A Pragmatic Study of Derogation in American Election Campaign Speeches

Language is sometimes used for influencing people negatively. This is done via the use of various derogatory strategies. Therefore, the present study deals with derogation pragmatically in American election campaign speeches. Precisely, the current work attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How is derogation approached pragmatically in American election campaign speeches? (2) Through which impoliteness strategies is derogation realized? (3) What is the target of derogation? Is it the public face or the personal face? And what are the foci of derogation? The study aims to find answers to the previous questions through reviewing the literature related to derogation and adopting an eclectic model for analyzing the data under investigation. Besides, a statistical means represented by the percentage equation is used to calculate the results. The main conclusion is that American presidential rivals use different impoliteness strategies to derogate each other; through this derogation either the public face or the personal face is threatened.