ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the strategies, functions, and patterns can be used as a compass as students continue to ask questions about the function and importance of brand consistency and stylistic variation in the construction of an individual's political identity over time and through various stages of the trajectory of his or her political career. It provides the deconstruction of the sociolinguistic style of an individual and the interpretation thereof via an analysis of parody. The analysis of the Saturday Night Live (SNL) parodies of Donald Trump in his primary and general election campaign served to examine the perception side of identity construction. The chapter argues that parody is a type of metadiscursive genre that selects and exaggerates linguistic and nonverbal aspects of individual style in ways that expose the perceived dissonance between what certain sociolinguistic features have conventionally come to index and the qualities perceived in the individual who uses these features.
