they do not copy reality. Therefore, we need to break away from reproduction or replication theories of quotation that simplify how social actors forge character productions. One theorist who understands the complexities of spoken quotations is the literary critic Meir Sternberg. In his work on biblical citations, Sternberg (1981, 1982) demonstrates that an authoritative figure can frame quotes in a variety of ways to determine the meaning and integrity of a given quote.

For quotation brings together at least two discourse-events: that in which things were originally expressed (said, thought, or experienced) by one subject (speaker, writer, reflector), and that in which they are cited by another. In principle, these form – spatiotemporally, thematically, teleologically – two separate and independent events. […] In quotation, first of all, the two discourse-events enter into representational (“mimetic”) relations. It should be borne in mind that quoting consists in a representation, one that differs from other acts of representing the world only in the represented object. For its object is itself a subject or manifestation of subjective experience: speech, thought, or otherwise expressive behavior; in short, the world of discourse as opposed to the world of things (Sternberg, 1982, p. 108).

These two events (the original and the recontextualized version) spatiotemporally different.

One event occurred in the past, and the other is currently unfolding. The quoter plays the most crucial role in this production since he or she can erase aspects of the original act of speech or action and create an entirely new representation. According to Sternberg (1981):

“…even if the original could be copied down to the last detail, it is transplanting and framing in a new environment would impose on it a new mode of existence” (p. 108).

Acting, whether we are referring to an actual theatrical production or everyday, face-to- face dramatization, involves citationality. Actors look to the script for their lines; whereas, everyday conversationalists refer to salient situations or cultural references.

For Sternberg (1981), a quote is designed to reflect the opinion of the utterer, not the original author’s intent. “For the defining trait of quotation (as mimesis of discourse),”

Sternberg (1982) argues, “consists in the fact that its represented object is itself a subject with expressive features: verbal, moral, sociocultural, thematic, aesthetic, informational, persuasive” (Sternberg, 1982, p. 109). Theories of reproducibility fail in Sternberg’s view because it is impossible to replicate all the features that give meaning to an original quotation. Quotations are made meaningful through different scales of distinctiveness, specificity, realism, rhetorical and performative effects. Sternberg (1982) disrupts what he terms a “mimetic fallacy” because there is a “one-to-one rather than the many-to-many relationships between linguistic and representational structure” (p. 148).

But what is the primary function of, say, direct discourse? Is it (speaking only of mimetic ends) to achieve mimicry, or sympathy? Or realism? Or specificity and distinctiveness? Or perhaps vividness, or a sense of immediacy? Whatever their disqualifications, any of these would have stronger claims to place of honor than absolute reproductiveness, which is precluded, or at least actively militated against, by an array of communicative factors (Sternberg, 1982, p. 148).

In the earlier literature on quotations, scholars claimed “direct reference” of the actual original utterance is entirely possible; however, Sternberg (1981, 1982) argues that quotations are “perspectival montages.” When someone quotes a person, he or she is framing the cited figure’s words by selectively editing or even subordinating his or her

34 words or actions. Performative effects (satire, parody, and irony) destabilize the relationship between the original utterance and the quoted version.

There are several relevant uses for Sternberg’s theories for establishing a working theory of mimesis in interaction; however, I find his description of multiple interpretive correspondences to be the most useful here. As Merlin Donald (2005) puts it, “ As anyone who has played charades knows, mimesis is a frustratingly imprecise mode of expression based on analogy association, and resemblance” (p. 284). The notion of reproduction is a inadequate template for understanding meaning-making.

Sternberg’s account is not dramaturgical in the theatrical sense, but he shows that quotations are intricately crafted and creatively designed to accomplish an interactional goal. Speakers manufacture characters by putting words in their mouths. By adapting their bodies, interlocutors can enliven characters in conversation and comment on these real or imagined figures. It is also significant to note that Sternberg refers to mimesis as a miming of discourse.

Evoking the Platonic dichotomy between diegesis and mimesis, Sternberg claims scholars have argued that the two notions are opposing representational methods. In mimetic discourse, the quotation is sympathy promoting, referentially specific, stylistically distinctive, and reproductive to the original context (see Sternberg, 1982, p. 111). Diegetic discourse is considered a nonempathetic type of discourse, lacking referential specificity and is paraphrased or reformulated talk (see Sternberg, 1982, p.111). As Sternberg points out, such a simplistic model of direct and indirect speech does not capture how direct discourse is just as contrived as indirect discourse. Also, he reminds scholars that indirect reported quotations can be sympathy-producing like a direct reported quotation, but no 35 citation can reproduce the original. The dichotomy between diegesis and mimesis may reflect common performance tendencies and associations, but each performative act depends on the context in which it emerged.

The most critical feature of a quotation appears to be the context, since, the setting determines the pragmatic, social, and rhetoric aims and outcomes of discourse. Sternberg’s major overhaul of mimesis and diegesis, while it contributes to our understanding of how quotations (direct, indirect, or otherwise) are not reproductions, fails to account for other forms of bodily, or physical forms of quoting. While I take up Sternberg’s charge to consider the context as one of the most significant factors in interpreting quotations, the distinction I make between diegesis and mimesis falls in line with performance theories such as Michael Issacharoff.

“Mimetic space,” Issachroff (1989) writes, “is represented onstage and made visible to an audience. Digetic space is described, that is, referred to in the dialogue, and therefore confined to merely verbal existence” (p. 58). My concern is not for reproducibility; rather, I am interested in how mimetic and diegetic forms become meaningful in specific performance spaces on the American campaign stage. Many scholars reserve the term mimesis to refer to visible action patterns and not linguistic styles of character-making. Mimetic devices make referents “seeable” and “hearable” to audiences by crafting distinctive vocal and bodily representations of characters, while, diegetic devices describe characters. To avoid simplifying the dichotomy between mimesis and diegesis, I turn to linguist Deborah Tannen, who has developed a nuanced theory that subverts notions of direct, indirect, or free indirect reported speech.

Constructed Dialogue, Imagination, and Involvement

In her scholarship, Tannen (2007) criticizes the long-held notion of “reported speech.”

‘Reported speech’ is misleading because it implies that the representation of speech in current discourse is, first and foremost, a “report” of discourse created by another speaker in another context. My claim is that, whenever a speaker frames an utterance as dialogue, the discourse thus framed is first and foremost the speaker’s creation, just as surely as playwrights, filmmakers, or fiction writers create dialogue (Tannen, 2007, p. 21).

Reported speech, according to Tannen, is a misnomer because when speakers claim to say the words or actions of another; they do so by framing it within a new context while concomitantly stylizing how the quoted speaker sounds or appears. Words that speakers claim to “report,” while made out to be “objective,” paint a portrait that subjectively framed, stylized, and repacked in the here-and-now. Constructed dialogue involves

“recontextualization of words in a current discourse” (Tannen, 2007, p. 17). When we directly or indirectly enact the words of others, we are not reproducing the originals; we are repurposing and selectively dramatizing the speaker’s voices for others. Everyday storytellers craft their narratives and characters within their dialogue to persuade the audience into seeing what they want them to see. The vivification of people (i.e., roleplaying or shifting) in these everyday narratives creates the involvement between the quoter and the listening audience.

Tannen uses different terms to examine the various mimetic effects, though

“ventriloquizing” (cf. Bakhtin’s, 1981 notion of “ventriloquation”) is a notion that best describes vocal imitative acts. Tannen (2007) argues: “Ventriloquizing is a special case of constructed dialogue in that a ventriloquizing speaker animates another’s voice in the presence of that other. It is also a kind of frame-shifting insofar as a speaker who utters

37 dialogue in the voice of another is assuming a new and different footing vis-à-vis the participants and subject of discourse…” (p. 22).

In her later scholarship, Tannen (2010) illustrates how ventriloquizing works through Bateson’s understanding of “abduction,” “a mental process by which analogy creates meaning” (p. 307). “Ventriloquizing,” according to Tannen (2010), “creates meaning by abduction, as speakers borrow others’ identities and thereby temporarily assign to themselves characteristics associated with those voices they borrow” (p. 307). A father, for instance, may try to demonstrate for his son or daughter how to make an omelet while taking on the voice of a non-present chef to increase his appearance as a knowledgeable cook. Alternatively, a mother can conjure up an imagined voice for “Sparky,” their pet dog, to talk to her son or daughter about putting away their toys as the dog does (Tannen, 2010).

Through the voicing of these figures, human or non-human, the performer creates associations to the qualities or characteristics to an evoked character. Dialogic meaning- making always depends on shared knowledge between the person who constructs the dialogue and the present audience. When someone voices a character mimetically, he or she does not report particular qualities, thoughts, utterances, or actions; they vividly portray them. Again, this harkens back tradition rhetorical understandings of mimesis as a craft involving various modalities, representational techniques, and performative effects.

Although scholars reserve the term mimesis to refer to the act of reproducing bodily actions or motor patterns, the voice can be mimetic in the sense that it makes visible what a character is like and how they speak.

Tannen does not attend to gestures or more bodily visual dimensions in dialogue, but her notion of constructed dialogue has inspired others to coin terms like “constructed

38 action” (cf. Metzger, 1995; also see Liddell, 2003). Whereas constructed dialogue focuses primarily on vocal and literary dimensions of language, constructed action looks at spontaneous gestures and manual actions of the signer to demonstrate the illustrative functions. However, Tannen’s work is missing a close examination of the bodily visual dimensions of mimesis. For that, I turn to Clark (1996, 2016), Clark and Gerrig (1990), and Wade and Clark (1993).

Quotations as Demonstrations

Psycholinguist Herbert Clark has the most systematic interaction-based approach to bodily mimesis. Clark (1996) proposes, “quotations as demonstrations.” Before Clark’s work, scholars explored different pragmatic, social, and linguistic dimensions of quotation structures; however, very little work engaged in the visual and kinesthetic qualities of quotations.

Citing the work of nominalist philosopher Nelson Goodman (1968), Clark distinguishes between “description” and “demonstration” (depiction in Goodman’s terminology) as two types of communication. Clark provides a general theory of how human communication operates, noting that there are three convenient methods of how humans “signal” to others. “When people communicate, they have three fundamentally different devices at their disposal. They can describe. They can indicate or point. And they can demonstrate” (Clark and Gerrig, 1990, p. 802).

For Clark (1996), demonstrating through language differs significantly from describing. When speakers describe, they use the conventions of language to label and demarcate the world. While, “demonstrations work by enabling others to experience what it is it is like to perceive the things depicted” (Clark & Gerrig, 1990, p. 765). “The point of 39 demonstrating the thing,” Clark (1996) writes, “is to enable addressees to experience selective parts of what it would be like to perceive the thing directly” (p. 174). Bodily quotations offer a direct experience that audiences can imagine and enjoy. Clark (1996) gives the example of a man named George acting-as Queen Elizabeth as though she were holding a teacup, maneuvering her facial expressions, and pretending to drink from the cup

(pp. 172-173). In the interaction Clark describes, George’s interlocutors know he is not

Queen Elizabeth, and that Queen Elizabeth is not drinking tea at the dialogue moment.

Clark and his colleagues show that social actors can depict any number of aspects about a referent: how a person walks, how they move their body, how they exhibit emotions, and how they move through space and time. Demonstrations can depict physical objects, abstract concepts, qualities associated with social figures, and so forth. Clark concedes that demonstrations do not reproduce everything about the depicted referent. The reality is quite the opposite; a presentation (keeping in line with spoken quotation research) is not reproducing a past event, scene, or set of actions. It is impossible for human social actors to mime the actual events of the past including the characters, reactions, and location. Any mimetic performance involves a performer who manufactures their own perceptual experiences concerning the talked-about-world.

According to Clark and his colleagues, performers selectively demonstrate features of a referent. Demonstrations require “recognition” and “imagination.” The referent must be intelligible to the audiences who are witnessing the performance. Spectators must be able to imagine what is being demonstrated based on their shared knowledge. Not all aspects of a referent are made explicit in a demonstration, and therefore, the audience is

40 encouraged to imagine what the performers are trying to capture with characters and events portrayed.

When speakers demonstrate only a snippet of an event, they tacitly assume that their addressees share the right background to interpret it the same way as they do. In essence, they are asserting, ‘I am demonstrating something we both can interpret correctly,’ and that implies solidarity (Clark & Gerrig, 1990, p. 793).

Clark is more explicit about the “body language,” since, demonstrations are multimodal depictive actions. There are, in his schema, four main types of aspects that demonstrations.

Quotations as Demonstrations

1. Depictive 2. Supportive 3. Annotative 4. Incidental (see Clark (1996) pages 173-174).

A demonstration highlights aspect of a referent: how they act, talk, or features of their personality.

The world is rich in perceptual experiences, and therefore, performers can only highlight aspects of a character or event.

Take, for instance, a well-known incident in the 2016 election where Trump performed a demonstration of Clinton falling over at the September 11 memorial. A brief discussion will explicate Clark’s ideas and the usefulness of the term demonstration. When Trump acted as Clinton, he could not condense every essential stylistic feature or habit associated with her “character.”

There are several perceptual dimensions that Trump could have enacted, including her dialect, her age, her emotional state, or even more abstract qualities such as an authoritative power.

Instead of highlighting all of Clinton’s character qualities, Trump focused on how she fell and reacted by using his own body to make a demeaning or damaging social critique. Trump

41 depicts Clinton’s body slumping over and stumbling. The mimicked performance is not a replication of Clinton falling; it is a performance where Trump caricatures her public image. As we will explore in a later chapter, Trump’s behavior is more akin to an embodied parody than a faithful representation of her falling behavior. Although I discuss this example further in Chapter

5, I will use this as a brief anecdote.

Besides selectivity, Clark theorizes that depictive communication involves supportive dimensions that bolster the meaning. Supportive aspects, in the case of Trump’s demonstration of

Clinton, refers to his verbal assessments of her character. Trump’s oral assessments of Clinton supplements or supports the meaning of the bodily demonstration to come. Demonstrations are not meant to depict so much as they are intended to contextualize or provide a foundation for the image.

Clark’s refers to the third dimension as annotative aspects, which are perhaps the most pertinent for an analysis of political oratory. Annotative aspects involve performers making explicit or implicit commentary on the object or person as they are depicting. By representing

Clinton falling over, Trump can craft an insinuated critique of her ability to lead as a presidential candidate. The performer who is miming a character needs not voice the evaluation explicitly, but instead, the speaker asks the audience to infer the message based on the stylistic portrayal.

And finally, Clark describes incidental aspects of a demonstration. This category is the most ambiguous of Clark’s schema. Clark shows that some elements of a demonstration are not vital to the performer’s interpretive intent. By using this term, Clark attempts to show that performances do not purposefully capture all the iconic or indexical features of performance.

Political rally crowds will only hone in on or tune into aspects of a demonstration as it is framed or keyed (Goffman, 1981) in a particular contextual configuration.

Demonstrations range from the partial use of the body to full-scale presentations, which involve the entire body (see Clark, 2016). Therefore, in thinking about mimetic acts like these, we see how Clinton and Trump may use different strategies as part of their respective narrative repertoires. Clark (2016) makes the following distinction: “To describe something is to tell others about its properties—to represent it categorically. To indicate something (e.g., by pointing) is to locate it for others in space and time. To depict something, however, is to show others what it looks like or sounds or feels like” (p. 342). Clark’s account of meaning-making seems simple, but

I think this straightforwardness allows us to attend to some sophisticated dimensions of mimesis.

In Clark (2016), he argues that demonstrations enable audiences to imagine what the performer is trying to capture regarding perception. Demonstrations accomplish effects in the world as audiences react to the staged performances of a living figure. In one section, Clark and

Gerrig (1990) attend to more performative dimensions of depiction, including oratorical delivery

(p. 775). Clark and Gerrig (1990) note that a social actor uses the mimeticized body to demonstrate age, gender, voice quality, speech disabilities, emotional states, and even bodily gestures to steer the audience to a precise line of inferential logic. And therefore, I would add that demonstrations not only animate characters, they also individuate given socio-indexical features associated with or attributed to the cited figure. A performer animates the actions of a character; however, just because they animate what they did, it does not mean they necessarily individuate the character’s normative habits or identity features.

Clark’s theory of quotation as a demonstration is appealing. In positioning depiction as a mode of communication, Clark (2016) notes that there is a clear distinction between quoting practices. There are spoken quotations that are descriptions (indirect quotations) and that are demonstrations or depictions (direct quotations), each of which plays their role in distinct

43 interactional moments. Clark (2016) does not conflate demonstrations with other forms of depictive communication such as facial expressions, iconic gestures, or make-believe play, although these features can be part of a demonstration. My study adopts Clark’s distinction regarding quotations versus demonstrations. In my empirical chapters, I use the term quotation to refer to spoken descriptions of what a referent said, did or thought, while a demonstration selectively depict aspects of a character and his or her actions. To clarify, I have made a broader distinction below.

1. Mimesis refers to a theatrical style of performance where the actors depict the voices and

actions of others as they are telling a narrative. A politician crafts “mimetic space” (cf.

Issacharoaroff, 1989) when they make visible other social figures who are not present in the

here-and-now moment. Through vocal and gestural depiction, politicians use a mimicking

performances to conjure up three-dimensions figures, trying to bridge the gap between the

action the audience may not have or could not have been privy. Referred to by narrative

scholar Gerard Genette (1983) as “immediate speech," mimetic styles involve a “narrator

[who] is obliterated and the character substitutes for him” (p. 174). Mimesis creates an

illusion of reality intended to persuade the audience via the dramatic play unfolding before

their eyes.

2. Diegesis refers to a less theatrical or dramatic style of performance where a politician

describes the voices and actions of others in telling a narrative. The distinction between

mimesis and diegesis is primarily a verbal and visual distinction, since a diegetic space,

Issacharoff (1989) writes, refers to the talk about the dialogue that takes place in “a merely

verbal existence” (p. 58). Likewise, Gennette (1983) diegetic narration a form of “transposed

speech,” in that, the performer claims no fidelity towards the verbal or bodily quotation being

presented. When a politician uses a diegetic style of performance, he or she makes it visible

to the audience that they are present and constructing the words and actions of others. A

diegetic style leaves for more ambiguity between the narrator and the narrated social actions

of others. A diegetic form refers to itself as subordinated speech that is constructed to remove

the characters animated presence from the narration. Social interaction scholars sometimes

use the term “indirect speech” to describe this method of animating human figures (Clift &

Holt, 2007).

Replaying Experience of the Cited Figure No interaction-based account of mimesis is complete without a brief mention of sociologist Erving

Goffman. According to Goffman (1974), social actors quote others by reproducing “strips of talk” in a sort of “dramatization” (p. 504).

For what a speaker does usually is to present for his listeners a version of what happened to him. In an important sense, even if his purpose is to present the cold facts as he sees them, the means he employs may be intrinsically theatrical, not because he necessarily exaggerates or follows a script, but because he may have to engage in something that is a dramatization—the use of such arts he possesses to reproduce a scene, to replay it (Goffman, 1974, p. 504).

The term dramatization is key to understanding the performance of social actors when they replay a story for an audience. “A replaying,” Goffman writes, “will therefore, incidentally, be something that listeners empathetically insert themselves into, vicariously re-experiencing what took place.

A replaying, in brief, recounts a personal experience, not merely reports on an event” (p. 504).

Interlocutors adopt the conventions of stagecraft to vivify characters, improvise stage props, and transport the audience to imagined scenes made-visible with the body (Goffman, 1974, pp. 124-

155). Goffman, like Plato, is not convinced audiences which witness these stagecraft performances are tricked into being passive viewers.

Rather, Goffman urges us to see that face-to-face dialogue has evolved to include enthrallment as a general expectation. Everyday hearers are not “passive viewers” (Goffman, 1974, p. 550); people act as collaborative co-producers when they interact with each other. If we are to reconceptualize mimesis for interaction, then we need to understand that the goal may be to entertain and not necessarily deceive.

In Goffman’s terms, everyday social encounters are likened to theatrical characterization, and interlocutors take different roles as stage directors and actors when they dramatize aspects of the talked-about-world. When interlocutors act like characters, they evoke a vicarious experience of what those people are imagined to be like for the audience. A replaying allows interlocutors to substitute the here-and-now moment for a temporally distant memory or imagined scenario, and in doing so, they create a shared sensory experience (Clark, 2016). When a narrator tells a story, he or she inhabits the role as a character, gives these characters recognizable motives, and attributes qualities to their personalities. What makes a performance a dramatization is that interlocutors place themselves and the audience into different participant configurations: the performer, the observers, and the imagined figures (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004).

Like Bakhtin (1981), Goffman argues that people are always authoring multiple voices, which extend beyond their own. Goffman refers to these instantiations of characters as “cited figures” (p. 529) and defines them as real or imagined representations of others. In characterizing these others, he reminds us that the replaying of talk and action is somewhat analogous to a staged theater where the actors pretend to be characters acting in a fictional setting. An everyday actor creates an imagined stage that engrosses the audience.

Despite the pervasiveness of these animation techniques, Goffman’s work indicates that some social actors are more gifted at animating characters than others. The skillful storyteller will 46 also know that different quoting techniques have their advantages and disadvantages. In direct quotations, the performer takes on a first-person perspective of the figure they are attempting to animate. In this form of citing, the performer writes him or herself out of performative accountability and makes it seem like the audience is experiencing those words or actions directly from the source. There are many reasons direct mimetic forms engross viewers in the performance, although the use of stereotyped registers or prosodic stylizations of the voice plays a significant role in helping the audience imagine “caricaturized reenactments” (Goffman, 1974, p. 2).

When a person is quoted indirectly, the audience gets a sense that the performer is twisting the words of the cited figure and purporting a highly perspectival account (Longacre, 1983). Often involving a third-person perspective, indirect quotations “report” or describe what someone said, and therefore, more often than not, these types of quotations fail to give the character a recognizably distinct voice. Indirect discourse is transposed speech according to the French literary theorist Gérard Genette: “Although a little more mimetic than narrated speech, and in principle capable of exhaustiveness, this form never gives the reader any guarantee—or above all any feeling—or literary fidelity to the words “really” uttered: The narrator’s presence is still too perceptible in the very syntax of the sentence of the speech to impose itself with the documentary autonomy of a quotation” (Genette, 1983, p. 171). In indirect quotations, the interlocutor is not acting as the character, but the actor’s role is to describe what they said or did without letting the polyphonous voice or body emerge in their performance. As Sternberg (1981, 1982) reminds us, the distinctions between indirect and direct quotation discourses are not hard and fast. An interpretation of how quotations are produced is dependent on the context-of-use. The rhetorical leverage or benefits of each will stylizing form will depend on when and where the speaker employs them.

In sum, Goffman shows that interlocutors transform everyday dialogue into a stagecraft performance, populate these scenes with real and fictive characters, and use a plethora of storytelling devices to accomplish an interactional goal. Theories of spoken quotations provide a groundwork for distinguishing between mimetic and diegetic means of vivifying the words and actions of social figures; however, they do not capture the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of bringing a character to life is at the heart of mimesis. To address this issue and conclude this literature review, I turn to scholarship on embodied communication and narrative in gesture studies.

How Do Actors Make Characters “Visible?”

Dramaturgical theories of spoken quotations give us only half of the picture of how actors enact character roles in everyday discourse. When interlocutors put a distinctive voice to their character, they use linguistic features (grammar, prosody, or voice quality) and their hands, torso movements, and facial expressions. Any quoting performance of a character is a multimodal gestalt of vocal and gestural components (Keevallik, 2010; Streeck, 2002) and each of these accouterments contributes to the animation of a character’s personality. Scholarship has been to be divided into the literature either spoken quotation (reported speech) or gestural enactments (pantomime or mimetic enactments). In this section, I try to bring several research stands together to scrutinize these three terms: depiction, miming, and speech-gesture viewpoint.

I argue that contemporary studies of quotations could benefit from a more precise discussion of the relationship between depiction and animation of the character. Charting out the connections and hierarchical relations between depiction, animation, and enactment helps characterize voice and corporeal styles used to personify a character. These distinctions create a robust explanation for why American audiences value visualizing a character role as a rhetorically more potent narrative device than merely describing a character. Though the rhetorical interaction

48 between verbalizing and visualizing forms of storytelling will depend heavily on the contextual details (Sternberg, 1982), the scholarship in the area of embodied communication provides us with clues as to why the mimetic practice of making characters “audible” and “visible” is so vital for contemporary American audiences.

Embodied “Iconicity” When it comes to talking about the way everyday people manufacture believable characters

(through imagistic and aural play) to audiences, embodied communication and gestures studies scholarship has referred to these practices as depiction, enactment, and, on fewer occasions, animation. The lack of discernment among these performance-oriented terms obscures our vision as to how mimesis functions as an actuating means of engrossing audiences. I will try to address some of these terminological problems, while at the same time, opening up a space for examining the way social actors orient and utilize their bodies to act as characters.

For years, gesture scholars have paid attention to iconic gestures as they offer up imagistic versions of their concrete or abstract referential counterparts in conjunction with spoken dialogue

(Kendon, 2004; McNeil, 1992; Beattie, 2016). Put simply, iconic gestures operate with or without speech and provide an illustration or pictorial representation of size, shape, and temporality, among other human perceptual experiences. When we review the scholarship on imagistic gestures, we immediately encounter disagreements as to the definition and relations between iconicity and depiction.

Most psychological-oriented theories reserve the term gesture to refer to the “inner” thoughts of interlocutors, thus, evoking a mind-body dichotomy. The dualistic, Descartian-inspired tradition has concealed the way embodied meaning-making is a form of visual-manual thought in its own right. As a result, contemporary scholars try their best to avoid mind-body distinctions and

49 turn to theories of art aesthetics and cognitive linguistics for a semiotic account of iconic gestures

(Mittelberg, 2014; Mittelberg & Evola, 2014; Mittelberg & Waugh, 2014).

Contemporary theories of iconicity value the mind and body equally, and therefore, these theories also shy away from emphasizing “likeness” or “resemblance” between a referent and its representative base. As Streeck (2008, 2009) argues, we need to place critical interpretive weight on the gestural techniques interlocutors use to create analogies linking pictorial construals to a target. Aesthetic theories of art show how iconicity is scarcely about an actual resemblance to a depicted “real” reference. Iconic sign enables humans to create a pictorial label that is immediately intelligible to audiences (cf. Goodman, 1968). Scholars have examined how hands depict objects and re-enact action patterns but rarely do they discuss the complexities of how social actors pretend to act as a human figure.

On a surface level, the distinction between the act of animating and depicting may seem common sense. In depiction, the hands and body model, sculpt, trace, handle, or display objects to be inspected or perceived (Streeck, 2008, 2009). In animation, the body becomes a personified character who is portrayed and evaluated based on the actions or words that a performer makes them do (Goffman, 1974). Many scholarly works on gesture use demarcations between enactment, animation, and depiction that are muddled, collapsed, or vaguely distinguished. For this reason, I will provide the beginnings of a theory that examines the relationships between the three terms.

My approach more adequately addresses the role that animation plays in everyday dialogue. By disentangling the relationships between these terms, I believe we extrapolate these findings to understand better how Clinton and Trump use very different mimetic and diegetic styles in their performative vignettes to voice and embody character viewpoints. Table 1 summarizes the

50 terminological terrain that has been used in embodied communication literature and will allow us to compare these approaches more accurately.

Table 1 Definitions of mimesis, enactment, and depiction in gesture studies scholarship

Author Terms Brief Definition Relation to Depiction

Goffman (1974, 1981) Animation A dramaturgical staging No explicit mention of H. Goodwin (1990) of a real or imagined depiction. The theory figure in talk and implies imagistic or gesture in a image-making. dramaturgical fashion. Clark & Gerrig (1990) Demonstrations A depictive form of Demonstrations are Clark (1996, 2016) communication that depictions, but not all Performed Depictions uses icons to facilitate a aspects communicate shared perceptual through depiction. experience of what is being imagined. Calbris (1990, 2011) Mimetic gestures A form of gesturing Mimetic gestures are Pantomimic gestures that enables the considered abstractions audience to see or feel in the form of symbolic what the ideas. Mimesis is a speaker/gesturer means form of analogical in dialogue. Mimetic reasoning that evokes a gestures selectively visible, physical abstract or pick out dimension of a given distinctive embodied object. features and movements that allow for the intelligibility of the reference. Kendo (1980, Mimetic Enactment The sampling of a Kendon: depiction 2004) motor-schema derived refers to objects that do Streeck (2002, 2008, from conventional not require a movement 2009) forms of cognition and pattern. sociality. Streeck: includes pantomime of a character as a depictive, world-making technique.

Table 1, cont.

Mandel (1977 Mime An iconic device that Depiction and miming presents a ‘token’ of an are not considered the action. same process. The depiction is the pictorial image of the base referent.

Müller (2009, 2014, Acting Mode Two different technique Gestures are inherently 2016) Representing Mode of depiction Acting mimetic, using different renders motoric acts cognitive processes to visible in manual and construe how the hands visual thinking. The mean and the hand re-enacts everyday representations they movement patterns. The create in discourse. representing mode turns the hands into sculpting devices used to model spatiality, location, motion, and manner of objects. McNeill (1992) Character-Viewpoint Character viewpoint C-VPT and O-VPT are Object-Viewpoint depicts the first-person iconic, depictive perspective of an narrative devices. The imagined character. two viewpoints can be Observer viewpoint invoked at a moment’s displays and event from notice. a distanced, third- person perspective.

Bodily Quotes: Mimetic Enactment and Animation

Two examples from American politics will help elucidate the terminological issues surrounding bodily quotations. The first example comes from a Donald Trump rally in which he animates a

Clinton-character using pantomime. In the forthcoming snippet, Trump pantomimes Clinton stumbling at a 9/11 memorial event in New York City. By acting like Clinton, Trump’s actions

52 are assumed to be that of the character he portrays (McNeill, 1992). The quotable action performed is a displaced (Chafe, 1994) past action pattern of “Clinton’s” body as she falls over.

The second example comes from a Hillary Clinton rally speech in which she also attempts to embody aspects of a character: Hugh Rodham. Clinton labels her father as a small-business man and depicts him screen printing.

Each vignette communicates something about the speaker’s opponents. One account is

“agent-focused,” the other, “scenic-focused.” Both mimetic or diegetic techniques of representation are valuable in storytelling, but only mimetic forms make an opponent “seeable” as a figure acting on their “own” accord. In the transcripts below, visual snapshots accompany physical actions that either enacts characters or depicts a scene; otherwise, other notable facial expressions, bodily postures, or hand gestures are described. Aspects of the gesture phrase—the onset of movement, the acme or stroke of the gesture, and gestural holds or retractions to the home or rest position—are not delineated individually (Kendon, 2004; Sacks & Schegloff, 2002;

Schegloff, 1984). For readability and brevity, the entirety of the gesture phrase, from the preparation of movement to the return to the rest position, is underlined following McNeill (1992) and Sauer (2003). Each gesture receives its unique number in the order they appear. Gesture descriptions appear directly below their co-occurrence with spoken utterances. In the empirical chapter, Chapter 4-5, I explore these in narratives in much greater depth.

In the following case, Trump quotes the body of Clinton by referring to a highly public and mediatized event in which she is nearly fainting during a 9/11 memorial service in New York City.

The video of Clinton almost stumbling into the Secret Service fan received a wide array of attention as people began speculated further her health on the campaign trail. The press later revealed that

Clinton had pneumonia, but the campaign team chose not to release this information early on.

Conservatives used this media outlet to question Clinton’s suitability as a presidential candidate.

Trump capitalized on the media frenzy and animated the following character version of her.

Extract 2: Trump Mocking Clinton’s Stumble [Manheim, Pennsylvania, Oct 1st, 2016] Animating a Character through Pantomime

Tru: But here’s a woman. (1) index and thumb pinched movement down (pause) She’s supposed to fight all of these different things. (2) palms facing each other; move inward and outward And she can’t make it fifteen feet to her car. (3) create a line with gripped hand Give me a break. (Audience begins shouting) (4) both hands held out parallel; palms face the audience Give me a break. (5) gesture held ((Pantomimes Clinton as the audience yells and cheers))

(5) throw-away gesture; hands both flap forward Give me a break. (6) index and thumb pinched movement down She’s home resting right now. She’s getting ready for her next speech which is gonna be about fifteen minutes and is gonna be in two or three days.

After providing several negative assessments (Heritage, & Raymond, 2005) of Clinton and her policies as the Secretary of State, Trump brings his evaluations of her to their climactic conclusion through pantomime. Trump referred to Clinton as a “disaster,” now, he presents the audience with a vivid example of her ill fit as a presidential candidate. “She's supposed to fight all these different things. But she can’t make it fifteen feet to her car,” Trump utters as his right hand traces an imagined line to depict the distance between her leaving the event and stumbling to the Secret

Service van. The audience comes to this interpretation because Trump is referencing a past incident

54 where Clinton’s staff caught her as she nearly fell to the ground. Trump’s utterance, packaged with a set of disagreeing evaluations, foreshadows a pejorative bodily rendering of Clinton’s personhood. Before the pantomimed performance, Trump displays disbelief about Clinton’s inability to lead the country by uttering “Give me a break” and gesturing with both hands. Trump expresses the same scoffing remark two times, showing that he sees Clinton and her actions to be problematic.

Instead of just describing Clinton’s inability, Trump depicts a Clinton-character. The characterization takes place in two parts. First, Trump’s body begins to quote Clinton when he wobbles his body with his eyes closed; this is a signal of the performance’s exaggerated nature.

Now that he has established Clinton as physically and metaphorically unbalanced character, he subsequently performs her fall. Trump chooses not to fall as Clinton did, at the risk of hurting himself; he schematizes the actions into a semblance of falling. Here, he evokes an intelligible bodily schema that creates the surface appearance of collapsing. The extract ends with Trump repeating his scoffing remark (“Give me a break”) with strong verbal emphasis that serves as a final critique of her lackluster public speaking abilities.

The pantomimed performance is embedded in a robust narrative framework concerned with

Clinton’s failure to lead as a past Senator and Secretary of State. By using a bodily quote or demonstration, Trump performs a comical enactment, making her faults exaggeratingly visible.

Not only is Clinton made to appear physically weak or ill but also, the performance is intended to suggest something more damaging about her ability to lead as a president. Pantomime enables the audience to cheer and shout through his performance without interrupting. Further remarks can be made about this performance, but it evokes issues surrounding mimetic enactment, depiction, and animation.

As we noted by Goffman, animation includes a figure who acts as or cites the actions or words of another living being. In this case, we encounter an example of what many embodied communication scholars reserved for pantomime. Most scholars in Table 1, with the exclusion of

Goffman, discuss pantomime or mime as the ability to act or re-enact bodily motions of a living being to varying degrees of specificity and complexity (Calbris, 1990, 2011; Clark, 2016; Kendon,

1980, 2004; Streeck, 2002, 2008, 2009; Mandell, 1977). Its stagecraft-like qualities commonly define pantomime. To mime or pantomime an action of a living being, social actors must selectively schematize and perform the act, only evoking particular attributes about the temporality and movement qualities (Calbris, 1990; Zlatev, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2016). Trump pantomimes the action of the body becoming unbalanced and then the act of collapsing from weakness. These actions are not replications of the actual fall, because, if so, the performance would lose its

“dramaturgical flair.” Trump does not want to hurt himself by actually falling; instead, he wants to evoke a vivid portrayal that allows him to make a visual assessment of Clinton’s character.

Pantomime, mime, and enactment as studied in embodied communication are used rather loosely. McNeill (1992), for instance, reserves pantomime to refer to gestures performed without co-occurring speech. “In pantomime,” McNeill writes, “the hands depict objects or actions, but speech is not obligatory” (p. 37). Enactment is defined almost identically to pantomime, as Kendon

(2004) argues, “In enactment the gesturing body parts engage in a pattern of action that has features in common with some actual pattern of action that is being referred to” (p. 160). The interchangeability of these terms is not too problematic since they share similar etymological roots.

To embodied communication scholars the term mimetic enactments have more utility since “a mimetic act is a motor performance that reflects the perceived event structure of the world, and its motoric aspects make its content a public, that is, the potentially cultural expression” (Donald,

2005, p. 283). As the sign language scholar Mark Mandel (1977) aptly puts it, “Mime…is probably the best-known of all iconic devices, and presents a token of action” (p. 64). Mimetic enactments or pantomimed actions – as I use the terms - describe the infinitely complex ways that people evoke human means of carrying out quotable actions to build into a dramaturgical scene. Müller

(2009, 2014, and 2016) makes more nuanced distinction by arguing that enactments involve cognitive processes such as metonymy, synecdoche, and metaphoricity. In sum, mimetic enactments evoke parts of an action in progress or the finished action to conjure up an imagistic schema. When we evoke the act of swinging a bat, the performer is not swinging the bat, but conjuring up a clear image pattern.

Mimetic schemas are thus body-based, that they are representational in that they stand for a particular object, action or event, that they are accessible to consciousness, that they are specific, each one constituting a generalization over a particular bodily act, and finally that they can be pre- reflexively shared, in the sense that they can be imitated and thus ‘shared’ via cultural exposure (Evans, 2007, p. 145).

Echoing the work of cognitive studies scholars like Merlin Donald and Jordan Zlatev, Evans captures how embodied communication scholars reserve the term mimesis for motoric action patterns shared among a cultural community. The term mimetic enactment is often extended to refer to physical quotations; however, these definitions of mimesis still fail to capture the nuanced meaning-making that happens when one human being acts as non-present other. When the production of a human character is involved in any mimetic enactment, we are dealing with ideological processes (Irvine & Gal, 2000) that shape not how we interpret what the figure is doing, but how we see the picture as a reflection of those actions. As referenced in the first section of this literature review, Aristotle was quite aware that mimesis of character involved ideological processes, since actors had to make conscious decisions, whether they would present a figure better or worse than they were in real life. When Trump creates a Clinton-character invoking shared schematic patterns of a wobbling body, he is not merely quoting her fall. 57

Trump is performing a quote (Keevallik, 2010) that simultaneously evokes our physical schemas as well as our beliefs and values. To harken back to Bakhtin (1981), a narrator voices a character often through parodic stylization; this performance technique involves an implicit and explicit evaluative commentary about the cast put on display. Updating Bakhtin’s work, Keevallik

(2010) argues that these moments demonstrate the polykinetics that occur when actors layer or laminate (Goffman, 1981) multiple bodies in a single utterance. Although pantomime and mimetic enactment are often used to describe how people cite or living a figuration of a character in dialogue, the term only captures physical complexities of their actions. These terms are not used to describe something about the role being performed or the stylized way a mimeticized act speaks to a speaker’s evaluation of that character. Gesture studies scholars use the term mimesis to refer to mimesis of bodily action and not mimesis of character (Ricoeur, 1986); the later considers the personalities and socio-indexical attributes being placed on a cited figure.

To capture the complex relationships between terms like depiction, enactment, and animation, I prefer to use Clark’s (1996, 2016) theory of quotations as demonstrations discussed earlier. The term demonstration enables us to talk about quotations as “performed depictions”

(Clark, 2016, p. 325). Demonstrations allow us to focus both on the motoric act being enacted or re-enacted, and at the same time, consider how the stylized performance of that act speaks to the annotations one is trying to place on the character (Clark & Gerrig, 1990). Put differently, gesture studies scholars do not tend to focus on the speech-gesture delivery of a mimetic enactment or pantomimed action in relation to its rhetorical goal: portraying characters like a type of positively or negatively evaluated person. Even though Clark and his colleagues (Clark, 1996, 2004, 2016;

Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark & Van Der Wege, 2014; Wade & Clark, 1993) do not establish an explicit rhetorical theory of quotations, their framework encompasses vocal and embodied delivery.

In a demonstration, performers act as a character, in doing so, they animate the character through actions or speech. Ultimately, the character is rendered visible through “seeable” and “hearable” iconic representations. If we are to conceive of mimesis in the rhetorical sense of the term, we have not only to consider the cognitive acts of reproducing actions but also, their micro-rhetorical accomplishments and the level of granularity at which a character is animated and individuated.

Acting out a figuration of a living being means we are already dealing with meaning-making on multiple levels that include multimodality and ideologies of the body (Goodwin & Alim, 2010;

Hoenes del Pinal, 2011).

For this reason, I am more apt to combine Clark (1996) with Goffman’s (1981) term animation to refer specifically to the complexities human dramaturgical figuration acted out through talk and gesture and made imaginable through imagistic crafting. I also use animation in the more colloquial sense: to give an image of a character or bring it to life through movement or animation techniques. To animate a character is not only to reproduce the action patterns but requires individuating the character, thus giving life to their perceived or manufactured personality.

Characters mimed actions, those that the performer quotes, are used as ideological weaponry to make judgments (positive or negative) about the role in question.

In chapters 4 and 5, I will examine these types of evaluation practice in more depth. For now, I will note that in demonstrations, the performer takes up the role of acting as a citable figure to defame their image and what they represent. Citing others, as I see it, refers to the way that characters are made visible and audible by evoking culturally shared action or vocal patterns associated with parodied social stereotypes (Agha, 2007). Mimetic acts make see-able what we know from our own experiences of hearing or seeing others act in everyday life. A mimetic enactment is a token of an action pattern used to act out the actions of a character. Animation,

59 however, means we are not depicting or showing action patterns for the sake of showing them; we are displaying them as the action of a living character to be evaluated.

Animation, co-opting Goffman’s term, means to impart power to, to give life to or animate a character for a hearer or audience to get a sense of how the performer wants us to see the figure; whether that is in negative or positive terms. Albeit, Goffman does not talk about the evaluation of characters much; his understanding allows for this dramaturgical possibility. I take the practice of animating figures to its next logical conclusion. Animating a character involves not only displaying what the character did or how they did it; it also means that a performer crafts a rhetorically powerful visage instructing audiences to interpret the character and the actions. In dialogic, discourse analytic terms, when a role is acted out in everyday talk, the performer takes up a stance Du Bois, 2007) towards the figure, positions themselves and the audience about the character and evaluation being made of them. My definition is much in line with narrative scholars like Koven (2007), who distinguishes the notions of “character role” to refer to a speaker role.

“Telling a story of personal experience,” Koven (2007) writes, “involves the representation of past speech events, often as accounts of who said what to whom, how, and to what effect. In this way, people do not only speak in a here-and-now capacity, current interlocutors but also have themselves and other speak as quoted characters” (p. 99). When I use the term animation, I refer to how creators iconically and social indexically animated characters in comics or actors give voices to characters other than themselves. “In the character role, speakers replay the thoughts, feelings, words and deeds of characters from the narrated event, through various modes of reported speech” (Koven, 2007, p. 99).

The Role of Depiction in Quoting a Character While the distinction discussed above clears up issues with contemporary theories of quotation, it still does not conceptualize the role depiction plays in this process. An account of mimesis of character needs to consider how diegesis might play into a physical performance.

Therefore, I turn to my second example that takes place in a Hillary Clinton rally around the same time as the Trump example. I use this example to show that these are two very distinct performers, who use characters to accomplish dissimilar rhetorical projects. I purpose we need to have a precise definition of the relationship between depiction, mimetic enactment, and animation if we are to understand how mimetic and diegetic forms of storytelling matter in political oratory.

The following example shows Clinton performing the work of her father at his screen- printing business. While the performance is a sort of round-about bodily quote, in the sense that she displays the actions of her father, the emphasis is placed on describing and depicting particular elements to portray her father as a hardworking businessman who contrasts with wealthy businessmen like Trump.

Extract 3: Father’s Silk screening [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Oct 2nd, 2016] Depicting a Scene that a Character Inhabits

Cli: But he has stiffed employees. (1)-C shaped hand moves downward (Audience member shouts “NO”) I am talking painters, plumbers, and dishwashers. (2)-counts with the left hand He has refused to pay small businesses that had a contract with him. (3)-performs a series of beat gesture with a flat hand And I’ve met some of these people. And I take it really personally. (4)-holds the left hand to chest Ya know, my dad, born up in Scranton. (5)-points up with the left hand My grandfather was a factory worker. (6)-points forward with the left hand (7)-nods head (Audience started cheering during utterance) And my dad started a small business when he got out of the Navy, after World War II. (8)-points with left hand And he worked really hard.

(9)-flat palm faces the audience; shakes slightly. He-he printed drapery fabric. (10)- displays the length of drapery fabric on a table.

So he’d get big bolts of fabric. (11)- displays “big bolts of fabric” with a sweeping gesture

He had a small printing plant. (12)- motions rightward in a small movement

It was just (pause) ya know a long room. (13)- sweeps across the body to show the length of the room

No natural light. (14)-pushes away her hand

And he would take the fabric and roll it out on the table. (15)- displays rolling out cloths on the table

Then he’d take a silkscreen. Ever see a silkscreen? (16)-holds the silkscreen He would take a silkscreen. (17)-picks up the silkscreen

He’d start at one end of the table. (18)-places the silkscreen at the end of the table He’d put down. (19)-puts down silkscreen

He’d pour the paint in. (20)-pours in paint

He’d take the squeegee. He’d go across. (21)-goes across with a squeegee

He’d lift it up. (22)-curves upward

(Right hand appears off-screen) He’d go all the way down to the end of one table. Then he’d cross over to the second table. And if he needed to add a second color, he would do the same. (24)-adds color to paint

(25)-repeats a condensed schema of print-making

Then when he was finished, he would load the fabric up in his car (26)-loads cloth in the car

And he would take it to the customer that ordered it. (27)- motions away from the body

He worked hard. (28)-precision-grip gesture. I helped him out (29)-precision-grip gesture. (pause) from time to time. (30)-precision-grip gesture. And he made a good middle-class life for my family. )31)-precision-grip gesture with beats. And I’ll tell ya what. (32)-precision-grip gesture. I am just so grateful he never got a contract from Donald Trump. (33)-precision grip gesture. (34)-points to imagined contract.

(35)-punctuates sentences with head nods throughout entire utterance. (Audience starts clapping and cheering) Cuz I dunno what (small pause) we woulda done. (Audience keeps clapping and cheering)

Clinton creates a generic scene depicting an unspecified instance of her father and screen-printing work. Chafe (1994) refers to this type of performance as “remembering,” a process in perceptual experiences that were derived from a past consciousness are repurposed in the immediate dialogic environment (p. 198). A displaced mode of knowledge enables Clinton to imagine her personal experience alongside the audience. Clinton also begins with a line of negative evaluations of

Trump’s character. First, she criticizes his mistreatment of his contracted employees and small- business partners. By describing Trump as an unethical business partner, she contrasts him with her hard-working father.

In comparison to her “heroic father,” Trump is being described as a “villainous, cold- hearted businessman.” “But he has stiffed employees. I am talking painters, plumbers, and dishwashers,” Clinton remarks. The memories of her father portray him as a war veteran and small- business man who hailed from Scranton Pennsylvania. American working to middle-class values are part of a politician’s standard rhetorical devices that create identification with the cheering audience (Atkinson, 1984a).

Clinton then describes her father in the following fashion: “And he worked really hard. He- he printed drapery fabric.” As she utters the sentence, she uses her hands to display the drapery fabrics on an imagined table. The audience orients to the contrast between Trump and her father as she presents the depicted scene. Description and depiction fill much of the narrative segment as

Clinton enacts actions with her hands, displays the relative size and shape and location of objects or props in the imagined workshop. Everyday narratives involve complex conceptual mappings

67 connecting the here-and-now space and to a distal or imagined one (Clark, 2016; Liddell, 2000,

2003).

In this case, Clinton envisions her father’s workspace and how he carried out his job.

Gestures 10 through 27 are intended to evoke the scene of a hardworking Hugh Rodman. A variety of visual dimensions are sustained and build upon throughout the segment. Clinton’s actions are classified as different “model-world” making techniques (cf. Streeck, 2008, p. 294), since she uses her gestural works to populate the story with objects and the qualities or motions that go with them.

Nothing in the scene indicates that Clinton is acting as or animating her father’s mannerisms or personality; her actions are just the rudimentary actions.

At the beginning of the conversation, Clinton repeatedly uses a palm down, semi-flat hand shape to move horizontally away from her body. The flat palm hand moves right of the body in a straight trajectory. First, she uses the gesture to evoke the movement that displays the drapery fabrics on the table (gesture 10). Then, she precedes to bound (cf. Streeck, 2008) the size of the

‘big bolts,’ ‘small printing plant,’ and ‘long room,’ all with a similar movement (gestures 11-13).

Her gesture space becomes the anchor for depicting the relative size, length, or position of the objects that populate this imagined event.

Continuing with the narrative, Clinton enacts different action patterns. She rolls out the table the fabric with a similar flat-palmed hand, though it maintains a slightly curved trajectory, moving from the left side of her face to the mid-portion of her right side (gesture 15). She motions as-if she was screen-printing herself. Her hand grips the imagined silkscreen then takes it and holds it up on display. Last, she moves from one end of the table (gestures 16-18). Since Clinton is holding a microphone in one hand, she is limited in her gestural abilities. The single-handed

68 gesture does not fulfill the actual two-handed requirements needed in conventional screen-printing processes.

After positioning her body at the imagined table, Clinton puts down the silkscreen, pours paint in, takes the squeegee across the silkscreen, lifts the silkscreen, crosses over the second table, add color then repeat the process (gestures19-24). Clinton is enacting action patterns made visible to the audience. She condenses all these separate actions and depictions into one quick schema for print-making, moving the hand right while moving up and down. Lastly, her hand depicts her father’s actions loading the fabrics into his car and delivering it to the customer (gestures 26-27).

After recognizing her father’s work, the story ends with a summative, moral climax: Clinton is glad her hard-working father did not work for Trump. So what does this tell us about depiction?

Depiction, as it is mainly described in the embodied communication literature as our human ability to create “pictorial images” that tend to precede their lexical affiliates in the talk (Schegloff,

1984). As Kendon writes, “In depiction the gesturing body parts – which are almost always the hands, which may be shaped in different ways according to what is being depicted – engage in a pattern of movement recognizable as ‘creating’ an object in the air” (p. 160). In earlier work on sign language in Papua New Guinea, Kendon distinguished enactments and body modeling from depiction, noting that the later “appears to be used only for those objects which there is no associated movement pattern” (p. 99). The point that I find significant in Kendon’s definition is that depiction refers to the creation of an object in space. As Müller (2009, 2014, 2016) conceptualizes gestures, they are inherently mimetic and involve cognitive processes of construal that either render motor actions visible or they turn into sculpting devices to be used to model spatiality, location, motion, or the manner of objects.

If we refer to Table 1, it seems like most of the theorist subsume enactment under depiction.

I return to Mandel (1977), who creates a clearer distinction. “Depiction,” Mandel writes, is “the process of displaying a picture of the base rather than a token of its type” (p. 93). Moreover, as subsequent scholars have shown (Kendon, 1980; Streeck, 2008, 2009; Müller 2014), gestures evoke a wide variety of depiction practices or method to make something visible about a reference.

I cannot survey all these different methods here, but I find the distinctions sign language research between the base and referent to be useful.

“The referent of a sign is the meaning that it carries in a context of use. The base of the sign, on the other hand, is the object or action that the production of the sign is derived from”

(Kendon, 1980, p. 83). This distinction allows us to determine what type of depictive method is in play in a particular moment and how the schematized act or object is rendered visible through cognitive processes that reduce it to a minimal intelligible form. As Clark (2016), rightly argues, much of language through linguistic means is descriptive, but there are indeed aspects of language that are highly depictive in that they render something visible. I am inclined to restrict my talk about depiction through gesture to those who create intelligible pictures of objects and manipulate them using the hands.

Trump’s story involves animating a Clinton-character and giving her a distinctive way of moving and acting. By doing so, Trump evaluates Clinton’s personified character and invites the audience to do the same. In Clinton’s account, we get a more diegetic narrative. The story is told through verbal narration of action patterns and third-person telling devices (e.g., “he’d get” or “he would take”). Albeit, Clinton’s narrative involves some mimetic enactments; the story is scenic- oriented since she mainly describes her father through his work, not his personality or mannerisms.

The animation and storytelling style are far too generic to function as mimesis of character. In sum,

70 the following the two starkly different stylizations enable us to identify the distinctions between enactment, depiction, and animation (see Table 2).

Table 2 Basic definitions of gestural depiction, animation, and enactment Terms Definitions Depiction by Gesture The process of creating a picture of a virtual object using various depictive techniques.

Animation The embodied practice of performing as a character, enlivening a clear voice and body associated with different social and indexical evaluations. Enactment The process of selectively acting out motion patterns that represent a more complex bodily schema.

Embodied communication scholars need a performance-based theory of visual communication. Of the scholars in Table 1, David McNeill’s (1992) earlier work provides the inkling for this kind of approach. As McNeill has argued, gestures offer two different viewpoints: character-viewpoint

(C-VPT) or observer-viewpoint (O-VTP). C-VTP enables the performer to act or animate the character through their own body, depicting the actions of the character in the first-person perspective. In O-VPT, the hands of the gesturer map onto the character in his or her entirety and are presented in a third-person perspective similar to indirect speech (Parrill, 2009, 2011). The dichotomy roughly translates to a mimetic account in a C-VPT and a more diegetic account in O-

VPT. Of the significant research strands, McNeill’s approach becomes most useful here, allowing us to synch up to embodied account of the notions of mimesis and diegesis.

The literature on gesture and viewpoint has become quite nuanced and links up with several other linguistic theories of cognitive blending structures (see Parill, 2010; 2011; Parrill, Stec,

Quinto-Pozos, Rimehaug, 2016; Quinto-Pozos, & Parrill, 2015; Steck, 2012; Stec, Huiskes, &

Redeker, 2015; Sweetster, 2012). These cognitive linguistic-oriented studies have even started to

71 talk about politicians and viewpoint (see Guilbeault, 2017). My study, for several reasons described above, chooses a more microanalytic approach that adopts Clark and Gerrig’s (1990) early distinction between different quotable acts as demonstrations. In Chapter 3, I describe how I carried out a microanalytic account that pays specific attention to how mimetic and diegetic acts of character production are constructed in the moment-to-moment unfolding of politician-audience interaction.

Summary To summarize “Mimesis can incorporate a wide variety of actions and modalities to its purpose.

The tone of voice, facial expressions, eye movement, manual signs and gestures, postural attitude, patterned whole-body movements of various sorts, and long sequences of these elements that can express many aspects of the perceived world” (Donald, 2003, p. 283). In this literature review, I have attempted to show the different ways characters are crafted through mimetic, and to a lesser degree, diegetic techniques of the body.

A theory of how characters are made “hearable” and “seeable” to modern audiences can; I believe, help us understand interactions between audiences and political speech-makers. Social actors animate the voices and bodies of others in order to ascribe implicit or explicit evaluations onto an animated figure (Buttny, 1997, 1998, 2004; Couper-Kuhlen, 2007; Holt, 2000); present direct (experiential) evidence (Besnier, 1993); frame one’s discourse with an air of objectivity and authenticity (Ingrids & Aronsson, 2014); index (indirectly) a speaker’s thoughts/affect (Ochs &

Schieffelin, 1989); display/foreshadow epistemic, moral, and affective stances (Holt, 1996, 2000); stylistically exaggerate, caricature, or parody the lived habitus of the cited figured (Bakhtin, 1981;

Basso, 1979; Bauman, 1986; Goodwin, & Alim, 2010; Günthner, 1999; Hoenes del Pinal, 2011;

Lane-Mercier, 1991; Vološinov, 1973); distance oneself from the words, actions, thoughts, or values of the cited figure; allocate blame (Goffman, 1981; Wooffitt, 1992); provide contrastive

72 versions; heighten audience recipiency (Holt, 2000; Sidnell, 2006); and coordinate proper instruction in in the arts (Keevallik, 2010; Tolins, 2013). Above is not an exhaustive list, but one that suggests an urgency to test what enactive character creation accomplishes for political figures and their audiences. I take the lessons learned from previous scholarship on mimesis to understand how characters are produced in rally interactions.

The following chapter, Chapter 3, I harness the issues discussed here into a microanalysis of political communication that is centered on quotation and demonstration practices. In this methodology, I show in precise detail how I came to be interested in quotation and demonstration practices, why I think they matter to political communication, and how I will analyze the data in my empirical chapters: Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. As I have emphasized, my understanding of quotations (showing vs. telling; mimesis vs. diegesis; direct reporting speech vs. indirect reporting speech) utilizes Clarks work the most because his theories enable a nuanced rhetoric-oriented understanding of how characters are dramatized and produced. Moving forward, I reserve quotation for, non-visible, indirect means of citing characters and demonstrations (cf. Clark &

Gerrig, 1990) to refer to the way figures are made visible.

Chapter 3: A Microanalysis of Political Communication Introduction In this chapter, I describe the qualitative microanalytic methods used to analyze political speech communication. For over three decades, microanalytic and conversation analytic scholars have been invested in continuing the Greek and Roman rhetorical tradition of studying the speaker- audience interactions in political oratory (Atkinson, 1984a, 1984b, 1985; Bull, 2000, 2002, 2003,

2005, 2006,, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016; Bull & Feldman, 2011; Bull & Miskinis, 2015;

Bull & Noordhuizen, 2000; Bull & Wells, 2002; Choi & Bull, 2016; Clayman, 1992, 1993; Duranti,

2006; Heritage & Greatbatch 1986; Wells & Bull, 2007). Instead of treating political speeches as pure monologues, these scholars have shown that politicians and audiences interact with one another in unique ways; politicians use well-recognized rhetorical tactics (for example, contrasts, three-part lists, and namings, among other rhetorical tactics) to cue when they can take part in booing, cheering, applauding, or yelling. To a much lesser degree, these scholars have shown how audiences influence the speaker in the unfolding, moment-to-moment discourse. My intervention into this scholarship focuses narrowly on a rhetorical strategy that has been overlooked or only mentioned in passing: quoting or animating citable figures in rally speeches.

In Atkinson’s (1984a) rhetorical theories of speaker-audience interaction, he argues that politicians need to be highly astute to the messages that the media and audience find “quotable,” and thus, circulatable. In my case, I am interested in two very diverse American presidential nominees, and how they animate, individuate, and perform characters in their stories. The following chapter provides a detailed, step-by-step approach to how I studied the “quotation” practices of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the way these rhetorical moments reach their respective audiences. My specific interest lies in how these two political contenders animated characters in their stories, either “depicting” the characters in a dramatized way, or “describing”

74 them in a more matter-of-fact style. By examining these moments concerning the speaker-audience interaction at the moment of the quotation and the broader storytelling context, I hope to provide an empirically grounded, conversation analytic inspired rhetorical critique of the “oratorical skillfulness” (Bull, 2011) of each candidate.

Method Participants The two candidates nominated by the Republican and Democrat parties for the 2016 American presidential election were: politician-turned-celebrity Hillary Clinton (Democrat) and entertainer- turned-politician Donald Trump. Trump is considered a political outsider, a reality television star, realty mogul, and controversial public figure. Clinton is a political insider who gained celebrity status over the years due to the many government positions she has held—former First Lady, U.S.

Senator from New York, Secretary of State, and two-time presidential nominee—and several political scandals. Clinton and Trump are often considered having political personae (Zoonen,

2005) that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum (Schoor, 2017). A politician’s public identity and image, however, vary from context to context and changes over time. The participants for this study also include the audience members present at a candidate’s speech.

The Speeches I selected speeches from different parts of the 2016 campaigning season: The Democrat and

Republican primary season (January 2016) to the end of the campaign season (December 2016).

There were 100 speeches in total: 50 by Clinton and 50 by Trump. Organized by the candidate, the full 100 speeches are listed below. Location and date are provided; however, specific durations are not included. The speech durations vary depending on whether the person or news crew recording captured the entire rally event on camera. Only the full speechmaking segments of

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are analyzed in this dissertation. Trump spoke for

75 approximately one hour per rally speech; Clinton spoke for roughly thirty to forty-five minutes per speech.

Donald Trump

1. Biloxi, Missouri (January 2) 2. Claremont, New Hampshire (Jan 5) 3. Rock Hill, South Carolina (Jan 8) 4. Norwalk, Iowa (Jan 20) 5. Baton Rouge (Feb 11) 6. Fountain Hills, Arizona (March 19) 7. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (April 21) 8. Warwick, Rhode Island (April 25) 9. Evansville, Indiana (April 28) 10. Charleston, West Virginia (May 5) 11. Omaha, Nebraska (May 6) 12. Spokane, Washington (May 7) 13. Albuquerque, New Mexico (May 24) 14. Anaheim, California (May 25) 15. Billings, Montana (May 26) 16. Fresno, California (May 27) 17. San Diego, California (May 27) 18. Sacramento, California (June 1) 19. San Jose, California (June 2) 20. Raleigh, North Carolina (June 5) 21. Cincinnati, Ohio (July 6) 22. Denver, Colorado (July 29) 23. Erie, Pennsylvania (August 12) 24. Akron, Ohio (August 22) 25. Greenville, North Carolina (September 6) 26. Pensacola, Florida (September 9) 27. Asheville, North Carolina (September 12) 28. Canton, Ohio (September 14) 29. Laconia, New Hampshire (September 15) 30. Miami, Florida (September 16) 31. Colorado Springs, Colorado (September 17) 32. Estero, Florida (September 19) 33. High Point, North Carolina (September 20) 34. Kenansville, North Carolina (September 20) 35. Melbourne, Florida (September 27) 36. Manheim, Pennsylvania (October 1) 37. Prescott Valley, Arizona (Oct 4) 38. Ocala, Florida (Oct 12) 39. West Palm Beach, Florida (October 13) 40. Bangor, Maine (October 15)

41. Green Bay, Wisconsin (October 17) 42. Delaware, Ohio (October 20) 43. Tallahassee, Florida (October 25) 44. Grand Rapids, Michigan (Oct 31) 45. Tampa, Florida, (November 5) 46. Wilmington, North Carolina (September 5) 47. Sioux City, Iowa (November 6) 48. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (Nov 24) 49. Des Moines, Iowa (December 8) 50. Orlando, Florida (December 16)

Hillary Clinton

1. Davenport, New Hampshire (Jan 1) 2. North Liberty, Iowa (January 24) 3. Newton, Iowa (January 28) 4. Nashua, New Hampshire (Feb 2) 5. Derry, New Hampshire (February 3) 6. Chicago, Illinois (February 17) 7. Reno, Nevada (February 20) 8. Atlanta, Georgia (February 26) 9. Nashville, Tennessee (February 28) 10. Cohoes, New York (April 4) 11. Buffalo, New York (April 8) 12. Athens, Ohio (May 3) 13. San Bernadino, California (June 3) 14. Culver City, California (June 3) 15. Columbus, Ohio (June 21) 16. Annandale, Virginia (July 14) 17. Youngstown, Ohio (July 30) 18. Omaha, Nebraska (Aug 1) 19. Commerce City, Colorado (August 3) 20. Kissimmee, Florida (August 8) 21. Clevland, Ohio (August 17) 22. Hampton, Illinois (September 5) 23. Cleveland, Ohio (September 5) 24. Kansas City, Missouri (September 8) 25. Charlotte, North Carolina (September 8) 26. Greensboro, North Carolina (September 15) 27. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 19) 28. Des Moines, Iowa (September 29) 29. Fort Pierce, Florida (September 30) 30. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (October 4) 31. Akron, Ohio (October 3) 32. Toledo, Ohio (October 3) 33. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (October 4)

34. Columbus, Ohio (October 10) 35. Detroit, Michigan (October 10) 36. Miami, Florida (October 11) 37. Pueblo, Colorado (October 12) 38. San Francisco (October 13) 39. Cleveland, Ohio (October 21) 40. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (October 23) 41. Charlotte, North Carolina (October 23) 42. Raleigh, North Carolina (October 23) 43. Manchester, New Hampshire (October 24) 44. Coconut Creek, Florida (October 25) 45. Lake Worth, Florida (October 26) 46. Wake Forest, North Carolina (October 27) 47. Cedar Rapids, Iowa (October 28) 48. Daytona Beach, Florida (October 29) 49. Wilton Manors, Florida (October 30) 50. Pembroke Pines, Florida (November 5)

Microanalytic Procedures Here, I provide a detailed account of the microanalytic methods used in my case studies of the rhetorical delivery practices of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Reviewing each of these stages, starting from the preparation phase to the collection and implementation of transcription, I will illustrate how this inductive method is an apt approach to the study of speaker-audience interactions on the political stage. The phases detailed below provide information about the rationale for my focus on diegetic and mimetic devices used by politicians to animate (political) figures in storytelling sequences.

I consulted several scholarly microanalytic or video-based interaction study “manuals” or

“texts” in order to develop and implement the procedures in this study (Bavelas, 1987; Bavelas,

Gerwing, Healing, & Tomori, 2016; Bull, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2012; Health, Luff, & Hindmarsh,

2010; LeBaron, 2012; Schegloff, 1996; Streeck & Mehus, 2005). To understand my theoretical and analytic choices, I provide a detailed narrative that describes each phase and the knowledge and specialization I cultivated. Although not stated clarified in the phases below, in each of these

78 various steps I consulted several kinds of literature on quotations, character animation, and mimetic and diegetic forms of narration concerning oratory (see Chapter 2).

1. Preparation:

Phase1 involved collecting and storing 484 political speeches using YouTube Premium (formerly known as YouTube Red), a subscription service on YouTube that enabled me to save videos, create playlists, and watch the videos offline. I consulted each of the candidate’s respective websites to find a list of their rally speeches. Two distinct “playlists” were created for each presidential nominee: “Trump Rally Speeches 2016” and “Clinton Rally Speeches 2016.” Speeches range in location (city and state), setting type (outdoors or indoors), and degrees of formality (a church setting versus a high school gym). Of these speeches, 100 speeches—50 from each candidate— were selected in a quasi-random sampling. I refer to the sample as quasi-random, since, most of the speeches came from the latter half of the campaign when Trump and Clinton were already nominated as the official Republican and Democrat presidential candidate. I broadened the scope to include speeches from the tail end of the Democrat and Republican primaries to increase the generalizability of my findings when talking about each candidate’s delivery styles and tactics.

Although speeches may differ in context and theme, the same iterative story segments were found across these two individual’s political speeches.

Only YouTube videos that include the full speech were collected. By full speech I mean the video included the entire portion of the rally where Hillary or Trump spoke. Rally speeches are a form of institutional talk (cf. Drew & Heritage, 1992), whereby; the event follows a normative, logical order and stricter forms of participation. The organization of a rally speech comprises a speaker and a respective party and the location organizer who introduces the candidate and issues.

Then, the candidate comes up to the stage, shows appreciation to the organizers, people in

79 attendance, and family. After these introductions, the chief Republican or Democrat candidate delivers their own political speech. For this study, I am not concerned with the initial

“introductions” at the beginning of the rallies or closing remarks that were provided by Democrat or Republican guest speakers or endorsers.

As far as speech quality, versions of political speeches that were spliced, voiced-over, looped, or manipulated by YouTubers in any visible or hearable fashion were also excluded from the data collection. The majority of speeches were collected from the YouTube pages of local news stations or significant news networks to ensure high-quality videos, although not all the speeches could be located via these primary sources. I used some speeches that were uploaded by everyday

YouTubers, and therefore, these recordings of speeches vary regarding audio and video quality.

Prerecorded data provided an easy avenue to examine the speaker-audience interactions, rhetorical devices, general vocal and gestural forms of delivery for both speakers. I had no control over the measures and quality of devices used to record the audio and video at these rallies.

2. Discovery:

Phase 2 concerns what social interaction researchers refer to as “noticing” or “initial discovery”

(Bavelas, 1987; Bavelas et al., 2016; Schegloff, 1996). In this phase, I watched the entire collection of 100 speeches, alternating between the two candidates to get a sense of the rhetorical practices, delivery methods, and speaker-audience interactions present at political rally speeches. Although

I did not travel to a physical “field site,” I consider the digital collection as part of the preliminary fieldwork since it involved familiarizing myself with the policies, message content, and vocal and gestural practices of each candidate. After multiple viewing sessions, I became intrigued by the way Clinton and Trump imagined themselves as different characters in their stories, and the process, these two presidential contenders imitated the words, voice, and physical actions of citable

80 figures (Koven, 2007; Reyes, 2011). Having prior familiarity with some of Trump’s mimetic devices for enacting characters (Hall et al., 2016), I decided to collect instances where Clinton animated the voices and bodies others. I focused on how animations or quotations are used to

“depict” or “describe” the cited referent (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996). Repeated patterns emerged; the same stories and characters were being quoted or animated in set skit-like performances.

3. Data Workshop 1

Once I observed the quotation practices of Clinton and Trump, I created short video samples (only two or three examples) to share with colleagues at weekly, one-hour “data sessions.” At the data sessions, I showed several clips of Trump and Clinton performing bodily quotations of various political figures in a variety of rally moments. I did not supply the colleagues with my own preconceived notions about the practices I was interested in. I allowed the data session group to talk about their own discoveries as we viewed the video segments and discuss the social interactions between the speaker and his or her respective audience. Transcriptions of the video segments were not provided at earlier data sessions.

4. Assembling a Dataset:

After collecting various examples of character-animating moments and sharing some of these with colleagues, I turned my attention to a more systematic way of assembling my official dataset.

I re-watched the dataset, taking detailed notes of the location, form, and function of moments where Trump or Clinton animated different characters when narrating stories. Although high-tech video annotation software (i.e., ELAN or CLAN) are available to code and transcribe gesture, I I settled on a more low-tech method of taking detailed notes on each speech. I amassed two hundred very detailed notebook pages. These field notes outlined speech topics and documented

81 reoccurring rhetorical tactics (all the quotation practices), stories, and salient vocal and gestural delivery methods (Figure 1).

I found this detailed note-taking to be extremely beneficial in allowing me to reach a saturation point in the data. Detailed note-taking enabled me to spot reoccurring patterns of similarity and difference in how these two presidential nominees voiced or embodied characters.

Using Snagit, a screenshot program that enables you to capture video and audio played on your screen; I created video segments of each instance where the candidates quoted themselves and others. At this stage, I did not offer precise labels for the kinds of body quotes, quotations, or

“animations I discovered in order to avoid prematurely delimiting the creativity and conceptualization of these practices in their own right (Bavelas, 1987). Instead, I tagged each video segment with a location, timestamp of where the part occurred in the full speech, and a shorthand analyst’s comment. General comments included who the speaker was quoting and what the speaker

82 was doing as they animated the character(s). A digital archive was created by saving these video segments to a Seagate External Hardrive.

Video Catalogue Methods Video Tag Template: Date-City, State–timestamp including hours, minutes, seconds (Analysts shorthand description)

Sample 1: Donald Trump: Aug-12-2016-Erie, Pennsylvania–16mins (Trump enacts Clinton reading from a teleprompter)

Sample 2 Hillary Clinton: Sept-29-2016-Des Moines, Iowa–14mins30secs (Clinton enacts her father as he is screen-printing)

5. Verifying Intuitions

In the fifth stage, I reviewed the 330 instances of Trump or Clinton voicing or embodying various aspects of a citable figure: actions, propositional content, or personality quirks or habits. The distribution of quotation types and methods fell into the following broad categories:

Table 3 Basic definitions of quotation type and delivery methods Terms Definitions Basic Quotation Types (Kuo, 2001) ▪ Self-presentation: the orator cites him or herself

▪ Other-presentation: the orator cites a person other than themselves Techniques of Delivering a Quotation ▪ Indirect: the quotation is delivered from (Longacre, 1983; Mayes, 1990; Tannen, 2007) the speaker’s perspective and deictic center

▪ Direct: the quotation is delivered from the cited character’s perspective and the diegetic center of their original utterance(s)

▪ Constructed dialogue: quotations are delivered as though the characters being enacted were having a conversation in the here-and-now moment.

Re-watching of all the assembled quotations also helped me to discover how these practices are embedded in broader narrative structures (Jefferson, 1978; Labov & Waltezky, 1967; Mandelbaum,

2012; Norrick 2000; Polyani, 1985). I observed that these iterative skits were all examples of

83 stories that go by different names in social interaction and narrative studies scholarship: morality plays (Basso, 1979), moral tales (Polyani, 1985), or moral stories (Bauman, 1986). In this study,

I will use one term, moral vignettes, to refer to the way candidates animate or quote figures in dramatized stories that instruct audiences on “proper and improper behavior, responsible and irresponsible action, and attitudes towards them” (Bauman, 1986, p. 59).

By collecting samples of the same interative quoting performances, I could compare Trump and Clinton’s quotation practices in the context of creating a story that moralizes the characters for rhetorical purposes. I then categorized these repeated performances into categories that developed inductively from multiple viewings. I have listed some of the most common skits below.

Clinton Clinton quoting Trump at the debates Clinton quoting Michelle Obama talking about Trump and Republicans Clinton quoting her father, Hugh Rodman, working at a drapery factory Clinton quoting her adversaries claiming she is “playing the women’s card” Clinton quoting supporters and everyday people Clinton quoting authority figures (e.g., inspiring women leaders) Clinton quoting her critics on her overemphasis on policy-making Clinton quoting Republicans on issues such as climate change or the economy

Trump Trump creates constructed dialogues with everyday people (business acquaintances or the crowd, general Americans) Trump enacts the Paris shootings Trump characterizes the media as dishonest and bias Trump quoting himself on the economy or jobs Trump quoting himself as he hypothetically negotiates with countries and companies Trump quoting politicians as incompetent and corrupt

Two very different means animating characters became evident in these stories: documenting

(Redecker, 1991) and demonstrating (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996); this distinction roughly

84 translates to indirect and direct reported speech. The primary distinction is between a much older set of rhetorical concepts: diegesis and mimesis.

In demonstrations (Clark 1996) the performer uses mimetic devices to enable the audience to imagine or experience aspects of the reference; whereas, in the documentation method, the performer describes what was said with varying degrees of commitment to the “veracity” of the quotation. Both types of quotations have varying interactional effects, some of which I will explore in my empirical chapters. Although storytelling events often involve mixtures of both forms of describing and depicting (see Clark, 1996, 2004), I wanted to understand what delivery methods are used to enhance or heighten the candidate’s performance and speaker-audience interactions.

To get at the rhetorical functions and effects of character animations and quotations, I selected sixteen representative examples from my Trump and Clinton speeches. Each story shows how

Trump and Clinton quote or enact characters and the types of audience-speaker interaction that occur in these moments.

6. Transcription

Before analyzing each of the eighteen different story segments, I reanimated the talk, gestures, and interactions between the speaker and audience in a transcribed format. Transcripts were created by using Praat and QuickTime Pro to capture the precise timing of verbal and gestural actions. In the space below, I provide a concise description of my transcription method. For a full list of speech and gesture transcription conventions, please see the Appendix. Note that each of these transcription steps benefitted from multiple viewings and listenings.

85 a. Step 1: All actions (speech, prosody, turn and sequence timing, pauses, overlaps, laughter,

pitch-accents, volume rate, and other interactional features) of the speaker were transcribed

using conversation analysis methods (Jefferson, 2004; Reed, 2011). Using Praat, I transcribed

verbatim the utterances, vocalizations, and audible stylizations of each presidential candidate

as relevant to the story segment.

b. Second, I transcribed the audience responses following previous microanalysis and

conversation analysis techniques (e.g., Atkinson, 1984a; Bull & Feldman, 2011; Clayman,

1992, 1993; Heritage & Greatbatch 1986). Symbols denoting audience responses are marked

with a string of c’s (cheering), b’s (booing), x’s (applauding), h’s (laughing), and z’s (buzzing

or uncoordinated sounds). Following Clayman (1992), I distinguished between weak responses

(x-x-x), moderate responses (xxx), and strong responses (XXX). The length of audience

response was documented. For example, xxx (12.0) would mean the collective applause lasted

for 12 seconds. Chanting was marked with the chanting message: “LIAR” or “WOO.”

c. The third layer of transcription included physical actions (i.e., gaze, hand gestures, facial

expressions, and posture). For each story segment, I transcribed every hand gesture of the

speaker. Although there are a variety of elaborate transcription conventions for helping to

visual-gestural actions in a transcript (see Hepburn & Bolden, 2017 for further explorations),

I have adapted McNeill’s (1992) transcription of gesture in narratives. In my transcriptions, I

include all the hand gestures, gaze patterns, and bodily movements that are immediately

relevant to the messages being conveyed. Primary emphasis is placed on bodily quotation or

quotes, and therefore, I include corresponding images to compliment these occurrences.

Visible and kinesthetic actions are given a number in order of their emergence. Gestures are

also synchronized with relation to co-occurring speech and labeled with a brief description.

Transcribers must decide what level of granularity to include when showing their transcribed

talk and actions to readers. I have chosen not to distinguish each gesture phases components

(Kendon, 1980, 2004) for each gesture (i.e., preparation, stroke, retraction, pre- and post-stroke

holds). Following McNeill (1992), I underlined the phrase as it corresponds with a given

gesture or set of gestures. Below each underlined utterances, I provide a brief description of

each gesture, hand shape, and movement to the level of granularity needed for a reader to

imagine and interpret each bodily act. The embodied actions of the audience are transcribed

only when possible; however, the researcher is limited to the pre-established camera angles

and position of the orator. Not all videos include visible access to the audience’s gestural

actions.

7. Data Workshop 2-3

Once I selected 16 samples of Clinton and Trump’s practices of animating citable figures, I shared some of these examples (including transcriptions) with colleagues at weekly data sessions. At the data sessions, I showed several clips of Trump and Clinton performing bodily quotations of various political figures. Later, in the sessions, colleagues and I discussed reoccurring patterns in the data set, transcription methods, and possible strategies for formal analysis.

8. Formal Conference Presentations

Besides informal workshops, I presented variations of the project at two international conferences:

The International Pragmatics Conference and The International Society for Gesture Studies. Each

87 of these sessions provided necessary feedback in the process of analysis, transcription, and future directions.

9. Mode of Formal Analysis

After each of these inductive phases, I conducted a formal analysis of the mimetic and diegetic design strategies that each candidate used to quote or demonstrate citable figures. I adapted conversation analytic methods of Atkinson (1984a, 1984b, 1986), Clayman (1992, 1993), and

Heritage & Greatbatch (1986) to scrutinize rhetoric design, formats, implementation of quotable or character-animating moments. Previous microanalytic studies of political rhetoric (see Bull,

2003) focus narrowly on a collection of specific rhetorical devices (e.g., lists, contrasts, puzzle- solution, head-line punch line, position taking, pursuits, and namings) and applaudable message types (external attacks on outside parties or members, approvals of party members, metastatements, replies to heckling remarks, and commendations). I emphasize a more holistic approach that analyzes the entire story sequence.

Of the possible quotation or demonstration types discussed above, I choose to focus narrowly on how Trump and Clinton used quotations and demonstrations to discredit or spoil the image the cited figures image (D’Errico, Poggi, Vincze, 2010). To study and compare the

“rhetorical skillfulness” (Bull, 2003; Argyle & Kendon, 1967) of these two presidential candidates,

I examined the storied segments with precise attention to audience-speaker interactions, story structure, sequential organization, and goals concerning the animation of characters. With this aim in mind, my two empirical chapters show Clinton and Trump’s documenting and demonstrating methods used to animate characters, portray their personalities, and try to defame the image of other political contenders.

Study Limitations and Summary Every study has its limitations; this study is not an exception. Microanalysis is an inductive method that enables researchers to study face-to-face dialogue and can apply to politician-audience interactions at rallies. Political speeches are public forms of engagement with everyday citizens, but how politicians perform in front of others is often mediated by a variety of factors that would uniquely benefit from more microethnographic methods (see Wodak, 2009 for a discussion of

“front stage” and “backstage” politics). A significant limitation of this study is that I do not access to the intimate lives of the politicians or the audience members in attendance at these rallies, and therefore, I aim my claims only concern public forms of address and how these rhetorical tactics invite specific political speaker-audience interactions. This study has excluded the interaction this is mediated via television, social media, and other video-based networks. It would be worthwhile to devise a quantitative methodology that elicits perceptions of Trump and Clinton as they perform quotations or animations of characters to secure more representative interpretations of these two political figures and their rhetorical skillfulness.

Another limitation concerns the audio-visual dataset. In most microanalytic, interaction- based, or conversation analytic studies, the principal investigator captures his or her data with their recording and movement tracking equipment to ensure the highest quality audio, video, and camera angles (Bavelas et al., 2016; Health et al., 2010). Unfortunately, YouTube leaves the researcher with little control over the quality and level of detail included in these recorded speeches. Public speeches of politicians are available with multiple versions circulating at a time. Therefore, it is likely I can find different versions that general audiences have uploaded that may capture more visible or kinesthetic aspects of the crowd dynamics. That said, I have done my best to make sure

I have full versions of each speech analyzed and avoided or removed any videos that showed tampering with the temporality, voices, or actions of the political figures.

Last, the study focuses on the speaker-audience dynamic regarding moments where Trump and Clinton enact or act like other political figures. It is highly likely that the fodder for these performances are also generated by the media and then taken up by the political candidates. For instance, in one case, Trump mimicks Clinton falling, a moment that occurred when Clinton collapsed in September 2016 at the 9/11 memorial service. Trump was reacting to the wide- reaching media coverage and messages that depicted Clinton as weak or ill. We cannot assume these narrative forms occur in a vacuum but are produced in the complex socio-political media landscape of American popular culture. When necessary, I link micro-interactional rhetorical tactics of quoting with the larger macro-sociopolitical contexts that made these quotations or demonstrations possible in the first place. In further studies, I hope to combine macro and micro methods of studying social interaction to make sense of these widely circulating performances.

Chapter 4: Hillary Clinton and her Documenting use of Quotations to “Objectively Report” the Words and Actions of Political Characters

Introduction Studies show that English-speaking politicians restrict their language use to a limited subset of shared oratorical and linguistic strategies, carefully timed rhythmic movements, and discourse- structuring gestures (Atkinson, 1984a; Bull, 1986, 2003; Maricchiolo et al., 2014; Streeck, 2008).

Hillary Clinton is no exception to this trend. Having served as the First Lady of the United States, a Senator from New York, the Secretary of State, and a two-time presidential candidate, Clinton stands out as perhaps one of the most quintessential democratic politicians who masterfully deploys well-established rhetorical devices.

Countless scholars have analyzed her speech delivery style, noting her use of alliteration, rhythmic devices, emotionally attuned metaphors, three-part lists, and anaphora (Bennister, 2016;

Giordano, 2008, 2010, 2012). Undoubtedly, Clinton’s use of rhetorical stratagems makes her noteworthy politician, who, in time, has become a celebrity figure in the American political circuit

(Street, 2004). However, her stardom aside, Clinton is very much an exemplar of an old-fashioned politician who favors oral literacy over visual literacy; values policies above entertainment spectacles; and rationalizes through argumentation, not pure emotion (Jamieson, 1988). Despite these rhetorical merits, critics, American audiences continue to map cultural, indexical, and sometimes sexists descriptors onto her body as a female politician (e.g., “screeching,” see Edgar,

2014). Over the years, Clinton has earned a reputation as an elitist politician who has difficulty relating to the everyday American. Scholars, commentators, journalists, and ordinary Americans have all tried to understand the rhetorical style of Hillary Clinton, many of these researchers rightly turning our attention to her struggles with prejudice as a female political figure and presidential candidate (Giordano, 2012; Jamieson, 1994). While I believe issues concerning media coverage,

91 blatant sexism and misogyny, and narrative optics, all played their roles in the 2016 presidential campaign, I plan to pursue a modest focus, one that may cross paths with these concerns. My interest is in Clinton’s oratorical delivery, more precisely, the way she distanced herself from being labeled a dramaturgical performer or entertainer during 2016.

During the 2016 presidential election, Clinton relentlessly distanced herself from her

Republican adversary, Donald Trump. For example, when asked in an interview with the American journalist, Lester Holt, if this would be the “nastiest campaign ever,” Clinton made the following statement about Trump:

No, absolutely not. He can run a campaign of insults; I am running a campaign of issues that are going to produce results for the American people. I am going to talk about why he’s unqualified to be president based on his own words and his deeds. And I am going to continue tah make the case that he is temperamentally unfit to be commander-in- chief (NBC News, 2016).

While it is understandable for Clinton to emphasize argumentation or logos-oriented rhetoric to build credibility with audiences (see Bennister, 2016), one is left to wonder why she would detach herself so fiercely from a dramaturgical method of telling stories to her viewers. It is especially interesting that Clinton downplayed her performance potential, given that contemporary American society obsesses over mass-mediated visual spectacles and theatrical optics (Bordo, 2017; Hall et al., 2016).

In this chapter, I examine Clinton’s use of embodied storytelling techniques with the primary focus on how she animates characters in speeches. Previous microanalytic or linguistic studies have emphasized common rhetoric strategies and language-based devices, but the microanalytic literature on political discourse has significantly downplayed the importance of body quotes (Keevallik, 2010; Streeck, 1988). To my knowledge, only a small group of scholars have talked about how politicians perform the voice and body of characters in political speeches (see

Holsanova, 2006; Hall et al., 2016; Kuo, 2001; Reyes, 2011; Sclafani, 2017). Therefore, I

92 investigate a range of multimodal quotation and demonstration practices that Clinton uses when she tells moral vignettes to her audiences.

As noted previously, stories are useful evaluative devices for analyzing and evaluating people’s lives. As Labov and Waletzky (1967) and Longacre (1983) have shown in their extensive studies of narrative discourses, stories involve “moral slots” whereby enabling storytellers to persuade audiences to share in a character depiction. Polayni (1985) indicates that Americans construct generic narratives upon cultural norms, recognizable social figures, and ordinary, everyday morals. It seems fitting then to suggest that there can be rhetorical consequences based on how Clinton chooses to animate characters. This chapter proceeds by examining several reoccurring moral vignettes she told on the campaign trail to show the scale of multimodal complexities involved in her ability to animate political figures.

Each story will examine a different aspect or dimension of Clinton’s storytelling abilities to review how she cites, animates, and individuates characters in speech discourse, bringing them into focus to accomplish rhetorical aims. I will proceed with a microanalytic approach to the study of Clinton’s speechmaking rhetoric. Microanalysis of political communication (cf. Bull, 2002,

2003, 2008, 2012) enables the researcher to examine the moment-to-moment coordination of rhetorical devices, audience responses, and other relevant methods of producing a demonstration.

Analyzing Clinton’s speech and gestural delivery concerning the literature on character production in everyday storytelling allows for an empirically grounded critique of her use of character depiction. It also enables us to see what techniques steeped in drama effects could strengthen her logos, content-focused oratory when it comes to animating and individuating characters.

Animating the Voices and Bodies of Everyday People and Political Adversaries

On the campaign trail, Clinton mainly told stories about the trials of ordinary workers, voters, parents, and political leaders to show whom would benefit from her policies. Clinton’s accounts describe Americans struggling with shared hardships: the cost of living and prescription drugs, the effects of climate change, and the suppression of voter rights, to give a few examples. Clinton tells stories that align with liberal morals and values as described by the cognitive linguists, George

Lakoff (1996). In her interactions with rally audiences, Clinton performs “moral stories” (Bauman,

1986), “morality plays” (Basso, 1979), or moral vignettes as I call them. During moral vignettes, the storyteller dramatizes their respective understandings of “proper” and “improper” conduct, selfish and unselfish actions, and empathetic and indifferent interactions with others (Bauman,

1986; Basso, 1979).

In rhetorical terms, political rally stories are what literary critic, Kenneth Burke (1974) refers to as “equipment for a living,” in the sense that, these tellings provided exemplars of common moral problems and strategies for managing them. The moral issues of these stories are intertwined with the characters who exemplify values through their actions and words. It is worth examining a range of multimodal activities and characters that a canonical politician like Clinton engages in when quoting others. I will start with stories that contain the least semiotic complexity, meaning that Clinton restricts her use of vocal and nonverbal articulators (Bressem, Ladewig, &

Müller, 2018) when portraying characters. As we progress, I will build up to more complex forms of semiosis, interactional moments that show the coordination of various bodily articulators and prosodic changes such as voice quality or intonation.

Gay Maintenance Worker Harassed at Trump Golf Club” In the story entitled “Gay Maintenance Worker Harassed at Trump Golf Club,” Clinton refrains from quoting the words or actions of the characters. A primarily diegetic manner is used

94 to narrate the event. In the first story, the principal character is a maintenance worker who discloses his sexual identity to his co-workers. As Clinton recounts, she restricts her actions to the verbal channel. Clinton describes the scene, the characters, and their activities; she does not demonstrate or depict them (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996). Instead, she reads from a manuscript. The segment exemplifies the most restricted range of her storytelling abilities, at least when we are talking about acting as a character. In this extract, Clinton resembles a reporter or journalist.

Extract 4: “Gay Maintenance Worker Harassed at Trump Golf Club” [Manchester, New Hampshire, October 24, 2016]] Reporting a Story and Characters 1 Cli: So we-we know a lot about how Donald Trump works. (1) left hand shakes slightly 2 And today (2) left hand slices downward, slowly at an angle 3 (0.5) 4 today we heard yet another story. (3) right hand moves away from the body 5 (1.0) 6 It’s about a maintenance worker at one of his golf courses. (4) right hand appears off-screen, but the arms movements indicate two beats 7 This maintenance worker told his co-workers he was gay. 8 (0.5) 9 And they started harassing him. 10 (0.8) 11 They used anti-gay slurs to his face? 12 (0.6) 13 They threw rocks? 14 and golf balls at him? 15 (0.8) 16 His supervisors saw it and did nothing- 17 And it got so bad he wound up in the hospital. 18 (0.9) 19 Finally he went to the police for help. 20 (0.7) 21 He couldn’t go back to work because he was too scared for his safety. 22 And then he was fired by Trump’s golf club. 23 .hh 24 Now this is heart-wrenching on a lot of levels. 25 For starters it is a painful reminder of the harassment violence 26 .hh and discrimination that too many LGBT Americans still face every day. 27 And it is d[eeply disturbing. 28 Aud: [woo-xxxxxxXXXXXXXXX[XXXxxx (4.7) 29 Cli: [That instead of stepping in to stop the tormenters. (5) right hand maintains distance from her body and moves towards her, performing one slice to show “Trump’s employees “intervening” 30 Trump’s golf club 31 .hh 32 turned on the victim for coming forward.

33 (barely audible boo) 34 If that’s how Donald Trump business. 35 What does that say about how he would run the country?

After a lengthy discussion of Trump’s mistreatment of workers, Clinton engages in a new telling.

Her negative evaluations of Trump make the moral tenor of the story clear. Clinton orients her audience to background details: the location of a Trump golf course and the homophobic co- workers. The telling is not distinctively personal. Clinton reads from a manuscript; she treats the story as a “newsworthy event.” Her retelling is perhaps better understood as a “recounting of a news story.” Told in the past tense, Clinton reads from a written manuscript placed on the podium.

She describes how the maintenance worker came out as gay to his co-workers and faced discrimination. Clinton appears to place herself in the role of a “quasi-journalist,” reporting or describing the crucial details of a story that implicate Trump and his employees in hate crime behavior.

It is notable that the story lacks a “mimetic character.” Clinton does not animate the gay worker, the golf club harassers, or even Trump himself. She does not explicitly name the maintenance worker: Eleazar Andres. Eleazar’s excruciating details of the harassment he faced are markedly condensed (see Stern, 2016 for the full story). In place of providing emotional weight by animating the actions or stances of the characters, she reports the temporal succession of events.

Temporal Sequence

1. The maintenance worker discloses that he is gay to his co-workers (Ln.7). 2. The co-workers harass the worker verbally (Ln. 9, 11). 3. The harassment turns physical as his co-workers throw rocks and golf balls (Ln. 13-14). 4. The supervisor does not intervene (Ln. 16). 5. The situation escalated to the maintenance worker needing medical attention (Ln. 17). 6. The maintenance worker contacted the police; no outcome was reported (Ln. 19). 7. The maintenance worker was too scared to return to work (Ln. 21). 8. In the end, the maintenance worker was fired from his job (Ln. 22).

Several multimodal features suggest that Clinton performs in a “reporter mode” or “documentation mode” (Redeker, 1991; Waugh, 1995). To begin with, Clinton rarely gestures throughout the entire segment; she restricts her movements to discourse-structuring or pragmatic gestures (Ln. 2, 4, 6).

Also, she repeatedly looks down at the manuscript placed on the podium, signaling to the rally audience, she is not willing to dramatize the event or characters. Her utterances are carefully poised with noticeable pauses between intonation phrases (Ln. 1-20). A good majority of Clinton’s utterances are delivered with final falling intonation and limited prosodic variability. Clinton does not use conspicuous prosodic devices to individuate the voices or bodies of the character or animate their personalities or stances. The performance lacks prosodic ingenuity that contemporary audiences may come to expect from a morally weighted story (Holt, 2000; Klewitz

& Couper-Kuhlen, 1999). Although Clinton claims the story is “heart-wrenching on a lot of levels,” her performance reads like a set of written statements, and less like an engaging story. Clinton’s narrative style, as I will show, involves “reporting” or “documenting” the event and characters, and is part of her broader rhetorical style.

Despite its lack of dramaturgical boldness, Clinton’s story conveys a robust evaluative argument based on the actual experiences of mundane people. More to the point, she uses the quotations of people and their skills to critique her adversaries. The reason the event is “tellable,” as Sacks (1971) might argue, is because it transmits cultural knowledge and moral values about how people are supposed to treat others in everyday scenarios. The main point or take away comes in line 25. “For starters, it’s a painful reminder of the harassment violence and discrimination that too many LGBT Americans still face every day,” she comments. Throughout the telling, the audience response is absent until she provided this explicit evaluative remark (Ln. 27). The adverbial modifier and adjectival descriptor (e.g., “and it is deeply disturbing”) show explicit

97 evaluative language (Labov & Waletzky, 1967), that, in due course, prompts the audience to respond.

The closest Clinton comes to mimetic devices in this story is a partial demonstration of the harassers. Clinton argues that “instead of stepping in to stop the tormentors; Trump’s golf club turned on the victim for coming forward” (Ln. 29-32). During this utterance, Clinton gestures from the observer’s viewpoint (McNeill, 1992): her body motions forward as she produces a slicing gesture. Her hand synechdochically represents the tormentors failing to come forward to stop the violence against the worker.

The coda comes when Clinton steps briefly detail the incident and now uses it as a representative anecdote to display Trump’s lack of empathy. The story is an excellent example of a Clinton-told event which is almost exclusively diegetic. Clinton’s performance of a heart- wrenching story is not exceedingly engaging or dramatic, as evidenced by the lack of expressive gestures, intonational shifts, or emotional facial displays. Rather, Clinton likens herself to a

“documenter” (Redeker, 1991) who picks selected snippets from an already available news story and then re-reports them to her audience (Waugh, 1995). Although she garners the audience’s response in lines 29 and 33, I would suggest a missing dramaturgical adroitness hinders the exigency of such a robust moral-bound story. It is evident in her final remarks she tries to evoke empathy for everyday American who is attempting to make a living and support amicable relationships at work. Discrimination hinders the man’s life. Morality plays a significant role in conveying the message, as she evokes a shared interpretive, social schema.

Story Moral 1 Trump’s employees represent him and his brand. Because some of his workers exhibit homophobic tendencies, we may wonder if Trump supports violence towards LGBTTQQIAAP-identified individuals. His lack of intervention in the scenario implicates him at the least as a bystander to homophobia. We should empathize with others, in this case, a worker who is facing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The story evokes empathy towards those who are discriminated against based on their sexual orientation. Many of Clinton’s stories work this way; she pits characters and their morals against an imagined other. Although description, in a topically sensitive story like this, might be expected,

I will show that Clinton, even in quoting or imagining characters is more descriptive than depictive.

When she quotes characters, she does not necessarily demonstrate or depict them and their activities. Although story types and situations will require differing degrees of description and depiction, demonstrations provide persuasive, visually compelling arguments that could quickly boost Clinton’s storytelling performance. Linguistic anthropologists have shown that storytellers use characters with recognizable moral values that way they can contrast them with other imagined, potentially immoral figures (Basso, 1979; Bauman, 1986; Hill, 1995). It is likely Clinton avoids using more mimetic devices of quoting these figures because she wants to present the facts of the case with evidential precision; however, the lack of details story does not aid in this type of production.

Extract 4 provides a baseline for the bare-bones of the semiotic complexity. Told as though

Clinton is reading a written report, her role as a narrator can be likened to a reporter who discloses snippets of a news story as dictated by her manuscript. Like reporters or journalists, politicians must be careful with how they quote others because they can be called out if there misquotation

(Waugh, 1995). So, it is likely that Clinton is restrictive in how she voices or embodies people when telling stories for this very reason. Clinton plays with referential ambiguity, and as a result; the stories have limited epistemic sharability and imaginability for the audience (Stivers, Mondada,

& Steensig, 2011). Use of a more indirect means of quotation ensures that Clinton’s performances lack animation and individuation of characters. In this specific case, a reporting leaves little room

99 for her to animate the emotional and quotable dimension that could enable others to experience the characters and identify with them and their given situations.

“My Dad was a Small Businessman” Version 1 In the story entitled “My Dad was a Small Businessman,” Clinton adopts a mostly diegetic style of storytelling. Extract 5 differs from Extract 4 because Clinton enacts the motoric actions of her father and depicts objects in the imagined scene. We will look at two examples of the same story regarding Clinton’s factory-working father. Clinton uses the following moral vignette to recount her father’s hard work ethic as a screen-printer. In her attempt to portray the embodied skillfulness of her father, she produces a “generic quotation” of the rudimentary actions involved in screen- printing.

Later in this section, I will juxtapose two different tellings of this story to show the variable tellability of a past event. The telling proceeds descriptively but with the addition of co-speech manual gestures which depict objects in the factory and mime the labor skills of a screen-printer.

Extract 5: “My Dad was a Small Businessman” [Cleveland, Ohio, August 17, 2016] Depicting the Scene that a Character Inhabits (Version 1) 1 Cli: Joe was born in Scranton? (1) right hand held out with palm up 2 my grandparents (2) right hand motions to chest 3 my father was born in Scranton? (3) right hand moves away from the chest 4 I went back to Scranton every summer (4) right hand motions away from the body (5) right hand performs search gesture 5 m-Lot of Christmas holidays (6) right hand circles outward 6 (0.7) 7 My grandfather was an immigrant 8 came as a young child. (7) left hand enacts delivering points 9 (0.7) 10 He worked in the Scranton lace factory 11 Making lace (8) left hand motions forward with the palm facing the ground 12 (0.8) 13 Which was a big deal back in those days (9) left hand is held out; palm faces the audience 14 I remember we used to have lace curtains and lace tablecloths and things like that

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(10) left hand motions horizontally, emphasizing the lace tablecloths and general objects 15 .hh 16 (1.2) 17 And my grandfather worked really hard because he believed if he worked hard (11) left hand is held flat facing floor 18 He could provide a better life (0.3) ↑for his kids. (12) left hand circles several times as it moves to the left of her body; her fist is closed 19 And he did. 20 My dad got to go to college. 21 He went to Penn State where he played football. 22 Aud: [xxx-Yeah-Woo-XXXXXXxxxxx (4.0) 23 Cli: [And 24 then he took a job in the Midwest as a salesman (13) left hand swipes towards the body; her palm faces the body 25 And then went into the Navy in World War II (14) left hand motions towards the body; her palm faces the body 26 And when he came out he started a small business. (15) left hand motions towards the body in a slightly reduced movement; her palm faces the body 27 And he worked really hard. (16) left hand with extended index finger motions downward 28 (0.5) 29 And I used to go help him sometimes. (17) left hand motions back and forth between two points, showing Clinton “helping” her father 30 Because he printed (.) fabric for draperies. (18) left hand with index finger extended performs a beat; the hand then moves across the body

31 And he had a print plant. (19) left hand indicates a point and then move to another location below 32 He had (0.5) two lo:::ng tables. (20) left hand moves from the right side of the body to the left

33 And it was .hh

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34 Ya know 35 Not a-it was just an old plant. (21) shrugs with hands held out

36 Ya know. 37 It was low ceiling- (22) left hand moves downward from head to mid-body

38 no windows- (23) left hand motions away from her body

39 and he would print that drapery fabric. (24) left hand slopes downward and moves laterally in front of her body

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40 He’d take an old fashion silkscreen- (25) left hand motions upwards to show picking up the silkscreen 41 and he’d put it do:wn- (26) left hand motions downwards to show the placing of the silkscreen

42 he’d pour the paint in- (27) left hand tilts downward to show pouring paint ((appears off-screen) 43 .hh 44 then take a squeegee- (28) left hand moves across the imagined table

45 and then .hh- 46 go from one side to the other- (29) left hand closes, and the body tilts to her right

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47 pick up the screen- (30) both hands motion dowards

48 keep going down the table. (31) left hand arches forward, showing a condensed screen-printing process

49 (1.2) 50 And he provided a good life. (32) right hand motions slightly up and down, palm faces her body 51 (0.7) 52 I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. 53 (0.3) 54 And so I:: (33) left hand moves to her chest 55 (0.4) 56 I know (34) left hand taps chest 57 (1.2) 58 what the American dream is all about

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(35) right hand performs a series of small circular motions with the palm facing up 59 I am proud to be the granddaughter of a factory worker 60 and the daughter of a small bus[inessman] and standing here (0.4) before you. (36) performs a series of palm up punctuating gestures, followed by a “presenting” gesture 61 Aud: [xxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX= 62 =XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX[XXXxxx (11.4) 63 Cli: [And so 64 When I think about how hard my dad worked. 65 (1.0) 66 And I think about him printing those fabrics (37) left hand circles towards her body 67 And then loading um into his car (38) O-VPT: left hand circles towards her body again with a larger radius 68 And delivering them to whoever ordered them. (39) O-VPT: left hand moves between two imagined trajectories, showing the father loading fabrics 69 (1.3) 70 And then expecting to be paid. 71 Cuz he had done the work. 72 (0.9) 73 It just really (.) hits me personally. (40) the left hand slowly moves to the chest 74 .hh 75 When people 76 are standing up and telling their stories. (41) left hand circles outward away from the body; her palm faces the body 77 They were small business people 78 They were plumbers 79 electricians 80 painters (42) left hand motions forward showing emphasis on each category of worker 81 .hh 82 who did work for Donald Trump and he refused to pay them. (43) Beats: left hand slices downward twice 83 Aud: bbbbbb[BBBBBBBBBBBBbbbbbb (3.7) 84 Cli: [That violates the basic bargain. (44) left hand is held out to side 85 If you do your job you are supposed to be rewarded for your w[ork. (45) small circular motions with right hand (46) performs a hand out gesture 86 Aud: [xxx-Yeah-xxxXXX[XXXXXX= 87 Cli: [Not stiffed. (47) hand indexes stiffness 88 Aud: =XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX= 89 Cli: Not told to go sue somebody. (48) quick motion outward with the right hand 90 Aud: =XXXXxxx[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (9.0) 91 Cli: [And I (0.5) I can help but take it personally (49) puts a hand on chest 92 cuz I think about what would have happened to my family. (50) left-hand motions away and back to the body 93 If my f(h)ather (.) had taken (.) a job like that and put his hard and soul into it (51) put in gesture 94 bought the material 95 boutht the paint 96 did the labor

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(52) hand arcs towards the body three times 97 Shows up (53) trajectory gesture 98 delivers the product and is told 99 We’re not paying you. 100 But person after person 101 small business after small business 102 is telling the same story. 103 (0.7) 104 That they were not paid. 105 That they were told to sue Donald Trump. 106 .hh 107 Well you’re a small business 108 You can’t afford lawyers to go sue somebody. 109 That’s not the way it’s supposed to work?

Clinton describes two starkly different figures: her father, a small-business owner and Trump, a real estate mogul. She tells a story about her father just moments after outlining her policies concerning a fair economy and affordable education. First, she provides an orientation to the setting and the characters involved. Joe Biden, her grandfather, and father are three figures that grew up in the moderately sized city of Scranton, PA. Continuing in her “documentation mode,”

Clinton begins with a retelling of her grandfather's immigration to the United States.

Temporal Sequence 1. Her grandfather was an immigrant who came to the U.S. when he was very young (Ln. 7-8) 2. Her grandfather worked for the Scranton Lace Company; a valued position at the time (Ln. 10-13). 3. He made lace curtains and tablecloths to provide a better life for his family (Ln. 12-19). 4. Her grandfather’s success was evident in the fact that his son got to attend Penn State, play football, go into the Navy, and eventually, start a small business (Ln. 20-26).

The story includes side sequences (Jefferson, 1972) that deviate from the core point, and therefore, it is hard to discern the proper takeaway. The dense narration of her grandfather’s biography leads to the sequential reveal of her father possessing his own screen-printing business.

In line 27, Clinton provides evaluative descriptors of her father and his work ethic. “He started a small business, and he worked really hard. And I used to help him sometimes,” she recounts (Ln. 26-27). The plot revolves around her father and his accomplishments and not her grandfather’s situation. During the telling, Clinton enhances her verbal descriptions with gestural depictions (“pictorial descriptions,” cf. Goodman, 1968) and motoric patterns to conjure up a 106 representation of the scenic elements. Clinton orients the audience to the imagined print plant by

“pointing to” the factory (Ln. 31). She populates the fictional print plant with the necessary equipment for silk screening.

She imagines the tables, depicting their length with her horizontal-sweeping hand. A co- occurring iconic device complements the interpretation: elongated vowels when uttering the adjectival modifier “long.” Searching for the words to describe the print plant, she settles on, “ Ya know not a-it was just an old plant” (Ln. 34-35). Her co-occuring word search gesture (Goodwin

& Goodwin, 1986) is a possible detraction from the seamlessness of her speech. There is also the lack of vivid depictions that proceed with the word search production. As she depicts the low ceiling, Clinton’s hands provide a movement pattern that descends from her head to the lower half of her body (Ln. 37). Then, she uses a negation away gesture (Bressem & Müller, 2014) to indicate that the plant had no windows (Ln. 38). After providing the audience with an “elusive representation” of the workstation, she enacts mimetic schemas involved in printing drapery fabric

(Ln. 39).

Imagining her father screen-printing, she takes a silkscreen, puts it down, pours the paint in, runs a squeegee across the paint, picks up the silkscreen, goes to the other side of the table, and continues to repeat the process (Ln. 40-48). Clinton’s hand act out the entire screen-printing procedure in a condensed, mimetic schema. Her body language imitates the motoric action patterns involved in screen-printing (Donald, 2003). Although these actions provide a general understanding of the screen-printing process, the embodied delivery does not give the audience a good sense of her father’s individuality.

Clinton narrates from the third-person, habitual past tense. The actions she performs are exceedingly rudimentary both regarding the complexity and speech delivery. At no point in the

107 telling does the audience hear her “father’s voice,” nor, do we get a sense that these mimeticized actions are unique to her father’s embodied competence, even though the segment is presented in a quasi-character viewpoint (McNeill, 1992). The audience is instructed to understand that

Clinton’s gestures are mapped onto her father’s body in such a way that her bodily visual actions correspond to what the character did. Clinton is performing a demonstration of her father and his work actions. At the same time, the third-person perspective can be likened to an observer- viewpoint (McNeill, 1992), whereby; the narrator is describing the actions, as though she were watching alongside the audience. When a social actor takes up a character role, they narrates the scene in a way that disguises the narrator and provides the audience with experiential access to the event (Clark, 1996). Theoretically, Clinton “quotes” or performs a demonstration of her father

(Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996, 2016; Keevallik, 2010; Streeck, 1988) by enacting his actions as a silkscreen artist. But she hits some road bumps in the rhetorical delivery of this father- demonstration.

For starters, Clinton’s narration is dense, and she does not reveal the focal point of the story until much later. At the end of demonstrating her father’s screen-printing process, it is two minutes into the performance, and still; it remains unclear what she wants her audience to take away from this performance. What does Clinton accomplish by depicting scenic aspects of the print factory and then miming the generic actions of her father? What kind of cultural or political knowledge does she attempt to impart to her audience? What makes the bodily quotation unique to her father and not generic silk printer? In what way does Clinton individuate her father as a recognizable, salient personality? Answers to some questions emerge in the latter half of the telling.

After performing the actions of a screen-printing worker, she contextualizes the scene as representative of a “good father” providing for his family (Ln. 50). The story becomes temporally

108 and locationally disjunctive. In lines 52-60, she tells the audience she grew up in a suburb of

Chicago, not in Scranton, the former focal point of the narrative. By presenting her affiliation with

Chicago, she creates identification with working-class audiences. It is probable that the locational switch could pose issues for the story’s coherence. She elicits applause by boasting that she is “the daughter of a small businessman” (Ln. 59-60). The audience cheers for 11.4 seconds as she aligns herself with her factory-working grandfather and small-business-owning father.

In the second half, Clinton delivers the primary message which clarifies her rationale for acting as her father in the silk printing business. Switching from a character’s viewpoint to an observer’s viewpoint (McNeill, 1992), she reiterates how her father worked hard by loading up the fabric and personally delivering the orders to the respective customers. Her hands go from miming the actual actions of her father to presenting his whole-body loading and delivering fabrics to his customers. The participant role of the audience and Clinton now becomes that of distant observers.

A multi-part visual series becomes relevant in lines 73-82, where she draws an analogy between her father and other working-class Americans: plumbers, electricians, or painters. The complication suggests that working-class Americans, like her father, have been stiffed by Donald

Trump who refused to pay them for their work (Ln. 82). Clinton remarks, “This violates the basic bargain. If you do your job, you are supposed to be rewarded for the work” (Ln. 84-85). Now three minutes into the narrative event, she finally reveals the moral and cultural value.

Businesses should compensate workers they hire to do a job. The message aligns agreeably with the liberal values identified by a cognitive linguist, George Lakoff in the 1990s. According to Lakoff (1996), Democrat-oriented moral frameworks promote empathy and mutual responsibility. Clinton suggests that it is our collective responsibility to help those who do not get paid fairly. In this framework, people like Donald Trump, those who refuse to pay workers after

109 they have completed a task, are considered selfish, “immoral agents.” As the transcript demonstrations, these moralizing moments matter to the interaction between the speaker and her audience.

The audience burst out in affiliative shouts and applause when she supplies a negative characterization of Trump as an unfair, perhaps even an uncaring businessman. As soon as the audience applauds, Clinton builds momentum by portraying Trump as someone who is too far removed from working-class society. When Trump refuses to pay his workers, this requires them to sue him if they want to obtain fair compensation. Working-class establishments, however, cannot afford the cost of court fees and the proceedings necessary to sue a well-established business. Despite the moral resonance made manifest in the speech, some significant issues emerge in Clinton’s rhetorical delivery.

First, it takes Clinton too long to deliver the point of her message. Clinton does not make it immediately evident why she is contrasting her father with Trump. In line 89, she has delivered the key message, but, instead of wrapping it up; she draws it out. She appears to reiterate similar content that was disclosed in lines 66-89 that is now repackaged in lines 92-109. In the latter section, she creates a hypothetical scenario where her father buys the materials for screen-printing, expecting to be paid by Trump but is surprised when he refuses to compensate him. Table 4 below illustrates the striking syntactic, lexical, and contextual parallelisms between previously stated utterances and later ones. On the left, we have lines 66-89, and on the right, 92-109.

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Table 4 Repeated discourse segments in Clinton’s story

The Version that Happened A Hypothetical Re-telling

And I think about him printing those fabrics cuz I think about what would have happened to my family. and then loading them up into his car and delivering them to If my father had taken a job like that and put his hard and whoever ordered them and then expecting to be paid. soul into it. Bought the material, bought the paint, did the Cuz he had done the work. labor, shows up, delivers the product and is told we’re not paying you.

When people are standing up and telling their stories. But person after person, small business after small business, They were small business people they were plumbers, is telling the same story. That they were not paid. That they electricians, painters who did work for Donald Trump and he were told to sue Donald Trump. Well, you’re a small refused to pay them.That violates the basic bargain. If you do business; you can’t afford lawyers to go sue somebody. your job, you are supposed to be rewarded for your work. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Not stiffed. Not told to go sue somebody.

The sheer redundancy shown in Table 4, suggests that her repetitions in lines 92-109 do not do her any favors as far as conveying her message. Much of the same information is conveyed a second time around but recontextualized in a hypothetical scenario concerning her father. The audience does not respond to the second version. Despite some speech delivery setbacks, a moralizing point emerges.

Story Moral 2 Clinton’s father was a diligent working-class screen-print worker who depended on his customers to take care of his family. Business moguls like Trump take advantage of people like her father: painters, plumbers, and electricians). Trump depends on working and middle-class employees for his success; however, he fails to compensate them fairly. People should respect others and their work. If workers accomplish the task that they were hired to complete, they should be paid for their craft. We should have empathy for hard-working Americans and be willing to help them out.

Clinton tries to liken herself to everyday workers and the struggle to make in the current American economy. Her attempts to demonstrate the actions of her father do not provide him with an

111 individuated character “voice” or “bodily habit.” Undoubtedly, her father can be portrayed as more than his general labor acts, and the lack of personal detail suggests that such a production is not the most effective strategy. If, as we are supposed to believe, she “used to help him sometimes,” then it needs to appear genuine, not forced. The “generic rendition” of her father creates a possibility for viewers to find utterances like those in line 29 to be disingenuous or not easily imaginable. The rhetorical goal here is to evoke an drapery factory scene and a hard-working Hugh

Rodham. More mimetic devices that distinguish her father’s individuality or personhood could easily help. “The point of demonstrating the thing,” Clark (1996) argues, “is to enable the addressees to experience selective parts of what it would be like to perceive the thing direct” (p.

174). In sum, we experience the generic actions of her father as he may have performed them.

Here, she is animating her father through a quasi-bodily quote. Even the vignette here is meant to create a sharp contrast between her hard-working father and Trump, the descriptions of her father only provide limited imaginability. If the audience is to imagine her father, a selection of a unique moment where he speaks or acts in ways that demonstrate his individuality and moral values would be more appropriate.

“My Dad was a Small Businessman” Version 2 Version two of the “My Dad was a Small Businessman” is an example of how these stories recirculate in various political speeches. The second version is considerably more concise, and the message is on point. In the earlier iteration, the moral was suspended until the very end but in this version, Clinton prioritizes the moral and cultural message.

Extract 6: “My Dad was a Small Businessman” [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Oct 02, 2016] Depicting the Scene a Character Inhabits (Version 2) 1 Cli: But he has stiffed employees. (1) c-shaped hand moves downward 2 Aud: zzz-no-zzz (0.5) 3 (Audience member shouts “NO”) 4 Cli: I am talking painters, plumbers, and dishwash[ers. (2) counts with the left hand

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5 Aud: [zzzzzzzzz (1.1) 6 Cli: He has refused to pay small businesses that had (0.2) a contract with him. (3) performs a series of beat gesture with flat hand 7 Aud: zzzzzz (0.9) 8 Cli: And I’ve met some of these people. And I take it really personally. (4) holds left hand to chest 9 Ya know, my dad, born up in Scranton. (5) points up with the left hand 10 My grandfather w[as a ↑factory worker? (6) points forward with a left hand (7) starts nodding head 11 Aud: [xxxXXXXXXXXX-Woo-XXX (5.9) 12 (audience started cheering during utterance) 13 Cli: And my dad started a small business when he got out of the Navy, after World War II. (8) point gesture with the left hand 14 And he worked really hard. (9) flat palm faces audience; shakes slightly. 15 He-he printed (0.5) drapery fabric. (10) right hand sweeps from the left side of her body to her right side

16 So he’d get big bolts of fabric. (11) right hand sweeps horizontally as if showing the size of the “bolts of fabric”

17 He had a sma:: ll printing plant. (12) right hand sweeps horizontally as if showing the length of the “printing plant”

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18 (0.5) 19 It was just (0.6) eh-ya know a lo::ng room. (13) right hand motions up towards head and then out to the side

20 No natural light (14) right hand swipes out to the side ((moves off-screen))

21 (1.0) 22 And he would take the fabric and roll it (0.4) out on the table (15) right hand slopes downward to show “rolling out the fabric”

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23 Then he’d take a silkscreen 24 ever see a silkscreen (16) right hand is held out to side as if holding an object; palm faces body 25 .hh 26 He would take a silkscreen (17) right hand clenches to show “gripping a silkscreen”

27 He’d start at one end of the table (18) clenched right hand motions downwards as if “starting the screen-printing process” 28 He’d put down (19) clenched right hand motions downwards as if “putting down the silkscreen”

29 He’d pour the paint in (20) clenched right hand tilts downward to show “pouring paint”

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30 He’d take the squeegee. He’d go across (21) right hand grasps imagined prop and moves horizontally from right to left

31 He’d lift it up (22) turns the body to the right as her right hand slopes slightly downward and to her right side

(23) right hand appears off-screen 32 He’d go all the way down tah (0.4) the end of one table 33 Then he’d cross over to the second table. 34 And if he needed to add a second color (.) he would do the same. (24) right hand with fingers spread motions forward

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(25) right hand motions slightly downwards and then traces a curved line

35 .hh 36 And then when he was finished, he would load the fabric up in his car (26) right hand arcs towards the body to show “her father loading fabrics in his car”

37 And he would take it to the customer that ordered it. (27) right hand arcs slightly towards the body to show “father driving fabrics to customers”

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38 (1.0) 39 He worked hard. (28) right hand performs precision-grip. 40 (0.9) 41 I helped him out (29) right hand performs precision-grip. 42 (0.5) 43 from time to time. (30) right hand performs precision-grip. 44 And he ma:de a good middle-class life. 45 (0.7) 46 For my family. (31) right hand performs multiple precision-grip gestures 47 (0.6) 48 And I’ll tell ya what. (32) Beat: right hand with pinched fingers 49 I am just so grateful he never got (0.2) a contract from Donald Trump. (33) right hand performs multiple pinched fingers beats (34) right hand points to imagined contract. (35) punctuates sentences with head nods throughout entire utterance. 50 [Because I dunno what (small pause) we woulda done. 51 Aud: [Xxx-Yeah-XXXXXXXXX-Woo-XXXXXX[XXXXXXxxxxxx (9.2)

Clinton wastes no time getting to the crux of her argument. “But he [Trump] has stiffed employees.

I am talking painters, plumbers, and dishwashers” (Ln. 1-4). Not only has he stiffed small businesses, but she contends that he blatantly refused to pay them while under a contract (Ln. 5).

Compared to Extract 5, Extract 6 starts with an active “moral element.” In lines 2, 5, and 7, the audience responds to her three-part negative evaluations with uncoordinated buzzing. The relevancy of commenting on Trump’s business ethics is then made clear.

In lines 8-9, she aligns with these hardworking Americans, commenting on how she has met many of them on the campaign trail and can relate to their struggles. Positioning Trump as a

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“villainous other,” Clinton strengthens the audience’s disaffiliation and dis-identification with

Trump. The mention of her Scranton-born father and factory-working grandfather provides an attempt to upgrade her epistemic credibility regarding the plights of working and middle-class families (Ln. 9-10). As Atkinson (1984a) has noted, mentioning the names of respected leaders or everyday people (i.e., “positive naming”) can evoke applause. Likewise, Rutter (2000) has shown with stand-up comedy; it is the sequential position and explicit evaluation of the person that requests or elicits audience response. Her grandfather and father are positioned as relatable working-class Americans. Then in line 11, Clinton emphasizes her father’s role as a small businessman and family man.

When she narrates her father’s story, she gestures to depict print plant objects and then performs a demonstration of her father’s screen-printing acts. Clinton starts by representing the size of the small print factory and the long rooms. Unlike the previous iteration of this story, the more recent telling shows Clinton remaining steadfast in her to the use of a single hand throughout the performance. A horizontal swipe and elongated vocal production represent the small space and extended rooms. When comparing this version to a previous one, we also do not see hesitations or perturbations such as the word search gesture when describing the plant. The depiction is brief and to the point. She populates the room with gesturally created props (Clark, 2016). Afterward,

Clinton dives right into the demonstration of her father’s habitual actions. She imagines herself as a father-character who rolls out the fabric, takes a silkscreen, starts at one end of the table, puts down the silkscreen, pours in the paint, takes a squeegee across the paint, lifts the silkscreen up, repeats the process (Ln. 19-34). Going from a character’s viewpoint (acting as her father) to an observer’s viewpoint (acting as if she were watching her father), Clinton enacts the schematized action of father loading up the fabrics and taking them to the customer who ordered them (Ln. 35-

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36). Not only is the story structured in a more efficiently than the previous iteration, but also the visualization of the scene is condensed. The abbreviated story makes it manageable for the audience.

After she enacts her father is working, Clinton transitions into components of the story that are projected to resonate with her audience: “He worked really hard. I helped him out from time to time. Moreover, he made a good middle-class life. For my family” (Ln. 39-46). In these few spates of talk, Clinton reminds the audience that her father imparted in her a working-class sensibility. In lines 48-49, she uses the headline-punchline rhetorical tactic (Heritage & Greatbatch,

1986). First, Clinton proposes an announcement (the headline) on the Trump situation just described: “And I’ll tell ya what” (Ln. 48). Second, she delivers the punchline by proceeding to make the point she announced: “And: “I am just so grateful he never got a contract from, Donald

Trump. Because I dunno what we woulda done” (Ln. 49). As expected, the rhetorical tactic gains traction, and she invites her viewers to cheers and shouts (Ln. 50).

There are parallels between the first and subsequent telling of this story; however, the moral remains the same. For Clinton, Trump does not treat workers fairly and sympathize with their financial struggles. Furthermore, Clinton mimes related aspects of her father’s screen-printing process, neglecting to move beyond the generic actions of a person who specializes in screen- printing. Without giving her father an individuated character intonation or recognizable bodily habit, the narrative remains limited in its performative vividness. The literature on everyday storytelling suggests that hearers respond favorably to direct quotation practices or demonstrations.

Demonstrations enliven the characters, dramatize the peak of the narrative, present a more convincing story, and attribute evaluative characteristics to cited figures (Clark & Gerrig, 1990;

Clark, 1996, 2016; Lorenz, 2007; Mayes, 1990).

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Clinton’s demonstration (Clark, 1996; Clark & Gerrig, 1990) enables the audience to see the work her father did, however, the bodily quotation only provides generic actions that could be performed by any competent worker. What do we learn about her father from the demonstration?

The audience does not get any sense of the father’s personality or unique actions that set his craftsmanship apart from others. His character intervention in the story is meant to “depict” his working-class to middle-class relatability. When animating human characters, storytellers need to attribute socially recognizable features to the portrayal, making the character stand out from the narrator and the contrasted other.

When telling stories intended to evoke sympathy for the characters, effective storytellers use a range of vocal and gestural accouterments to create a dynamic performance. Along the same lines, Clinton could animate her father speaking on the hardship of work-class businesses or use direct forms of mimetic action to present the attitudes of High Rodham. Because Clinton quotes the body of her father, her demonstration should convey something only a daughter would recognize about her father and or his screen-printing skillfulness. Additional semiotic complexity, the use of voice quality, pitch, amplitude, or rate of speaking, could help evoke a specific speech or gestural register would add nuance to the animation of her father portrayed here (Lorenz, 2007;

Fox & Robles, 2010).

Lack of animation aside, there are also substantive differences in the telling. Although she still does not perform a quote that personalizes her father’s voice or body, Clinton provides a succinct message that forefronts the “moral issue.” Multiple tellings of a story allow politicians the opportunity to refine their delivery of a particular story and performance of characters. Clinton eliminated the redundancy found in an earlier version of the “My Dad is a Small Businessman” story. She also preserved components that likely resonated with previous rally audiences.

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Further narrative examples are more semiotically complex and require the coordination of multiple articulators and vocal constituents. So far, we have not examined clear, multimodal demonstrations; therefore, I will use the next sections to focus on demonstrations that selectively depict their referents (cf. Clark, 1996).

“Trump Stiffs Drapery Workers”

In the next four examples, I analyze the delivery tactics Clinton uses to “voice” different characters.

By “voicing,” I mean that Clinton speaks as that character she is enacting. Extract 7 is a prototypical case of Clinton quoting the words of a cited figure. The story, entitled, “Trump Stiffs

Drapery Workers,” tells of a small drapery business in Las Vegas that secured an employment contract with Donald Trump. Near the end, Clinton quotes the words of the well-known poet, Maya

Angelou to comment on Trump’s efforts to re-brand his public image and look more presidential.

Extract 7: “Trump Stiffs Drapery Workers” [Charlotte, North Carolina, September 08, 2016]

Attributing Words to a Character

1 Cli: In fact 2 (0.4) 3 I just ran across a story in- 4 Las Vegas- 5 when I was there a few weeks ago? 6 (0.7) 7 of a small drapery business- (1) left hand is fully extended and slightly sloped with palms facing down 8 (0.8) 9 who got what they thought was the greatest contract- (2) left hand motions to chest 10 (0.5) 11 ever? (3) left hand performs beat gesture 12 (0.8) 13 for Trump’s new hotel in Las Vegas- (4) left hand motion off to her left side 14 [(0.8) [(5) head slightly shakes and left hand motions forward in front of her body 15 they delivered- 16 (0.9) 17 the goods? (6) widens eyes 18 (0.3) 19 And they were (.) refused payment.

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(7) left hand rises to mid-torso 20 (0.6) 21 For no reason other than it is a game to him. (8) squints eyes, hunches shoulders, cups hands, and moves them rhythmically 22 (0.7) 23 ↑Everything is a game (9) left hand performs multiple beats 24 (0.4) 25 it’s like he is living in his own celebrity reality TV progr[am. (10) left hand moves rhythmically three times in a semi-circular punctuating fashion 26 Aud: [XXXXXXXXX [xxxxxxxxx 27 Cli: [Ya know what Donald. (11) left hand rises quickly 28 (.) 29 This is[ real reality (12) left hand points in front of her body rhythmically 30 Aud: [xxxxxxxxxx[xxxxxxXXXXXX= 31 Cli: [This is real people. (13) left hand points in front of her body rhythmically again 32 Aud: =[[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX= 33 Cli: [[This is real decisions that have to be made (0.6) for our country. (14) left hand points in front of her body rhythmically again 34 Aud: =xxxxxxxxx (9.5) 35 Cli: He actually stood on a debate stage and said “wages are too high in America.” (15) left hand extends entirely as if to “place Trump the stage”

36 (0.9) 37 Now (.) he’s got some new advisors. 38 He’s had a bunch of advisors. (16) left hand waves in circles multiple times 39 He’s got some new advisors. 40 Aud: (slight chuckle) 41 Cli: And they're all 42 (0.2) 43 trying to make him 44 (0.4) 45 look presidential n’. (17) left hand motions upwards with her eyes squinting 46 Aud: (slight chuckles) 47 Cli: Sou:nd mo::re 48 (0.9) 49 serious. (18) left hand motions upwards in a somewhat circular fashion with her eyes squinting 50 (0.6)

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51 Not working too well. (19) left hand is held outwards with palm flat and down 52 (2.9) 53 But (.) remember what Maya Angelou who spent the last years of her life in this state= 54 =of Lake Forest. (20) left hand performs index finger beats 55 (1.0) 56 Reminded all of us= (21) left hand performs index finger beat 57 =I think about it often= 58 [I was so privileged to know her. [(22) looks down at the manuscript 59 (1.7) 60 “When someone shows you [who they are” [(17) looks down at the manuscript 61 (0.7) 62 [“Believe them the first time.” <> (23) leans in on the podium and emphasizes the quote

63 [(some audience members recite the quote) 64 Aud: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (7.7)

Clinton describes the two main characters: Vegas-based drapery employees and Trump. In line with the previous segments, Extract 7, recounts a drapery business eager to get a contract from a celebrity businessman (Ln. 1-13). This story follows from yet another iteration of the “My Dad was a Small Businessman” story. The telling remains continuous with the message of the previous moral vignette. The main complication emerges when the drapery workers delivered the requested goods to Trump’s new Las Vegas hotel and were refused payment (Ln. 13-19). There is an immediate similarity between the hypothetical scenario where Clinton’s father gets stiffed by

Trump and a real scenario involving the Las Vegas drapery business. The “My Dad was a Small

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Businessman” story provides the interactional slot to secure a related telling concerning Trump’s unfair behavior.

Clinton reveals very minimal details of the story events and characters. Her telling does not offer information about the drapery projects that the Las Vegas company was doing for Trump or the name of the business; all of which are details that could help the audience empathize with the protagonists. The referential ambiguity or non-specific information makes the story hard to imagine. It would be difficult to create a strong “joint pretense” (cf. Clark, 1996), in which, both the audience and the speaker can imagine the scene unfolding. When creating imaginable scenes and characters, the presentational and descriptive details matter to create the appropriate audience response. When Clinton neglects to reference the company involved in the conflict (“Catalina

Draperies”), she tells a story with limited believability (Berzon, 2016). Unintentionally, Clinton

“gives off,” to use Goffman’s (1956) term, the impression she is “overly cautious.” It is possible that Clinton keeps the narrative brief because she is telling two stories consecutively; however, the story appears to be too impersonal. Whatever the case may be; she provides a reason Trump would not pay his workers: “For no reason other than it is a game to him. Everything is a game; it’s like he is living in his celebrity reality TV program” (Ln. 21-25). The audience orients to Clinton’s evaluative remark, sparking collective applause and affiliation with Clinton and her stance on

Trump (Ln. 26). Viewers are asked to imagine Trump as a cold-hearted businessman. The short set of sequences from line 20 to 34 illustrate how Clinton’s “documentation style of oration” makes good use of canonical rhetorical devices. In a few lines, Clinton combines a problem-solution format with a three-part list solution (cf. Atkinson, 1984a).

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Figure 2. Problem-solution rhetorical device with a three-part solution. Clinton uses a problem- solution and three-part list format to attack Trump and invite the audience to applaud her resolve.

According to Clinton, Trump trivializes the hardships of everyday Americans to get ahead in his business dealings. Trump is a privileged person who views the world as a reality television program, and therefore, he fails to see the consequences for American workers. Clinton articulates a three-part solution: “This is a real reality; this is real people, this is real decisions that have to be made for our country” (Ln. 27-33). The effectiveness of the syntactic recycling of the construction “this is real + noun,” projects an interactional slot for the audience response (Atkinson,

1984a). Poetic rhythmicity is accompanied by three consecutive pointing gestures that stress the solution, which is a reminder to Trump that the consequences of his actions can damage real

American lives.

As the applause fades, she evokes a Trump quotation: “He actually stood on a debate stage and said wages are too high in American” (Ln. 35). The quote is strategically placed after the audience applause and is coupled with evaluative remarks. Conventional distinctions between diegesis and mimesis (i.e., indirect speech and direct) are often presented as clear-cut distinctions, but the differentiations between these poles are murky (Tannen, 2007; Sakita, 2002). Clinton lacks the prosodic or gestural framing necessary to incorporate Trump’s personality into the citation.

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Her performance is not a demonstration; the mimetic act it does not create a “pictorial” version of

Trump. Clinton “documents” what Trump said and tries to create “epistemic evidence” by locating his quote as being said during the debates. In “documenting” versus “demonstrating,” the quoter conveys the quote with the illusion of epistemic precision (Redeker, 1991). Instead, her reporting practices provide a generalized piece of information that supports the primary point (Mayes, 1990).

Performance views of quotations (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Bauman, 1986; Sakita, 2002;

Sidnell, 2006; Tannen, 2007; Wierzbicka, 1974) support this interpretation, since, scholars claim direct style quotations occur at the punch-line or climax, and therefore, they induce heightened vividness, involvement, dramatic effect. Clinton does not perform the characters using prosodic or gestural markers that would suggest she is quoting Trump in a “verbatim-like” presentation. In storytelling, a “presentational mode” (cf. Bauman, 1986) can make characters and events visible and audible, hence imaginable in the here-and-now discourse.

Clinton does not frame the quotation as though she is pretending to capture any authenticity in “how Trump uttered the words” on the debate stage; rather, she manufactures a near-likeness to

Trump’s original utterances by paraphrasing. For Clinton, the propositional content is what matters, not the extensiveness of her performance. In everyday life, interlocutors, even researchers, tend to associate indirect styles of quotation with more extensive editing, stylings, and compressing of the original utterance (Waugh, 1995). By not using mimetic devices to animate Trump, Clinton cautiously presents his “words” in a way intended to be strategically damaging. The lack of a

Trump-demonstration–how he sounds or acts–emphasizes the reporter’s interpretative perspective.

The indirect reporting of his words turns the audience’s attention to the fact that these are Clinton’s words attributed to Trump and not necessarily his own (Loncagre, 1983).

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Quotations presented in a “direct” manner are “precise characterizations” or indexical figurations of the cited individual’s personality who are coupled with a dramatic presentation of story-world events (Yule, 1993, p. 240-241). “Direct speech” as Yule (1993) writes, “is not just quotation or information or description; direct speech is theater” (p. 241). Now, it is important to note that “direct quotations” or “demonstrations” are not accurate verbatim quotations (Mayes,

1999; Tannen, 2007). The Trump-demonstration is not performed in a theatrical or depictive manner. Clinton values the content of her message over style, but the stylization of Trump’s voice could aid in how the content is packaged and received. Dramatizing the character is even more significant when we consider these actions to be “power maneuvers” and “connection maneuvers”

(cf. Tannen, 2003).

Tannen (2003) illustrates how family members in everyday dialogue can manipulate the voice of a mimeticized character. When family members “speak as a character,” they can direct the quoted segment to different present addresses. Speakers who “ventriloquizing” the voice of another can use these character creations to exert power over hearers/viewers and maintain solidarity. For Tannen, power and solidarity are intricately linked and interdependent. When a mother wants to comment on the father’s soda drinking habit, for example, she can speak through their younger daughter (Tannen, 2003). By speaking through the daughter, the mother can engage in a power maneuver that positions herself as the person responsible for the family’s nutritional habits, while showing a connection to the father by not performing an “outright critique” (see

Tannen, 2007, pp. 57-58).

When Clinton acts like Trump, she is trying to engage in a power maneuver that shows her

“moral superiority” over Trump and his “misinformed opinions” on U.S. wages. The performance is simultaneously a connection maneuver because she is using the quotation to address the

128 audience and sediment their shared views and values. Demonstrations, as Clark has argued, are selective depictions backed by a speaker’s personal motives. Direct reported speech forms or demonstrations present the words and actions of others as if they were unfolding in the present moment, and therefore, these depictive characterizations try to “write out” the narrator’s perceived intervention. A dramaturgical, depictive rendering that illustrates, Trump would enable Clinton to hold more power over him. Hence, it would be most appropriate for Clinton to perform a more melodramatic, embodied quotation when critiquing Trump’s embodiment of presidential behavior

(Ln. 37-51). In lines 45-51, Clinton remarks that Trump has hired advisors to make him sound and look more serious as a presidential candidate, but these efforts have, according to her, failed.

The sequence is a typical joking moment, where appropriately placed exaggerating could be a useful rhetorical defense (Basso, 1979; Bauman, 1986). To heighten the immoral image of Trump,

Clinton contrasts his personhood with that of African-American poet, Maya Angelou. Quoting her words, Clinton enacts Angelou, stating, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” (Ln. 60-63).

By voicing the words of an influential, female activist, Clinton contrasts two figures: one characterized as a “villain,” the other a “hero.” Angelou’s quotation became popular in American culture when it was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in June 1997 (Oprah Winfrey

Network, 2014). The citation is folk wisdom, suggesting that if someone tells or shows you that he or she is mean, selfish, crazy, or other qualities they claim, then you should believe them when they say it. In this context, the quote is being used to judge Trump’s character explicitly. After telling two Trump-related stories concerning how he has hurt small-business owners, the implication is he is a selfish person who takes advantages of others. Even though he is trying to change his image, Clinton argues that he has proven time-and-time again that he is not “presidential

129 material.” Liberal moral values are implicated in Clinton’s story, as Trump is imagined to be a

“selfish antihero” who puts his self-interest above others (Lakoff, 1996, p. 119).

The second quotation exemplifies one of Clinton’s strengths as a political orator, her ability to canonize the words of well-known activists or leaders into an attack slogan. Slogans are co- opted in a political rally discourse because they are culturally recognizable sayings that entail moral presuppositions (Atkinson, 1984a). The audience recognizes the quotation and even repeats it alongside Clinton (Ln. 63). Viewers burst into collective applause and display their mutual affiliation with Maya Angelou and Clinton. Simultaneously, the crowd disaffiliates with Trump.

The Angelou quotation is delivered as a “written word” that is subsequently verbalized. Clinton looks down to her manuscript in her performance. Because the quote is a general statement attributed to Maya Angelou, and not a particular moment in which she said it, it operates as a contrastive catchphrase.

This quotation also lacks a specific dramatic animation; Clinton could quote Angelou in a more solemn manner characteristic of her poetic skillfulness and carefully timed delivery. At the same time, the lack of animation leads to the production of an Angelou’s words that does not individuate her personality. Because of Maya Angelou’s popularity, the citation is oriented to by the audience, nonetheless. The moral comes in a similar package, with a focus on Trump’s misdeeds and the audience’s shared empathy for struggling Americans.

Story Moral 4 Trump’s hires workers and treats them poorly by not paying them fairly. For Trump, the struggle of middle to working-class Americans is nothing but a game. No matter how he attempts to change his image, we should know that Trump remains the same individual who does not care about the hardship of others. We should empathize with struggling American, in this case, the workers who the repercussions of being taken advantage of by well-established corporate brands.

Clinton’s story operates as a appeal to celebrity/leader argument schema (Walton 1998), utilizing the words of Angelou to attack Trump’s moral character: an ad hominem attack (Macagno, 2013;

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Macagno & Walton, 2012). By crafting a story about his misdeeds in the past, Clinton can conjure up a prejudicial image of Trump that speaks about his future abilities as a president. If Trump has mistreated small businesses in the past, what is to stop him from doing so in the future? This inferential chain of reasoning is intended to make an immoral target out of Trump, characterizing him as a “lousy person” unfit to take a position that needs to help working and middle-class

Americans.

“Pay Inequality at a Local Pizzeria” Extract 8 is a story that Clinton told about two teens (Jensen Walcott and Jake Reed) securing their first jobs at a pizzeria. Clinton introduces a retelling of Jensen and Jake’s battle with securing equal pay for women. While in the previous examples, Clinton told stories that had little to no news or media coverage, this example is a reenactment (Sidnell, 2006) of the two teen’s story they delivered at the Democratic National Convention July 28, 2016. Compared to the prior extracts, this story had significant potential to be recognized by the public. This example shows the variability of quoting practices that are more mimetic and designed to place two characters in dialogue with one another.

Extract 8: “Pay Inequality at a Local Pizzeria” [Tampa, Florida, September 06th, 2016] Voicing a Character – Constructed Dialogue 1 Cli: Did any of you watch any of the Democratic convention. (1) left hand is held out with palm up 2 (0.3) 3 Aud: ZZ[ZZZZ (2.4) Cli: [(2) performs a “thumbs up” gesture while nodding 4 Cli: Well I dunno if you saw these two young people. (3) left hand points to two imagined figures and then performs two counting gesture 5 17 years-old from Kansas. (4) left hand performs beat point 6 Young man- 7 Young woman- (5) left hand points near her face and then she pinches her fingers together 8 Went to the same high school- (6) left hand motions out slightly 9 Bout to be seniors- (7) left hand arcs towards the body 10 Get a summer job- (8) left hand performs flat hand, palm down beat

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11 Working in a pizza restaurant in their hometown- (9) left hand performs flat hand, palm down beat (10) left hand index finger curves back towards the body 13 They're pretty excited? (11) widens eyes and puts her left hand out 14 I member when I had what I thought was my real first job. (12) left hand points to the chest and then performs swirling motions 15 Not babysitting: (13) left hand performs away from body gesture 16 Not ya know: (14) left hand performs away from body gesture 17 Just kinda knocking around (15) left hand wiggles 18 but a real job where actually had to show up someplace. (16) left hand performs beat with c-shaped handshape (17) left hand with index finger extends makes circles and then points to the audience 19 Get a paycheck. (18) left hand grips as if “grabbing a paycheck” 20 That was pretty exciting. 21 So the young man young women (19) left hand circles back towards the body with index finger extended 22 were at our convention and here’s the story they told. (20) ) left hand circles back towards the body with index finger extended 23 They were talking together one day after work? 24 They’d known each other? 25 And the young women said↑“ya kno:w” (21) left hand is held out

26 “I am excited because I think I am actually going to save some money for college”- (22) left hand starts with pinch beats, and then, she transitions to a pinch motion outward as if “storing money”

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27 making eight dollars an hour. (23) left hand motions back towards the body as if “collecting money”

28 And her friend (24) left hand arcs back towards the body with her eyes slightly squinted

29 The young man looked at her and goes (25) shifts body to her left side and squints

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30 “I am making eight fifteen an hour.” (26) shifts body and curls finger on left hand and slightly shakes head

31 And-and the young women said “well” (27) shifts her body to the right

32 “You didn’t have any experience before this job” (28) squints eyes and points to imagined interlocutor while slightly shaking head

33 “Doing this did you?” 34 “No 35 you know I didn’t.” (29) body slightly shifts towards the center of the podium as she raises eyebrows and moves out left hand

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36 She said 37 “well 38 what do you think happened?” (30) shifts body to the right side, squints eyes, and motions out with the left hand

39 “>Yeah I mean-oh< it must be a mistake.” (31) left hand it held out in front of body with palm down; moves head in with eyebrows flashed

40 So they together- (32) left hand with index finger extended circles back to the body 41 Aud: (slight murmurs) 42 Cli: And I give the young man a lot of credit 43 Goo:d gu:y [(.) right? 44 [xxxxxxxxx-woo-xxxxxx-yeah-xxx (3.0) (33) left hand with index finger extended is held out; she nods lightly 45 They go to tell the manager? (34) left hand shows the “two teenagers going to the manager” 46 (5.2) 47 That (.) there’s been a mistake

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(35) left hand motions outward with the palm facing her body 48 They are doing exactly the same job. (36) left hand performs thumb up beat 49 (0.8) 50 He’s making fifteen cents more an hour. (37) left hand points then index finger curls back to the body 51 (0.6) 52 What happens? (38) leans in; eyes widen; left hand moves outward 53 The manager fired them both. 54 Aud: bbbbbb (3.1) 55 You know what 56 That’s legal. 57 (1.2) 58 If you find out about someone else's salary?= (39) left hand performs a “searching gesture” 59 =even if you are doing exactly the same (.) job? (40) left hand performs multiple index finger extended beats 60 (0.7) 61 You can be retaliated against. (41) left hand performs index finger extended beat 62 Including being fired in most places. 63 So when I say?= 64 = let's have equal pay (42) holds hand to chest 65 and some people I see looking quizzical at me? (42) first, the left hand touches her chest; then, she performs a character enactment of “audience members looking quizzical with left hand out at side”

66 (0.7) 67 “They say well of ↑course you have to have equal pay.” <> (43) performs a character enactment of the “audience members looking quizzical with left hand out and a surprised voice”

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68 Well ya if you’re in the military and (44) left hand performs a thumbs up gesture 69 (0.5) 70 the pay scale is set- (45) left hand motions to show “flat scale” 72 or if you’re in the government 73 (0.3) 74 and it’s set (46) left hand motions to show “flat scale” 75 or you’re under a union contract. (47) left hand motions to show “flat scale” 76 (0.4) 77 But if you are in the vast majority of jobs in America (48) left hand motions to show “flat scale” and slopes upward 78 (0.3) 79 You have no idea if you are being paid fairly. (49) holds gesture 47 80 (1.2) 81 So we cannot let that continue 82 that’s wrong in American 83 if you are doing the [job you deserve to get the pay. (50) left hand performs multiple index finger extended point beat gestures 84 [XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (8.9)

Clinton asks the rhetorical question: “Did any of you watch any of the Democratic Convention?”

(Ln. 1). Her phrasing implies that her sympathetic audience may not keep up to date with her presidential campaign. Clinton’s use of any, a determiner of indefinite quantity, assumes the audience is not too involved in political affairs, and therefore, her repeated use of the lexical item creates distance between herself and the audience. The question is designed to produce a dramatic collective response (Ln. 3). Despite inadvertently distancing herself from the audience, she describes the background of two young teenagers in Kansas (Ln. 4-13).

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Background Information 1. Two 17-year-old teenagers (one female, one male) apply for a job out of high school (Ln. 5-8). 2. Both teens know seniors who go to the same school (Ln. 8-9). 3. Both teens try to find a summer job and get hired at a pizzeria (Ln. 10-11).

In lines 5-8, Clinton provides the general situation: two high school seniors applied for the same job. Clinton delivers the background information with a constant, level pitch, inadvertently making the information sound more monotonous than dramatic. Accompanying the level pitch, Clinton performs three rhythmic gestures with the palm facing down. These poised gestures emphasize the activity of listing general background details of the story (Ln. 6-11).

Clinton does not specify the city in Kansas, nor does it name the two figures she purports to animate. As she is about to transition out of the story-world and into a related side comment, she provides what is meant to be an emotion-laden statement: “They’re pretty excited” (Ln. 13).

The vocal delivery of the announcement is, however, lackluster and accompanies a small shrug.

As Streeck (2009, 2016) has argued, shrugs are gestures that show a noncommittal stance towards something in the talked about discourse. Clinton’s shrug “gives off” (Goffman, 1956) the impression she is emotionally uninvested in the lives of the characters she talks about. Her oral delivery creates an unintended, disjunctive message.

Afterward, she transitions into a side sequence (Jefferson, 1972), which is not relevant to the story-world. She recalls her own experience as a young adult trying to land her first “real first job” (Ln. 14). While audiences expect stories like these to create intimacy, solidarity, and empathy, the side sequence does not aid Clinton in this aim. She classifies babysitting as not a “real first job,” and associates it inadvertently with “knocking around” or “wasting time.” Again, Clinton incidentally “gives off” (Goffman, 1956) an elitist position by downgrading the status of babysitting to a “not a real job” by performing throw-away gestures (Bressem & Müller, 2014)

(Ln. 14-19). Whether mishaps of the speech writer, oversights on Clinton’s part, or a combination

138 thereof, her comment could easily damage her closeness or connection with the audience. The storytelling lacks an appropriate analysis of the audience and the tactics necessary to establish an intimate connection with them. Although we do not have direct access to the audience’s interpretation of this segment, a variety of opinion-pieces who discuss the same story-skit performed at different rallies at least verifies this as a possible interpretation (see Devaney, 2016;

Rutz, 2016).

There is also something disjunctive about Clinton’s statement and the message she is trying to convey. Clinton wants to express how two teens were excited to get a job in a more corporate setting, but the result is, she inadvertently dismisses childcare professionals. Clinton returns to the story, reintroducing the young man and woman, and using pointing gestures to index the imagined

Democratic National Convention stage (Ln. 21-22). “They were talking together one day after work. They had known each other,” she utters, providing reminders to the audience as to the character’s relations to one another (Ln. 24-25). The rest of the story-world revolves around a

Clinton-created dialogue to enable the viewers to imagine, or for some, re-imagine their story as told at the convention speech. Acting as Jake and Jensen, Clinton tries to animate their voices when retelling their story to the Tampa audience.

Clinton’s multimodal quoting practices indicate that the performance is more mimetic than diegetic. She portrays two distinct voices and bodies as they are speaking to one another. The imagined depiction is a projection of the characters involving more than just linguistic descriptors.

To accomplish this task, Clinton utilizes her body position and her gaze to indicate a role-shift between the two characters. Her dialogic choreography includes her shifting body and gaze direction (McClave, 2000).

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Jensen Walcott Jake Reed

1 2

3 4

Figure 3. Role shifting. The illustration shows the general bodily postures Clinton assumes when animating Jensen Walcott and Jake Reed.

In the image above, I have mapped out each of Clinton’s quoting utterances of the two cited figures.

When assembled in a “storyboard presentation style” (see Figure 2), the embodied forms of character-shifting or role-shifting becomes clear. The set of sequences is a clear example of what

Tannen (2007) referred to as “constructed dialogue,” in that, two imagined characters are mimetically conjured up and performed as though talking with one another. The dialogue is a

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“displaced mode of conversation” (cf. Chafe, 1994); the past discussion and consciousness of two teenagers are “transported” or represented in the in-here-and-now moment of discourse. Explicitly,

Clinton situates this dialogue in the story told at the Democratic National Convention. This detail is significant because she differs in some ways from how the teenagers told it. Clinton’s story does not maintain “fidelity” to the actual words and actions of the teens when she places the story in a new context.

When Clinton returns to her imagined dialogue, she has to find a way to distinctively role- shift between different characters. A straightforward way to accomplish this task is to resort to prosodic markers: voice quality, amplitude, the rate of speaking, or register. Clinton does not resort to much prosodic variability, despite an emotive tinge in her tone. Instead, Clinton maintains her habitual speech-delivering register, and therefore, she does not distinguish the voices with prosodic saliency. Because Clinton does not utilize register-shifting, she needs another way to show who is speaking during each consecutive turn. In this specific instance, Clinton adapts her body posture and gazes to index the narrator and the two figures. When she speaks as Jensen,

Clinton’s body shifts towards her right side, whereas, she uses her left side and center stage to voice Jake. By imitating the standing position of each character, Clinton takes on the character role in a visible manner. With a character’s viewpoint (McNeill, 1992) she acts as the two figures, imitating their emotional state towards the situation and each other’s utterances.

Even though role-shifting is indicated by the positioning of her body and coordinated gaze,

Clinton’s performance is not semiotically dense. Without clear prosodic cues (i.e., differentiating the voices via indexically salient vocal traits), she leaves out a dramatic effect that would make this story more comprehensible and exciting to the audience. Technically, Clinton animates the characters, providing visibly differentiated character space. In the constructed retelling, Jensen

141 and Jake were hired and had the same level of experience, but Jensen found out she was paid less for being a woman. No distinctive vocal characteristics other than Clinton’s idiosyncrasies come through in the dialogue. She manages to convey emotive aspects essential to stories, such as Jake’s confusion over the pay difference (Ln. 28-30) or Jensen’s dismay at the situation (Ln. 31-34).

However, the emotive aspect is primarily accomplished through a series of facial expressions, such as Jake and Jensen’s bewilderment indexed through squinting eyes and a bunched forehead (Ln.

29-37). The dialogue is restrained to two teens engaging in “small talk” about their jobs. Therefore, the quotation is minimally definable as a dramatic demonstration (Clark, 1996).

Besides the lack of vocal lamination, the bodies of the two speakers are hardly distinguishable regarding gestures or character traits. The performance is not a full-bodied demonstration that depicts the actions and personalities of the characters she purports to animate.

In fact, the gestures Clinton performs while enacting the characters are her own political habits. A prime example of this is Clinton’s precision-grip gesture (Kendon, 2004; Lempert, 2011) in line

26. Variations of the gesture are referred to as the “Clinton thumb” gesture, made famous by Bill

Clinton, and adapted by Hillary Clinton (Basu, 2016). Pragmatic gestures like these are all too familiar for politicians and punctuate the discourse, create a rhythmic, repetitions coherence, and indicate vocal stress, among other discourse-related features (Bavelas et al., 1992; Bull, 1986).

The point being, Clinton not only neglects to animate the voices of the characters through prosodic devices, but she also fails to distinguish clearly between her role as the narrator and the characters she enacts. Only emotional dimensions are demonstrated in this performance. Clinton becomes a narrator whose voice “encroaches” on those of the characters, making it evident that this is her version of the story, not theirs. The audience is asked to imagine the scene with these two young, outraged teens but that joint-imagining is not made fully realizable through her demonstration.

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Here, her performance is more of a “documentation” (Redeker, 1991) of the event than a dramaturgical rendering. Clinton struggles with her vocal and nonverbal speech delivery of the two teens, and thus, fails to switch between “laminated” figures (Goffman, 1971). The polyphony of voices and bodies that should be evident in this type of quotation (Bakhtin, 1981; Keevallik,

2010) is subdued.

If the reader needs additional evidence for the interpretation, one can support the micro- interactional evidence by comparing Jensen and Jake’s actual performance at the Democratic

National Convention (see Kansas City Star, 2016). Clinton’s version of the story is exceedingly embellished. First off, she tells the audience that the two spoke in person; however, the dialogue that took place between the two was over Snapchat. Hence, Clinton switches modalities to create a more face-to-face scene, implying that the story is more “put on” than it may seem. Second, at no point at the National Convention does Jensen mention she is using her money to save up for college; either this is a detail missing from her public story, or the performance aggrandizes on this detail to make Jensen appear to be responsible (Ln. 26-27). Third, Clinton misreports the pay gap. In the actual speech, Jensen was told she would make eight dollars an hour, and Jake eight twenty-five, not Clinton’s eight fifteen. It is a small detail, but one that could without much difficulty be fact-checked to make a more believable telling. Fourth, after the quotative dialogue,

Clinton tells the audience that the young man and women went together to talk to the manager (Ln.

38-48). According to multiple tellings by the teenagers, Jensen called the manager herself and was told she was fired for discussing pay. Later, Jake was fired for the same reason. Jake is valorized in this narrative, as indicated in her evaluation of him (i.e., “good guy”) and the subsequent audience clapping (Ln. 40-42). Too many discrepancies exist between the actual telling, as told by the two teenagers, and Clinton’s retelling (see Democratic National Convention, 2016). The quoted

143 scene is perhaps best labeled as a misquotation (cf. Macagno & Walton, 2017), one that alters what was said, when it was said, and even the modality used to say it. The constructed dialogue and character viewpoint amplify the depiction of the two characters. When interpreting or analyzing aspects of perspective presented through quotations, we need to be careful to note that representation can also be a form of rhetorical amplification (Macagno & Walton, 2017; Osborn,

1984). In an almost Aristotelian adoption of mimesis, Clinton mimeticizes the characters to describe them in salient persuasive ways to gain the audience’s empathy for the cited figures.

Amplification through the depiction of characters (Osborn, 1984), however, can also lead to distortion. Clinton produces a selective, even erroneous version of the told events.

Her narration does not end here, and in fact, Clinton reiterates the complication in line 43-

48, where the two discover that there is a pay discrepancy. The problem is augmented further when the two find out the manager fires them for asking or discussing salary (Ln. 51). By presenting the two innocent teenagers and their scenario, Clinton can now comment on the more significant issues at hand: public policy on pay transparency and inequality. According to Clinton, the manager retaliated against the two teenagers (Ln. 59), and therefore, she tries to contextualize this as a broader issue faced by others. “If you find out about someone else’s salary, even if you are doing the same job, you can be retaliated against. Including being fired in most places,” she exclaims

(Ln. 56-60). One issue here, however, is that Clinton says that it is “legal” to fire someone under these pretenses (Ln. 54). The laws and protections Clinton refers to are a more complicated than she gives credit. Fact-checkers and policymakers have argued that most workers should be protected and able to discuss pay inequality in the workplace; however, one would need to examine the misinformation and state-based differentiations (see Hee Lee, 2016). As such, this example speaks to the way quotations or past dialogues are misappropriated or blatantly misused. By

144 evoking two innocent teens and contrasting them with a potentially sexist boss, Clinton can now step in as the advocate with a solution.

In lines 61-62, Clinton presents herself as a just advocate. Afterward, she performs a character role, taking on the generic embodiment of potential critics or confused voters with their quizzical facial expressions (Ln. 63). The squinted eyes and bunched forehead display an emotive reaction to her stances, and she adds onto the character viewpoint performance with a generic voicing of these interlocutors. “They say well, of course, you can have equal pay,” Clinton utters with a pitch step-up and higher pitch register, thus, showing that her “critics” or “bemused interlocutors” find her claims to be common sense. Using repetitions and parallel syntactic constructions, Clinton provides the audience with three exceptions to confusion pay-legislation: the military, the government, and union contract jobs. Clinton has put herself in dialogue with

Americans who think equal pay is a common sense value; however, she argues with them, in the sense that, she notes that this only applies to specific jobs.

To end this story, Clinton indicates that in other job sectors, people are not getting paid a fair wage (Ln. 74-76). The moral play comes to a concluding front, as she provides a solution:

Americans must continue to fight to get the pay they deserve (Ln. 78-80). Clinton uses the same problem-solution rhetorical format (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986). When a solution is provided for the problem, the audience knows it is time to applaud the speaker's resolution and commitment.

Story Moral 5 Two teenagers applied for the same position and were not paid fairly for the work. Women continue to get paid less than men, and this is a violation of our values that everyone should be treated equally. If you do the work, you should be paid fairly. We should empathize with these teenagers and their situation, because, many Americans face discriminatory practices due to issues in pay-legislation.

Like so many of Clinton’s stories, the point of this episode is to “magnify” the heroic behavior of the characters. However, as I have shown, she often lacks mimetic devices needed to make her

145 characters individualistically discernable or memorable via animation of the voice or body. An analysis of the moment-to-moment unfolding of her story reveals how Clinton does not animate or individuate the characters of her moral vignettes. The accumulative analysis shows that Clinton does not adopt common mimetic storytelling devices when quoting story-characters. The lack of animation and individuation of these characters is likely to have grave effects on the delivery and reception of the message.

“102-year-old Voter Being Suppressed” The previous excerpts lacked a dimension of semiotic complexity, in the sense that Clinton avoided framing her quotations in direct, mimetic ways needed to individuate the two teenagers. Direct references permit spectators to experience the personality of the depicted character through the character’s purported motoric actions and prosodically stylized voice (Günthner, 1999; Holt, 2000;

Lorenz, 2007; Yule, 1993). In the examples investigated, Clinton quotes the efforts of respected people and leaders to spoil the contrastive image of her adversaries. In Extract 9, Clinton imagines herself as one of her senior who is having difficulty voting without providing a copy of her birth certificate.

Extract 9: “102-year-old Voter Being Suppressed” [Pine Bluff, Arkansas, February 28, 2016]

Voicing and Embodying a Character

1 Cli: I will also defend voting rights (1) left hand with index finger extended beat 2 because in many places right now- (2) left hand with index finger extended beat continues 3 in our country (3) left hand with index finger extended beat continues 4 (0.5) 5 voting rights are being suppressed. 6 People are being 7 (0.4) 8 put through 9 (0.3) 10 hoops? (4) left hand slopes upward with the palm facing the audience 11 I met a 102-year-old woman? (5) left hand holds previous gesture orientation; hand slightly shakes, followed beats 12 the other day in South Carolina-

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13 came to one of my events (6) left hand motions back towards the body 14 (1.2) 15 And she’d gone- 16 to register to vote- (7) thumb, index finger, and middle finger of the left hand extended with a slight flick of the hand 17 because she’d be moving arou:nd- 18 living with family and everything- (8) thumb, index finger, and middle finger of the left hand are extended as the hand motions forward and backward 20 So there she was (9) left hand points outward towards the audience 21 back in South Carolina. 22 She went to register; (10) index finger and thumb slightly open; left hand motions forward 23 ↑she to(h)ld me (11) supine hand gesture; hand moves forward, away from the body 24 she said 25 “They asked? for my birth certificate.” (12) supine hand gesture; hand motions back towards the body

26 hhhhhhhhhhhh (1.2) 27 She said to me. (13) rotates body from facing front stage to the side 28 “↑I: haven’t seen my birth certificate in fifty yea:: rs.” (14) bends her body forward and slightly shakes her head

29 HHHHHHhhhhhhhhh (2.5) 30 Think about it. <> (15) halts body motion and looks back and forth with eyes and blinks noticeably 31 Wh-why? are people trying to suppress (16) cups both hands and slowly moves them together 32 (1.0)

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33 People who can vote 34 (0.3) 35 What part of [democracy are they afraid of (17) left hand performs two open hand beats 36 Aud: [x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x= 37 =[x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x= 38 [We need to stand up and say (.) (18) left hand performs open hand beat 39 =[x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x= 40 [Every American is entitlted to exercise his or her (19) left hand performs closed fist beat 41 XXXXX[XXXXXXXXXXXXX (19.2) 42 [vote

To refute the policies of their competitors, politicians often use “mock-testimonials” taken from everyday people. People that politicians have met on the campaign trail can provide an expert lay testimony to secure empathy and to support a policy position. One strategy for delivering a testimonial is to quote a person. In this instance, Clinton has been discussing how she will protect the fundamental rights of Americans, including the right to vote (Ln. 1-10).

The story takes place in South Carolina amidst a controversial voter ID law that caused a substantive amount of confusion (Roth, 2016). Voters had difficulty interpreting the law because the marketing campaign and advertisements, which for many citizens seemed unclear whether it required them to show a government-issued form of photo ID before voting. In lines 11-20, she introduces the setting and the characters: a 102-year-old woman who, after leaving South Carolina returned to the state to find she could not vote with ease. Since the voter was “moving around living with family and everything,” she lost track of her birth certificate (Ln. 15-18), creating the talked-about complication. Instead of reporting that 102-year-old woman could not vote because she could not locate her birth certificate, Clinton animated the voice and bodily movements of the character. She lets the character tell her own problems to the audience.

Framed in the past tense, Clinton’s first prefaces the quotation with “she told me,” with slight laughter. Then, switching to the verba diciendi (the speaking verb) “she said,” Clinton

148 projects the voice of the older woman. “The asked for my birth certificate. I haven’t seen my birth certificate in fifty years,” the old lady character states (Ln. 25, 28). When animating the words of the voter, Clinton enacts a “wavery old person voice,” a recognizable vocal register that Americans associate with the weakening of our vocal cords as we age. Prosodically, Clinton performs the “old lady character” using a higher pitch register (Klewitz & Couper-Kuhlen, 1999), especially in line

28. She also elongates her speaking rate and speaks in a breathy voice quality; each of these linguistic realizations operates as socio-indexical characteristics people associate with older individuals (“The Body Odd,” 2015). Besides her stereotypical vocal performance, Clinton complements the “shaky voice” with wavering head movements. The multimodal production is a canonized into a comic routine involving Clinton acting like an old lady who is being harassed while she is trying to vote. Clinton’s quotation is a demonstration since she depicts how the character “habitually” sounds and acts.

By gesturing in a character’s viewpoint, Clinton ensures that the performance heightens the punch-line of the joke (cf. Bauman, 1986). As it is presented, the situation seems absurd, since officials are asking a senior woman to locate her birth certificate granted by that state over one hundred years ago (Ln. 28). She positions the elderly voter against an imagined other, the so-called

“voter suppressors” who are trying to hinder democracy (Ln. 35). The rhetorical question, “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” demands a sequentially implicative call-to-action. Lines 31-

42 appears to be a variation on the problem-solution rhetorical format (Atkinson, 1984a), in that,

Clinton poses a question about attacks on democracy and then uses the message to outrage the audience enough to act.

Clinton uses a common public speaking tactic to conclude her segment: a call-to-action. A call-to-action is a marketing and speaking ploy intended to build up an emotional or enthusiastic

149 response towards a topic. At this moment in the speech, Clinton tries to persuade the audience to stand up to lawmakers and Republicans who are accused of suppressing the voices of everyday citizens. Audience members anticipate that Clinton will offer a solution to the posed problem, and therefore, we can see uncoordinated audience responses starting in line 36. When Clinton delivers the call-to-action, the single, the audience produces interspersed claps that transition into the full- on applause.

The imagined, “villainous other” in this scenario is left vague. Whom are the people trying to suppress the right to vote? Is it lawmakers? Republicans or Democrats? News articles suggest that Clinton’s claims of voter suppression occurred primarily because of Republicans (Nilsen,

2017). The ambiguity is perhaps strategic, although it is also problematic because it does not provide the audience with a clear referential target. Even so, the audience finds Clinton’s call-to- action to be commendable. The moral lesson, however, seems imprecise when compared to the previous story segments. Here, Clinton implies that Republican politicians are making it difficult for people like her 102-year-old woman to vote. The lesson follows: Americans should be guaranteed their inalienable right to vote in a democratic country.

Story Moral 6 “Republican-backed laws” threaten to take away American’s ease of access to appointing a candidate, essentially, suppressing their vote. Our American democracy values freedom to vote and take part in the selection of the President of the United States. Those who make and enforce voter ID laws like those in South Carolina are acting as “immoral agents” who take away American freedoms for deceptive purposes.

The quotation creates a “comprehendible hero,” a 102-year-old woman who, despite her age, still performs her civic voting duties. The villain is a familiar Clinton-adversary, the

Republican party and Republican-won states that enforce citizens to observe confusing voter ID laws. Clinton could have enacted Republicans, using a presentational mode (Bauman, 1986) to create two discernible, contrastive figures. However, she performs figures who share her

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Democratic values. What is evident in the audience response, though, is that direct, mimeticized quotations create a noticeable affiliative audience reaction. The audience genuinely orients to and laughs at Clinton’s performance of the elderly lady (Ln. 26, 29). Demonstrations invite audiences to participate and collectively imagined the cited figure. The old lady character is undoubtedly laughable because her personality is heightened, exaggerated, and partially distorted (Basso, 1979).

Scholarship on everyday storytelling has shown that imitations like these provide excellent moments for critiquing those in power (Basso, 1979; Bauman, 1986; Tannen, 2003, 2010); nevertheless, Clinton rarely animates or individuates the personality of her adversaries, not often using the rhetorical of depiction (Osborn, 1984). Clinton imagines a more “scene-oriented” event centered on “documenting” (Redeker, 1991) policies and facts. Clinton’s evidence-oriented precision is vital in politics but could be bolstered by more mimetic devices.

“Republicans Don’t Believe in Climate Change” In the latter part of her campaign, Clinton directed most of her attacks to Donald Trump; however, she also critiqued the broader category of Republicans during the primaries. In the story,

“Republicans Don’t Believe in Climate Change,” Clinton animates the words of Republican politicians speaking on global warming. Extract 10 provides an example of a constructed dialogue.

Here, Clinton creates a “pseudo-conversation” between herself and Republicans.

Extract 10: “Republicans Don’t Believe in Climate Change” [Nashua, New Hampshire, February 02, 2016]. Voicing a Character 1 Cli: The best wa::y 2 to get new jobs is to finally combat climate change. 3 By really goi[ng after clean renewable energy. (1) right hand performs multiple open palm beats 4 Aud: [XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX[XXX= 5 Cli: [I am (2) left hand is held up 6 Aud: =XXXXXXXXX[XXX= 7 Cli: [I am always 8 Aud: =xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (14.2) 9 Cli: I am always just a little 10 amused

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11 (0.8) 12 When the Republicans are asked 13 As they are (smacks lips) (3) Clinton’s left hand is held throughout the audience cheering 14 What they think of climate change. (4) lateral headshakes 15 (1.0) 16 And then they say (5) left hand slightly motion out 17 (0.7) 18 “I dunno::?” (6) head tilts while left while hand motions left; eyes widen 19 “I am not a scientist.” (7) tilts her head to the right while motioning with her left hand

20 You heard that right? (8) nods head 21 Aud: hhhhhh (1.5) 22 Cli: ↑I mean I’ve gone across the country (9) slight motion with left hand 23 Trying to answer that (0.7) question for them (10) left hand enacts word search 24 I’ve said ↑“you know you can (0.3) ↑remedy this by going to ↑talk to a scientist.” (11) shrugs shoulders with a simultaneous left hand out palm up gesture

(12) left hand performs slight semi-circular motions

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25 “You could-you could ↑go to the university?” (13) left hand performs slight semi-circular motions

26 “You could come to the community college?” (14) left hand raises up past head and holds here

27 “You could go to a lot of high schools and talk to science teachers-” 28 “And they [will explain climate change to you.” (15) leans forward for emphasis 29 Aud: [xxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX= 30 =[XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX= 31 Cli: [“And what we should be doing.” (16) lowers left hand

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32 Aud: XXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxxxx (12.5) 33 Cli: Now I have concluded. 34 (0.8) 35 That not all of them are that ignorant. (17) switches microphone to left hand; the left hand is held out with palm up 36 hhhhhhhhh (18) nods and raises eyebrows 37 I’ve concluded that they are doing what the Koch brothers are telling them to do. (19) nods emphatically 38 Aud: [XXX-Woo-XXXXXXXXX[xxxxxx (6.2) Cli: [(20) nods twice and shrugs shoulders [And 39 ↑That’s bad enough to be in that kind of denial (21) right hand extended to the side of the body as it waves slightly (22) right hand moves to mid-torso and perform semi-circular motion 40 (0.7) 41 but 42 (0.7) 43 they are missing a great opportunity to grow our economy. (23) right hand held up to mid-body while it is trusted forward

The following extract is treated as a more “comical telling” than the previous narrative examples.

At the beginning of Extract 10, Clinton displays her rhetorical strengths in the form of another puzzle-solution rhetorical format: “The best way to get new jobs is to combat climate change finally. By really going after clean, renewable energy” (Ln. 1-3). Clinton utilizes a familiar rhetorical device to invite collective affiliation. The topic of climate change triggers a telling about a related episode (Jefferson, 1978) of Republicans speaking about their perspectives on global warming. Clinton tries to talk through the audience applause (Ln. 5, 7) and prefaces her talk with:

“I am always just a little amused when the Republicans are asked about climate change, as they are” (Ln. 9-13). The story references a generic answer that Republicans offer when the media ask

154 them about climate change. In lines 14-16, she transitions to a multimodal quotation. Afterward,

Clinton takes a noticeable in-breath, which also projects an upcoming performance on

Republicans. The quotation, “I dunno I am not a scientist,” is also demarcated further by several features.

We know that Clinton’s speaking voice in lines 18 and 19 is not her own, because several prosodic devices suggest she is performing a generic voice attributed to Republicans. The pitch track and wavelength of the utterance show how Clinton elongates her speech raises her intonation and intensifies her amplitude.

600

Pitch (Hz)

0 0 Time (s) 1.783 Figure 4. Praat Pitch Tracker. This illustration was taken from Praat and shows the pitch contour, segmented utterances, the amplitude, and duration.

Regarding gesture, Clinton also tilts her head, widens her eyes, and holds out her left hand as means of embodying the character. The coordination of gestural, syntactic, and prosodic devices signals to the audience, she is laminating a character voice (Keevallik, 2010; Bakhtin, 1981) onto her own body. She produces the character lamination with clear culturally embued signs. The tilted head, slumped shoulders, and the prosodic transformation add annotative layers to the multimodal performance (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; McClave, 2000), all of which provide an interpretation that she is insulting Republicans. As linguists have shown, facial expression, prosodic devices, posture

155 allow storytellers to make implicit and explicit evaluations of the cited figure (Clark, 1996;

Günthner, 1996; Holt, 2000; Lorenz, 2007).

In this segment, Republicans are portrayed as “aloof” or “ignorant,” given the drawn-out

“goofy-sounding voice,” tilted head, and self-doubting demeanor. The quotation may gain further resonance with the audience since the “I am not a scientist” catchphrase has been labeled as a

Republican strategy for dodging a stance on climate change (Chait, 2014).

Back in 2014, the motto became extremely common among Republican politicians such as

John Boehner, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Joni Ernst, and Mitch McConnell (see Atkin, 2014). The phrase was mediatized on shows like Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, where the host, Steven

Colbert satirically replayed snippets of Republicans like Marco Rubio feigning ignorance of the issues of climate change (Loria, 2014). In Clinton’s quotation, Republicans are made to sound ill- informed when it comes to climate change. The phrasing makes an over generalization about all

Republicans and their knowledge base. The citation is an excellent illustration of how the words of others can be harnessed for evaluative purposes. Carrying a “mimetic punch,” Clinton acts like a Republican, demonstrating uneducated stances towards climate change intended to outrage the audience. Clinton’s next moves support evidence for this interpretation.

She transitions out of the demonstration that selectively depicts Republicans, and she secures more interpersonal involvement with the audience by asking about their familiarity

Republican stances on climate change. She then advances the constructed dialogue by putting herself in conversation with Republicans. An easy way to do this is to monopolize yet another problem-solution rhetorical format. The problem she presents is that Republicans do not believe climate change is a real concern; the solution then, is the advice Clinton supposedly has supplied in response.

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You know, you can remedy this by going to talk to a scientist. You could-you could go to the university. You could come to the community college. You could go to a lot of high schools and talk to science teachers, and they will explain climate change to you, and what we should be doing (Ln. 24-31).

The quotation allows her to deliver a three-part list as well as a problem-solution rhetorical format

(Atkinson, 1984a; Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986). Republicans can talk to scientists at the university, community, college, or the high school. Clinton raises her amplitude and rate of speaking, moves her right hand in a circular motion, and repeats parallel syntactic constructions to persuade her audience. Unlike her depiction of Republicans, Clinton does not attribute a

“caricatured voice” to herself. Her self-quotation is a means of providing a solution that grounds her a rational, science-informed politician. The puzzle-solution, three-part list, and extensive repetitions work in tandem to encourage audience applause in lines 28-31.

Her orientation instructs the crowd on how to interpret her demonstration (Ln. 34). After putting herself in dialogue with Republicans and providing what she treats as common sense solution, she clarifies her perspective on Republicans: “Not all of them are ignorant” (Ln. 34).

Clinton argues that Republicans are reiterating the words of the Koch brothers, two billionaires in business who are said to have corrupted the political system, using their wealth and influence political decisions. Hence, she spoils the image of Republicans further by providing an upgraded, morally wounding accusation. It is not only that some Republicans may not believe in climate change, but the audience should also know the party takes advice from special-interest groups.

As the story comes to its conclusion, Clinton provides the final moral blow: “That’s bad enough to be in that kind of denial, but they are missing a great opportunity to grow our economy” (Ln.

39-43).

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The segment provides a clear socio-indexical distinction between the two cited figures

(Gal & Irvine 1995; Irvine & Gal, 2000). By imagining herself to speak like Republicans,

Clinton presents a selectively designed depiction of what the political party stands for in the

2016 election. The intertextuality among Clinton’s rendition and the known iterations of the

Republicans lends credibility and rhetorical force to the production. It is also is the case that the production co-occurs with other well known rhetorical formats (three-part list and puzzle- solution), creating a projectable moment for audiences to affiliate with Clinton’s values. Despite the everyday success of this performance, Clinton’s delivery exhibits moments that could use improvement.

As noted, Clinton has had issues with audiences feeling like they can trust or relate to her presumed elitist political style (Schoor, 2017). When quoting herself speaking to Republicans,

Clinton creates an epistemic hierarchy of who has access to scientific knowledge on climate change. The three-part list refers to educational spaces where Republicans could go to seek advice on the climate and is listed in descending order from higher education (college level) to secondary education (high school). Clinton remarks: “You can go to a lot of high schools and talk to science teachers, and they will explain climate change to you” (Ln. 25-27). The English quantifier “a lot,” suggests that not all high schools can offer a reliable or accurate explanation of climate, and therefore, in the three-part list, high schools are treated as the least tangible for

Republicans to get a good grounding of climate change.

Months later, on April 09, 2016, Clinton performs the same moral vignette and uses high schools as a lower-level educational category. Clinton’s wording could offend high school teachers or provide Republicans with fodder to attack Clinton’s inability to relate to everyday

Americans. Criticisms like these may seem small but such moments in rhetorical delivery are

158 crucial if you redo the performance at another rally. Clinton has been of being elitist, and we can see this trend dating back to the 90s with Clinton’s infamous comment about staying home and baking cookies to refer to homemakers (see Bennister, 2016).

On the political rally stage, image matters for politicians, because audiences will find meaning in the vocal and nonverbal delivery style of the speaker, even when they do not intend one. Goffman (1956) made this semiotic lesson clear decades ago, noting that in everyday life, individuals give off intended and unintended impressions. Clinton errs on the side of distancing herself from the audience who may find the implication even a high school teacher can tell

Republicans about climate change to be offensive.

Like the previous excerpts, Clinton plays off “liberal moral values.” As Lakoff (1996) notes, the “nurturant parent” model of morality conceptualizes moral action as a sacrifice for the greater good of others (p. 120). Republicans do not deny climate change; they are not acting morally because special interests influenced them. In Clinton’s story, they are not working for the greater good of Americans.

Story Moral 7 Moral agents are people who sacrifice for others, and, despite differences, should be informed on the facts of an issue. Republicans act like they deny climate change, but in reality, they are being influenced by a non-present third-party. Renewable energy could help the environment and provide jobs for Americans; therefore, to deny this action goes against the needs of everyday Americans. Accordingly, Republicans are not acting as moral agents with American’s best interests in mind.

These examples of voice-oriented demonstrations (Clark, 1996, 2016) provide a range for how

Clinton animates non-present characters. Although Tannen (2003) reserves the term

“ventriloquizing” to refer to instances where a person animates a present second part by acting or speaking as that person in their presence, the quotations Clinton performs still serve different aspects of ventriloquism.

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As Tannen (2003, 2007, 2010) has shown, “speaking as” a real or imagined person requires the performer to animate the voices of figures, which can help them secure solidarity and wield power over others. By animating Republicans or Trump, Clinton can hold power over their voices, and make them “hearable” or “seeable” despite their non-presence. When politicians speak as another, they control what is said, how it is said, and the attitudes attributed to the character. Clinton often fails to animate her adversaries in ways that would show she can wield power over them (Tannen, 2003). Instead, she usually opts for energizing the voices of familiar individuals or those who share similar liberal and cultural values, therefore, creating solidarity or connection with her audience through the recognizable leaders. For the last example, I show a rare instance in my dataset where Clinton individuates and animates her adversary, Donald

Trump. While Clinton’s speechmaking practices favor an oral tradition of oratory, Extract 11 presents an example of how Clinton can on occasion use a more mimeticized bodily quotation from time-to-time.

“Trump Lurks over Clinton at Presidential Debates” Near the end of the campaign, Clinton used more dramaturgical maneuvers to discredit Trump. In the majority of the extracts, Clinton avoided mimeticizing the voice or body of her opponents.

More often than not, she “animated” characters such as Maya Angelou, her hard-working father, and 102-year-old Democratic voter to use their magnified, or heroic voices to empower her supports and selectively present the voices of her adversaries. In the following discrediting strategy

(cf. D’Errico et al., 2010), Clinton attributes negative characteristics to the body of Donald Trump to spoil his image. I want to emphasize that “caricatured demonstrations,” as I refer to them, occurred very infrequently in Clinton’s speeches. Here, Clinton recounts her experience combating Trump during the second presidential debate, which took place October 9th, 2016. The dialogic skit contextualizes Trump within the broader newsworthy stories about his relationship

160 with women. Clinton’s comments refer to the infamous Access Hollywood tape that emerged of

Trump demeaning women with oversexualized, objectifying comments (Victor, 2017).

Extract 11: “Trump Lurks over Clinton at Presidential Debates” [Lake Worth, Florida, October 26th, 2016] Pantomiming a Character 1 Cli: Now-now did anyone see the last debate? [(1) smiles 2 Aud: [Yeah-ZZZZZZZZZZZZ-[x-x-x (4.0) 3 Cli: [Ya know 4 I stood next to Donald Trump- 5 for four and a half hours. 6 Aud: [zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz= 7 Cli: [In those three debates? 8 Aud: [[=zzzzzz (3.8) 9 Cli: Proving I think once and for all that that I have the stamina 10 [ to be presid(h)ent. (2) left hand performs multiple index finger extended beats 11 Aud: [cccccccccCCCCCCCCC= 12 Cli: [[And no matter what he did. (3) waves left hand 13 Aud: [[=x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x (8.4) 14 Cli: No matter what he said. (4) continues to hold flat handshape of waving hand and turns her body 15 No matter how he sta:lked 16 me: and [lu::rked o:ver me::. (5) creeps slowly to the side of the podium to show “Trump’s hunch body hoovering over Clinton”

17 Aud: [HHHHHHHH-woo-HHHHHH (4.5) (6) walks back to the podium 18 Cli: I just kept thinking about what Michelle Obama said (7) holds her left hand up in the air 19 Aud: ((slight audience wooing)) 20 Cli: [“When he goes low” (8) lowers left hand with index finger pointing down

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21 Aud: [When he goes low (including gesture) 22 [[↑”We go high.” (9) audience raises hands as well 23 Cli: [[We go high (including gesture) 24 Aud: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (5.7) 25 And boy has he gone low. 26 Right?

Like some of the previous extracts, this story is a humorous telling that secures noticeable audience participation. In line 1, Clinton prefaces her story (Jefferson, 1978) and orients the audience to the details of the story-world. When Clinton utters, “Now-now did anyone see the last debate?” she secures heightened audience recipiency and projects a related story about the presidential debates.

By mentioning the debate, Clinton invites the audience to show affiliation and to believe that she is a more skillful debater than Trump. The question offers a moment for the audience to anticipate him being the “butt of her joke,” especially since she often verbally mocked Trump’s debating abilities long before the debates had occurred (Merica, 2016). Her question invites the audience to respond with substantive shouts and yelling remarks (Ln. 2); however, the phrasing of the question itself poses a potentially problematic issue for Clinton’s closeness to the audience.

Campaign speeches are often delivered to a sympathetic audience, and therefore, it should be assumed that the audience is keeping track of the debates and newsworthy events. By articulating the question in this manner, Clinton possibly distances herself from the audience. The rhetorical question does not presuppose closeness with them even though she should expect them

162 to watch or read about the second debate. Clinton unwittingly reveals that “out of touch” with her supporters. She secures solidarity with her rally cohort, but by assuming that they lack epistemic access to the highly mediatized debates, the delivery would appear counter to this aim. More to the point, this very same “debate skit” was performed multiple times across her campaign trail, using the same question format. The question projects a future story related to the presidential debates. Clinton accompanies her question with a turn-opening smile (Kaukomaa, Peräkylä, &

Ruusuvuori, 2013) that signals to the audience she is about to tell a humorous story. Smiling as she utters the question enables her audience to anticipate her funny, emotional state and share her stance towards the story plot and characters.

The setting of the story is built up further when Clinton jokes about having shared the debate stage with Trump. In lines 3-10, Clinton mocks Trump’s inability to debate skillfully, which is a mark of his outsider political status. Her proof of stamina comes in the form of spending hours debating Trump (Ln. 4-5). The audience provides evidence for this interpretation during their uncoordinated buzzing (Ln. 6). Also, some viewers can be seen using a “facepalm gesture” or shaking their heads. The facepalm gesture is used to indicate exasperation or emphasize how hopeless someone is by “slapping” their forehead with their palm. Likewise, the head shakes conveys a complementary signal, indicating the audience member’s disbelief that Clinton could stand next to Trump for so long. Although it is difficult to determine the exact meaning of these gestural performances, the actions of the audience mark Clinton’s joking sequence as a Trump criticism.

There is also an added layered of meaning to her utterance in lines 9-10 since it requires presumed knowledge for its interpretation. Clinton refers to the fact that Trump criticized her during the debates for not having the stamina to be president (Tatum, 2016). Hence, the sequence

163 is part of a broader, continuing rebuff meant to jokingly “prove Trump wrong.” There are different ways to interpret Trump’s use of the term “stamina,” since, some have indicated that it is a sexist critique of Clinton that reflects the U.S. presidency as a male-dominated position of power (Allen,

2016). The joke Clinton makes says something akin to: “Anyone who can stand up and debate

Trump and his ludicrous behavior surely has stamina.”

To appreciate the crux of the joke, Clinton upgrades her performance to a demonstration of how Trump acted. She uses syntactic repetition of the construction “No matter what he [did, said],” to evoke a generic schema of his actions. Her actions are, once again, part of a standard rhetorical device: problem-solution format (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986).

First, she constructs a three-part problem that is packaged in a repetition leading up to the punch-line in series. In the first two iterations of the phrase, Clinton does not specify what Trump did or said, rather, she saves the explicit characterization or bodily quotation until the third iteration

(Ln. 12, 14, 15, 16). Delivering the third part of the problem Clinton remarks, “No matter how he stalked and lurked over me” (Ln. 15-16). As she produces this utterance, a few prosodic and nonverbal features become noticeable. She elongates her pronunciation of the words, hunches her shoulders up high, slowly makes her way across the stage, and finally; she demonstrates “how

Trump lurked” behind her on the debate stage. The problem is not only described, but it is also made visual in the third iteration. Clinton takes on Trump-character and depicts his habits. The body quotes serves as a presentational, mimetic mode that shows Trump as a “caricatured demonstration,” something I will explore in depth in the next section. Her audience is invited to share in ridiculing Trump, and they laugh and “woo” in response (Ln. 17).

“Success” of her performance is dependent on a variety of factors. And I would like to draw our attention to some issues that go beyond the moment-to-moment conversational sequences

164 analyzed here. Afterward, I will return to the latter half of this story segment. The moment Clinton refers to was a visible instance in the presidential debates. The characterization of a “creepy” or

“lurking Trump,” is contextualized within a broader cultural moment. In the beginning of October

2016, Trump encountered significant criticism after the leak of a “Hollywood Access” video that involved a recording of Trump bragging about his sexual exploits with women. If we think about this particular rally moment as it relates to the entire campaign, Clinton continually criticized

Trump for not defending women’s rights and blatantly objectifying them. Therefore, the characterization of Trump “looming behind her” at the second presidential debate is a more substantial method of spoiling his image. The bodily quotation is an attributive rebuff; a maneuver that labels Trump, both descriptively and pictorially, as an intimidator of women. Clinton does not explicitly say this exact phrasing in the story, but she recounted the moment in several public forums.

In her book, What Happened, Clinton recounts preparing for the debates and her experiences with Trump. Clinton (2017) the incident of Trump looming over her and she thought to herself: “Back up, you creep, get away from me, I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up (emphasis original)” (p. 136). Clinton even discussed the incident on the Ellen DeGeneres Show on October 14, 2016, arguing that Trump angerly stalked her

(Berenson, 2016). Strategic maneuvers like the ones described above, attempt to brand Trump as a sexual harasser and mistreater of women. Her performance is fueled by Trump’s subsequent scandals and their coverage in the news. The moment became so popular and turned into the

“Trump Lurking Behind” meme that likened Trump to a horror film stalker (“Trump Lurking

Behind Clinton Images,” n.d.) Also, a skit on Saturday Night Live continued the popularization and satirization of Trump creeping behind Clinton (VanDerWerff, 2016).

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In her previous extracts, Clinton told stories limited in their shared epistemic access.

Usually, the stories are ones only Clinton and her campaign team would have experiential access to or familiarity with. Extracts like 5 and 6, tell her memories of her father. These episodic moments were not readily available to the audience regarding perceptual access. Therefore, dialogic moments like these would require more “dramaturgical” modes of engaging the audience in offering a visible, experiential story. Without having much first-hand access to the events being talked about, the narrator is required to provide more scenic and character details. Moments like

Extract 11 build upon already mediatized, ideologized, and moralized situations. The Trump lurking incident was covered widely in social media and television broadcasting, and therefore, the performance was recognizable to a large-scale audience. Intelligibility allows the viewer to enjoy the experience and the performer to condense how it is performed.

To return to the vignette, Clinton quotes another political figure near the end of the segment.

After creating a mimetic space (Issacharoff, 1989) that invites the audience to disaffiliate with the

Clinton-as-Trump-caricature, she sets up a contrastive portrayal. In this case, Clinton cites part of

First Lady, Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention: “When he goes low, we go high” (Ln. 21-22). The statement evokes an orientational, embodied metaphor:

GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN (cf. Lakoff, 1996; Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, pp. 16-17). In American culture, we experience VIRTUE UP; DEPRAVITY IS DOWN, and therefore, a metaphorical account characterizes Trump as an immoral, depraved person who mistreated women. And, her quotation of Obama is the solution part of the three-part Trump problem, and therefore, it invites the audience to respond. A co-speech gesture accompanies the performance as she enacts the metaphorical, moral schemas. We can examine Clinton’s dramaturgical ingenuity by comparing her reproduction to Obama’s original utterance.

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MICHELLE OBAMA – JULY 25, 2016 HILLARY CLINTON – OCTOBER 26, 2016 How we explain that when someone is cruel or I just kept thinking about what Michelle acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. Obama said, “when he goes low, we go high.” No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.

Figure 5. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton using the low-high metaphor. On the left is Michelle Obama’s original utterance and gestural performance of her low-high metaphor. On the right is Hillary Clinton quoting Michelle Obama at this moment.

While Obama embodies the metaphor with solemn, small gestural movements, Clinton exaggerates the quotation to stir up audience response. Clinton holds her left hand up as she faces the audience; she then moves her hand and body downward and then upward. The exaggerated demonstration gives the audience time to remember and orient to Obama’s words. The performance is juxtaposed to the previous hyperbolic performance of Trump.

First Lady, Michelle Obama (Ln. 15-16), serves as a contrastive moral figure, one who stands up to people who bully or intimidate women. Again, Clinton harnesses the “voices” of respected individuals to diminish the image and credibility of her adversaries. Regarding content,

Clinton’s quotation displays dialogic resonance (Du Bois, 2007) with Obama’s, in that, both speakers were talking about women’s issues and the “bullying language” used by Republicans during the campaign. This example shows how quotations can become a means of a shared stance position, one that has been turned into a recognizable campaign slogan. Clinton focuses on

“documenting” what a speaker said and the propositional content; she does not necessarily illustrate how the figure delivered their message. The audience anticipates and recites Obama’s quotation alongside Clinton, even including the enactment of the metaphor through their body. 167

Clinton’s voice is not animated, at least in the sense of capturing mimesis of her character and personality. In a roundabout way, one could argue that she is still demonstrating Obama’s metaphorical gestures, and therefore, it is still a demonstration of her character.

What I can say more definitively, however, is that it illustrates how mimetic performances can persuade audiences. “Success” of this performance is perhaps best judged by the coordinated summoning of audience participation when she delivers the solution (Ln. 24). Such moments enable the viewer to display affiliation and shared moral stances (Du Bois, 2007) towards a given political event and target. Quotations also gain power because they are intelligible to a larger audience before their reproduction (Finnegan, 2001). Unlike our previous instances, this character demonstration is not the typical story length found in her other tellings. The performance is fragmented into short multimodal snippets that speak more about the mimesis of the characters

(herself included) than her policies. I will examine condensed, fragmented quotation segments more firmly in the next chapter, focusing on how Trump creates caricatured demonstrations of his adversaries. I show this as the last extract to demonstrate that Clinton can use more mimetic devices to individuate, animate, and characterize others; however, in my data, she more often than not “documents” words and actions, emphasizing descriptive content than content that is presented or, that is, made an audible or seeable stylization of a person’s character.

Like the other extracts, Clinton presents a morality play, whereby, Trump is a “villainous womanizer,” and Clinton is the “victimized woman being harassed.”

Story Moral 8 Trump is an immoral character who intimidates women. We can see evidence of his unethical treatment of women in the “Locker Room Incident,” a situation Clinton implicitly hinted at in the telling. The point is made more explicitly when Clinton references Trump lurking at the debates.

In this case, Clinton seems more successful at garnering a massive responses from audience because Trump’s “lurking behavior” has been talked about substantively in broadcasting media

168 and social media. Clinton is not simply performing mimesis of action, but mimesis of character

(Ricoeur, 1984). Extract 11 differs from those previously discussed because Clinton harnasses the media coverage on Trump’s inappropriate behavior with a woman to create a highly recognizable pejorative demonstration. In this instance, Clinton mimes Trump’s character or personality. In doing so, Clinton produces a version of Trump audiences relate to because the same damaging critiques have been presented already in the news. The audience is likely to have access to Trump’s notable, media-covered foibles and as such; it allows them to have immediate epistemic access to the reported event. Additionally, Clinton animates Trump and gives him his own bodily presence

(individuates him), while simultaneously using this Trump-character to critique his moral character overtly.

Summary In this chapter, I have explored Hillary Clinton’s quoting practices during the 2016 presidential campaign. As she expressed quite vehemently on the campaign trail, she was running a campaign focused on political issues, not stylized characterizations or insults audiences can associate with

Trump. Clinton did, however, attack her adversaries and competitors, just not in the same manner as Trump. To “attack” or “spoil the image” of her competitors and adversaries (for example, Trump,

Republicans, and drug companies, or other institutions and figures she deemed “morally” corrupt),

Clinton harnessed the voices and bodies of various authority figures. These authority figures include everyday people (e.g., voters, struggling Americans, her family members), celebrity figures and powerful leaders (e.g., Maya Angelou, Michelle Obama, Mother Teresa), other political figures (Barak Obama, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders), and herself. Fitting with her campaign slogan, “Stronger Together,” Clinton told stories that quoted the bodies and voices of “the

Americans people,” often pitting these characters and their moral values against her adversaries.

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In my study, it became clear that Clinton adopts an oratorical style dependent on the strong use of rhetorical devices associated with mainstream politicians (Atkinson, 1984a, 1984b, 1985;

Bull, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016; Bull & Feldman, 2011;

Bull & Miskinis, 2015; Bull & Noordhuizen, 2000; Bull & Wells, 2002; Choi & Bull, 2016;

Clayman, 1992, 1993; Duranti, 2006; Heritage & Greatbatch 1986; Wells & Bull, 2007). From three-part lists to headline-punchline rhetorical formats, Clinton invites audiences to take part in her stories through recognizable speaker-audience interactional mechanism.

But, when it comes to examining the practice of animating and individuating characters as part of her moral vignettes, Clinton rarely uses the potency of depiction or direct quoting as a method of communication (Clark, 2016). I have found that Clinton’s “matter-of-fact” style of quoting is, for the most part, diegetic narration: she describes the actions, utterances, and personalities of the figures she portrays (see Extract 4-8). In “documenting uses of quotation” (cf.

Redecker, 1991), Clinton momentarily evokes the words of speakers with an air of evidential precision (Drew, 2003). Quotations of figures like Maya Angelou, Michelle Obama or everyday

Americans are read from written manuscripts or teleprompters as they are speaking about policy issues that affect American citizens. Reading from a script allows Clinton to provide quotations that index a degree of precision or “quasi-verbatim status” since they are captured in written text and then verbalized, as was the case with her quotation of Maya Angelou and Michelle Obama in

Extract 5 and 11. Clinton narrates characters through more indirect speech quoting methods, which entail: (i) using third-person pronouns, (ii) not demonstrating or selectively depicting characters,

(iii) locating the deictic center of the narration in that of the time of speaking in a distal context, and (iv) conveying “factual” information (Longacre, 1983; Mayes, 1999; Chafe, 1994).

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While both indirect and direct forms of quoting characters can be sympathy-producing in narrative situations (Sternberg, 1981, 1982), more direct means of animating characters allows audiences or listeners to “emphatically insert themselves into, vicariously re-experiencing what took place,” as Goffman (1974, p. 504) writes. When Clinton attempts to animate characters such as her father, two teenagers fighting for equal pay, or Republicans speaking on climate change

(Extracts 5, 6, and 8), she limits her dramaturgical production of these characters. In her more diegetic, indirect means of presenting characters, Clinton makes it evident that we are hearing the

“narrators voice and body,” not the “characters' voice and body” (Loncagre, 1983). Clinton’s, as the narrator, clearly infringes on the voices and bodies she purports to quote, creating a sense of distance between what is attributed to the characters. When Clinton demonstrates her father's actions as a silk screener, for example, she mimes actions, enacting generic acts of a silk screener as she describes the process. However, Clinton does not translate the mimesis of action into mimesis of character (cf. Ricoeur, 1984), in the sense that, she did not animate or depict any distinctive features of her father’s personality and manner of speaking or acting. The result is, the audience is asked to imagine a hard-working, middle-class man that is meant to be contrasted with

Trump, but this is not fully realized and made permeable to the audience. Clinton’s long narrations, unintentional methods of distancing herself from the audience, and her lack of dramaturgical ingenuity did not do her any favors when it comes to the delivery of her stories. More to the point,

Clinton’s well-crafted moral vignettes are intended to use the characters to demonstrate “moral superiority” over her adversaries and competitors, but many of the events, being distal events

(Chafe, 1994) that only Clinton had access to, would require a level of theatrical finesse to create a joint pretense and an imaginable scene (Clark, 1996, 2003, 2016). And it is at this point in

Clinton’s oratorical abilities that she falls short of reaching audiences or, at the very least, fails to

171 redefine her image against negative portrayals of her as an elitist, out of touch politician (Schoor,

2017).

As we saw in Extract 10 and 11, Clinton can undoubtedly perform mimesis of character of

Trump or voters that helps the audience see the moral points she is trying to make; however, these moments, at least in my data, were few and far between. Clinton is unquestionably a gifted orator, but when it comes to telling stories to everyday Americans, her lack of theatrical finesse does not do her any favors in creating imaginable scenes and characters that audiences can understand, sympathize with, and respond to in their moments of being quoted or demonstrated. The reason for Clinton’s obstinance towards “dramaturgy” in political campaign speeches, in the context of quoting, is something worth pursuing but would require more careful ethnographic explorations of her speeches and consideration of the performative burdens placed on female politicians and presidential candidates trying to make it in a male-dominated profession.

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Chapter 5: Donald Trump and his use of Caricatured Demonstrations to Dramatize, Exaggerate, and Simplify Political Characters

Introduction Humans are mimetic creatures evolved to take conscious control over their motoric actions, and they can use this skillfulness to imagine themselves as, or in the place of others (Donald, 1991,

1998, 2001, 2005, 2006). Merlin Donald’s (1998) cognitive perspective reminds us that mimetic devices allow humans to communicate, share sensory experiences, and adapt how they present the world to others. Mimesis is a form of “kinematic imagination” (cf. Donald, 2001) that enables humans “to model the whole body, including all its voluntary-action systems, in three-dimensional space” (Donald, 1998, p. 49). As an evolving human capacity, mimesis depends on our ability to memorize, rehearse, review, and refine our perceptual actions in a way that creates an

“unpredictable public theater of convention” (Donald, 2002, p. 274). In Chapter 4, I examined the public theater conventions of Hillary Clinton, noting that she does not use the depictive prowess of quotations. Quotations as demonstrations can enable the teller and audience to imagine jointly or simulate parts aspects of a storyworld (Clark, 1996). A cursory goal in these political stories is to create audible or seeable scenes and characters. Demonstrations do more than depict referents and their actions; they can also be used to either empower or foil the iconically fashioned other

(Clark, 1996, 2004, 2016; Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark & Van der Wege, 2015; Wade & Clark,

1993). The general lack of animation and individuation of specific characters on Clinton’s part creates diegetic-oriented, scenic production, where the point is to “document” characters and what they stand for (cf. Redeker, 1991), not show them or make them visible.

Trump is agent-focused, and crafts pejorative animations of those who oppose him. In

American politics, quotations, as they are embedded in stories, can be an effective dramaturgical strategy for engrossing audiences (Clark, 1996; Lodge, 1986), positioning social actors via implicit

173 or explicit attitudes (Holsanova, 2006; Kuo, 2001; Lane-Mercier, 1991), and undercutting the arguments of adversaries. I use this chapter to explore a different kind of public theater: how the

2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump manufactures demonstrations to caricature a wide range of political figures.

Scholars have argued prodigiously that Donald Trump has a political style, unlike any other

U.S. politician. Claims of Trump’s “uniqueness,” however, depends on whom we are comparing him to and by what standards we are judging him. Trump uses oratorical maneuvers that appear to veer off the course of the ideal, stereotyped image of a “mechanistic,” “put-together politician.”

Whether it is his use of pointing to establish an interpersonal engagement with a specific audience member or his off-script, off-topic banter, reminiscent of a close friend telling a short anecdote,

Trump’s folk-entertainer style of oratory appears recognizable to American audiences. While there are several areas of Trump’s un-conventional political style that are worth empirical investigation, the current chapter focuses on one piece of the rhetorical puzzle, that is, how Trump performs caricatured demonstrations and their rhetorical effects on the speaker-audience.

Trump and Clinton differ in their oratorical skillfulness concerning their abilities to animate, individuate, and depict characters in their stories told to rally audiences. Linguistic anthropologists have noted, Trump commands a handful of visual rhetorical strategies such as his extensive use of iconic gestures and “embodied mimicries” that he uses to make himself stand out from other American politicians (Hall et al., 2016). Earlier, I suggested that Clinton’s stories tended to have limited imaginability; Clinton has experienced the events she talks about, but the audiences may or may not have. The crowd’s lack of epistemic access (Stivers et al., 2011) to these stories is not necessarily a problem but would require Clinton to specify the characters more explicitly when she is quoting and portraying them.

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Trump uses already-packaged media events and character depictions and descriptions that make demonstrating characters notable. As I will show, “dramatized snippets” (Jamieson, 1994) help Trump keeps his audiences attentive to the manufactured, fractured versions of reality that he presents (Lane-Mercier, 1991). I substantiate and build on these claims by examining how Trump tries to tell cogent stories, but instead, reverts to fragmented, anecdotes about these characters.

Trump uses mimetic devices to make visible or imaginable the characters he portrays. Differing from Clinton, he produces versions of his adversaries intending to lampoon or burlesque the target and the larger institutions they represent (cf. Pino, 2016).

Trump creates demonstrations where he inhabits the role of different figures (media commentators, politicians, other citable characters) to craft damaging portrayals (Sauer, 2003). A significant part of this analysis dedicated to a subtype of mimesis I term: caricatured demonstrations, building on Clark and Gerrig’s (1990) theory of quotations as demonstrations.

The most basic rhetorical outcome of caricatures is to size up opponents and defame their image

(i.e., weaken their ethos or moral character). In these anecdotes, Trump shows the past actions or events involving a citable figure: presenting the quotation as if it were a “fair evaluation” of the figure. The portrayal of characters in these events involves salient vocal or gestural behaviors. A performer like Trump can use these culturally intelligible actions to encourage his or her audience to make inferences about someone’s moral character. I will explore dimensions of caricatured demonstrations as it relates to Donald Trump animating or individuating characters and how his practices compare to his political adversary: Hillary Clinton.

Manufacturing Caricatured Demonstrations of Various Political Actors

In the 2015-2016 campaign cycle, Trump disparaged others: foreign leaders, Republican and

Democrat figures, significant businesses, and American citizens through name-calling devices and

175 caricatured demonstrations. Lyin’ Ted Cruz, 1 to 48 Jeb Bush, Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, and the Dishonest Media, are among of the nicknames part of his foiling arsenal (Cillizza, 2018;

Flegenheimer, 2018; Hall et al., 2016). Trump’s defaming nicknames and co-occurring embodied performances bring together spoken discourse and gesture into a focused, multimodal attack on a cited character. As we shall see, Trump’s demonstrations are recognizable regarding his use of mimetic devices.

To understand Trump’s visual rhetoric, I will explore the different embodied resources harnessed in quoting. Like the previous chapter, my aim is not to single out each prosodic, gestural, or syntactic variable of Trump’s demonstration, but instead, I present a more holistic picture of the rhetorical goal of each character portrayal. Continuing with the format of the previous chapter, I have selected eight representative examples to show how Trump performs caricatures. With each interactional instance, I will build up a coherent picture of how Trump animates characters in his rallies through short, fragmented; moral snippets used to evaluate the cited figure’s qualifications, work-ethics, or aesthetics.

“Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (a)” The set of stories (Extracts 12-14) featured here show Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a written manuscript or teleprompters. In the previous chapter, I explored Clinton’s repertoire of citing figures, moving from single modality examples to more multimodal ones; in this case, I pursue the reverse order. Trump is a prolific animator of political characters, and so, I explore

Trump’s repertoire of demonstrations by analyzing more complex, multimodal examples first, those that include the synchrony of verbal and gestural channels of communication. After examining a range of multimodal cases, I then move to instances where Trump restricts his performances to bodily visual means alone. While I point out specific prosodic and gestural devices that belong to Trump’s caricaturing repertoire, a finer-grained analysis would need to be

176 done to isolate the acoustic all the salient details that go into an individual demonstration. I approach these demonstrations holistically by reviewing several samples and the interactional context in which these performances are embedded. I am interested in the rhetoric of demonstrations as they apply to Trump’s persuasive storytelling abilities.

In first anecdote, entitled “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter,” Trump illustrates how

Clinton delivers rally speeches. In this skit, he turns teleprompters, a conventional speech-delivery technology for politicians, into an egregious character flaw.

Extract 12: “Hillary Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (a)” [Cincinnati, Ohio, July 06, 2016] Voicing and Embodying a Character 1 Tru: And ya know: what I did 2 >oh let me tell ya little story< 3 these-I love this 4 I love this crowd. 5 .hh 6 Isn’t it nice when you don’t read from a spee:ch. <> (1) grips hands and moves them towards his face 7 Aud: CCC[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC (2.4) 8 Tru: [“Ladies and gentleman.”] <> (2) stiffens postures; begins o-lipped facial expression

9 ↑“THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR BEING HERE.” 10 Or ↑HILLARY with the teleprompters every single time. (3) stretches arms with palms facing the audience 11 .hhhh (4) turns head to left 12 “AND WHETHER YOU GO::” (5) stiffens posture; glances at the podium and then back to the left stage 13 (0.5) 14 “↑NORTH AND SOUTH” (6) turns head to the right stage 15 Aud: hhhhhh= 16 Tru: [“O:R (.) EAST AND WEST”] 17 Aud: [hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]hhhhhhhhh (3.9) (7) turns head to the left stage

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18 Tru: “↑DONALD TRUMP <> is a ba:d PERson.” 19 Aud: ((indiscriminate yelling)) ((LIAR)) (1.7) Tru: (8) turns his head to the right side of the stage 20 Tru: “DONALD; TRUMP MA:: DE A LOT of money in Atlantic City 21 but he hurt the little people.” 22 >She calls it the little pple.< (9) right hand moves outwards with palm up 23 “>He hurt the little ppl.<” 24 °I didn’t° (10) right hand palm out; shakes head slightly 25 made a lot of mo: ney. (11) right hand slices downward; transitions to pinch three fingers extended 26 And government what they di:d. <> (12) right hand slices downward (13) right hand slices downward 27 (0.5) 28 I’ll tell ya. (14) right hand performs l-shaped pinch beat 29 Did you see that sha:m? 30 I left several years ago. (15) right hand swipes three times; palm facing audience 31 .hh 32 But-but (16) right hand l-shaped pinch hold 33 she goe:s this (17) palms out gesture; hands alternative moving forward and backward 34 .hh 35 And then after a little while 36 did ya ever notice (18) both hands parallel with mid-torso; hands contract and then expand 37 after about twelve minutes 38 people start leaving? (19) palms faces the chest; brushing or sweeping away motion with both hands

Seconds prior to Extract 12, Trump praises his son Eric for his success in the real estate business.

Then, he projects a story about his son’s involvement and accomplishments in the political campaign. Trump launches a story preface (Jefferson, 1978; Sacks, 1971, 1974, 1978), but the proposed narrative about Eric does not follow (Ln. 1-2). He breaks from the activity of telling a 178 story about his son and proposes a competing activity of appreciating the rally crowd. In line 3,

Trump introduces what conversation analyst Gail Jefferson (1972) refers to as a “side sequence,” a moment in which a speaker takes a break from the ongoing activity to pursue a different one.

Trump withholds or subordinates the telling when he praises the crowd (Ln. 4-5). Henceforward, he pursues the subsidiary activity of telling an anecdote about “proper” or “engaging” speech decorum. The side sequence does not signal the complete abandonment of his initial Eric-related story, but a temporary suspension.

Before talking about Clinton, Trump initiates meta-commentary on his own oratorical abilities: “Isn’t it nice when you don’t read from a spee:ch,” (Ln. 6). The comment reflects on

Trump’s ability to break from normative speech conventions. His meta-commentary also contextualizes his praising of the crowd as an example of his “genuine” speech crafting abilities.

Line 6 projects a negative evaluation of a subset of people who deliver speeches while reading from a manuscript. As Trump is delivering a negative evaluation of this category of speakers, he grips his hands as if he were holding up a written document, and thus, he creates an imaginable prop (Clark, 2016). The audience cheers during the demonstration (Ln. 7), encouraging Trump to continue with his performance. The telling is locally occasioned by Trump’s self-appreciation of his own “impromptu” abilities because he shows he can take small moments from the speech- delivering activity to address the audience. In lines 8-9, he quotes a generic, underspecified figure supposed to be delivering a speech.

Trump does not use verbal quotation devices (i.e., verbs of speaking) to introduce the shift between his voice/body and that of a general speech-maker. He uses prosodic and gestural devices to signal his transition into the character role (Koven, 2007). The gestural delivery includes a noticeable stiffening of his body and the controlled use of a round, o-lipped facial expression (Hall

179 et al., 2016). Trump provides a mocking example of an “unengaging speech.” The complimentary prosodic shift entails lowering his pitch and using an exaggerated tempo (Holt, 2000; Klewitz &

Couper-Kuhlen, 1999). Trump acts as a “generic speaker” who adopts “stilted prose” and formulaic terms to address the present audience. The utterance,“Ladies and gentleman. Thank you very much for being here,” is an embodiment of a standard speech introduction that viewers are likely to have heard throughout their lives. Trump shows the generic character as a “pompous” and “artificial speaker” who delivers a canned speech.

Afterward, he uses this pre-fabricated figure to assess Clinton under an interconnected critique: reading from teleprompters at her rallies. Again, he sets up the stage for a short, amusing tale about Clinton’s speech delivery. Unlike Clinton’s stories, Trump’s story does not contain all the normative narrative conventions such as the orientation, background, complication, and resolution (Jefferson, 1978; Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Mandelbaum, 2012; Norrick, 2000). His stories are more akin to the narrative framework of anecdotes. Anecdotes, as I am defining them, are short, entertaining happenings that center on a single individual. Anecdotes can also be treated as gossip because the teller uses narrative conventions to criticize or spread rumors about a citable figure’s behavior (see Goodwin, 1990; Pino, 2016). Such anecdotes are useful for setting up the conditions for a caricatured demonstration of Clinton.

Trump moves from performing a generic target—a person who uses manuscripts to deliver speeches—to a more explicit characterization of Clinton reading judiciously from a teleprompter

(Ln. 10). As the antagonist to the second part of the anecdote, Clinton is demonstrated by speaking poorly of Trump’s integrity. Uttering, “Or ↑Hillary; with the teleprompters every single time,”

Trump extends his arms with his palms facing the audience. His two hands function as depictive props (Clark, 1996, 2016), creating an imagined stage that is perceptually accessible to the

180 audience. The imaginable scene establishes a shared background (Müller, 2013; Streeck, 2008,

2009). When Trump quotes Clinton, he does not refer to any specific speech or rally moment, but instead, his portrayal assumes that he is “showing” the habitual way she speaks to audiences.

Speaking as Clinton, Trump utters “AND WHETHER YOU GO:: NORTH OR SOUTH

EAST OR WEST DONALD TRUMP is a ba:d person” (Ln. 12-18). Again, the demonstration does not cite a specific time where Clinton would have said such an utterance. The quotation notably bares little epistemic or evidential precision (Drew, 2003), since, we do not have a reference point for when Clinton may have uttered her critique of Trump. Trump, acting as Clinton, is a practice that enables him to make claims about her character that is not consistent with her logos, argument-centered rhetoric (Bennister, 2016). Trump is not concerned with evidential accuracy; his performance is purely hyperbolic. When animating his Clinton-character, he is loud, and his vocal quality is aspirated. He also brings his arms and hands to his sides, restricting how his body—the imagined body of Clinton—takes up space. Last, his facial expression maintains the same exaggerated, round, o-lipped facial expression found in lines 8-9. When uttering the cardinal directions, he lingers in different stage directions: first left, right, left, and then back to the right

(see Table 5).

Table 5 Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (a) Speech Gesture and whether you go looks left north and south looks right or east and west looks left

Trump’s mechanical rendition of Clinton is made laughable. In rhetorical terms, the depiction arouses affiliative response with Trump and his evaluative project (Clayman, 1992; Osborn, 1976).

Laughter from the audience is heard several times throughout the initial Clinton-characterization

(Ln. 15, 17), thus, suggesting the interpretation above is credible. Laughable depictions of the

181 opposition allow for affiliation and disaffiliation at the same time. By laughing, the audience can appreciate the damaging portrayal of Clinton, affiliating with Trump’s stances towards her and other politicians more broadly. Spectators can also disaffiliate with the visualized figure by hurling insults such as “LIAR” at the portrayed, non-present Clinton-figure.

After the audience launches a few pejorative epithets at the Clinton-character, Trump swings his body towards the right side of the podium, delivering the upshot of “Clinton’s” argumentative point: “↑DONALD TRUMP is a ba:d person. DONALD TRUMP MA::DE A LOT of money in Atlantic City but he hurt the little people” (Ln. 20-21). Trump moves from a non- specific performance of Clinton’s “oratorical ineptitude” to a more focused critique of her speech in Atlantic City; a speech delivered earlier that day. Nowhere does Trump mention the argumentative basis for Clinton’s critiques of Trump’s business debt, bought with or bankruptcy, or harm his dealings may have done to small-business owners. He omits evidence incriminating him in the failing businesses in Atlantic City during the late 90s and the early 2000s (Buettner &

Bagli, 2016). Rather, Trump deflects Clinton’s criticism by focusing on the audience’s attention to her “moral essence” (cf. Lakoff, 1996).

While, in the Clinton chapter, I discussed aspects of the “nurturant parent model” when talking about Democratic ideas of morals, here, I elaborate on the “strict father model,” commonly associated with Republicans (Lakoff, 1996). In the strict father model, “moral character” is cultivated across one’s lifespan from childhood to adulthood, suggesting that one can be judged by their “character essence” (cf. Lakoff, 1996). Under this model of morality, a person is what they have done, and one’s actions in the past determine or reflect on their values, virtues, and future actions. By performing a version of Clinton speaking as a “mechanical” or “scripted” politician, Trump is making a broader claim about her character essence and general moral

182 compass. Trump creates a selective depiction (Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996) of Clinton, producing a scene where she is hurling “baseless” accusations at him. Trump can harness the imagination of the audience to create a burlesqued Clinton, whom he can refute (Ln. 24-30).

Claiming the government was at fault for the bankrupted casino in the 90s, Trump emphasizes his own “achievement,” since, despite the “sha:m,” Trump “made a lot of mo:ney” (Ln. 25, 29).

Trump characterizes Clinton as someone the audience should not trust. According to the

“moral logic” evoked in this segment, Clinton is “mechanical,” “lackluster,” and “unoriginal.” By enacting Clinton reading a negative evaluation of Trump from a pre-planned manuscript, Trump is trying to demolish her credibility (L.14). The inferential chain is oriented to by the audience who yells “LIAR” and other pejorative epithets immediately preceding his embodiment of Clinton

(Ln. 19). For Trump, demonstrations like these do not require “factual” precision or accuracy; the point of his performances of adversaries is to manufacture culturally intelligible and exaggerated icons of the person. Trump’s blatant disregard for indexical precision (Drew, 2003) suggests that his performances are intended to be caricatured, fault-find demonstrations (Ln. 6-23).

Although the term caricature is often relegated to graphic media and cartooning, the term fits these types of quotations. As the art historian and psychoanalyst, Ernst Kris (1952) reminds us, caricatures “are aimed at an individual or type, whom they portray with single features exaggerated; the natural harmony of an appearance is destroyed, and this has the result most times revealing a contrast in the personality between looks and character” (pp. 174-175). Caricature artists, when drawing, use graphic techniques to distort features of the illustrated body. Trump uses hyperbolic verbal and gestural demonstrations to create a distorted portrayal of a figure.

The features of caricature refer to how Trump modulates his delivery (voice and body) in ways that fall outside his normative range or habit. The aspirated, lower-amplitude vocal delivery,

183 and o-lipped facial expression, and stiff frame are not features unique to Clinton. They are generic bodily expression harnessed to create a caricatured demonstration of a social type: American political figures. Trump invokes a minimal, selective vocal and gestural actions (Clark & Gerrig,

1990; Clark, 1996; Osborn, 1976) to evoke a broader category of “self-righteous” and “predictable” politicians. Because a set of side sequences interrupted the initial story, Trump’s story is mostly a fragmented anecdote about politicians and their “character flaws,” of which Clinton is his representative figure. Taking on the role of a character in speech and gesture (Koven, 2007;

McNeill, 1992) becomes a means of caricaturing the body and voices of others. The character moral is as follows:

Character Moral 1 Clinton is a lack-luster politician who behaves like an automaton. Like politicians who read mechanistically from a speech produced by others, Clinton lacks originality and truthfulness showed in her behavior. She is told what to say and do by others (e.g., campaign manager, businesses, and speech writers), and if she is willing to forgo her voice now, we cannot expect any different in the future.

Extract 12 shows how fragmented anecdotes create the interactional slots for caricatured demonstrations. While Trump does not tell extensive, coherent stories, he creates short comedic moments for the audience. The focus of these “humorous skits” is to emphasize a character’s moral essence over factual evidence or verbatim quoting. In the next two examples, I will show the same skit but performed at different rally locations and times on the campaign trail. Comparing these renditions shows how Trump entextualizes (cf. Bauman & Briggs, 1990) these caricatured demonstrations, removing them from one interative context and placing them in another.

Fragmented anecdotes make these performances easy for cultural recognizability, interactional transportability, and audience reproduction.

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“Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (b)”

Extract 13 explores another repetition of Trump’s caricatured demonstration of Clinton.

Taking place at a rally in Erie Pennsylvania a month after the one in Ohio, Trump, once again, concentrates on Clinton’s moral character. In this speech, Trump focused heavily on America losing out to other countries which he attributed to outsourced labor and bad trade deals. Just before

Extract 13, Trump criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade agreement that was conceptualized in the 80s but was signed into law in 1993 by the 42nd President of The United States, Bill Clinton (Ford, 2008).

Extract 13: “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (b)” [Erie, Pennsylvania, August 12, 2016] Voicing and Embodying a Character 1 Tru: And ya kn:ow 2 did ya see where I say (1) right hand, palm sideways swipe 3 “I’M GONNA RENEGOTIATE NAF[TA.” (2) right hand performs small arch (3) right hand performs pinch beat with three fingers extended 4 Aud: [“TPP” ((audience member yells)) 5 “↑I’M GONNA” (3) right hand performs pinch hold with three fingers extended 6 “re-” TPP (4) right hand points to an audience member 7 D[isaster okay. (5) right hand swipes quickly (6) right hand points to the crowd again 8 Aud [bbbbbbbbbbbbb= 9 Tru: [↑don't worry. 10 [BBBBBBBBBBBB= 11 [[Don’t worry. (7) left hand flaps downwards 12 Aud: [[BBBBBBBBBBBB (3.9)[[[[“BOO” 13 Tru: [[[[AND HILLARY (8) right hand points near the midsection of his body twice 14 (0.5) 15 Was in favor of TPP. (9) right hand performs pinch beat with three fingers extended 16 She said “It’s the GOLD STANDARD.” 17 Thank you for reminding me? (10) right hand points to an audience member (11) right hand holds up his index finger 18 Aud: hhh[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh= 19 Tru: [I like this guy. (12) left hand points to the audience member 20 Aud: hhh[[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 21 Tru: [[“It’s the GOLD STANDARD.”

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(13) right hand performs three pinch beats 22 Aud: [hhh (4.6) 23 [TPP 24 Trans Pacific Partnership. (14) right hand performs three circular beats coinciding with each word 25 it is going to be: (15) holds his left hand up; palm out 26 (0.4) 27 I don’t think} it can be worse than NAFTA honestly (16) left hand palms up horizontal movement out from the body 28 but it’s gonna be as bad as NAFTA (17) left hand sweeps left, palm facing body 29 So TPP she SAID (18) right hand performs pinch beat with three fingers extended 30 .hh 31 “IT IS THE GOLD STANDARD” 32 She is reading it from a tele[prompter. (19) looks back and forth between the podium and imaginary teleprompter 33 Aud: [“Boo” 34 [hhhhhhhhhhh “woohoo”= 35 Tru: [“IT IS” (20) looks left

36 [=hhhhhh (audience continues to chuckle)= 37 (0.6) 38 [[“THE” (21) looks right with emphatic o-lips 39 Aud: [[hhhhhhhhh= 40 Tru: [[[“GOLD” (22) looks left

41 Aud: [[[hhhhhhhhhhhh=

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42 Tru: [[[[“STANDARD”. (23) looks right

43 Aud: [[[[[hhhhhhhhh (5.1) Tru: (24) right hand moves from the head downwards 44 Aud: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz “BOO” (slight laughs and indiscriminate shouts) (2.9) tru: (25) right hand performs dismissive gesture 45 Tru: [UH BO:Y 46 Aud: [=XXXXXX (cheering and whistling)= 47 Tru: [[=Our country’s in trouble. (26) head shakes 48 Aud: [[=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ((continues cheering and clapping))= 49 Tru: [[[↑OU::R COUNTRY’S in trouble. 50 Aud: [[[=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxx ((gets quieter))= 51 Aud: [[[[◦Our country’s in trouble◦. 52 Tru: [[[[=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ((tappers off)) (9.5)

Earlier, Trump describes NAFTA as the “Single worst trade document ever signed in the history of our country and probably in the history of our world.” This negative evaluation sets the stage for the forthcoming story: “And yaw kno:w did ya see what I say I’M GONNA RENEGOTIATE

NAFTA” (Ln. 1-3). At this moment, Trump quotes himself without explicitly acknowledging the source of his original utterance: the third presidential debate. He assumes his supporters share a common ground (cf. Clark, 1996) regarding his past statements and his current position on NAFTA.

After framing the forthcoming telling as a comment on his position towards NAFTA, an audience member screams “TPP.” Trump tries to repeat his utterance, cuts off his self-quotation mid-turn

(Ln. 5-6), and re-orients to the audience member’s comment. Pointing to the man in the crowd,

Trump shifts the discussion to different trade agreement: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). By acknowledging the audience’s comment, he engages in a side sequence that derived from the main topic (Jefferson, 1979).

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The quote refers to Trump speaking at the third presidential debate where he called Clinton out for “flip-flopping” on her stance towards TPP. In the debates, Trump cited NAFTA as an example of Clinton’s failed policies, since, as he argues, the trade agreement cost many Americans their jobs. At the referenced moment—the third debate—he accuses Clinton of lying about calling

TPP “the gold standard” of trade agreements. The interactional segment became a source of public controversy when Clinton claimed she did not call it the “gold standard.” Later, Clinton changed her opinion of TPP after the trade agreement was being negotiated. What Clinton actually said was,

“TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade — the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field” (Kullgren, 2016). By bringing up

TPP, the rally crowd member showing solidarity and familiarity with Trump’s earlier discourse about NAFTA and TPP. So, the TPP controversy involving Clinton gets reinstated and made relevant to the here-and-now speaker-audience interaction. Evidence for this interpretation is found in Trump’s orientation and response to the audience member.

With the newly established topic of TPP, Trump negatively evaluates the trade agreement, calling it a “disaster” (Ln. 7). The crowd agrees with his characterization, booing at the mention of TPP (Ln. 8-12). Trump assuages the audience’s concerns, implying he will take care of TPP when elected to an office position; several times he says, “don’t worry as he gestures dismissively away from his body (Ln. 8, 11). The negative co-evaluation transitions into a topically connected anecdote about Clinton’s stance on TPP. And in lines 13-15, Trump contextualizes Clinton as a

TPP supporter, rehashing his previous criticisms. Trump enacts Clinton: “It’s the GOLD

STANDARD,” but produces a disjunctive break in the current activity to thank the audience member (Ln. 16). The quotation is not noticeably animated or individuated; a character’s personality is not “enlivened.” It is not a clear demonstration of Clinton and her actions. The quote

188 is not so much a mimetic demonstration (cf. Clark & Gerrig, 1990) as it is diegetic documentation

(cf. Redeker, 1991) intended to quote Clinton in a seemingly “objective way.”

The quotation, short-lived as it may be, produces interpersonal connection, enabling

Trump to take up an “interlocutor role” (cf. Koven, 2007; Reyes, 2011) in the here-and-now moment. In the interlocutor role, he can break away from simple narration, and he “simulates a face-to-face conversation placing the social actors involved (political leaders and audiences) at the same level” (Reyes, 2011, p. 62). There are many language-specific devices that speakers can use to signal a shift to an interlocutor role. These devices include: making direct comments to the listener that break the current frame in progress, using affective intensifiers or discourse markers that help the speaker put forth an emotional or interpersonal stance, shifting to second-person pronouns, and engaging in laughter or interjections (see Koven, 2007; Reyes, 2011). Trump builds solidarity and interpersonal rapport with the audience (Ln. 17) whom he addresses directly. By stating, “I like this guy, ” Trump creates comical rapport with the rally crowd. Interpersonal interaction gives the audience the semblance of an everyday conversation and establishes camaraderie with Trump (Tannen, 2007).

Seconds later, Trump resumes the previous activity of quoting Clinton and her stance on the trade deal (Ln. 21). Trump produces a more classic quotation: he introduces Clinton’s words with a verb of saying. Trump does not animate Clinton, and rather, documents her presupposed utterances with no attention-grabbing prosodic or gestural devices used to create a vivid depiction.

It seems like he will transition into a more heightened presentation of Clinton when uttering “TPP” with an o-lipped facial expression and stiffened body; however, he momentarily abandons a

Clinton-demonstration (Ln. 23). The repeated part of the quotation garners a few, interspersed audience’s laugher tokens, but he quickly transitions into another side sequence by providing his

189 evaluation of TPP. In lines 23-28, he compares the two trade agreements (NAFTA and TPP) and concludes that they are equally terrible.

Up to line 29, Trump has attempted a telling about Clinton, but he does not move past the secondary, descriptive background. With the discourse marker “so,” Trump transitions back to the complicating action of the anecdote (Schiffrin, 1987), in this case, what Clinton said or did regarding TPP. For a third time, Trump quotes Clinton with little animation: “IT IS THE GOLD

STANDARD” (Ln. 31). And in line 32, Trump provides a focused frame of interpretation for his

Clinton rendition. He breaks from the quotation frame to offer meta-commentary: the Clinton- character is supposedly reading from a teleprompter (Ln. 32). As he utters, “She’s reading it from a teleprompter,” he looks back and forth from his left side to the podium, as if he were looking for his next speaking cues to appear on the imagined teleprompters. His actions create a shared, fictive simulation of the event (Clark, 1996). By setting up the imagined props; Trump creates a more believable scene. The audience orients to Trump’s characterization, booing and laughing at

“Clinton” (Ln. 34).

Trump creates an opening slot for a more discerning performance. For a fourth time, Trump repeats the same utterance “IT IS THE GOLD STANDARD” (Ln. 35-42). In the previous rehearsals of this quotation, Trump diegetically documented what Clinton “said,” however, in his fourth performance, he establishes a highly distorted image of Clinton. Once again, Trump performs a version of Clinton with the same embodied characteristics we encountered in Extract

12. Her character is made audible with a lowered pitch register and raised vocal amplitude. Her character is accompanied by a contorted facial expression and stiffened body. In his previous quotations, the point was to document what Clinton said to “prove” that she contradicts herself.

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As an performer, he provides a specific set of instructions for his final quotation: Clinton is supposed to be reading from a teleprompter.

Trump recycles his own caricatured demonstration as shown in Extract 12 (Goodwin, 2011,

2013), but he performs it in a new rhetorical situation. In both segments, Trump thrust a

“mechanical form of embodiment” onto the Clinton-character (cf. Bergson, 1914). When he utters the quote this time, he pauses between each lexical item, creating a “monotonous,” “robotic” version of Clinton (see Table 6).

Table 6 Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (b) Speech Gesture it is looks left the looks right gold looks left standard looks right

With each utterance, Trump repeats the same choreographed gaze pattern observed in Excerpt 1; he gazes left, then right, left again, and back to the right. The “humorous skit” distorts the audience’s perception of how “Clinton” appears. Unlike the previous quote in lines 16, 21, and 31, the fourth animates the figure providing an unambiguous context for interpretation. The scenic background enables him to depict how “Clinton” sounds and acts (changing her prosody and gestures) when delivering a speech.

Such depictive stylizations of the body are typical for joke telling or mocking sequences

(Goodwin & Alim, 2010), and the speaker can exaggerate any number of vocal or gestural dimensions to achieve a “comic end” (Clark & Gerrig, 1990). Linguistic anthropologists have taken note comic performances like these for some time. Anthropologist Keith Basso, for example, describes similar “comic techniques” found in Apache joke-telling when they imitate “white men.”

“Western Apache jokers,” Basso (1979) writes, “pursue invention and interpretation through caricature and hyperbole, portraying their characters to make them appear ludicrous and ridiculous”

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(p. 44). For Basso, caricatures in oral narratives involve two main principles: the “distortion principle” and the “contrast principle.” The contrast principle states that the joke-teller must select a “status-role” that is salient in a culture or community and contrast it with another figure in the other culture. In Extract 13, Trump has selected Clinton, a “prototypical American politician.” To make this contrast more culturally salient, the performer must select “stock phrases” or “habitual activities” associated with the role-status chosen. Trump selects an activity associated with politicians: giving speeches.

After choosing the points of contrast, he observes the “distortion principle,” taking the designated behavioral features and exaggerating their verbal and nonverbal delivery. As Clark

(1996, 2016) reminds us, demonstrations are “selective depictions” of their referents. Trump crafts a salient, iconic construal (Streeck, 2008) and layers explicit and implicit annotation (Clark, 1996) onto the depiction that help the audience interpret the cited figure. He establishes a chain of inferential, indexical meanings that are used to portray her vocal and gestural delivery (Clark &

Gerrig, 1990). He also describes how she called TPP the “gold standard,” and then he refers to the fact that she denied her commitment to the trade deal.

Demonstrations create a “joint pretense” (Clark & Van Der Wege, 2015) or a coordinated joint-imagining. Because of Trump’s performance, viewers can vicariously witness Clinton lying about her stance on TPP. To make this critique more damagingly clear, Trump depicts Clinton as delivering her stance towards TPP in a “mechanical,” monotone voice and bodily posture. The documented stance is quoted several times in this segment with little or no animation but is later transformed into an exaggerated demonstration intent on attributing specific ways of speaking, acting, and taking up stances to Clinton. “Mimesis,” as Donald Merlin (1991) argues, “is fundamentally different from imitation and mimicry in that it involves the invention of intentional

192 representation. When there is an audience to interpret the action, mimesis also serves the purpose of social communication” (p. 169). Demonstrations allow performers to conjure up intentional representations of others, intervening (Vološinov, 1973) in how audiences may see human figures from that point moving forward.

Trump’s anecdote is only possible because of the audience member who shouts “TPP” as

Trump is talking about NAFTA. The audience intervention opens a slot to talk about the opposition

(Clinton and the Democrats) and their views of the trade deal. Trump, calling out Clinton on her views on TPP, was broadcasted heavily in the news and on social media. YouTube video titles such as “Trump Calls out Clinton’s TPP Flip Flop” circulated in 2016, showing truncated version of Clinton and Trump arguing over what she said about TPP. With a few mimetic strokes, the third presidential debates become imaginable and available to carry out micro-interactional goals.

The demonstration in Extract 13 led to a broader accumulative evaluation of the political system and the actors who take part in the legislative institution. While Clinton is seen as laughable via Trump’s demonstration (Ln. 34, 36, 39, 41, 43), she also represents an opportunity for the audience to critique the American political institution (Ln. 44). Trump shows an even stronger evaluation, implying that with people like Clinton in charge, the U.S. is moving towards a decline.

His dismissive hand gesture and idiomatic expression “UH BOY” index a negative evaluative stance (Du Bois, 2007) geared towards Clinton. Clinton is made the “butt of the joke,” and the audience affirms Trump’s interpretation with overwhelming applause (Ln. 46). This negative stance-marker leads to Trump’s broader evaluation: “Our country is in trouble” (Ln. 47). Trump repeats the utterance three times, creating repetitive resonance with the audience which, as Tannen

(2007) has argued, creates a strong sense of solidarity. Trump’s Clinton-demonstration is used for two purposes. It immediately creates an image representation of Clinton to damage her image.

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Second, the damaging portrayal makes a much broader enthymematic or inferential critique: politicians like Clinton continue to cause ruin upon the country and the political system.

Again, the representation of Clinton is boiled down to a presupposed “moral character.”

The moralizing discourse is akin to Extract 12.

Character Moral 2 Clinton is a lack-luster politician who behaves in an unoriginal, robotic way. Like politicians who read mechanistically from a speech produced by others, Clinton lacks originality and truthfulness showed in her behavior. Clinton claims she did not call TPP the “gold standard,” but the demonstration presented by Trump suggests otherwise.

As fragmented as Trump’s stories are, they seem to work in Trump’s favor. Caricatured demonstrations have much in common with “graphic caricatures,” they are both contextually contained performances that can be grafted into a new context. Caricatures of any kind require specific cultural and historical knowledge for their interpretability (Gombrich 1940, 1963). In this case, whether Clinton called TPP the “gold standard” is not debated here; instead, Trump performs a demonstration that assumes her stance towards TPP. Trump does not use quotations to capture some factual occurrence; he creates a subjective, spectacle-producing version of reality.

“Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (c)” In Extract 12 and 13, I have shown two renditions of the same Clinton-demonstration, and the features involved in what I am calling caricatured demonstrations. The third example is a final iteration of the “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter” skit, which differs from the two earlier productions. Trump uses very minimal bodily or verbal elaborations to produce the next Clinton- teleprompter demonstration. Demonstrations render perceptual experience available to their audience (Clark, 1996, 2016; Clark & Gerrig, 1990). Clark’s definition of quotations as demonstrations is missing a rhetorical component, since demonstrations do not reflect reality as much as they refract (Vološinov, 1973) or compress (Osborn, 1976, 1986, 2018) lived experiences.

Through metonymic or synechdotal processes, demonstrations create a selective depiction of their

194 referents. The third instance, taking place at a rally in Florida just a few months after the previously discussed cases, shows caricatured demonstrations can become conventionalized into bare, minimal, mimetic strokes.

Extract 14: “Clinton Reading from a Teleprompter (c)” [Miami, Florida, September 16, 2016] Voicing and Embodying a Character without Propositional Content 1 Tru: We speak in rooms like this 2 this is about- 3 a hundred degrees right no:w. 4 zzzzzzz (0.7) 5 That’s considered a cool auditorium. 6 Aud: hhhhhhhh (0.7) 7 And the reason is we have such big crowds (1) right hand is held vertically sweeps to the right 8 like this one (2) right hand transitions to shape; shields eyes 9 Look at that- (3) points to the crowd 10 [every single corner- (4) right hand point moves across the crowd 11 Aud: [cccccccccccccccccCCCC (indiscriminate claps and whistles)= 12 Tru: unbelievable 13 Aud: =CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC (6.2) 14 Tru: THESE ROOMS WERN’T DESIGNED for this many people. 15 Aud: xxxxxxxxx-“woo”xxxxxxxxx 16 Tru: AND IT IS HO:T in these rooms. 17 Aud: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz(1.0) 18 Tru: AND WE STAND UP HERE AND WE TA:LK 19 and we do two or three 20 n’ sometimes we’ll be hitting fou:r 21 a DAY: 22 (0.6) 23 Do you think Hillary Clinton can get through O[NE? 24 Aud: [bbbbbbbbb“NO”BBB= 25 BBBBBBBBBBBB (3.9) 26 Tru: Ever see her 27 Eighteen-minute speech 28 “bom” (5) turns head to his left side 29 BOM (6) turns head slightly to his right side 30 “BOM” (7) turns head back to his left side

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31 “↑SEE YA”; (8) left hand waves

32 Aud: hhhhhhhhhzzzZZZZZZ(2.1)= 33 Tru: =↑“SEE YA” 35 “I AM GOING HO: ME.” (9) turns to “imagined Clinton audience” 35 Aud: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (2.4) ((Indiscriminate boos, claps, and yells)) 36 Tru: NA::H we’re doing it the right way- 37 and frankly? (10) both hands motion outward; palms up 38 Aud: zzzzzzzzz (0.6) 39 >When they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising< 40 I don’t have to; 41 because I do it the old-fashioned way- 42 I come into your neighborhood (11) both hands motion outward; palms up 43 ccc[ccccccCCCCCCCCC= 44 [right? (12) tilts head to side 45 =CCC[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC 46 IT’S A LOT CHEAper. 47 =CCCCCCCCC[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= 48 [↑IT’S A LOT HARDER WORK but a lot cheaper. 49 =CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC[CCCCCCC 50 [very true. (13) tilts head to side 51 =CCCCCCCCCCCC[CCCCCC= 52 [VERY VERY TRUE.= 53 =zzzzzzzzz (16.0)

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During his speech in Miami, Trump criticizes political leaders for letting Americans get taken advantage of by other countries. As Trump sees it, the United States is unsafe and holds little employment opportunities for American workers. Placing an emotional weight on how U.S. citizens are beings distressed, Trump talks about how he and his wife Ivanka has been traveling along the campaign trail trying to aid those in need. Part of these campaign travels, Trump remarks, involve giving speeches in less than desirable conditions.

Trump makes a sarcastic remark about the “cool” temperatures in the room, creating a

“joking framework” for the upcoming segment (see laughter in lines 3-5). The joke is short-lived, and Trump quickly transitions into a somewhat related discussion about drawing in rally crowds.

Cupping his right hand and holding before his eyes, he scans the room as he gives a reason he has such large rally crowds (Ln. 7-8). He forgoes a clear explanation for the crowd size, and instead; he instructs the audience to observe each other: “Look at that- every single corner- unbelievable”

(Ln. 9-10). He points to the crowd sweeping back and forth. At moments like these, Trump takes on an interlocutor role (Koven, 2007; Reyes, 2011), bringing the audience to his level and reinforcing group solidarity. Trump even jokes about the crowd breaking the building’s maximum occupancy (L. 14). And the audience cheers turn to overwhelming applause to showcase their support and pride.

Tactics that involve addressing the audience as though the speaker were having a conversation with them is typical in political oratory. Trump is using a rhetorical tactic Max

Atkinson (1984a) refers to as a “favorable reference,” an instance when the political orator directs

“praise not just to a particular individual, but to ‘us’ in general” (p. 37). These types of message assertions, Atkinson (1984a) argues, “Convey positive or boastful evaluations of our hopes, our activities, or our achievement stands a great chance of being endorsed by audiences with a burst

197 of applause” (p. 37). Not only does he refer to the ‘us’ (that is the crowd), he also makes the crowd size relevant. Now that Trump has focused the audience’s attention, he delivers the punchline:

“AND IT IS HOT in these rooms” (L. 16). The uncoordinated audience buzzing shows their orientation and appreciation for the joke. Next, Trump uses a more common rhetorical maneuver: a contrastive pair.

Contrastive pairs enable the politician to produce quick assertions and counter-assertions, allowing the audience to expect a completion point for the orator’s utterances and a punchline (see

Atkinson, 1984a). Rhetorical devices such as puzzle-solutions, question-answer sequences, and contrastive pairs can be used together for a stronger persuasive outcome. “If the speaker can present his audience with some puzzle,” as Atkinson (1984a) writes, then “he stands a good chance of arousing their curiosity and thus giving them more of an incentive to pay attention” (p. 73). By turning the audience’s attention to his ability to deliver multiple speeches per day, Trump contrasts his endurance on the campaign trail with that of Clinton’s (see Figure 5). Trump utters the contrastive punchline in line 24: “Do you think that Hillary Clinton can get through ONE?”

Tru: These rooms WERN’T designed for this many people. Aud: xxxxxxxxx- “woo” xxxxxxxxx Tru: AND IT IS HOT in these rooms. Aud: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (1.0) Tru: AND WE STAND UP HERE AND WE TA:LK

① and we do TWO or THREE

and sometimes we’ll be hitting FOUR:R a DA::Y (0.6) ② Do you think Hillary Clinton can get through O[NE? Aud: [bbbbbbbbb“No”BBB= =BBBBBBBBBBBB (3.9) Figure 6. Contrastive pair: Puzzle-solution format.

As Figure 6 shows, he creates a contrast between his “hard-working” self and a “stamina-drained”

Clinton. A contrastive pair enables the crowd to expect the speaker’s punch-line. The audience responds to his rhetorical contrast, agreeing that Clinton cannot stand up and deliver speeches to

198 large crowds. The rhetorical device persuasively invites the spectators to boo loudly when Clinton is referenced. Now that he has secured a positive presentation of his rhetorical abilities, he can distance himself even further from Clinton.

“Ever see her eighteen-minute speech,” Trump remarks as he caricatures Clinton (L. 26-

27). As with Extract 12 and 13, Trump repeats the stiff-bodied, o-lipped Clinton production where she appears to be reading from a teleprompter. Here, Trump downplays the propositional content of Clinton’s quotation, relegating her statement to non-lexical vocalizations (cf. Clark & Gerrig,

1990, p. 780). As Clark and Gerrig (1990) argue, speakers can edit out the propositional content of a citable figure’s utterance. By editing out Clinton’s words in this context, Trump is also critiquing Clinton’s stances and even suggesting her words do not matter. In Goffman’s (1974) terms, the joke is that Clinton is not the “principle” of her words; she is just the “animator” who reads from a teleprompter (see Table 7).

Table 7 Trump caricaturing Clinton reading from a teleprompter (c) Speech Gesture BOM looks left BOM looks right BOM looks left

Once again, Trump depicts Clinton as “lack-luster-performer,” whose delivery is “short-winded” and “mechanical-sounding.” Caricatured demonstrations do not capture the words of their referents with accuracy or precision. The caricaturing performer exaggerates and distorts the cited figure.

Trump produces minimal vocalizations (“bom”) to downgrade the significance of what

Clinton may have said in her speeches. And yet, it is still packaged as a quotation. The audience

199 is instructed to pay attention to her delivery. By pointing out that Clinton’s speeches are shorter than his (Ln. 27), he is evoking a stylized critique. In this example, we see how earlier iterations of this story and character production can become paired down to bare, conventionalized means.

If they become culturally salient enough, skits like these can become “emblematized” into quotable gestures (Kendon, 1992, 2004) that index a stereotypical representation and require little or no verbal contextualization.

Trump needs not to describe Clinton’s performance; rather, he can use depiction to show and denote something about her personality. “bom, BOM, BOM” is a vocalized quote that downplays propositional content of Clinton’s imagined speech (Tolins, 2013). He also depicts a

Clinton-character who exhibits little enthusiasm in her vocal delivery. Further interpretive clues are available, and Trump attributes the following words to Clinton: “SEE YA I AM GOING

HO:ME” (Ln. 32). As “Clinton” utters these words, she waves her hand at the crowd. The performance implies that Clinton fulfills the bare minimum of her job and after only “eighteen minutes” she is ready to retire. There is a lot of implicit social-indexical meaning layered on this caricatured demonstration. Trump takes only a few bodily features to exaggerate how Clinton is perceived. The final punchline of the joke (30-33) brings the audience to the realization that, once again, Clinton is not to be taken seriously; she is all talk, no action. Trump is not lampooning

Clinton alone; he is also making a broader claim about politicians. Clinton is simply a depictive sample (Goodman, 1968) of a category of “problematic politicians.” The rounded, o-lipped facial expression is repeated, and the audience is invited to laugh. Audience laughter dissolves into several indiscriminate forms of booing, clapping, and yelling (L. 33, 35). Trump has used caricatured depiction to foil his adversary, and, in this case, he juxtaposes a “stamina-depleted,”

“disingenuous Clinton,” with a “hardworking” and “level-headed” Trump.

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A caricatured Clinton is lumped together with “crooked politicians” who according to

Trump, “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising” (Ln. 39). In the imagined scene, mainstream politicians are made to appear inept compared to Trump’s ability to gain votes without campaign contributions. Instead, Trump is said to meet Americans in their neighborhoods (Ln. 40-

42). By disparaging Clinton, Trump tries to enhance his image. He accomplishes “hard work” for

“a lot cheaper” (Ln. 46, 48). The segment ends with the audience bolstering Trump’s image through intensified cheering (Ln. 43, 45, 47, 49, and 51) as Trump reaffirms his own vantage point.

Character Moral 3 Clinton is a stamina-depleted politician who can only deliver, eighteen-minute speeches. Like politicians who read mechanistically from a statement produced by others, Clinton lacks originality and truthfulness evidenced in her behavior. It is not essential to portray Clinton’s words is since they are not her own. Clinton and other politicians spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions to win; Trump does not require the same support, making him a stronger, more honest political contender.

It is ironic that Trump changed oratorical tactics later in his campaign to make himself appear

“more presidential” (Detrow, 2016). In this rally speech, Trump’s telling is more on point, most likely because he has teleprompters on each side of the podium. Although it is not the primary focus of this dissertation, I should mention that Trump changed his oratorical style later in the campaign and hired new advisors. Trump’s speeches in the latter half of the 2016 campaign were more controlled than in the Republican primaries; he read more carefully from a manuscript, thus lessening the appearance of caricatured demonstrations. This would suggest that being or acting presidential, does not entail such mimetic critiques of one’s opponent. Trump risks undermining his own depictive argument when he shows Clinton as a lack-luster, untrustworthy orator but then reads from a teleprompter.

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These first three extracts show a “replaying” (Goffman, 1981) of the same caricatured figure (Hillary Clinton); therefore, they only capture only part of the picture. The next several examples will continue to build up our definition and understanding of caricatured demonstrations by looking at various targets of Trump’s quotations. I will start with cases that involve the coordination of speech and gesture, then, move to an example with vocalizations and gesture, and finally, end with a discussion of quotations done entirely with a gesture. Examining these different instances will enable us to see what of human figures Trump animates and individuates in his stories.

“The Guy on the Maps Announcing the Election Results” Although we have only examined moments where Trump quotes Clinton, he also used caricatured demonstrations to analyze other figures involved in American politics. For instance, Trump attacked journalists, news anchors, and media commentators and referred to them as “the dishonest media” or “liars.” Like his critiques of Clinton, Trump used demonstrations to implicate news anchors, journalist, and camera operator (among others) as bias parties. In this extract, Trump demonstrates an unnamed news anchor using the interactive electoral map to report the votes for each candidate. Some lines are omitted; however, the number assigned to the gestures continues from the original transcript.

Extract 15: “The Guy on the Maps” [Mobile Alabama, December 17, 2016]

Voicing and Embodying a Character 1 Tru: Ya had one guy 2 ↑Whose really good. 3 (0.3) I mean he’s really good on the maps. (1) right hand depicts a map 4 right? 5 You know who I am [◦talking about◦. 6 Aud: [mmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhh (1.1) 7 Tru: ↑AND THAT MAP was so red 8 it was so [unbelievable (2) continues to hold up right hand as though it were a map; performs one beat gesture 9 Aud: [woo ((faint audience member))

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10 Tru: that map that 11 (0.4) 12 ya know they used to show it 13 and it was really depressing 14 everything was BLUE BLUE BLUE <>. (3) right hand moves around the imaginary map 15 .hh 16 THEY HAD THE ↑BLUE WA:LL 17 remember the blue wall that [was unbreakable. (4) right hand swipes from left to right, right to the left, and lastly right to left 18 Aud: [xxxxxxxxxxxxxx[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx= 19 Tru: [Boy did we shatter that wall. 20 right? 21 Aud: =Yeah-XXXXXX[XXXXXXXXXXXXX= 22 Tru: [We shattered that wall. (5) right hand points to the audience 23 Aud: XXXXXXXXX[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx= 24 Tru: [That wall was ↑SHATTERED. 25 Aud: [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-yeah-xxx (9.3) 26 Tru: [THAT WALL will never be the sa:me 27 so we broke the wa:ll. 28 So now we won Wisconsin. 29 ↑NOW we won Michigan. 30 (0.6) 31 And I’ll never forget the guy: (6) holds palms out 32 he was devastated. <> (7) palms out; hands move out to sides of the body, then close together 33 Aud: hhhhhhh (0.7) 34 Tru: This not in [his play. (8) palms out hands move away from each other 35 Aud: [mmmm 36 Tru: ↑He never even thought of this (9) gesture 8 and 9 continue; hands move towards each other and back out 37 .hh 38 “And his hand is like (0.1) quivering” (10) right hand moves aimlessly 39 “Ya know he-[cuz he puts it on the map” (11) right hand is pushed forward twice

40 Aud: [hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh= 41 Tru: [and the map turns red.

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(12) transitions from placing gesture to a swipe right 42 Aud: =[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHH (3.3) 43 Tru: “Donald Trump has won” (13) body begins quivering as he holds up right hand

44 “the state of Wisconson” 45 [“eeergh ooow no” <> (14) right hand slowly moves upwards above head as his body trembles

46 Aud: [hhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHH[HHHHHHHH= 47 Tru: [“Donald Trump” [(15) shakes head 48 Aud: =[CCCCCCCCC[cccccccccccccccccccc= 49 Tru: [“Cuz OH NO (0.2) OH NO” (16) grips hands to depict an imagined manuscript; shakily handles the “manuscript” 50 Aud: =[ccc-yeah (7.2) 51 Tru: [NO (17) shakes head; still holding the imagined manuscript 52 “Please check this ◦please check this◦” (18) gazes to his right as if talking to the production team

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53 Aud: hhhhhhhhh (1.1) 54 Tru: “Donald Trump has won-” (19) returns to stiff body pose as he faces the audience

55 “the state of Michig(h)an.” <> 56 (0.3) 57 Aud: I LOVE YOU ((Trump))-YEAH-CCCCCCCCC[Ccccccccccccccccc ((11 lines omitted)) 68 Aud: =[ccccccCCCCCCCCC[Cccccccccccccc= 69 Tru: [So now he goes:: 70 Aud: =[cccccccccccccc (6.7) 71 Tru: [So now he goes:: 72 Cuz they’ve been saying there is no way to get to two seven 73 Right remember? 74 (0.5) 75 “THERE IS NO PATH” 76 (1.0) 77 “to two-seventy.” (25) stiffens his body and displays o-lipped facial expression 78 Aud: zzzzzzzz[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (4.3) 79 Tru: [And the most they could get me to (26) pinch beat 80 was two sixty-nine. (27) right hand motions to the side 81 Remember that? ((31 lines omitted)) 112 ↑So now what happens 113 is 114 He’s up 115 “he says Wisconsin” (44) right hand thrust forward 116 “he says “Michigan” (45) right hand it thrust forward 117 .hh 118 and now:: 119 (1.0) 120 ◦He goes::◦ (46) transitions to the stiff body and o-lipped facial expression 121 (0.5) 122 “◦there is::◦” 123 Aud: bbbbbb 124 Tru: “◦no path◦” 125 Aud: hhhhhhhhh (1.1) 126 Tru: “◦for Hillary Clinton◦.”

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127 Aud: CCCCCC[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= 128 Tru: [“to become president” 129 Aud: =[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= 130 Tru: [“of the United States” 131 Aud: =[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= 132 Tru: [“DONALD TRUMP and his GREAT MOVEMENT” 133 Aud: =[CCCCCCCCC[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC[CCCCCC= 134 Tru: [“is president [OF the United States.” (47) puts both thumbs up 135 Aud: =[[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC[CCC= 136 Tru: [[SO: it was pretty great [I (48) holds both hands out; palms up 137 Aud: =CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC[ccccccccccccc(33.9) Tru: (49) throws up hands (50) claps hands alongside audience; gazes around the stage 138 Tru: [It was pretty good

In the speech, Trump talks about his campaign victory and events that happened the night of the presidential election. He discusses the behavior of news anchors who reported the election results.

In line 1-3, he projects a story about an unidentified anchor who is known for his use of an interactive digital electoral map (Ln. 1). Even though Trump’s evaluations of this figure are initially positive (Ln. 2-3), the story leads Trump to a caricatured demonstration.

It is noticeable that Trump does not name the figure; he assumes his audience shares the same epistemic knowledge about the talked-about event (Ln. 5). While this is telling a compelling narrative structure (i.e., temporal organization, orientation, coda, and an evaluative component; cf.

Labov and Waletzky 1967), Trump derails his telling with a tangentially related side sequence about election results as they appeared on the digital map. In lines 7-26, he begins with the subsidiary activity of setting the stage for the forthcoming imagined scene. First, Trump discusses his initial disappointment that the interactive electoral map was primarily “blue,” showing that the

Democrats were ahead (Ln. 12-20). As he slides his right hand back and forth, Trump describes and depicts the “blue wall,” a term that pundits, anchors, and political analysts used to describe a set of states that typically vote Democrat (Ln. 16-17). Trump riles up the audience by discussing

206 shattering that wall the “blue wall” (Ln. 18-20). The excited audience applauds with increased intensity as he continues to emphasize their win over the Democrats (Ln. 19-26). Twenty-two lines later, he resumes the main activity of the original telling, to talk about the “guy” who is “really good on the maps” (Ln. 1-3).

After noting that he won the electoral votes for Wisconsin and Michigan, he depicts how the anchor reacted to Trump’s victory. He contextualizes scene, commenting that the anchor was

“devastated” and had “never even thought of” the possibility of Trump winning (Ln. 33-36). Then in line 38, Trump quotes the anchor’s “quivering” body. This quote speaks to the versatility of how a person can be demonstrated. Trump—acting as the anchor—puts the results on the map as it turns red (Ln. 38, 39, 41). Like his portrayals of Clinton, Trump uses the same stiff, centered body posture to signal he is quoting someone else.

In these lines, diegetic and mimetic narrative strategies work in tandem. Trump describes the actions of the anchor while using iconic gestures (Schegloff, 1984) to enact putting information up on the interactive map. Trump’s earlier descriptors of the anchor (e.g., quivering and devastated) imply that the telling is comical. The exaggerated bodily comportment and wavering enactment of the anchor prove laughable for the audience (Ln. 40, 42).

Before letting the anchor-character speak, Trump depicts the character trembling with wobbly hands. Mustering up the strength to speak, the anchor utters: “Donald Trump has won the state of Wisconsin. eeeergh ooow no” (Ln. 45). The anchor is manufactured to appear and sound ridiculous. The character produces a non-lexical vocalization (Tolins, 2013) in a trembling voice

(Ln. 45). Then, the non-lexical vocalization of disbelief is accompanied by the anchor unsteadily moves his hand and body. Once again, we see the same bodily characteristics of a Clinton

207 demonstration: stiff body, o-lipped facial expression, and a notable character intonation and voice quality. These caricatured demonstrations show that Trump does not individuate his character animations, instead, he resorts to a small subset of parodying devices to lump his adversaries together.

Now in line 47, the anchor-character tries to reread the news of Trump’s victory while he continues to suffer from “shock.” As the anchor utters, “Cuz OH NO (0.2) Oh No,” he is depicted gripping an imagined manuscript with unsteady hands (Ln. 49, 51). Interspersed between the anchor’s utterances are the audience members’ cheering as they “relive” the victory announcement being delivered by “liberal media.” The audience and the speaker are joined in a joint-present (cf.

Clark, 1996). Both the speaker and the audience are asked to imagine or remember themselves witnessing the event. To heighten the comical portrayal, Trump enacts the anchor gazing to his right side as if he were talking to the off-set crew or the other news anchors, asking them to check the facts (Ln. 52). The demonstrations help conjures up the representation of a “bewildered news anchor” who can barely report what he is reading, and the audience laughs (Ln. 53). With a breathy-sounding voice, the news anchor tries to continue reporting the news: “Donald Trump has won the state of Michigan” (Ln. 56). Vocal and gestural delivery work in tandem to produce a caricatured demonstration of the anchor. The understood critique seems to be that the news anchor is too partisan, and he cannot report the Republican “objectively.” In the quoted production, the anchor’s overly affective state is simultaneously displayed in the demonstration and used to exaggerate his character humorously. It is hard to imagine the news anchor actually acted so hyperbolically, something the audience is likely to understand. The audience displays orientation to Trump’s performance: some cheer while others shout “I LOVE YOU TRUMP” (Ln. 58). Trump, instead of continuing with the performance, trails off into another side sequence. For brevity’s

208 sake, I have omitted 10 lines (Ln. 59-69) since they are only tangentially relevant to the demonstration. I list side sequences in the following form:

Side sequence 9. The state of Pensylvania is not receiving enough media recognition (Ln.59-70).

In line 71 and 73, Trump returns to the primary activity: telling a story about the bewildered news anchor. He uses the quotative “he goes” (Buchstaller, 2001) to switch into the character role

(Koven, 2007). Uttered twice, Trump produces a noticeable lengthening of the fricative /s/ sound in “goes” (Ln. 71, 73). The lengthening is likely to secure his speakership since the crowd continues to cheer at his remarks about the state of Pennsylvania.

Trump does not resume quoting the news anchor; he produces yet another side sequence about the 270 Electoral College votes. At this moment he cites “general media: “THERE IS NO

PATH to two-seventy” (Ln. 77). I have included this side sequence because Trump uses a lowered speaking register, the stiff body with hands at the side, the stilted tempo to caricatured another figure. Trump, thus produces a caricatured demonstration that allows the audience to imagine the media’s purported stance towards Trump. Also, spectators boo and shout at the quoted figure (Ln.

80). This demonstration leads to a very long break from the primary activity to talk about the media being bias because, according to Trump, they never accurately portray his electoral winnings. I have omitted lines 84-115, but an abbreviated description is provided.

Side sequences 1. Trump produces a number of complaint sequences about the “bias media” (Ln. 84-103). 2. Trump discusses the electoral votes he needed to win, including Texas and Maine (Ln. 104-115).

When Trump returns to the original storytelling activity (Ln. 116), he enacts the anchor’s hand moving towards the map. In doing so, he produces the quotative form “he says” and then quotes him verbally saying “Wisconsin,” then “Michigan” (Ln. 118-120). 209

In these lines, Trump is not caricaturing the anchor; he is documenting (Redeker, 1991) what the anchor said or did. We can assume a non-caricatured interpretation because he produces none of the animation devices described earlier. When he delivers a caricatured demonstration just a few moments later, he resumes his exaggerated vocal register, stilted speaking tempo, stiff body, and o-lipped facial expression (Ln. 124). As with most of Trump’s caricatured demonstrations, the propositional content—what the anchor says—plays a minimized role for the interpretation of the character. Trump places most of his emphasis on the character’s vocal and gestural style. In using generic caricaturing devices, Trump does not individuate the news anchor, because the unnamed character serves as a sample depiction (Goodman, 1968) of a much broader category: media pundits. In doing so, Trump creates a moralizing critique of the media and their role in political worldmaking.

Character Moral 4 Media pundits, like the new anchor who reported the election results, are biased towards Trump as an outsider in politics. The audience is encouraged not to trust the media because, as Trump depicts them, they are incompetent in objectively reporting facts such as Trump’s victory in winning the presidency.

As the demonstration ends, he depicts a defeated liberal new anchor who reluctantly announces

Trump’s victory (Ln. 128-138). Interestingly enough, in lines 136 and 138, his body loosens, and he returns to his normative speaking register, producing two voices in one: Trump’s and the anchors. Extract 15 is a clear example of what Bakhtin (1981) calls “double-voiced discourse” since Trump’s voice “leaks through” as he is acting in character as the anchor. Trump’s caricatured demonstrations are always polyphonous (Bakhtin, 1981), in that, when he produces a character version of a citable figure, he does so with his own intervening intentions. Tannen (2007) reminds us that quotations involve a speaker’s interventions of some sort. Trump is minimizing or

210 deflecting his own involvement in these caricatured productions by using direct reported speech and bodily forms, alongside various comic devices (Goffman, 1981; Hall et al., 2016).

“An Interview with Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd”

In Extract 16, I analyze one final example of Trump quoting both the words and bodily actions of a citable figure. In line with our previous extract, Trump tries to tell a story about the

“bias media.” He retells a story about his interview on the Meet the Press with American, MSNBC television journalist Chuck Todd. Since this story includes many off-topic breaks from the primary story activity, I have omitted sections. For the parts I have omitted, I add a summative description in my analysis; however, the gestures conveyed in the transcript below will maintain numbering consisting of the full transcript.

Extract 16: “The Bias Media Quotes Trump on Saddam Hussein” [Cincinnati, Ohio, July 06, 2016] Voicing and Embodying the Self and Others 1 Tru: There’s a guy on meet the press (1) holds out right hand; palm up 2 called sleepy eye::s Chuck Tod (2) right slices downward (3) transitions to right hand held out; palm up 3 Do-does anybody ever (4) keeps his right hand held out; transitions to both hands while smirking 4 Aud: bbbbbbBBBBBB (1.8) 5 Tru: The GUY WAS DYING (5) performs pinch beat gesture 6 on meet the press (6) performs pinch beat gesture two times 7 >a year ago 8 a year-and-a-half-while ago.< (7) right hand performs pinch as it creates and arc and swipes 9 He was dying 10 nobody watching meet the press. 11 >In fact 12 they were talking about taking him off (8) right hand swipes right 13 everything else.< 14 Never treated me fairly. (9) wags right hand with index finger extended 15 And then (10) right hand performs pinch beat 16 what happened? (11) right hand performs l-shaped pinch

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17 (0.9) 18 was 19 (0.3) 20 He called me (12) hand releases from the podium and spreads fingers 21 and he wanted me to do an interview. 22 (0.6) 23 And I did it 24 (0.5) 25 and it was one of the highest rated interviews (13) right hand performs three pointing beats 26 in the head of 27 eh 28 you know 29 in the history of Meet the Press? (14) extends arms out to the side and holds them there 30 .hh 31 But these are disloyal people. (15) both hands perform pinch beat twice 32 (0.7) 33 So after about two days 34 he forgot about it. (16) both hands facing each other; move toward one another and away 35 (0.7) 36 And then 37 he did a little bit more and I did (17) right hand performs a semi-circular motion (18) wags right hand 38 and these 39 Meet the Press does fine right now. 40 I am not going to do any more interviews with them 41 but (19) wags hands outwards; moves hands towards and away from each other 42 (0.4) 43 cuz I watched him (20) right hand slices downward twice 44 .hh 45 so I watched (21) cups right hand as a beat gesture 46 like yesterday (22) right hand performs semi-slice beat 47 .hh 48 And I made the statement (23) holds out right hand; palm faces the audience 49 something to the effect (24) holds out right hand with fingers together 50 (0.5) 51 I was talking about terrorism. (25) holds out right hand with fingers together 52 .hh 53 And I said 54 (0.5) 55 “Sadam Hussein” (26) performs l-shaped beat two times 56 (0.3) 57 “is a ba::d man.”

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58 You heard this. 59 Aud: YEAH 60 zzz[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz[zzzzzz (0.3) 61 Tru: [Right? [Right? (27) holds hands to the side with palms up 62 You heard this. 63 .hh 64 “He’s a ba:d man.” 65 (0.9) ((28 lines omitted)) 95 But I said (46) hand held flat; palm faces audience; moves up slightly 96 very simple 97 I said 98 Sadam Hussein (47) right hand performs pinch beat with three fingers extended (48) right hand slices downward 99 (0.7) 100 “Is a ba:d man” (49) performs pinched fingers with index finger extended; performed twice 101 (0.8) 102 “ba::d guy” (50) pinched fingers with index finger extended beat; performed twice 103 (0.7) 104 And I said it three or four times. (51) right hand swipes right 105 REALLY BA::D (52) right hand slice beat 106 (1.0) 107 cause I know what they are going to do (53) wags right hand 108 (1.2) 109 I said but one thing he’s good at (54) performs pinch beat 110 I said this last night. (55) hands held out to sides; palms up 111 (0.5) 112 Now they said they wanted me to talk about Hillary fo- (56) both hands assume pinched beat handshapes; right hand remains held 113 (0.5) 114 for one hundred and sixty (57) right hand held vertically; palms face audience; hand moves in arched motion 115 I said you know like- (58) right hand motions down towards the body 116 for hours (59) repeats gesture 57 117 it wasn’t fifteen minutes 118 >that was a long time (60) left hand swipes left; performed twice 119 talking about 120 I read whole things 121 wrote a whole thing< 122 .hh 123 I mean she’s Crooken Hillary 124 that’s all you have to [know (61) left hand moves up, then both hands move outward, slightly angled; move inwards

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125 Aud: [h-h-h-h= 126 Tru: [she’s crooked as hell (62) holds gesture 61 127 Aud: =[h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-hhhhhhhhhhhhh[hhhXXX-YEAH-XXX[XXXXXXXXXXXX= 128 Tru: [NO [It’s unbelievable (63) continues gesture 61/62; hands move inwards again; return to podium (64) waves right hand; shakes head 129 Aud: =XXX[XXX-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x (10.4) 130 Tru: [So (.) no but but listen listen listen listen. (65) holds out right hand; palm facing audience (66) retracts right hand slightly, then transitions into pinch three fingers extended beat 131 So (67) right hand held flat; palm faces audience; swipes slightly 132 after a while we want to talk about terrorism right? (68) holds right hand near mid-torso; closes eyes and tilts head (69) holds right hand near the body; palm up; then extends up to face level; then returns back 133 Aud: RIGHT 134 YEAH 135 Tru: Cause we will beat Hillary (70) right hand held verticle beat; transitions to three index fingers extended pinch 136 if we beat Hillary (71) transitions from gesture 70 to slice beat 137 what difference does it make. (72) right hand swipes 138 .hh 139 As she would say; (73) holds out right hand 140 [what difference is it (74) performs three fingers extended pinch beat 141 Aud: [h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h (1.1) 142 Tru: “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?” <>

(75) tightens body posture; shakes head with an o-lipped facial expression 143 Aud: zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZ (2.1) 144 .hhh (76) makes three fingers extended pinch handshape 145 Tru: MAKES A BIT DIFFERENCE. (77) transitions from gesture 77 to l-shaped beat 146 Aud: ((indiscriminate yelling)) 147 Tru: “WHAT DIFFERENCE does it make-” <> (78) tightens body posture; shakes head with an o-lipped facial expression 148 remember the famous statement- 149 green dress. (79) performs pinch beat and holds the gesture

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150 [.hh 151 Aud: [((indiscriminate yells)) 152 Tru: Okay 153 Aud: ((LIAR)) 154 (1.4) 155 Tru: SO (80) continues pinch beat 156 Aud: ((indiscriminate yells) 157 Tru: [green dress? 158 Aud: [((indiscriminate yells)) 159 Tru: ◦yeah◦ (81) nods head once 160 ◦green dress◦ 161 ◦no◦. (82) tilts head to the right side 162 Aud: ((GREEN DRESS)) 163 Tru: [She said green paint suit. (83) points to the audience member (84) returns to holding pinched fingers handshape 164 Aud: [((indiscriminate yells))= 165 =[[(( yells continue )) [[So (0.4) so (0.4) so look 166 listen. (85) transitions from pinched hand-shaped to l-shaped handshape, then flat palm out beat 167 (0.8) 168 So last night I said- (86) performs palm out swipe 169 and it was an ↑unbelievable crowd in North Carolina (87) performs palm out swipe 170 .hh 171 standing ovations all over the place. (88) performs palm out swipe 172 .hh 173 But I said (89) holds pinched handshape 174 (0.7) 175 “BA:D GUY” (90) right hand performs pinched beat; performed twice 176 SADAM HUSSEIN. 177 BA::D GU:Y (90) right hand performs an index finger extended beat; performed twice 178 (0.9) 179 .hh 180 >Then I said again< (91) point outward with his right hand 181 SADA:M HUSSEIN 182 IS A BA:::D GU:Y? <> (92) hunches slightly;grips podium 183 Aud: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (1.8) 184 Tru: “BUT he did one thing well-“ 185 (1.1) 186 “HE KILLED” 187 “TERRORISTS.” (93) performs forceful point beat with the right hand 188 Aud: cccccccccCCCC[CCCCCCCC[CCCCccc= 189 Tru: [Right? [↑It’s okay

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(94) holds hands out to sides; palms up 190 Aud: =[cccccccccccccccccccccc (5.0) 191 Tru: [Just a quick statement 192 BUT I WANTED TO EMPHASIZE. (95) carefully pronounces syllables in “emphasize”; three semi-arched motions with thumb up 193 (0.4) 194 Because I know if I didn’t emphasi:ze (96) performs gesture 95 again but with gripped hand 195 they’d say “I like Sadam Hussein.” (97) motions out with palm up 196 (0.4) 197 So I said it 198 I think three times (98) right hand becomes cupped and moves around the gesture space 199 “bad” 200 “bad” 201 “ba:d” (99) performs cupped hand beats; performed three times 202 in fact I started repeating myself (100) shakes right hand; palm facing his body 203 I said 204 “I don’t like that” 205 “People are gonna say:” (101) palm up; motions to the crown them himself with the right hand 206 .hh 207 “Is that guy okay?” 208 Aud: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 209 Tru: So what happened? (102) right hand swipes right 210 (0.5) 211 What happened 212 (0.7) 213 I said it strongly 214 ◦bad person◦. 215 Okay (103) right hand swipes right 216 now it’s over. (104) holds hands to sides; palms up ((111 lines omitted)) 329 And what happened (142) right hand slices downward 330 (0.5) 331 And what happened (143) right hand slices downward 332 (0.5) 333 I wake up in the morning 334 and we had 335 you had to see this crowd 336 this crowd was unbelievable (144) right hand swipes right 337 the energy (145) performs pinch beat gesture 338 ↑>But-then all the crowds have ener< (146) right hand swipes right 339 .hh 340 I wake up and turn on the television <>

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(147) holds hands out to sides; palms up 341 .hhhhhhhh (148) straightens body posture; beings o-lipped facial expression 342 “DONALD TRUMP” 343 “LO:VES” 344 “SADAM HUSSEIN.” 345 Aud: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (1.8) 346 “HE LOVES” 347 “SADAM HUSSEIN.”

348 Aud: ((indiscriminate yells)) 349 Tru: And I was just asked a question (149) points to the audience with left hand; palm up 350 by the Cincinna:ti Inquiry (150) right hand thumb point behind the back 351 ((and said)) 352 “MR. TRUMP” 353 (0.4) 354 “IS IT TRUE YOU LOVE SADAM HUSSEIN.” (151) resumes straightened body posture and o-lipped facial expression while tilting head slightly 355 Aud: hhhhhh[hhhhhhhhhhhhh (1.2) 356 Tru: [↑◦essentially like 357 sorta that (152) waves both hands together 358 ya know◦. 359 (1.1) 360 .hh 361 Tru: “I said that’s not what I said” <> (153) moves head forward; shakes head 362 (0.8) 363 Aud: hahaha ((single audience member)) 364 Tru: “I-that’s not what I said” <> (154) moves head doward; shakes head 365 (0.5) 366 So that’s the ◦narrative the goes around◦. (155) right hand performs pinch beat and motions to the right 367 (0.5) 368 I actually put a press release out. (156) hands move towards and away from each other as they face each other 369 And now 370 the people that ↑sa:w it (157) cupped hands facing each other; moves towards and away from each other 371 say that was great. (158) moves both hands up to face; palms out

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372 But the-they are lia::rs. (159) both hand pinch beat with three fingers extended; transitions into both palms out 373 These are ba:d peo:ple. (160) palms out beats; performed twice 374 >These are b:ad peo:ple<. (161) palms out beats; performed twice 375 (0.5) 376 And what I did say; (162) right hand beat with index finger extended 377 and what I did say (163) right hand pinch beat 378 is that 379 (0.5) 380 ↑“HE WAS GOO::D” 381 (1.0) 382 “AT ONE THING” 383 “HE WAS REALLY GOOD 384 at killing terrorist.” 385 He didn’t wait around.

When Trump introduces characters – those who do not fall under the category of friends – family, supporters, or people he admires, he has the habit of describing and depicting them in negative ways. Trump begins the story by referring to an American journalist, Chuck Todd as “Sleepy

Eye::s Chuck Todd” (Ln. 1-2). He contextualizes the pejorative nick-name a few seconds later, noting that it refers to Todd’s lack of ability to entertain. By asking if anyone watches “Meet the

Press” (Ln. 3), Trump sets up a joke at Todd’s expense. Viewers align with the negative, joke telling evaluation, booing the very mention of his name (Ln. 4). “Sleepy Eyes” is a vivid descriptor portrays Todd as “boring news entertainer” who puts audiences to sleep. The interpretation is made clear when Trump says Todd “was dying” because of the lack of viewership on Meet the Press

(Ln. 5-13).

At this point in the telling, Trump provides the background for the forthcoming narrative and projects his continued negative evaluation of Todd a “bias” and “boring” political pundit (Ln.

14). Eventually, Trump gets to the crux of the telling: Chuck Todd invited him to interview on the show (Ln. 15-21). As noted earlier, Trump’s stories are fragmented because he inserts his own tangential, annotative commentary into the story. In the process of getting to the main action or

218 problem of the story, Trump comments about his appearance on the show; Trump claims his appearance was the highest-rated episode, despite his belief that political commentators at MSNBC are “disloyal people” (Ln. 23-31).

In lines 33, Trump resumes the story: “So after about two days he forgot about it. And then he did a little bit more.” At this stage, the “tellebility” of the story is not made evident, and Trump veers off course from the main plot. He comments on the contemporary success in viewership on

Meet the Press, and the fact that he refuses future interviews with Todd (Ln. 36-41), instead of advancing the story plot. When he returns to the activity of telling a story, Trump reveals that the telling is concerned with his own words being taken out of context by Todd and the broader NBC news network. Trump refers to something he said at a rally the day before in Raleigh North

Carolina (Ln. 48-52). The original utterance he will reference is provided below:

Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Right? He was a bad guy. Really bad guy. But ya know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. He didn’t read um the rights. They didn’t talk. They were a terrorist; it was over. Today, Iraq is the Harvard for terrorism. You want to be a terrorist; you go to Iraq (Trump, 2016).

Trump uses quotative markers to introduce a forthcoming quotation: “And I said Saddam Hussein is a ba::d man” (Ln. 53-55). He repeats his utterance, “is a ba::d man,” and asks the audience to verify the veracity of his words (Ln. 57-58). He asks the audience to verify his claims concerning his past utterances. Viewers respond to this interactional moment and yell out “YEAH.” It is unclear whether the audience remembers the specific context; nonetheless, they react positively to his remarks. The audience takes part in the “conversation,” and provides the “pseudo-evidence” that Trump is telling the truth about his own words. Audience verification is also significant because the forthcoming story is projected to be a negative evaluation of Chuck Todd and MSNBC.

In moments where Trump quotes himself, we do not observe the same “caricaturing features.”

Although Trump’s self-quotation displays an exaggerated emotion to visualize his “disdain” and

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“distance from” for Saddam Hussein; he does not assume a stiff posture, an o-lipped facial expression, or “self-righteous” voice quality. When Trump continues to repeat his “original words,” his delivery is emphatic, and he is lengthening the vowel in the word “bad” to accentuate his stance towards Hussein (Ln. 64).

The purpose of the quotation is not evident, since, we can only presume that the “tellability” of the story has to do with him being “misquoted.” Although the side sequence is tangentially related to the rally speech he is describing, it does not progress towards the main story plot. Instead,

Trump takes an ample time to boast about his ability to speak to large rally crowds without using a teleprompter.

Side sequences 1. Trump boasts about his ability to stand up in front of multiple networks, deliver a speech without using teleprompters, and pull in large rally crowds (Ln. 68-93)

After breaking from the storytelling activity to engage with the audience on a more interpersonal level, Trump resumes his demonstration, repeating his quote about Hussein. “But I said very simply I said Saddam Hussein is a ba:d man” (Ln. 94-100). In quoting himself discussing Hussein,

Trump stresses the evaluative adjective, “bad” as he produces several pinch beat gestures. Trump’s

“interactive gestures” (cf. Bavelas et al., 1992) belong to a group of precision-grip gestures that index “being precise,” “being sharp,” or on point” regarding the message conveyed (Kendon, 2004;

Lempert, 2011). It is likely that the indexical meanings of the gesture work on multiple interactional levels (Brookes, 2004; Lempert, 2011) since Trump is trying to heighten the audience’s attention to the fact that these are the “verbatim” words he uttered during his rally in

Raleigh. Trump appears to be “making a precise point” worthy of audience scrutiny; after all, the story is about defending his own words. But again, this is not made evident, since, he repeats his demonstration several times, saying that Hussein is a “ba::d guy. REALLY BA:D” (Ln. 102, 105). 220

The cumulative weight of these quotations as documentations (Redeker, 1991, 1996), reinforces

Trump’s image as a leader who distances himself from Hussein’s violent reputation (Ln. 55, 57,

64, 98, 100, 102, 105).

Although Trump distances himself from Hussein, he also foreshadows one “merit” of his leadership (Ln. 109), but then he does not finish his utterance. Instead, Trump breaks from the storytelling activity to recall an instance where the media asked him to speak about Hillary Clinton.

It is unclear whether he is talking about a rally or his interview with Chuck Todd (Ln. 110-122).

Although this is an extended side sequence, I have included it here because it performs a caricatured demonstration of Clinton.

Trump’s nick-names and caricatured demonstrations can accomplish several interactional goals, but I think there is one common unifying rhetorical purpose. Embodied caricatures size up the opponent, rivals, or critiqued figures and obliterate their individuality. Writing about the relationship between caricatures and art, the art historian Ernst Gombrich comic comparisons function as persuasive tactics in many facets of everyday life.

If we ask the psychologists he tells us again that, as with caricature, the hidden and unconscious aim of such fun is connected with magic. To copy a person, to mimic his [or her] behavior, means to annihilate his [or her] individuality. The very word “in-dividual” means inseparable. If we succeed in singling out and imitating a man’s [or women’s] expression or way of walking, we have destroyed this individuality” (Gombrich, 1940, p. 14).

As Gombrich (1940, 1963) writes, caricature is part of the cartoonists’ arsenal, allowing the artist to use comic devices in creating a pictorial distortion. In rallies, Trump “destroys” the personality or individuality of a politician or figure by manufacturing embodied exaggerations that lack indexical precision or veracity. Trump’s caricatures highlight damaging foibles about a known figure, making that fault an “iconic construal” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016; Gal & Irvine, 1995; Streeck,

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2008; Irvine & Gal, 2000) of the person. An ideological process called “iconization” (cf. Irving and Gal, 2000) in linguistic anthropology is at play here. Trump links exaggerated vocal and gestural features to a person, making it seem likes iconic-indexical signs are “natural to” or

“evidence of” an “inherent” character flaw. In creating these vivid caricatured depictions, Trump also “erases” (cf. Gal & Irvine, 1995; Irvine & Gal, 2000) the complexities of a figure’s competencies, personality, and language and gestural styles.

Take, for example, the way Trump “sums up” Clinton through a nick-naming reduction: “I mean she’s Crooked Hillary that’s all you have to know. She’s crooked as hell” (Ln. 123-124).

The synechdotal point is made simple according to Trump: Clinton is a liar, and that is all she is, nothing more the audience needs to know to judge her. Caricatured demonstrations like should strike the reader as troubling since these performances instruct audiences to see political figures without necessarily providing “verifiable facts.” In lines 127 and 129, the audience moves from laughing to thundering applause; they affiliate with Trump but disaffiliate with the laughable

Clinton-representation. The caricatured demonstration combines with other rhetorical tactics like

“negative naming” (cf. Bull, 2003).

Bull (2003) writes: “In negative naming, the audience are invited to applaud the abuse or ridicule of a named person – typically a politician of an opposing political party” (p. 70). Negative naming, or nick-naming in this case, helps Trump provides an explicit negative evaluation of

Clinton. The tactic works to solicit an overwhelming audience response, one that Trump tries to get a handle on the audience responses moments later (Ln. 130). Holding out his right hand and repeating “listen” several times, Trump tries to recuperate his turn as the speaker and talk about terrorism (Ln. 132; see Mondada, 2007 for using the hand and pointing to request a turn in

222 conversation). Despite being reticent to talk about Clinton, he continues with the side sequence, noting that he has confidence to beat his adversary (Ln. 135). What appears as a simple utterance

“if we beat Hillary what difference does it make,” is recontextualized as a Clinton-quoted- utterance (Ln. 136-137).

Trump seizes her infamous rebuttal about the 2012 Benghazi attacks on the U.S. Embassy that resulted in American casualties. The history and timeline of the attack are complicated, and I cannot do full justice to the full details here (see Ryan, 2012 for a complete chronology). Therefore,

I will focus on one of Clinton’s “utterances” at the 11-hour Benghazi Hearing.

At the time, Clinton was Secretary of State, and she, the State Department, and the Obama

Administration shouldered much of the blame for not preventing the deaths of American diplomats and citizens. Although Clinton was cleared of responsibility during the investigation into the

Benghazi attacks, Republicans misquote Clinton’s words during the hearing. Clinton came under fire by Republicans, and she had an exchange with U.S. Republican Senator for Wisconsin, Ron

Johnson. Her response to Senator Johnson is often misrepresented or misquoted, so I have provided the original utterance.

With all due respect. The fact is, we have four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator (ABC News, 2013).

During the hearing, Senator Johnson accuses Clinton and the State Department of misleading the public, and he mentions that the attack was blamed on a protest. Johnson also questions why Clinton, and her administration, did not call the Benghazi survivors to confirm what happened during the attack. Clinton—in her quote above—responds to

Johnson and argues there was much confusion about the days leading up the attacks. She

223 claims appropriate steps were taken to rescue and aid the wounded survivors. Her clarification stresses the importance of apprehending the attackers, not debating the cause of the attack, at least at the moment. Despite contextual evidence suggesting a more nuanced interpretation to Clinton’s utterance, Republicans like Mike Pence, for example, have been shown to take her words out of context (Kertscher, 2013; Qiu, 2016). For conservatives, Clinton’s statement is an example of her “apathetic attitude” towards the death of four Americans.

When Trump utters “what difference does it make,” he recalls a scandalous political moment. Seconds later, he states this connection explicitly: “As she would say; what difference does it make?” (Ln. 140). To use Redeker’s (1991, 1996) distinction between diegesis and mimesis, Trump is “documenting” the propositional content of what Clinton said in line 140. There are no indications Trump is performing a caricatured demonstration; he provides no special character intonation or noticeable bodily habit. After the viewers laugh, he upgrades his quotation to a comical depiction: “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT

MAKE?” (Ln. 142). When Trump transitions into a caricatured demonstration, the vocal and gestural quality of the performance is altered mimetically. Trump puts his hands by his sides, raises his vocal amplitude, changes his pitch register, widens his eyes, bobs his head, and exaggerates the pronunciation with an o-lipped facial expression. The same features found in Extract 12-15 produce a caricatured Clinton-character. Prosodic and gestural features are part of Trump’s audible and visual political weaponry. In rhetorical terms, these portrayals invite the audience to join in the ridicule of Hillary Clinton. Caricatured demonstrations also require specific cultural and historical knowledge for their interpretation, and here, Trump recalls her foible at the Benghazi Hearing. In these

224 caricaturing moments, he conjures up a “multimodal effigy” that allows the speaker and his audience to ridicule symbolically or share in their dislike of the represented figure.

When he performs a caricatured demonstration, the audience responds, booing and shouting indiscriminate remarks at “Clinton” (Ln. 143, 146).

To sediment the portrayal, Trump even repeats the caricatured demonstration in a subdued mimetic form: “WHAT DIFFERENCE does it make” (Ln. 147). In this production, he bobs his head and trails off in his commitment to the caricatured demonstration. He reminds the audience to “remember the famous statement” where Clinton wore a “green dress” at the Benghazi Hearing (Ln. 148-149). It is likely that his audience gets the criticisms of Clinton since they shout “LIAR” (Ln. 153). The caricatured version of Clinton reduces the number of complexities that are required to “objectively” interpret the original utterance: the interactional context, her addressee and his questions, and the rest of her declaration; however, is not the only caricatured demonstration in this storytelling segment.

Eleven lines later, Trump transitions away from a Clinton anecdote to the main story-plot concerning his statements about Saddam Hussein. He resumes the original storytelling activity and reorients the audience (Ln. 166). He quotes himself admonishing

Saddam Hussein multiple times in front of rally audience. He repeatedly utters, “SADDAM

HUSSEIN IS A BA:::D GUY” (Ln. 175-182). While Trump thinks Hussein is a “bad guy,” he proposes one “venerable” quality to his character: “HE KILLED TERRORISTS” (Ln.

187).

In Trump’s 2016 campaign, he put considerable emphasis on his desire to eliminate what “radical Islamic terrorists.” By evoking Hussein’s hard stance on terrorism, he strengthens his own “tough-guy” image. Knowing full well that making an affirmative

225 statement about a brutal dictator is a controversial move, he emphasizes his negative evaluation of Hussein. If taken out of context, Trump seems like a supporter or advocate of Hussein’s vicious dictatorial leadership (Ln. 192-195). By repetitively quoting his words at the rally in Raleigh, Trump tries to sediment a version of the story. In the “political reality” he presents, he clearly distinguishes himself from the brutal dictator (Ln. 198-214).

He even secures this version of the story by inviting audience agreement in line 208. Once again, Trump’s fragmented oratory is strewn with another side sequence. I have omitted one hundred and eleven lines, but the side sequences are well documented.

Side sequences 1. Trump discussed the various topics that were mentioned in his Raleigh speech, including terrorism, trade deals, Obama Care, Common Core, the military, and the border wall (218-247). 2. Trump creates an extensive depictive scene about building the border wall with Mexico (248-278). 3. The segment describes how the border patrol agents endorse him. Trump talks about how “easy” it is for people to come into our country illegally (Ln. 279-312) 4. Trump discusses how he continues to deliver a speech despite politicians not listening (Ln. 313-324).

Several topics later, Trump returns to his original telling, and he redirects the audience to the story

(Ln. 330-338). The stage for the story now involves Trump watching the latest headline news on television. As the audience imagines Trump watching television, he transitions into a caricaturing posture: he straightens his body and produces an o-lipped facial expression as he quotes the media:

“DONALD TRUMP LO: VES SADDAM HUSSEIN” (Ln. 341-344). Again, Trump performs a

“self-righteous” voice with the use of character intonation. The stilted vocal quality adds to the exaggerated portrayal of the “general media,” who, in Trump’s eyes present themselves as

“morally superior.” Viewers are invited to ridicule the caricatured version of the media pundits jointly. The caricatured demonstration of the media is reproduced with a more specific target: journalists from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Trump does not distinguish between different pundits or media outlets; rather, he uses the same caricatured features when he quotes the Cincinnati Enquirer journalist: “MR. TRUMP. IT IS TRUE YOU LOVE SADDAM HUSSEIN?” (Ln. 352, 354). His

226 rally supporters laugh at the lampooned image the “bias” media. Trump does not merely document what the pundits said about Trump; he shows how they said it, portraying these figures as “self- righteous,” despite “misquoting” him.

The performance provides two stark contrasts: a “frank, truth-telling Trump” and a “bias, liberal media.” Trump even reaffirms this interpretation with is an audience when he quotes himself saying in a “nasal sounding” voice: “That’s not what I said” (Ln. 361, 363). Trump and his audience poke fun of the media for “twisting his words.” Pundits are grouped into a category of people who are supposed to be non-partisan but appear to display overt “liberal” leanings.

Despite claiming to put a press release out on the matter, Trump notes that the media are all “lia::ars” and “ba:d peo:ple” (Ln. 372-374). The repetition of these negative evaluations heightens Trump’s point and creates moments for the audience to share in his stance towards the media. Lastly, he provides the remaining “evidence” to be discussed, that is, what he “actually said” at the Raleigh rally: “HE WAS GOO::D AT ONE THING, at killing terrorists” (Ln. 382-384).

In this extended example, Trump makes “exemplars” out of different figures: Clinton

(inadvertently politicians) and media pundits. Notably, Trump uses a similar, if not the same, caricaturing devices (stiff body, o-lipped facial expression, head movements, and character intonation) to signal and act as a cited figure. The similarity between these productions is not a coincidence. By using strikingly similar caricaturing features, Trump shows how he categorizes these individuals as equally “immoral agents” who are, to use his words, “bad people” (Ln. 373-

374). Politicians and media pundits are both categories of people whom Trump distrusts and often labels as incompetent, bias, and liars; they represent a political system that Trump refuses to associate himself with (see Hall et al., 2016).

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Character Moral 5 Media pundits and reporters are biased agents who will egregiously twist the words of a candidate like Trump because he is a political outsider. The “liberal media” selectively spread misinformation in order to deceive the American public for their own political gain.

Caricatured demonstrations quote the person, but in a way that intervenes in their quoted utterances and reduces the complexities of what they said, did, or how they behave. Mimesis of actions, what characters did or said, is transformed into mimesis of character, how they said or did something and the faults implied in a character depiction. Caricatured demonstrations can be performed with varying degrees of exaggerated elaboration or complexity as seen above.

“Kasich the Disgusting Eater” Performers can use caricatures for a wide arrange of rhetorical purposes as the performer or artists chastises the social actions and behaviors of others. As the art theorist Rudolf Arnheim (1983) writes, “Caricature is a spectacular demonstration of expression by deviation. But, deviations come in many kinds, and only some make for caricature” (p. 320). Caricaturists can be used to portray social figures who “deviate” from “accepted” or “taken-for-granted” ways of behaving in social situations. “Deviation” as Arnheim understands it, refers to how caricaturists distort the normative visual representations of their targets. By making referents appear “gluttonous,” for example, caricaturists can critique wealthy elites and their ravenous eating habits, thus contrasting them to the rest of the starving population. If a person breaks social habits or overindulges in them, this can also provide a rhetorical avenue for a “character critique” (McPhee & Orenstein, 2011). The defamation of a person’s character through caricature has its history in the “physiognomic tradition” dating back to the Greek and Romans; whereby, the outer appearance or behaviors are seen as a

“psychological symptom” of “moral character flaws” (Arnheim, 1983; Gombrich, 1940, 1963;

Kris, 1953; McPhee & Orenstein, 2011; Wechsler, 1982). Although affordances of caricatured

228 demonstrations differ from their graphic counterparts, they still uphold the ideology that the

“physicality” of a person can speak to the “essence” of one’s personality.

In Extract 17, Trump turns (American) “eating etiquette” into a damaging demonstration of one Ohio Governor, John Kasich. Trump describes his experience facing off against Ted Cruz,

John Kasich, and others who also vied to be nominated as the Republican presidential candidate.

Extract 17: “Disgusting, Pancake-eating Kasich” [Evansville, Indiana, April 28, 2016]

Enacting and Vocalizing a Character 1 Tru: ↑So now what happens is he is losing badly; (1) right hand held vertically as it sweeps right (2) extends right hand further away from the body 2 ↑so he forms this alliance with Kasich. (3) right hand arches slightly (4) right hand held vertically beat 3 “Ya know the man that eats with like 4 large bites.” (5) gripped right hand motions towards the mouth 5 [Ya ever see? (6) open palms facing each other as if containing an object 6 Aud: [hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-x-x-x-x-x-x= 7 =[[x-x-x-x-[x-x-x-x= 8 Tru: [[“Foom” (7) right hand motions towards open mouth; all fingers pinched together 9 [“Arha.” (8) right hand motions towards mouth several times

10 Aud: =zzzzzz[zzz ((whistles, laughs, yelling))= 11 Tru: [News conference. (9) parallel movement of hands towards the body from different directions 12 Aud: hhhhhhhhh (4.7) 13 Tru: WHERE DO YA WANT YOUR NEWS CONFERENCE. 14 AROUND MY TABLE- (10) right hand index finger makes a circle 15 AS I STUFF PANCAKES DOWN MY THR[OAT 16 I never s::: (11) both hands are held out to the side of his body; palms up 17 Aud: [hhhhhhhhh[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhxxxxxx (2.8) 229

18 Tru: [Did yuh-SERIOUSLY? (12) both hands facing each other; move close together 19 Di you ever see a guy eat like this? (13) both hands facing each other; move toward each other and then away from each other 20 Aud: h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h ((sporadic laughter) (0.8) 21 Tru: HONESTLY. 22 ↑I’m being honest}. (14) palms out facing audience; slight wave movement 23 Ya know you think 24 IF I HAVE CAMERAS. (15) palms out facing audience; slight circular motions 25 >I-I tell ya I have a lot times where I >have no choice (16) hands held outwards in front of the body, palms up but angled 26 and I am sitting (17) right hand motions downwards 27 and cameras started forming and all< (18) both hands move parallel in a zigzag pattern from neck to midbody 28 .hh 29 And usually I don’t eat. 30 I just sorta don’t eat. (19) palms down; both hands move away from each other; performed two times 31 Number one I was taught (20) thumbs up counting gestures; holds gesture 32 .hh 33 “DON’T SPEAK <> (0.8) when you have your mouth full of food.” (21) two thumbs up beat gestures (22) right hand performs three circular motions 34 By my mother. (23) right hand slice 35 Aud: (indiscriminate yelling) 36 Tru: M[ary. 37 Aud: ccccccCCC[CCCCCCCCCCCC= 38 Tru: [↑MARY McCLOU:D. 39 Aud: =[ccccccccc (2.6) 40 [MY MOTHER SAID (0.6) 41 “DON’T (.) EVER (.) EAT” (24) right hand index finger beat gestures; performed three times 42 (0.2) 43 “with your mouth full.” 44 Okay. (25) palms up; hands held out to sides 45 And I’ve sort of remembered that right (26) both hands move in synch, towards one another and then away; performed multiple times 46 .hh 47 but 48 (0.4) 49 I-ya know (27) right hand moves in circular motion with index finger extended 50 I have a lot (28) RH circling with the index finger 51 where-ergh (29) palms facing each other at mid-body; hands move towards one another than away 52 There’s no ti:me (30) palms still facing each other; hands move in tandem to his right side 53 or there’s just (31) palms still facing each other; hands move in tandem to his left side quickly

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54 come (32) elbows bent, arms both angled with palms facing the audience 55 ya know the med-they’re like 56 (0.3) 57 brutal (33) palms up; move towards each other and away 58 (0.3) 59 They BREAK through secret <> SER(h)VICE 60 I mean they can do anything> (34) hands move out towards respective sides of the body; move towards each other and away 61 .hh 62 But (35) gesture 28 repeated 63 And all of a sudden I am eating (36) right hand index finger circles in the air 64 .hh 65 And ya know what I do 66 I stop eating (37) palms up; move towards each other and away 67 I ta(h)lk <>.} (38) right hand, index finger extended, motions towards the mouth and then away 68 .hh 69 I don’t eat. (39) returns to gesture 32 70 .hh 71 This guy is always (40) points downwards 72 ya ever notice? (41) right hand pinch finger held with three fingers extended; swipes right 73 It’s like he doesn’t have press conferences. (42) right hand held vertically; swipes right 74 .hh 75 Every time you see him (43) pinch fingers with three fingers extended beat; performed two times 76 He’s:: “eating.” (44) gripped right hand arcs toward the mouth 77 And he’s “stuffing his face.” (45) gripped right hand motions towards the mouth

78 I’ve never seen-the PIZZA (46) right hand flattens hand and puts in center of the body 79 ↑HE ATE A PIECE A PIZZA- <> (47) right hand performs four consecutive index finger beats 80 I AM TELLING YOU IT WAS FOUR OR FIVE INCHES LO: NG

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(48) index fingers held parallel to one another 81 BY FOUR OR FIVE INCHES (49) hands rotate, one held above the other 82 .hh 83 And he couldn’t get it in his mou:th (50) fingers on right hand are pinched together, moving towards mouth; changes to a clenched fist

84 And he is “pushing it in with a fork” (51) clenched fist moves towards and away from the mouth

85 and he’s got twenty CAMERAS (52) hands held in front of his face as they move away from each other and to the sides of his body 86 [on-I don’t understand. (53) palms up; hands move closer to each other and then away 87 [zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (2.5)

The primary storyline is designed to discredit U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Describing him as “Lyin’

Ted,” Trump tells the audience that Cruz, an inept politician. The quoted moment I am exploring occurs when Trump talks about Cruz “conspiring” with Kasich. Trump frames the alliance between the two as a necessary measure to combat Cruz and Kasich’s falling poll numbers (L. 1-

2). At this moment, Trump criticizes the company Cruz keeps.

Trump introduces Kasich: “Ya know the man that eats with like large bites” (L. 3-4). As

Trump utters this description, he also produces a co-occurring iconic gesture (Schegloff, 1984); a

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“generic eating gesture.” The “eating gesture” does not distinguish or exaggerate the size of the bites either with his hands or mouth. Trump also does not alter his posture to signal a role shift.

Furthermore, he does not verbally quote or demonstrate how Kasich sounds or acts when eating. At this stage, Trump is not performing a discernable caricatured demonstration; he does not deviate from what could be considered a “normal” eating gesture (Arnheim, 1983). These pieces of evidence suggest that the enactment merely is meant to conjure up a baseline representation of Kasich and his eating practices: mimesis of action.

Soon afterward, Trump, addressing the audience, asks: “Ya ever see?” as he depicts the

“largeness” of the bites Kasich takes when eating (Ln. 5). Diegetic and mimetic devices work collaboratively (Redeker, 1996) as the narrator projects a comical telling about Kasich. The audience appreciates Trump’s interpretation of Kasich since they laugh and clap (Ln. 6-7). As we have seen in other extracts, the audience is invited to join in the ridicule of the cited figure, and in doing so, they can encourage the speaker to upgrade or continue with the mimetic performance.

Trump quotes Kasich without the prototypical linguistic means: using meta-pragmatic verbs (verbs of speaking), or the quotative “be like or “go” (Blyth, Recktenwald, & Wang, 1990;

Buchstaller & D’Archy, 2009; Dailey-O’Cain, 2000; Ferrara & Bell, 1995; Streeck, 2002). Also,

Trump uses these non-lexical vocalizations to accomplish various interactional and depictive goals

(Tolins, 2013). The vocalized sound effects, “Foom and “Argha, help the audience to visualize

Kasich “face stuffing” (Ln. 8-9). He opens his mouth in an exaggerated fashion and closes his eyes as he enacts Kasich breaking the rules of “proper” eating decorum. The selective depiction enables the audience to imagine Kasich trying to speak with his mouth full of food. The crowd joins in the collaborative ridicule of Kasich as they laugh, whistle, and clap (Ln. 10 and 12).

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Trump elaborates on the “comic scene,” producing a more clear-cut context for the quotation. The crowd is now “transported” to an imagined scene where Kasich is speaking in front of a news conference. As he utters, “News conference,” Trump takes both of his hands, which at this point are held away from his body, and brings them simultaneously closer to one another. The gesture in line 11—performed from an observer’s viewpoint—simulates the image of journalists and media pundits descending onto the scene and surrounding Kasich. Supplying the imagery of

Kasich “chowing down” on pancakes, Trump conjures up a comic portrayal that is unbecoming for a politician meeting with the press.

In this constructed dialogue (Tannen, 2007), the “media crew” asks Kasich where he wants the news conference to be held, and Trump—acting as Kasich—yells: “AROUND MY TABLE

AS I STUFF PANCAKES DOWN MY THROAT” (Ln. 13-15). The words attributed to Kasich are undoubtedly something he would never utter in public. The double-voiced (Bakhtin, 1981) discourses are played out here since Trump’s voice also comes through in the Kasich- demonstration. Again, I would argue that the performance is not a notable caricature, and instead, the “humorous” aspect comes from the negative self-evaluation Trump “forces” his Kasich- character to speak. Trump expresses disbelief regarding Kasich’s “indulgent” eating habits: “I never s:::” (Ln. 16). The audience roars with laughter in response (Ln. 17), and Trump’s continued displays of incredulity (Ln. 18-22) makes the imagined scene even more “hilarious.” The audience is asked to envision a politician eating in a “piggishly” during a highly televised event. In

Arnheim’s (1983) terms, the caricatured demonstration in lines 8-9 deviates from the expected behavior of a “put-together,” “image conscious” politician. The manufactured caricature of Kasich enables Trump to put striking distance himself and the political figure.

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Trump differentiates himself as a “professional” who is accustomed to media coverage and consciously chooses not to eat during these moments (Ln. 23-30). To heighten the moral vignette, he provides a brief story about how his mother taught him “proper” eating etiquette. The side sequenced story begins with Trump quoting his mother: “DON’T SPEAK when you have your mouth full of food” (Ln. 33). The quotation lacks character animation and individuation. It is not until after the quotation is produced that Trump contextualizes these words as originating from

Mary McCloud (Ln. 34). The positive naming (Atkinson, 1984a) of his mother invites the audience to share in their appreciation of his mother (Ln. 37 and 39). As the audience is cheering, he performs another version of his mother by animating her “stern voice.” Acting like his mother,

Trump straightens his body and speaks in a “strict vocal register.” Mary McCloud’s utterances are punctuated by pauses to show that this is supposed to be a “childhood lesson” provided by an authority figure. As “Mary McCloud” imparts the socially acceptable norms to her son, she wags her finger in a stereotypical “reprimanding” or “scolding” performance (Ln. 40-41). The pointer- finger gesture creates a presupposed “aura of authority.” There is a slight mistake here though;

Trump noticeably “misquotes” the common expression by using the verb “eat” instead of “talk.”

Despite the gaffe, Trump’s demonstration of his mother reprimanding him helps to recontextualize his performance of Kasich. He makes it evident that his earlier Kasich-depiction was intended to be him trying to talk with his mouth full of food. Also, it is significant to note the audience does not laugh at any of the demonstrations of Mary McCloud; her character is supported by audience cheers (Ln. 36-37). The contrast between Kasich is regimented further by Trump’s remarks: “And

I’ve sort of remembered that right” (Ln. 45). Kasich is mocked as being “uncivilized” despite running for president. Caricatured demonstration enables audiences to read into the loaded, iconic- indexical meanings being assigned to a cited figure. Trump promotes inferential leaps: if Kasich

235 cannot eat in front of a camera, what else can’t do “properly.” And more to the point, we have a narrative embedded within another narrative. The side story of Trump’s mother allows him to provide an even more damaging critique of Kasich and “poor” eating etiquette by letting Trump’s mother “speak.”

Afterward, in lines 49-69, Trump embarks on a tangentially related side sequence about facing the “brutal” press (Ln. 57).

Side sequences 1. Trump speaks about having no time to prepare for the appearance of the media. This leads him to talk about how “brutal” the press can be since he claims they can even break through secret service (Ln. 49-61). 2. Trump discusses how he avoids embarrassing eating moments when he is in the presence of the media (Ln. 62-70).

After establishing that he does not eat in the presence of the media, Trump disparages Kasich once again. Critics of Kasich’s eating habits were not new at the time. Trump references an already well-documented criticism perpetuated by the media. When Kasich stopped at Gino’s Pizzeria in

New York City on March 30th, 2016, he ate his slice of pizza with a fork (Gass, 2016). The incident sparked outrage among locals and on social media, and Kasich was branded as an “out of touch elitist” (Hafner, 2016). Kasich immediately apologized for the incident and for breaking from the

New Yorker style of eating a piece of pizza. Thus, Trump’s demonstration of Kasich is made even more salient because of his eating habits have been documented heavily in the media.

When he finishes his side story, Trump ends the segment on another bodily demonstration of Kasich eating. In this section of the telling, Trump mostly repeats himself. “This guy is always ya ever notice? It’s like he doesn’t have press conferences,” Trump yells (L. 71-73). In lines 76-

85, Trump works to depict Kasich as a vulgar character who lacks proper eating etiquette.

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First, Trump quotes Kasich by enacting a generic, mimetic schema (cf. Zlatev, 2005), an eating action associated with “stuffing his face” (Ln. 77). Trump’s hand grip suggests that his

Kasich-character is supposed to be holding an eating utensil as he continuously brings food to his mouth. Then, Trump provides an extensive description of the pizza, characterizing it as a “FOUR

OR FIVE INCHES LO:NG BY FOUR OR FIVE INCHES” wide piece of pizza (Ln. 80-81). As he describes the approximate slice size, he also simultaneously simulates the length and width by manipulating the distance between his two index fingers. The dominant production also makes the situation appear even more ridiculous.

In his final demonstration of Kasich, Trump uses his right hand to enact Kasich eating. It is difficult to discern whether the enactments in lines 76-85 are caricatured demonstrations.

Although Trump shows how Kasich tries to fit food in his mouth by stuffing it in with a fork, and the mimetic actions are reduced to two activities: a gripped hand shape or a clenched bringing food to his mouth. These performances lack the exuberance, exaggeration, and distortion of the facial expressions and physical maneuvers we expect; they are, for the most part, mimesis of action, not the character. Also, these demonstrations do not garner audience laughter until the very end of the performance. There is another explanation for the reduced performance; Trump is repeating an earlier demonstration, and, now that he has already established this full-bodied caricature, he needs only reference it. Whatever the case, the performance is intended to continue with the ridicule of

John Kasich.

Again, Trump demonstrates how Kasich eats pizza with a fork. Trump draws attention to the public shame of “stuffing his face” while “he’s got twenty cameras” on him while (Ln. 84-85).

Quoting Kasich through a shared, mimetic schema (Zlatev, 2005, 2007, 2014, 2016) enables

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Trump and his audience to simulate the past events through their own bodily knowing. The rhetorical power of the mimetic production comes from its ability to use our pre-reflexively shared knowledge; our cultural experiences of a “generalization of a bodily act, even if this act is carried out in the imagination rather than actually performed” (Zlatev, 2005, p. 318). The mimetic act of

“stuffing one’s face” or “pushing it in with a fork” are two interrelated acts made (comically) visible. “I don’t understand,” is a summative evaluation that invites the audience to claps.

Perhaps the caricatured demonstrations and subsequent enactments of “bad eating habits” are not inherently a moral issue. But I would argue the opposite, suggesting that there is a “moral maxim” or “practical lesson” embedded in this anecdote. Moral character can also refer to a person’s lifestyle or public conduct, and in this case, Trump is using this anecdote to evaluate two people. By showing Kasich’s poor eating etiquette, Trump co-opts broader public sentiments and inferences about Kasich’s suitability as a presidential candidate. Evidence for this interpretation can be found in Hall et al., (2016) when they analyzed a similar Kasich food-shoveling skit.

According to Hall et al. (2016), “We again turn to the power of entertainment to understand the rhetorical effects of Trump’s display. His stint on Kasich incorporates recognizable techniques of impromptu stand-up comedy” (p. 89).

Character Moral 6 Kasich is an out of touch politician. Unlike Trump, Kasich breaks the “moral maxim of proper eating etiquette that everyday Americans are expected to be familiar with. Kasich’s eating flounder speaks to a broader character flaw; he is inattentive to acting appropriately in a situation like a news conference; thus, audiences are asked to make inferences about how Kasich’s “obliviousness” and “slob-like” behavior makes him a weak presidential candidate.

In this skit, as well as the one discussed in Hall et al. (2016), both mocking segments defame Kasich by depicting him as an “uncouth-slob.” These moral vignettes become powerful

238 replayings of events (Goffman, 1974) that exaggerate the script in a dramatized mockery of someone’s character. What makes Trump’s comic performance even more “entertaining” is that he juggles several voices with polyphonous exuberance (Bakhtin, 1981). The “physiognomic ideology” is played out here, as Kasich’s poor eating habits are meant to be “symptomatic” of other moral character faults that encourage the audience to question his “presidential suitability.”

“Lyin’ Ted and the Stupid Politicians” So far, I have examined the rhetoric of full-bodied productions performed to spoil the imaged of the cited figure. In the two remaining extracts, however, I illustrate how the meaning of caricatured demonstrations can be condensed (Gombrich, 1963) into single culturally recognizable bodily actions. In Extract 14, I suggested that caricatured demonstrations can, over time, become condensed into a performance that is meant to emblems of a person’s identity (cf. Agha, 2007).

Although caricatured demonstrations can be performed in limitlessly varied ways through different behavioral displays (uses of gestural, prosodic, and spoken devices), they ultimately try to make a damaging socio-indexical critique of the cited figure (Lane-Mercier, 1991).

In Extract 18, I explore a caricatured demonstration of the American politician Ted Cruz, who was also running for the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. Extract 18 differs in a few regards from our previous examples, in that, the rally crowd encourages Trump to do a caricatured demonstration by invoking the nickname Trump supplied him during the campaign: “Lyin Ted

Cruz.”

Extract 18: “Lyin’ Ted and the “Stupid” Politicians” [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 21, 2016] Pantomiming Character ((Trump is reading from a written manuscript)) 1 Tru: Now as Steven told you 2 Cruz and Kasich 3 Aud: LYIN’ TED ((one audience member)) 4 Tru: He uh

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5 Aud: zzz[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (2.1) 6 Tru: [CRU-and 7 BY THE WA:Y 8 HOW BOUT CRUZ (1) holds out right hand facing the audience 9 Is it LYIN’ TED- 10 Aud: [zzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZ= 11 Tru: [you’re right LYIN’ TED 12 Aud: =[ZZZZZZZZZ= 13 Tru: [He’s a LIA:R. 14 Aud: =ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ= 15 Tru: [[HOW BOUT this: (2) holds up right hand 16 Aud: = [[ZZZZZZZZZZZZ (5.0) 17 ((vehement yelling begins)) 18 LYIN’ TED 19 LYIN’ TED Tru: (3) nods head 20 Aud: LYIN’ TED 21 Lyin’ Ted 22 Tru: [HE IS SOME LIA:R. 23 Aud: [zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-LIAR-zzzzzzzzzzzzz] 24 Tru: HE’s a professional lia:r 25 You know I say it (4) left hand motion to the audience with palm up hand 26 Aud: ((indiscriminate shouting)) 27 Tru: I’m doing great with evangelicals (5) left hand held to chest 28 but Lyin’ Ted comes in and he “ho:lds the Bible up” (6) left hand performs an l-shape and pinch gesture; raises it above his head 29 Aud: ((indiscriminate shouting; “he holds it high”)) 30 Tru: “AND HE HOLDS IT HIGH RIGHT?” (7) points to an audience member and then resumes previous gesture

31 “HE HOLDS IT HI:: GH” (8) maintains an l-shaped hand gesture and shakes his hand

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32 Aud: [zzzzzzzzzzzzz= 33 “AND THEN HE LIE::S” (9) continues the previous gesture and performs two beats 34 Tru: [he lie:s 35 Aud: =[zzzzzzzzz[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz= 36 Tru: [But he puts it down and then he lie:s 37 Aud: =[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz= 38 Tru: [So here’s the Story. 39 Aud: =zzzzzzzz (7.9) ((35 lines omitted)) 74 Tru: They’re taking advantage of (34) right hand performs pinch with three fingers extended (35) left hand conducts a pinch with three fingers extended 75 not necessarily our stupid politicians (36) left hand performs an l-shape pinch beat; executed twice 76 in some cases stupid- (37) left hand arcs away from the body 77 and in some cases (38) left hand slice beat 78 THEY DO WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO: (39) left hand performs a pinch three finger extended beat; executed three times 79 (0.3) 80 IN ORDERED TO GET 81 (0.3) CAMPAI:GN CONTRIBUTIONS. (40) left hand performs an l-shaped pinch beat; executed four times 82 I’m not doing that fo:lks. (41) both arms open; palms up 83 Aud: zzz[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz= 84 Tru: [I’m putting up my ow:n money (42) both arms open as they move away from one another; palms up 85 =[zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz= 86 [◦I’m not doing that◦. (43) repeats previous gesture 87 =XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (8.0)

Trump starts with a story about Kasich and Cruz, but it derails his telling when an audience member yells: “LYIN’ TED” (Ln. 3). A crowd member helps to promote a side sequence about

Cruz’s character based on Trump’s assessment of him throughout the campaign. Vocatives such 241 as “Lyin’ Ted,” are great examples of how Trump uses fragmented anecdotes to create opportunities for speaker-audience interaction. Trump’s nickname for Cruz is something audiences without difficulty remember and can produce at a moment’s notice. Despite being part of the same political affiliation, Cruz is a competitor of Trump and a “traditional politician.” As the audience boos and yell epithets at the named politician (Ln. 5), Trump tries to resume his narrative, but then turns his focus to Cruz exclusively: “BY THE WAY HOW BOUT CRUZ” (Ln.

7-8). Agreeing with the audience interlocutor who is citing or quoting him, Trump reaffirms the derisive moniker (Ln. 9).

A point I made earlier is that negative naming (cf. Bull, 2003) invites the audience to boo or deride Cruz’s character. Trump even verifies the stance of the audience member: “you’re right

LYIN’ TED” (Ln. 11). As the audience roars with boos and epithets, Trump produces, yet another follow-up assessment: “He’s a LIA:R” (Ln. 13). Because of this interactional moment, the rally crowd chants: “LYIN’ TED LYIN’ TED” (Ln. 18-19). During the second iteration of the chant

(Ln. 19), Trump nods his head in affiliation with the sentiment towards Cruz and alignment with the activity of deriding him (see Stivers, 2008 on alignment and affiliation). And in lines 20-21, the pejorative epithets continue, and Trump puts an end to the whole affair with a strong, repeated negative evaluation: “HE IS SOME LIAR” (Ln. 22). After getting out a few boos and invectives calling Cruz a liar (Ln. 23), Trump resumes his speaker role with an ungraded evaluation, not only is Cruz a typical liar, “he’s a professional liar.”

The interactional sequence shows how Trump works with his audiences to create moments for speaker-audience interaction. Trump does not persuade his audience with a pure monologue; rather, he and his audience collaboratively denigrate the quotable characters. At face value, calling

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Cruz a liar does not seem like a very nuanced critique, but one that works well enough when attacking a “self-proclaimed Christian.” Trump makes a point of attacking Cruz’s Christian affiliation when he utters: “I’m doing great with evangelicals, but Lyin’ Ted comes in, and he holds up the Bible” (Ln. 28). As Trump describes the action of holding up the Bible, he performs a demonstration: mimesis of action. Trump is not quoting the words of Cruz or the supposed lies he told. With one simple embodied action, Trump turns a mimetic schema—holding up an object—into an attributable fault.

Trump incited excessive laughter from audiences when it came to talking about Cruz’s

“trustworthiness.” For example, when Cruz questioned Trump about his policies at the GOP debates, Trump cut him off saying: “You are the single biggest liar. You are probably worse than

Jeb Bush” (CNN, 2016). The audience responded to this moment with roaring laughter and applause. Here, the audience initiates the negative evaluation of Cruz, displaying their solidarity with Trump. Trump’s demonstration of Cruz only quotes his bodily act of holding up the Bible while lying, the negative moniker and evaluation transform mimesis of actions to mimesis of character. Unlike our previous examples, his distortion of Cruz’s character is a minimal quotation at best, since it embodies a single act. However, this embodied act – used somewhat metaphorically

– also functions rhetorically as a caricature that sizes up Cruz and annihilates his individuality

(Gombrich, 1940). Cruz is summed up by his “hypocritical” behavior of lying while praising God.

In this way, Trump also emphasizes a deviation from the expected political decorum of a

Republican politician and religious person, since, devout Christians are expected to value telling the truth (Arnheim, 1983). The selective depiction of Cruz holding the Bible serves as a synechdotal critique, whereby, one habit stands in for the whole of his character (Osborn, 1976,

1986). The emphatic delivery and vocal lengthening of his utterances, combined with a shaking of

243 his hand, mobilize the audience to continue to discredit his opponent (Ln.32, 35, 37, and 39). The

“critique” of Cruz is an exemplar of an attack on character; an ad hominem attack on Cruz’s presumed character and his arguments are devoid clear, well-supported arguments about in Cruz moment (Macagno, 2013; Macagno & Walton, 2012; Walton, 1998). Trump deflects the need for

“argumentative proof” instead he deploys “physiognomic attack.” Trump reaffirms what the audience is already introduced throughout the campaign: the belief that Cruz cannot be trusted. To add to the spoiled Cruz-image, Trump makes one last comment: “He puts it down, and then he lies” (Ln. 36).

This example shows how caricatured demonstrations come in a variety of forms and degrees of elaboration. If such a presentation is well-circulated, as this one was and continues to be in 2018 (look to the sheer number of memes and Lyin’ Ted embroidered merchandise for still in circulation for proof), then the caricatured depiction can be produced with minimal mimetic strokes. Trump, using the media and already pre-packaged gaffes, conjures up apt nicknames and embodied displays that quote the foibles or exaggerate habits to the degree that they become foibles.

Hence, Trump creates “emblems of identity” (Agha, 2003, 2007) or pieces of language and embodied communication that are detachable from a moment, and easily repurposed in another

(Bauman & Briggs, 1990). Dramatization is not needed in this particular scene since the skit is already intelligible to American audiences. Sometimes the audience instigates the caricatured performance. Trump’s practice fits well within the parameters of how the meanings of caricatures became condensed into very few, minimal graphic, synechdotal strokes. Well-known 20th-century political cartoonist and caricaturist David Low (1935) referred to these synechdotal depictions as

“tabs of identity,” since caricaturist could distill a caricatured portrait of a person into one notable, identifying feature; take, for example, Hitler’s Heil Hitler gesture or Mussolini’s mustache.

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Often tabs of identity can be used to damage and moralize citable figures, since, they already have ordinary meanings or associations in a community. For Cruz, the Bible holding gesture is perhaps a glowing example of how an embodied marker becomes linked to a persona.

The gesture is imbued with multiple meanings surrounding “truth,” since holding up one’s hand is associated with various institutional settings, for instance, swearing on the Bible in court. The orator can harness these condensed, implied meanings to create and reaffirm contrastive images between him or herself and the distorted, contrasted adversary (Gombrich, 1963).

In line 38, Trump provides a “contrastive model” when he resumes the original story about

Cruz and his policy vote on TPP. To maintain conciseness, I have omitted 33 lines.

Side story and side sequence 1. Trump discusses Cruz’s support of TPP and NAFTA (Ln. 40-46) 2. Trump examines the impact NAFTA had on American lives and individual state economies (Ln. 47-56) 3. Trump argues that other countries (Japan, China, Mexico, India, and others) are taking advantage of the U.S. (Ln. 57-73).

When we resume the Cruz story in line 74, Trump blames America’s economic problems on

NAFTA and poor trade agreements. Trump believes the problem falls on “our stupid politicians,” who, “DO WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO GET CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS”

(74-81). Trump’s vocal delivery and co-occurring beat gestures stress the significance of the contrast he is making between himself and other politicians. Trump’s caricatured demonstration builds up to a puzzle-solution rhetorical device. The problem, according to Trump, is that politicians will say anything to get elected. The solution: Trump puts up his own, “honest,” “hard- earned” money in his campaign (Ln. 82-86). The problem-solution format invites the viewers to boo and shout at the mention of mainstream politicians, but cheer and applaud a contrastive image of Trump. The audience responds to Trump with intensified applause (Ln. 83, 85, and 87). As the rhetorical scholar, Kenneth Burke (1974) argues in the case of poetry; poets work rhetorically to

245 create strategies that speak to situations of everyday people. For Burke (1974), “These strategies size up the situations, name their structure and outstanding ingredients and name them in a way that contains an attitude towards them” (p. 1). Caricatured demonstrations are strategic depictions

(Osborn, 1974, 1986) that size of characters who are placed in recognizable situations or events that are intended to enable audiences to make evaluative assumptions about the quoted figures

(Edwards, 1997). Trump, unlike Clinton, provides clear interpretive instructions through fragmented anecdotes that speak to the “moral character” or “moral essence” (Lakoff, 1996) of a cited adversary. In this case, the “moral play” at work in this vignette, Trump casts Cruz as a

“typical politician” who lies about policies and promises to the American people to get elected.

Character Moral 7 Cruz is a politician who claims religious affiliation to the Christian Church but is a hypocrite for not upholding the values and standards of his faith. As Trump understands him, Cruz is a person who will lie on the Bible to gain American votes. Cruz is lumped in with other “stupid politicians” who will do or say anything for campaign contributions.

“Collapsing Hillary” In the final example of this chapter, I examine a caricatured demonstration carried out through pantomime alone. In “Clinton Collapsing from Pneumonia,” Trump recounts a highly publicized moment when Hillary Clinton had to leave a 9/11 remembrance ceremony after feeling overheated.

As Clinton tries to make it to an SUV, a video captured her nearly collapsing onto the ground while

Secret Service agents catch her and escort her to the vehicle. To understand the complexities and persuasiveness of his story, a bit of brief background is necessary before we examine the Clinton anecdote.

Prior to the collapsing event, media outlets and talk shows from very different ends of the political spectrum (e.g., CNN or the Fox News) started speculating about Clinton’s health with

246 headlines such as “Hillary Clinton coughs and a nation listens” and “Hillary blames lengthy coughing fit on ‘Trump Allergy.” The proliferation of these stories created heightened visibility among supporters and opponents. Thus, people speculated about the severity of Clinton’s condition. Audiences concluded that Clinton’s coughing fits are either symptomatic of seasonal allergies or worse, a grave illness (Scutti, 2016). While Clinton downplayed her coughing attacks, even joked at a political rally in Cleveland that, “Every time I think about Trump, I get allergic”

(Diaz, 2016), Trump treated the situation very differently and capitalized on Clinton’s illness. He re-framed the idea of Clinton having allergies and transformed it into a jab at the media tweeting:

“Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive “hacking” or coughing attach, yet it is

#1trending. What’s up?” (Nguyen, 2016).

Spectators of all kinds were asked to treat the video as a semiotic object to be studied and mined for the “symptoms” of Clinton’s mysterious illness (Goodwin, 1994). When the thirty- second clip of collapsing Clinton surfaced, it became the site of heightened a socio-political drama.

The illness and the scandal surrounding it became a PR nightmare for Clinton’s campaign, and the spectacle bolstered Trump’s political momentum.

Trump made several appearances on television programs such as “Fox and Friends,” claiming to be forthright with American audiences by releasing his health records (Rhodan, 2016).

Two days after Clinton’s incident, the spectacle progressed even further when Americans found out from her physician that Clinton had pneumonia, but the information was withheld from reporters. News of her medical status came at a rhetorically impactful moment; her diagnosis was confirmed just weeks before the first Clinton-Trump debate. During the first debate, Trump clarified he would use Clinton’s “health scare” to attack her ability to lead as a presidential candidate. Evidence for this is found in one of Trump’s most well-known quotes that emerged

247 from the first presidential debate was when Trump said, “I do not believe Hillary has the stamina,” to be president. Following the release of the debate, the famous American comedy sketch even co- opted the discourse of Hillary’s pneumonia and produced meta-discursive parodies of the Trump-

Clinton debate, which included Clinton coughing and using a cane.

In one scene, actor Michael Che, playing moderator Lester Holt, who introduces Hillary stating, “First, she’s been battling pneumonia. And we hope she is feeling better tonight. It’s

Secretary Hillary Clinton” (Saturday Night Live, 2016). As the mock-Hillary enters the stage, she immediately walks with a limping gait and cane, occasionally stopping from coughing bouts. The sketch reaches the pinnacle of “humor” when mock-Hillary snaps out of her illness and Clinton summersaults onto the stage. Clinton’s health became a spectacle that was oriented to by a wide range of public actors in popular culture (e.g., news, comedy sketch shows, and public commentary). Highly mediatized broadcasting spectacles like the one concerning Clinton’s

“pneumonia” become a “quotable foil.” Clinton’s health scare sparked several interrelated debates over what constitutes a political candidate’s privacy. Because Clinton’s campaign waited to disclose her diagnosis, it led people to contextualize her lack of full disclosure as a signal of her untrustworthiness (Bordo, 2017; Chozick & Healy, 2016). At the time, the media discussed

Clinton’s health in tandem with her co-occurring email controversy being investigated by the FBI.

Several socio-cultural factors are at play in this unfolding spectacle; however, I have provided the macro sociopolitical context necessary to interpret Extract 19. With that background information in mind, I now turn to a Trump rally in Manheim Pennsylvania on October 3rd, 2016, just days after the first presidential debate.

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Extract 19: “Clinton Collapsing from Pneumonia” [Manheim, Pennsylvania, October 02, 2016] Pantomiming Character 1 Tru: And now they said 2 (0.8) 3 with crooked Hillary Clinton- 4 that’s ALL we have left [is crooked Hillary. (1) both hands facing each other; moves away from one another 5 Aud: [bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb[bbbbbbbbbbbb= 6 Tru: [.hh 7 [[HERE’S A WOMAN (2) l-shaped pinched beats; performed twice 8 Tru: =[[bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb[bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb (8.0) 9 Tru: [[THAT’S S[UPPOSED TAH FIGHT PUTIN (3) point downwards beats; performed three times 10 Aud: [((CHANTING))[[°Lock her up° Tru: (4) opens mouth; hand and index finger pointing to the audience 11 Aud: °Lock her up° Tru: (5) opens mouth and raises a hand but soon lowers it 12 Aud: °Lock her up° 13 LOCK HER *UP Tru: (6) shakes head 14 Aud: LOCK HER UP 15 LOCK HER UP Tru: (7) flashes eyebrows; walks to the right side of the stage 16 LOCK HER UP 17 °lock her up° Tru: (8) smiles; points to the crowd; returns to the podium 18 °lock her up° 19 °lock her up° (9) grasps podium and then shakes head 20 LOCK HER UP (10) raises arm up and pinches index and thumb finger 21 Tru: HERE’S A WOMAN (11) pinch beat with three fingers extended; performed twice 22 Aud: [((asynchronous shouts and whistles)) 23 (0.9) 24 WHOSE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT TRA:DE DEALS IN CHINA (12) palms facing each other; move towards and away from one another 25 they are ripping us like no one has ever ripped ups in the history 26 of the world. (13) palms continue facing each other; move toward and away from one another 27 hh HERE’S A WOMAN 28 THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING PUTIN. (14) continues palms facing each other gesture 29 HERE’S A WOMAN (15) right hand slice beat; performed two times 30 WHO HAS GIVEN BARAK OBAMA SUCH BAD ADVICE (16) cupped hand moving forward beat; performed five times 31 THAT I GUARANTEE YOU 32 IF HE HAD THE CHOICE TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN (17) left hand swipes left twice 33 GO BACK YEA::RS 34 HE WOULD’VE NEVER PICKED her as secretary of state (18) c-shaped, claw beat; performed twice 35 She’s been a *disaster.

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(19) palms facing each other; move towards and away from each other 36 *Everything she’s done has been ba::d. (20) descending movement with the right hand (21) right hand swipes left 37 IT’S ENDED IN 38 (0.4) 39 HU::GE FINANCIAL LOSS (22) near pinching beats; performed three times 40 AND DEA:TH. (23) right hand arcs downward to a palm up 41 (0.8) 42 AND I MEAN DEATH ON BOTH SI::DES. (24) right hand arches back and forth between points; index finger extended 43 DEATH ON BOTH si::des. (25) right hand slice gesture 44 (0.3) 45 You look on what is going on in the Middle East (26) right hand swipes right 46 where they BOMBED these cities and they’re leveled. (27) right hand sweeps extensively across the body, then flattens hand and sweeps again 47 (0.6) 48 You can imagine (28) right slice gesture 49 how many people die::. (29) right hands sweep right 50 (1.3) 51 She has been a disaster. (30) near pinch beat 52 .hh 53 BUT HERE’S A WOMAN (31) near pinch beat (1.0) 54 SHE’S SUPPOSED TO FIGHT ALL OF THESE DIFFERENT THINGS. (32) hands flapping outwards 55 (0.8) 56 And she can’t make it fifteen feet (33) the gripped hand moves from point a to point b 57 to her car. 58 ◦Give me a br[eak◦. (34) nods head with arms spead open 59 Aud: [cccCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= Tru: [◦give me a brea:k◦ 60 Aud: =[CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= 61 =CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC= Tru: (35) closes eyes, opens mouth, and waivers body; walks to the left stage and staggers body to the Ground; lastly, flaps hands while returning to the podium

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62 Aud: =CCCCC[CCCCCCCccccccccccc (13.0) 63 Tru: [GIVE ME A BEA:K.

Trumps engages in a side sequence that trails off from his main story. In this telling, he recounts how the media announced Clinton as the presidential nominee, and then, he evaluated the

“appropriateness criteria” for her being the next U.S. president. In lines 1-4, Trump launches into a lengthy diatribe against “Crooked Hillary.” Trump’s continued use of the rhetorical ploy of negative naming (Bull, 2003) projects an injurious stance towards Clinton; this rhetorical maneuver enables his listeners to anticipate and mirror how they should respond to the stance

(Kaukomaa, Peräkylä, Ruusuvuori, 2013, 2014). Here, the crowd responds expectantly, booing the mention of Trump’s adversary. The “story” consists of a set of short, anecdotal descriptions of

Clinton’s character and repetitiously couched in the expression “here’s a woman,” followed a “job” or “task” that Clinton is supposed to do as Secretary of State. Trump tells a series of anecdotes intended to “prove” or “document” Clinton’s “failures” in politics (Pino, 2016). The syntactic

251 repetition of “here’s a woman [who’s/that’s] supposed to do X” highlights Clinton’s

“shortcomings” or “lack of qualification” in a high-level government position that works directly with the president.

The list of negative evaluations starts with line 7 and 8, where Trump describes Clinton as a someone who does not have the authority or command the ability to stand up to foreign leaders:

HERE’S A WOMAN THAT’S SUPPOSED TAH FIGHT PUTIN.” While Trump continues his negative descriptions of Clinton, he is cut short by the audience who launches into a collaborative chanting sequence (Ln. 10-20). Trump tries to regain his speaking turn, opening his mouth and raising his hand; however, he forgoes his turn as the audience continues to yell: “LOCK HER UP”

(Ln. 10-11).

Chanting creates a speaker-audience interaction of shared stances. As the audience continues to call Clinton a criminal, Trump affiliates with the attitude and aligns with the activity at hand: shaking his head, smiling, and pointing to the audience (Ln. 15-20). In line 21, Trump walks back to the podium and resumes his onslaught of negative anecdotes. His recycling of

“here’s a woman that’s supposed to X,” resumes his telling and sediments Clinton’s “believed” failures to maintain firm trade deals, to stand up to foreign leaders, and to provide adequate aid to the Obama administration (Ln. 21-30). According to Trump, not only has Clinton failed in her position as Secretary of State but also, Trump proclaims that the president at the time, Barak

Obama, regretted his decision to hire her (Ln. 29-34). The layered, accumulative weight of these assessments builds up into one summative critique: “She’s been a disaster. Everything she’s done has been ba::d” (Ln. 35-36).

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Trump has implied that Clinton has not been doing her job as Secretary of State; however, he fails to provide adequate or substantive measures that fairly assess her credentials or success in any of her political positions. Again, we have ad hominin attacks on the character (Walton, 1998), not argumentative proofs. It is notable, that, despite several rhetorical tactics (i.e., repeated three- part lists), the audience remains relatively silent, or at least, less audible throughout.

In lines 37-49, Trump dramatizes a more imaginable scene as he engages in a short, albeit related side sequence about American involvement in the war with the Middle East (Ln. 37-49).

Side sequence 1. Trump implies that Clinton (and President Obama’s administration) is responsible for the loss of income in American due to war involvement (47-40). 2. Trump makes claims about numerous deaths in the Middle East, attacking the United States’ decisions to bomb, and in the process, destroy cities (40-49).

When Trump returns to his anecdotes about Clinton in line 51, he, once again, repeats his overall evaluation of Clinton’s career: “She has been a disaster.” Dense, diegetic descriptions work forcefully in this context to prompt audiences to track Clinton’s failures. Her failures are emphasized repeatedly as Trump recycles the same syntactic phrasing again: “BUT HERE’S A

WOMAN SHE’S SUPPOSED TO FIGHT ALL THESE DIFFERENT THINGS” (Ln. 54).

However, to dramatize her “failures,” he not only describes them but also shows them through a caricatured demonstration.

The accumulation of negative descriptors culminates in a visualized foil because when

Trump utters “And she can’t make it fifteen feet to her car,” he uses his hands to depict a short movement from one point to another. The utterance and representation conjure up the imaginable scene of Clinton collapsing. Trump does explicitly address Clinton’s collapsing incident verbally; rather, he assumes his audience is already familiar with the “scandal” for the reasons I described earlier.

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When Trump evokes this frame, he creates a new context for the quotable moment and keys his utterance and actions (Goffman, 1974) to reflect a displaced moment in the past, involving a “swooning Clinton.” The repetitious nature of his negative evaluations culminates into a highly condensed, metaphorical production of Clinton, in where Trump caricatures the way she almost collapsed at the 9/11 memorial. Uttering “Give me a break,” Trump scoffs at

Clinton swooning as she tries to enter the Secret Service SUV. This interpretation is made evident when Trump performs a character version of Clinton, quoting her collapsing body.

Without verbal quotative markers, Trump launches into a caricatured demonstration, whereby, he, assuming the character role of Clinton, centers his body, closes his eyes, tilts his head, and wavers and flails his arms (Ln. 61). Seconds later, Trump produces the another part to his caricature, clumsily walking towards the end of the stage and lowering his body. The demonstration uses the rhetorical power of depiction to make a gravely ill-appearing Clinton visible to audiences (also shown in Ln. 61).

Like Extract 18, I argue that Trump’s caricatured demonstration can be used as a visible

“emblem of identity” (Agha, 2007) or “tab of identity” (Low, 1936), and a means of critiquing

Clinton in a more damaging way. The short, few second productions of Clinton cites her incident, reminding the audience of the damaging images strewn about social media and television broadcasting that speculate about Clinton’s health. The critique, not made verbally explicit, ridicules Clinton’s ability to lead a nation and accomplish all the actions Trump lists if she cannot do something as “simple” as making it to her vehicle. Although the past two examples are not necessarily laughed at by the audience, the demonstration, nonetheless, produces a visible, foil of the portrayed character (Cloud, 2009; D’Errico et al., 2010). As the literary scholar, Lane-Mercier

(1991) argues, quotations are hardly veridical or even partisan.

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Henceforth defined as a practice whose subordinative tendencies are hidden beneath conventional claims to literarilty, objectivity and ‘vocal’ egalitarianism, a culturally sanctioned memorization process, as well as an act of specious discursive altruism whereby one ‘allows the other to speak’ without relinquishing one’s own right to speak, citation is nothing more than a pretext for the reaffirmation of the self and the exploitation of the other. In sum, reported speech relies on a strategy centered on the metaphorical death of the quotee, whose utterance, apparently intact, has nonetheless been decontextualized, severed from its ‘origin’, and subsumed by the utterance of the quoter (Lane- Mercier, 1991, p. 206).

Although Lane-Mercier is writing specifically about written or spoken quotations, the same applies to a pantomimed expression like Trump’s. Through using the rhetoric of depiction (Osborn, 1976,

1986) holds powers over his Clinton character, suppressing her own understanding of her illness or the reported failures Trump describes. Caricatured demonstrations, in the context of Trump’s quoting repertoire, consist of fault-finding performances made visible and audible stylized critiques. Trump distorts the body of his Clinton character, silencing her voice.

Conceptions of morality are also vital to understanding Trump’s criticism of Clinton. In the Strict Father model of virtue described earlier (cf. Lakoff, 1996), precedence is given to those who hold moral authority and order. In this conception of morality, everyone is placed in a hierarchy of power (Lakoff, 1996). Although there is nothing “inherently immoral” about Clinton being unable to stand up due to illness, the compounding of her aforementioned “failures” creates an image “incompetency” and “inability.” By silencing Clinton, attributing several failures to her character, and caricaturing her illness, Trump tries to place himself in a hierarchical position of power over Clinton. He invites the audience to contrast his “character” with that of Clinton’s, seeing himself as an exemplar of “moral strength” who is “healthy” and “competency,” unlike his

“stamina-drained” competitor. To make this criticism even stronger, Trump harnessed the rumors of Clinton’s health that were circulating through various forms of media (Bordo, 2017), and, in doing so, he could spoil Clinton’s image through damaging inferences.

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Character Moral 8 Clinton is portrayed as a failed politician and Secretary of state whose policies and plans have harmed Americans. When Trump acts as Clinton, he depicts her in a physically fragile state, one in which she is incapable of carrying out her responsibilities to the American public.

Although it is not the focus of this analysis, one cannot overlook the way Trump and his campaign strategists used “stamina” and “strength” to address a female presidential nominee vying for a male-dominated leadership role (Bordo, 2017; Helman, Conroy, & Ankerman, 2018;

Jamieson, 1995; Sheeler & Anderson, 2013). Sexist overtones lurk behind Trump’s caricatured production, since “physical stamina” and “strength” are closely linked to notions of “presidential masculinity” (Heldman et al., 2018). Therefore, it is likely that Trump’s caricatured production is even more poignant for those who share ideologies of sex and gender.

Summary

In this chapter, I have investigated several of Donald Trump’s quoting practices during the 2016 presidential campaign. Building on Clark and Gerrig’s (1990) theory of quotations as demonstrations, I have argued that Trump crafts caricatured demonstrations of his adversaries.

Caricatured demonstrations, like their graphic counterparts, make their referents perceivable by quoting their foibles, distorting their bodily habits, and showing that the target deviates from

“normative acceptable” public behaviors.

Throughout the campaign, Trump continually remarked he was not a politician, but an entertainer, and in this way, he capitalized on his celebrity status. By harnessing the power of vulgar comedy, Trump critiqued and marginalized subjectivities that did not fit with his vision for

America (Hall et al., 2016). To discredit his opponents, competitors, and non-supporters, Trump harnessed visual rhetorical methods of “showing” or “demonstrating” to make (political) characters “visible” and “imaginable” to rally spectators.

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When it comes to telling stories, Trump resorted to short, fragmented anecdotes to deliver criticism of others (Pino, 2016). Although these anecdotes often lack “narrative cohesion,” they remain a rhetorically powerful means of persuading audiences because they draw off of pre- existing rumors, gossip, or foibles that circulate the cited figure. Trump’s caricatured demonstrations use the audience’s shared, kinesthetic and visual imagination (cf. Donald, 2001) to conjure a representation of a character. Quoting the quirks, foibles, or distorted habits of citable figures enabled Trump to discredit or spoil (D’Errico et al., 2010) the pictured character by reducing the complexities of their personality.

Caricatured demonstrations come in a variety of elaborate forms, but for Trump, he limits himself to a set of recognizable features: stiff body, change in vocal register, and o-lipped facial expression, among others. In doing so, Trump animates but does not individuate the characters in his productions. By using similar, if not the same vocal and gestural forms of delivery, Trump can lump all his political adversaries together, resulting in “the metaphorical death” of the quoted figures (Lane-Mercier, 1991; Gombrich, 1940). By caricaturing these citable figures, Trump creates opportunities for his audience to imagine jointly a given character and take up shared stances toward that figure. Mimesis of action and habit is transformed into mimesis of character

(Ricoeur, 1984), as Trump acts as his characters while attributing a “moral essence” (Lakoff, 1996) to those cited. These damaging critiques use the power of identity foiling (Cloud, 2009) to help sediment a shared sense of intersubjectivity between the speaker and the audience.

As Extract 12-14, show, the repetition of these skits enabled image construal to become predictable and shared with their audience, to the point that, audience members can even produce or incite a demonstration as in Extract 18. Caricatured demonstrations are power and solidarity

257 maneuvers (cf. Tannen, 2003) since Trump wields power over the distorted figures he portrays to build shared stances of solidarity with his rally crowds.

Trump’s audiences are not silent interactional partners; instead, they are collaborative interlocutors who work alongside him. Booing, chanting, and laughing at the imagined figures enables spectators to join in the ridicule and symbolic destruction of the quoted characters.

Although they are persuasive, these short caricatured productions are also problematic, in that, they enable Trump to skirt around substantiating his claims with clear arguments and discussions of public policy. This microanalytic study of Trump’s quoting practices reveals that caricatured demonstrations, although perhaps uncommon in politics, became a powerful means for an entertainer-turned-politician to hold power over his adversaries with very little commitment to argumentative reason.

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Chapter 6: Concluding Remarks

Overview This exploratory study examined the 2016 American presidential nominees (Donald Trump and

Hillary Clinton) as they enacted repeated moral vignettes of different characters (Koven 2007).

My study is unique to rhetorical studies and microanalysis in that it conceptualizes quotations as demonstrations; this visual and kinesthetic-oriented analysis has, to my knowledge, not been undertaken with regard to political communication (cf. Clark & Gerrig, 1990; Clark, 1996, 2016).

It is also distinctive in that it scrutinizes the way voices and bodies are described and depicted.

Even more specifically, studies of how orators use mimesis to portray the personality quirks or foibles of a politician’s adversaries lack in the field of communications (see D’Errico et al., 2010;

Hall et al., 2016 for exceptions). My interdisciplinary scholarship attempts to bring this embodied rhetoric to the forefront of the study of political speeches.

Quotation practices enable orators to co-op the voices and bodies of different social actors in the here-and-now speechmaking discourse. Voicing or embodying characters helps orators create various interactional effects that align with their political agendas (Reyes, 2011). Of these roles, I focused on how Trump and Clinton enacted character roles. “The role of a character,”

Reyes (2011) argues, “empowers politicians to present multiple selves or other social actors.

Politicians display someone else’s voice to appeal to the audience’s emotions, to appropriate other person’s ideas, or to support their own arguments by showing that respected/historical figures agree with and/or support the very same cause or idea” (p. 97). Clinton, for instance, tried to appeal to her audience by contrasting her adversaries (Republicans, Donald Trump, corporate interests) with respected or historical characters who lend credibility, legitimacy, and moral superiority to her arguments and policies. In contrast, Trump disarms his adversaries and their political effectiveness by using caricatured demonstrations to make visible from the quirks, foibles, or

259 breaches of normative standards of decorum, any of which can make assumptions about a cited figure’s “moral character.”

The following sections bring together my contrastive findings concerning the storytelling abilities and animation practices of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, paying specific attention to the rhetorical goals accomplished in speaker-audience interactions. After providing the conclusions I have drawn from my qualitative research, I will discuss the limitations and then situate the significance of my scholarship in possible future research. Last, I will provide the final summative remarks.

Key Findings Examining what I call moral vignettes, I tried to capture a more holistic picture of each candidate’s rhetorical delivery methods, and social skills repertoires (Bull, 2003, 2008, 2011, 2012) used to manufacture and embody characters.

Stylizing the voice and bodies of different personalities enabled Clinton and Trump to accomplish different moralizing projects (Keane, 2017) intended to convince their respective audiences of a particular understanding of the American political system. In doing so, I have illustrated how microanalysis of communication (Atkinson, 1984a; Bull, 2003)—an inductive, interaction-based method—can, in treating speeches as speaker-audience dialogues, help scholars document and scrutinize the effectiveness of Trump and Clinton’s storytelling abilities. The sequence-by-sequence analysis of a speaker’s talk, gestures, and the subsequent audience responses provides a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of why and two very different political contenders contrast in their use of mimetic and/or diegetic tactics of narration.

In the following exegesis, I bring together the findings of my empirical chapters by briefly comparing Clinton and Trump.

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While both candidates are skilled orators in their own respective ways, a focus on visual rhetoric suggests specific tactics are likely to be more persuasive than others. Clinton’s iterative stories show that her oratorical strengths lie in her ability to report neatly packaged stories with dense descriptions of the events and characters. For Clinton, her political speeches focus almost exclusively on the struggles of working and middle-class Americans and how her policies would be beneficial to solving their problems (Bennister, 2016). To animate these struggles, Clinton calls on historically recognizable characters, figures of authority, and ordinary citizen heroes (e.g., the first lady, female leaders, struggling parents) who confirm or lend credibility to her arguments or supported measures (cf. Reyes, 2008, 2011). Clinton resorted to diegetic or descriptive narrative tactics to report the propositional content and actions of the characters she animates (see Extract

4, 5, and 6). Restricting her storytelling to verbal narration is not necessarily a problem since orators use and mix mimetic and diegetic forms of storytelling; however, mimetically enacting or depicting characters has its distinct advantages.

As discussed in Chapter 3, mimesis of character can be a powerful rhetorical force for keeping audiences entertained and complicit in a particular worldview. Quotations hold the rhetorical power of appearing “truth-bearing,” despite all quotative practices being perspectival montages (cf. Sternberg, 1982). As Plato argued in The Republic, performers, when they impersonate or take on the voices and bodies of others, can present a quotation of a given figure with an air of authenticity or integrity, as if what is being cited is a complete and truthful account of the events and actions of the character. In doing so, performers can present and convince audiences to accept their own unequal versions of reality.

Clinton attempts to use more diegetic methods of quoting characters to her advantage. By

“documenting” (Redeker, 1991, 1996) what characters said or did instead of trying to “demonstrate”

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(Clark, 1996; 2006) their personality, she presents herself as an “objective-appearing” person who

“sticks to the facts.” Thus, Clinton resorts to spoken or vocal quotations over more gestural or full-bodied methods of animating and individuating characters. Spoken or verbal quotations with slight prosodic variation enable Clinton to harness the voices of powerful leaders and figures to utilize the persuasive, convincing power of “authoritative discourse” (Duranti, 1994; Gal &

Woolard, 1995; Philips, 2004; Reyes, 2011). Paradoxically, Clinton’s narrative voice and own bodily habits encroach on her performance of various characters, turning the audience’s attention to the generic, unindividuated character production. In Extract 8, for example, Clinton animates the bodies of two teenagers, showing different affective states of the characters. However, the lack of a distinctive, empathy-provoking mimicry - whereby the audience gets a sense of the character’s personalities - leads to a flat performance with little room for speaker-audience interaction.

When Clinton resorts to more dramaturgical, mimetic methods of quoting, she performs mimesis of bodily actions (what the characters did in a given event) and not mimesis of character

(how their personality speaks to their character or the situation). In Extract 5 and 6, for example,

Clinton animates the silk-screening actions of her factory-working father in order to contrast this depicted image with that of Trump who takes advantage of small-business owners and workers.

However, Clinton fails to individuate the hard-working father’s personality and instead merely recounts a generic silk-printing process that does not lead to a compelling characterization of her father. Mimetic or direct forms of quoting create a momentary theater that allows the audience to experience an event vicariously and to understand what a character is like (Goffman, 1971).

Throughout her skits, Clinton did not use a quotation to provide clear instructions for how audiences should react and what they should take away from a given performance.

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The ventriloquizing of a voice or body also enables the orator to hold power over the characters she portrays (Tannen, 2007); when Clinton generically enacts her father and fails to enact Trump, she does not put forth a convincing public theater or empathetically imaginable scene based on the audience’s lack of response. Clinton’s inability to individuate the characters’ personality traits, foibles, or general characteristics proves to be a distinct disadvantage for her campaign. Moreover, Clinton performs characters that use her own recognizable political habitus, and therefore, she does not create the mimetic illusion that a character is actually speaking on his or her own behalf (Genette, 1983). Evidence for my interpretation also comes in the form of a lack of audience response (booing, laughing, cheering) when she performs various characters (see, for example, Extract 4, 5, 6, and 8). In my data, Clinton evokes audience participation when she uses or combines common rhetorical tactics: puzzle-solutions, position-taking maneuvers, three-parts lists, and call-and-response, among others (Atkinson, 1984a; Bull, 2003; Heritage & Greatbatch,

1986).

In the rare occasions that Clinton mimetically takes on the role of a character, she does so with minimal, multimodal complexity: changes in speaking register or bodily maneuvering. In

Extract 9-11, Clinton attempts more mimetic, humorous performances of Republicans, old voters, or even Donald Trump, garnering audience laughter. Extract 11, when Clinton performs Trump lurking at the presidential debates, is a clear example of the apparent success of these types of mimetic performances. Here, Clinton harnesses the power of already-broadcasted media critiques of Trump sexism to produce a culturally recognizable critique of her opponent. The same can be said about Extract 10, where Clinton attributes a particular stance to Republicans about Climate change. In my analysis of her political speeches, such performances were few and far between, and Clinton took on the role of characters with a generic performance. Microanalysis shows that

263 political skillfulness, when it comes to animating characters, comes in a more comprehensive package. The stories Clinton tells are ones that she has epistemic privy to, but the audience had not experienced first-hand, and therefore, would require more animation, individuation, and general depictive character to produce a shared, joint-pretense (Clark, 1996, 2003). These stories, whose protagonists are ordinary citizens and heroic leaders, should be sympathy-producing for the audience. However, the audience often looks away from the speaker, groom their bodies, or gaze at their cellphones, all of which suggest the lack of sustained engagement Clinton creates. In conjunction, Clinton has a bad habit of unintentionally distancing herself from the audience with her message. Take, for example, in Extract 8, where Clinton accidentally implies that babysitting is not a real job, or in Extract 11, where she asks a rhetorical question that implies her audience has not seen the presidential debates. My argument then, is that there are cumulative issues with

Clinton rhetorical delivery that may cause audiences to have difficulty resonating with her elitist politician style (Schoor, 2017) and the believability/imaginability of the stories and characters to aid her in criticizing or spoiling the image of her adversaries.

Trump is a very different type of orator and storyteller. When it comes to taking over the role as a character, Trump is strategic in how he manufactures and animates his political adversaries. Using what I call caricatured demonstrations, Trump selectively acts as cited figures in demeaning or damaging ways. These performances involve a vulgar form of comedy (Hall et al., 2016) attempting to discredit the reliability or objectivity of a cited figure. Unlike Clinton,

Trump’s stories are fragmented, including side sequences (Jefferson, 1978) that derail the main point to his story. In turn, Trump’s stories are more akin to anecdotes, short amusing tales that spread gossip about the cited character (Goodwin, 1990; Pino, 2016). His demonstrations are more noticeably multimodal than Clinton’s; his performances involve facial expressions, body posture,

264 and hand gesture to animate not only the actions of the characters but also, their bodily habits, quirks, and foibles. For Trump, mimesis of character is a rhetorically powerful method for discrediting an “opposing other” because he creates demonstrations making damaging moral assumptions about their personhood. More specifically, Trump harnesses already mediatized scandals about the American democratic institutions and the characters that play an important role in the political system. For instance, in Extract 19, Trump performs an enactment of Clinton collapsing to help the audience recall when she nearly fainted at a 9-11 memorial. The pantomimed performance of Clinton falling is intertextual with the barrage of disparaging speculations about

Clinton’s coughing bout and the possibility of her being ill (Bordo, 2017). Also, the timing of this performance works effectively because it supports his critique that Clinton is a stamina-depleted political candidate who has failed to live up to her responsibilities as a Senator and The Secretary of the United States. The caricatured demonstration enabled Trump to create a rhetorically powerful argument that is not based on traditional standards of proof but prompts audiences to make visualizable inferences about her “moral essence” (Lakoff, 1996). Although Trump animates the characters he portrays, he does not necessarily individuate them through the caricatured physical features he uses. When Trump’s caricatures, he uses the same mimetic methods: (a) an o- lipped facial expression, (b) a stiff bodily posture, (c) exaggerated head movements, (d) a hyperbolic speaking register, (e) and a restrained gesture space (McNeill, 1992) when enacting his adversaries. The effect of this standard procedure of caricature is that it creates a group of others politicians, the (liberal) media, and political institutions upon which he attempts to discredit or cast doubt upon in the minds of his voters. My argument fits well with others’ scholarship on Trump’s rhetorical signature. Political communication scholars Kathleen Jamieson and Doron Taussig

(2017) capture this in a broader description of Trump’s political rhetoric.

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“…Engaged in rhetoric disrupted political and discourse norms. Specifically…he eschews scripted language, depicts himself as the heroic savior of a country in free-fall, dismisses the authority of key custodians of knowledge when it is convenient to do so, refuses to honor traditional standards of evidence and argument, breaches long-lived canons of cavity, attacks legitimacy of a number of democratic institutions, and rejects the conceit of American exceptionalism. Just as a golden, block- lettered “Trump” expressed his brand in business, this spontaneous, Manichean, evidence-flouting, accountability-dodging, institution-disdaining rhetoric serves as his signature in politics (p. 649).

Likewise, Trump’s stratagems for animating characters fits appropriately with descriptions of populist leadership styles. Moffitt (2016), for instance, identifies three main components of populist leaders in his cross-cultural comparison of political figures: using bad manners, appeal to the people, and depicting a crisis or threat. Trump harnesses all three populist political stylings, to make himself appear both charismatic and relatable. For instance, in Extract 16, Trump takes a clear stab at political correctness and the “biased media.” Referring to politicians and the media as

“dishonest people,” Trump caricatured media pundits taking Trump’s evaluations of Saddam

Hussein as a “bad guy who killed terrorists” out of context. Trump harnesses his comedic, entertainer status to produce a form of vulgar comedy that is typically off-limits for politicians

(Hall et al., 2016). His enactment of “bad manners” portrays himself as a person who “speaks his mind” about the political system and the characters that inhabit it. At the same time, Trump presents to the American an existential threat: the “incompetent” and “biased” leaders and political actors that attempt to discredit him. Thus, his caricatured demonstrations work by making these characters visible as particular types of “immoral” figures who are threats to America.

My microanalytic study illustrates that Trump is highly successful in garnering audience responses when he comedically enacts characters like Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, or reporters.

Extract 18 shows that Trump’s performances are highly recognizable to audience members. In that extract, an audience member calls out Trump’s derisive moniker for Ted Cruz (Lyin’ Ted), thus, creating the interactional space for Trump to perform a caricatured demonstration. Caricatured demonstrations are a depictive form of communication which politicians can use to manipulate the

266 audience into accepting or affiliating with a version of the character portrayed. In the case of

Extract 18, Trump uses one caricaturing maneuver to attribute a particular feature to his personality/identity: that Cruz is a Christian hypocrite and a habitual liar. Caricatured demonstrations are not just a means of transfiguring or disfiguring one’s opponent; instead, if successful, the depicted image supplants our understanding of a character (Gombrich, 1940). The caricature, if rhetorically powerful enough, is a self-replicating, culturally transmittable form that can alter how we view and understand our political realities (cf. Dawkins, 2016). While Clinton and Trump are both persuasive orators, Trump’s use of dramaturgy, caricaturing, and visual rhetoric is both intriguing and problematic. Whereas, Clinton, if she entertained a more dramaturgical or theatrical production of in her stories, she would be able to convey her arguments and policies in a way that sustains the crowd and media’s attention. However, a fuller account of

Clinton’s rhetorical abilities and journey as the first female presidential nominee would need to account for the way sexism and misogyny have restricted her image production and reception in mainstream politics (Jamieson, 1995).

Limitations and Future Research

My empirical analysis of political speeches in the 2016 presidential election has several limitations that will be addressed in the following passages. First, as an empirical method, microanalysis of political communication can include both qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis (see Bull,

2003); however, this dissertation is only qualitative in its approach. Therefore, in future projects, it may be worth quantifying the number of quotation types and corresponding audiences’ responses more systematically to improve the reliability and generalizability of this exploratory study.

Research in this area would also distinguish and categorize the different types of political speeches.

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Second, this study focused on the speaker-audience interactions in these quotation moments, and only, when possible, discussed broader macropolitical contributions that are made possible by the media, political institutions, and the historical trajectory of political oratory in the

U.S. (see Sclamer, 2017 for the history of stump speeches). Further work should be undertaken to consider the quoting practices of other American politicians in political rallies to create a more representative body of literature that speaks to the bodily norms and interactional habits of

American politicians. In doing so, we can also explore more gendered dynamics I have hinted at throughout this dissertation.

Third, my analysis is limited to the audio and visual quality of the videos that are uploaded on YouTube. As an interaction-based researcher, I usually record the interaction myself, but in this case, it was not possible to do so. Since the data was not secured first-hand, I can provide limited detail regarding prosodic or intonational features of the speakers. Specifically, a finer-grained analysis of each prosodic variable could isolate and speak to caricaturing features of the voice with more analytic precision.

Fourth, my study, in focusing exclusively on speaker-audience rally moments, does not consider non-present audiences or all the avenues by which these performances circulate via social networking or media sites. Therefore, researchers could triangulate different modalities of communication as they contribute to the broader political message.

Overall, this dissertation has aimed to create an avenue for taking seriously the rhetorical significance of quotation practices as orators harness the depictive power of communication.

Clark’s (1996, 2016) theory of quotations as demonstrations, opens up new and old veins for thinking about visual rhetoric in a highly mediatized society that is bombarded with moving visuals.

It is essential to continue to think about how genres of politics and entertainment are continuously

268 merged and transfigured alongside the cultivation and moral expectations of American audiences.

Future work, including the addition of experimental studies, could test how audiences respond to characters being acted out by politicians, and therefore, I hope my scholarship allows for the further cultivation of interdisciplinary and microanalytic studies on political communication. As

Vološinov (1973) reminded language scholars nearly four decades ago, language is an ideological medium that does not reflect a pre-given reality, it refracts it, and mimesis is no exception.

Microanalytic studies of future speaker-audience interactions will be critical in educating

American audiences on rhetorical strategies that side-step informed argumentation and supplant it with ad-hominem, visual arguments.

269

Appendices Appendix A: Transcription Conventions Orator’s Talk Transcription conventions for the orator’s talk, prosody, intonation, and voice quality is adapted from Jefferson (2004) and Reed (2010) [talk] Indicates the onset and termination of overlapping utterances (0.6) Indicates measured pause, silence, or gap in seconds (.) Dot in parenthesis indicates a micropause a less than 0.2 seconds . or  Denotes a falling pitch ? or  Denotes a rising pitch , Indicates slightly rising or falling intonation - Level pitch <> Double outward arrows indicate voice quality changes wor- Dash between utterances or words indicates speech or intonation phrase is aborted wo:rd Sound proceeding a colon is prolonged or stretched out and lengthening is assessed according to duration .hhh, hhh Dot-prefixed ‘h’s demarcate a speaker breathes in, while ‘h’s without indicate a speaker breathes out >word< Inward arrows indicate talk is faster than surrounding talk Outward arrows indicates that the talk is slower than the surrounding talk WORD Capitalized talk indicates talk that is louder than surrounding talk °word° Talk bracketed by degree signs indicates talk that is quieter than surrounding talk ( ) Talk in brackets refers to talk undiscernible to the analyst; presumed wording is placed inside the parenthesis ((gazes left)) Indicates transcribers notations

Orator’s Gestures

Transcription conventions for the orator’s gestures, head movements, bodily posture, and gaze positioning is adapted from McNeill (1992).

Talk is underlined to show notable bodily actions that co-occur with the orator’s utterances. In the italicized segments directly below the utterances, a number is given to the gesture or set of bodily acts based on their sequence in the interactional extract. In moments where the talk occurred before the orator’s speech, there is underlying without corresponding utterances. And for situations where there is no corresponding utterance, a number and description are still provided for the orator’s conduct. For each numbered action, I offer a short, italicized annotation for the orator’s gestures. Illustrations are included below annotations.

Example 1 (Speech and gesture occur in tandem):

Cli: Because he printed (.) fabric for draperies. (16) left hand with index finger extended performs a beat

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Example 2 (Gestures occur just before the speech):

Cli: Joe was born in Scranton? (1) right hand held out with palm up

Example 3 (Gesture without speech):

Tru: (35) closes eyes, opens mouth, and waivers body; walks to the left stage and staggers body to the ground; lastly, flaps hands while returning to the podium

Audience’s Responses

Transcription conventions for the collective audience responses is adapted from Atkinson (1984a) and Bull (2003) xxxXXxx Indicates collective applause with the uppercase x’s denoting a more intense audience applause hhhHHhh Indicates collective laughing with the uppercase h’s denoting more intense audience laughter bbbBBbb Indicates collective booing with the uppercase b’s denoting more intense audience booing zzzZZzz Indicates uncoordinated collective responses with the uppercase z’s denoting more intense audience response “CHANT” Demarcates audience chanting word and is followed by the actual chat in unison, “Yes,” “Lock her up,” “He goes low, we go high.” ((raise signs)) Audience’s gesture or postural conduct is described when possible using annotator descriptions BBB (0.5) Measured time placed after collective response indicates the total time for a s stream of collective responses and may span across and during multiple speaker responses

271

Appendix B: Copyright Assignment

FOR GOOD AND VALUABLE CONSIDERATION, receipt of which is hereby acknowledged [Ian Wallace] ("Assignor"), located at [22W6600 Poplar RD, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137], hereby irrevocably transfers and assigns to [Matthew Bruce Ingram] ("Assignee), located at [3002 Ridgemore Dr SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403], its successors and assigns, in perpetuity, all right (whether now known or hereinafter invented), title, and interest, throughout the world, including any copyrights and renewals or extensions thereto, in [81 illustrations of “Clinton” and “Trump” based on political rally videos provided by the Assignee].

IN WITNESS THEREOF, Assignor has duly executed this Agreement.

Ian M Wallace

By :

Title : M A D Design Founder

Date : September 16, 2018

272

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