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Cited by 134Linguistic research and analysisDigital Communication and LanguageComputational and Text Analysis Methods

Stylistic variation on the Donald Trump Twitter account: A linguistic analysis of tweets posted between 2009 and 2018

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Clarke, Isobelle, Grieve, Jack·2019·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0222062PMC PMC6760825
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Abstract

Twitter was an integral part of Donald Trump's communication platform during his 2016 campaign. Although its topical content has been examined by researchers and the media, we know relatively little about the style of the language used on the account or how this style changed over time. In this study, we present the first detailed description of stylistic variation on the Trump Twitter account based on a multivariate analysis of grammatical co-occurrence patterns in tweets posted between 2009 and 2018. We identify four general patterns of stylistic variation, which we interpret as representing the degree of conversational, campaigning, engaged, and advisory discourse. We then track how the use of these four styles changed over time, focusing on the period around the campaign, showing that the style of tweets shifts systematically depending on the communicative goals of Trump and his team. Based on these results, we propose a series of hypotheses about how the Trump campaign used social media during the 2016 elections.

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  • The nuanced interpretation of evaluative language in online language using the Appraisal framework remains underexplored in linguistic scholarship.

    “Despite the growing prevalence of digital discourse in everyday life, the nuanced interpretation of evaluative language remains underexplored in linguistic scholarship.”

    From EXPLORING PUBLIC EVALUATION THROUGH APPRAISAL FRAMEWORK: A STUDY ON LEVI’S ADVERTISEMENT FEATURING BEYONCE (2025) · cites this paper as Clarke & Grieve, 2019

    The Conclusion (page unavailable) describes the rise of online communication and calls for more rigorous linguistic analysis of online text. It criticizes analyses in the popular press, but does not say that nuanced interpretation of evaluative language using the Appraisal framework remains underexplored in linguistic scholarship. The Results section on Dimension 4 (page unavailable) uses appraisal theory to interpret Trump's tweets; it does not establish that broader research gap. (LLM, conf=0.74)

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Authors
Clarke, I., & Grieve, J.
Affiliations
University of Birmingham (GB)
Corresponding author
Grieve, Jack
ORCID
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2019-09-25
Volume
14
Issue
9
Pages
e0222062
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0222062
PMC
PMC6760825
OpenAlex
W2975760178
Cited by
134
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 14
FWCI
75.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Georgia State University
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistic research and analysis
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Digital Communication and Language
  • Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
Keywords
Donald Trump, Twitter, stylistic variation, political discourse, social media communication, conversational style, presidential communication
MeSH terms
Humans, Language, Linguistics, Politics, Psycholinguistics, United States, History, 21st Century, Social Media

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