ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “Situating Trump,” seeks to locate the study of Trump’s discursive and communicative practices in the appropriate academic literatures. It begins by examining the scholarship on style, highlighting the fundamentally rhetorical, political, and collective character of style. It then examines the history of political campaign communication and presidential rhetoric, paying special attention to the role social media plays in contemporary politics. As it synthesizes the literature in these areas, it reviews the rapidly growing body of literature on Trump’s campaign and presidency. It concludes by arguing for the importance of attending both to the uniquely affective appeal of his rhetorical style, which is rooted in an aesthetic of white rage, and to his preferred modality of communication, Twitter, which the president expertly mobilized to achieve maximum affective effect (reach and influence).
