ABSTRACT The study attempts to investigate the use of Attitudinal resources, including Affect, Judgement and Appreciation in the first US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe
INTRODUCTION
RATIONALE
Language's primary function is communication, and humans are distinct from animals because they communicate through language As the most vital tool at humanity's disposal, language underpins democratic governance by enabling meaningful public discourse and participation Taiwo (2009) notes that language is the conveyor belt of power, moving people to vote, debate, or revolt, and thus helping to explain political stability or polarization in a society.
Language serves as a key tool for politicians, shaping how ideas reach voters In the United States, the presidential election occurs every four years, making the presidential debate a central component of the campaign A debate is a formal process for discussing a specific topic, where opposing arguments are presented to defend different viewpoints This traditional discussion format typically involves a moderator, an audience, and participating candidates who respond to one another and to questions, helping voters assess qualifications and policies during the election cycle.
The 2020 US Presidential Debates drew worldwide attention, with the first of four face-offs between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden held on September 29 in the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion in Cleveland, Ohio Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace moderated the 9:00–10:30 p.m ET debate, which spotlighted six topics: the candidates’ records, the Supreme Court, the ongoing pandemic, the economy, race and violence in cities, and the integrity of the election.
Appraisal theory, established by Martin and White (2005), offers a robust framework for analyzing how language encodes affect, judgments, and appreciation in the evaluation of people, issues, or events Consequently, it has become a valuable tool for examining a wide range of discourses, both domestically and internationally, including students’ argumentative essays, hard news, editorials, and TV interviews Studies (Hood 2004; Pascual & Unger 2010; Liu 2013) explore attitudinal resources and stance in student writing, while others (Wang 2004; Liu & Han 2004; Li 2005) analyze the deployment of appraisal resources in media genres In Vietnam, researchers such as Vo (2011) and Nguyen et al (2014) along with Nguyen (2016a, 2016b) have made significant contributions to genre analysis through Appraisal Theory At Quy Nhon University, many MA theses apply Appraisal Theory to diverse discourse types to uncover similarities and differences between speakers, as illustrated by Vo Thi Ngoc Hien’s 2014 study, which examines attitudinal resources in the victory speeches of Barack Obama and George W Bush.
In recent years, USA presidential debates—especially those featuring Donald Trump and Joe Biden—have captured global attention The study of these debates has attracted the interest of political scientists and historians and has also drawn linguists, underscoring how presidential discourse shapes public perception This multidisciplinary fascination inspired me to pursue a topic on debate rhetoric and its impact on voters and political outcomes.
Attitudinal study on 2020 US Presidential Debates” as my research paper.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This study was carried out to investigate how Donald Trump and Joe Biden used attitudinal resources for their political purposes in the first 2020 Presidential Debate
The objectives of the study are:
1 To find out attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation employed in the first 2020 Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden
2 To examine the frequencies of occurrence of the attitudinal resources employed in the debate
3 To make a comparative analysis of the frequency of the attitudinal resources used by the two presidential candidates.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The study aims at investigating the following questions:
1 What types of attitudinal resources are used in the first 2020 Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden?
2 What are the frequencies of the occurrence of the attitudinal resources in the Presidential Debate?
3 What are the similarities and differences between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in terms of the employment of the attitudinal resources for their political intention?
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The Commission on Presidential Debates sponsored the 2020 United
This article analyzes the 2020 U.S presidential debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, focusing on the first debate held on September 29, 2020 A second debate, scheduled for October 15, was canceled after Trump tested positive for COVID-19, and the final debate took place on October 22 To keep the data manageable for study, this work concentrates on the first 2020 debate and, due to time and resource constraints, examines only the attitudinal resources used by the candidates and their functions in conveying their attitudes in political discourse.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study aims to contribute both theoretical and practical value to attitudinal perspectives by applying the Appraisal framework to language in the 2020 US presidential debates Theoretically, although many researchers have analyzed attitudinal meanings in both verbal and nonverbal texts using Appraisal theory, few studies have examined the language of the 2020 presidential debates, and this work seeks to shed new light on the attitudinal values embedded in that discourse It also provides a curated list of references for readers with an interest in attitudinal aspects Practically, the study offers actionable suggestions for learning and teaching how to debate in English.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The study is organized into five chapters as follows:
Chapter 1, Introduction, will present the rationale, aims, and objectives, research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the study
Chapter 2, Literature Review, will provide the theoretical background on which the study is based and briefly present a review of previous studies related to this study
Chapter 3, Research Methods and Procedures, will deal with the research methods, research procedures, data collection, data analysis
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussions, will focus on describing, analyzing, comparing and discussing attitude on the first 2020 Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Chapter 5, Conclusion and Implications, provides a summary of research findings It also offers limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.
SUMMARY
This introductory chapter lays out the thesis rationale, then presents the aims and objectives, followed by the research questions, the study’s significance, and its scope, and concludes with an overview of the organization of the study, offering readers a concise roadmap and a preliminary sketch of the research outline to guide the forthcoming chapters.
LITERATURE REVIEW
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Appraisal theory, developed as an extension within Systemic Functional Linguistics by Halliday, treats interpersonal meaning as a structured system Martin and Rose describe Appraisal as a system of interpersonal meaning that centers on evaluation, where discourse negotiates attitude through the strength of feeling, the source of value, and how readers are categorized Martin and White identify Appraisal as one of the three major discourse semantic resources for constructing interpersonal meaning, alongside involvement and negotiation By deploying Appraisal resources, speakers and writers manage social relationships and communicate their sentiments about people and things, guiding readers or listeners toward an understanding of their attitudes.
According to Richards and Schmidt (2010, p 30), Appraisal theory is
Appraisal is a developing theoretical strand in discourse analysis and conversation analysis, aligned with Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics It analyzes how speakers express attitudes such as certainty, emotional response, social evaluation, and intensity in their discourse This appraisal can be realized through lexical items or through the entire clause, shaping how stance and meaning are conveyed in interaction.
Vo Duy Duc (2011, pp 28-29) defines Appraisal as an umbrella term for linguistic resources by which speakers or writers positively or negatively evaluate people, things, places, events, and states of affairs, engage interpersonally with the listener or reader in actual or potential ways, and modulate the utterances' intensity and precision Martin and White (2005, pp 34-35) show that the Appraisal framework comprises three domains—Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation—each offering semantic options that traverse diverse lexical-grammatical structures This study is conducted within the Attitude subsystem of Appraisal Theory, which can be further divided into three aspects: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation.
Appreciation An overview of this appraisal system is presented in Figure 2.1 as follows:
Figure 2.1 An overview of appraisal resources
Within the Attitude system, three semantic categories—Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation—cover emotion, ethics, and aesthetics The Engagement system describes the linguistic resources that allow the authorial voice to position itself in relation to other voices and alternative stances that are at play in the current discourse The Graduation system encompasses the resources that raise or lower the force or tone of an utterance and that sharpen or blur the focus and precision of the semantic categories used in communication.
Attitude is the central sub-system of AT, encompassing how people feel about and evaluate things It consists of three sub-systems—Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation—that correspond to emotions, ethics, and aesthetics, respectively.
Attitude represents a subsystem of evaluative meaning that positions readers or listeners to view experiences or the propositions about those experiences in a favorable or unfavorable light This evaluative layer signals approval or disapproval within discourse and shapes how experiences are interpreted and discussed In effect, attitude colors the perceived valence of events and ideas, guiding the stance conveyed by the speaker or writer.
Feelings in this context are emotions that are either explicitly stated or implicitly conveyed Explicit feelings, technically called inscribed attitudes, are emotions that are clear enough to be understood without interpretation In contrast, implicit attitudes—also known as invoked attitudes—emerge from how what is said is understood, reflecting emotions that lie beneath the literal words Understanding this distinction helps explain how meaning is communicated through both direct statements and inferred sentiment.
(2.1) He is an incompetent fool (explicit/inscribed)
(2.2) I don't think he can comprehend anything (implicit/invoked)
In the first example, the word 'stupid' signals an explicit negative attitude toward someone, making the sentiment unambiguous People hardly need interpretation to grasp the intended meaning of the word By contrast, in the second example, the clause introduces a more subtle, context-dependent attitude, requiring surrounding text to interpret the speaker's stance.
„don't think he can comprehend anything' is an implicit statement of a negative attitude
Attitude is organized into three subdivisions, each split into two regions: positive (likeable) and negative (unlikeable) attitudes Importantly, negative feelings are distinct from the negation of positive emotions, and they can look similar in some contexts but are not the same For example, “sad” represents a negative attitude, whereas “not happy” is the negation of a positive emotion, and a person can be not happy without feeling sad.
Martin and White (2005) argue that appraisal items can be used to express people's attitudes and their positive or negative feelings toward material objects or social events, with Attitude consisting of three components: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation.
Affect indicated through lexical items expresses the emotional response to a person, thing, event, or state of affairs This affect comprises three core dimensions: happiness and unhappiness, security and insecurity, and satisfaction and dissatisfaction By choosing specific terms, speakers signal the valence and intensity of their feelings toward the target, shaping perception, attitudes, and behavior in communication.
The judgment represents resources for evaluating people‟s behavior by reference to social norms or rules It is concerned with social esteem and social sanction
Appreciation is the resource for aesthetic evaluation, the system by which evaluations of products and processes are made Broadly defined, it comprises three subcategories: reaction, which captures immediate sensory responses; composition, which analyzes arrangement and form; and valuation, which assigns overall worth or merit Understanding these dimensions helps designers and creators gauge aesthetic quality across artifacts and workflows.
Figure 2.2 An Overview of Attitude (Martin and White, 2005)
It is worth noticing that declaring the analyst‟s reading position plays a critical role in scrutinizing invoked assessment Martin and White (2005, p.62) classify three reading assignments: compliant, resistant, and tactical reading
By tactical reading, we mean a partial and interested engagement with a text, intended to deploy it for social purposes beyond its naturalized meanings Resistant readings oppose the reading position created by the co-selection of meanings within the text, challenging the dominant interpretation Compliant readings subscribe to that naturalized reading, accepting the meanings that have been co-selected Together, these perspectives show how readers mobilize a text’s meanings to serve specific aims, revealing how interpretation can align with or contest the text’s conventional significance.
This study analyzes the tactical use of debate expressions by candidates, showing how these phrases are employed to illustrate inscribed and invoked attitudes The strategic deployment of such language reveals a deliberate rhetorical tactic in political discourse, contributing to linguistic research by showing how rhetoric signals attitudes and shapes audience interpretation in debates.
Another characteristic is that Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation contribute to forming an interactive and inter-related evaluation Martin and
White (2005) conceptualizes judgement and appreciation as institutionalised feelings that structure our responses to people and things Judgement institutionalises affectual positioning toward human behaviours—defining how we are expected to act—while appreciation institutionalises affectual positioning toward the value of objects, products, or processes This dynamic relationship, depicted in Figure 2.3, ties ethics and morality to systems of rules and regulations that govern both conduct and evaluation.
APPRECIATION feeling institutionalised as propositions
Aesthetics/value (criteria and assessment)
Figure 2.3 Judgement and Appreciation as Institutionalised Affect
In the domain of affect, the different categories can be identified based on the following factors, being drawn from Martin and White (2005, p 46- 49):
1 Are the feelings popularly construed by the culture as positive (good vibes that are enjoyable to experience) or negative ones (bad vibes that are better avoided)?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Over the past decades, political discourse has drawn sustained attention from linguists and discourse analysts who observe a close link between politics and language Analysts note that linguistic choices shape political messages, frames, and persuasion, making language a central instrument in political life The role of language in politics cannot be overstated, as language and politics are deeply intertwined and language serves as an indispensable tool for political actors and processes This intersection highlights how discourse informs public opinion, policy debates, and institutional communication.
In the area of analysis of presidential debates, there has been extensive research Researchers have studied political texts detecting ideological positions (Sim et al., 2013; Hasan and Ng, 2013), predicting voting patterns (Thomas et al., 2006; Gerrish and Blei, 2011) and characterising power based on linguistic features (Prabhakaran et al., 2013) While there is a vast amount of theoretical research on the rhetoric of politicians, only recently there has been a growing interest in understanding the argumentation processes involved in political communication Some more related studies are “A Study of the Impact of Persuasive Argumentation in Political Debates” by Cano-
Basave and He (2016) or “A Functional Appraisal of the Interpersonal
Meaning in Obama's political speeches” by Liushenghua (2011)
In recent years, in Vietnam, the study of presidential debates has attracted the interest of several researchers More and more master studies concerning this topic have been carried out, such as: “Attitude in Victory
Speeches of Barack Obama and George Walker Bush” by Vo Thi Ngoc Hien
Research in political discourse since 2014 has used Appraisal theory to map how attitudes are constructed around major events, including Pham Thi Hien’s 2016 study on interruptions in the 2008 US presidential debates, Nguyen Thi Thu Hen’s 2016 analysis of social attitudes in news reports about President Obama’s visit to Vietnam, and Nguyen et al.’s 2014 examination of Expansion resources in English and Vietnamese political editorials about North Korea These works, focusing on Expansion and its subtypes such as Entertain and Attribution, illustrate how linguistic choices shape readers’ perceptions of political actors and events.
Nguyen (2016a, 2016b) examines how Appraisal Theory operates in news reporting In An Appraisal study of Social Attitudes in news reports towards President Obama’s visit to Vietnam, Nguyen (2016a) analyzes Attitude and Engagement resources to reveal social attitudes toward the visit In a follow-up study (Nguyen 2016b), Appraisal Theory is applied to the styles of expressing attitude in commentaries about The Panama file, showing that commentators employ a range of Attitudinal resources to convey negative evaluations of the event.
Current research shows only a handful of studies examining political debates through Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005), a framework that evaluates texts in terms of appraisal elements, and there has been no prior study focusing on US presidential debates This gap motivates the proposed project, "An Attitudinal Study on the First 2020 US Presidential Debates," with the goal of contributing a fuller, more coherent picture to the field of political discourse analysis.
SUMMARY
Chapter 2 gives an overview of the Appraisal theory as the fundamental theoretical framework of the research
Attitude reflects our feelings and emotional reactions, shaping judgments and the evaluation of people, objects, or events, and it can express praise or blame as a positive or negative appraisal In discourse, engagement covers how language reveals the sources of opinions, while graduation gauges the degree of assessment through linguistic cues that indicate strength or intensity.
Because this thesis focuses on Attitude resources, it highlights three principal types of Attitude: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation Affect provides resources for construing emotional reactions, enabling speakers to express feelings and stances Judgment deals with resources for assessing behavior against normative principles, such as ethical or social standards Appreciation examines resources for valuing things, including natural phenomena, which contribute to semiosis by signaling worth and significance.
This chapter reviews the literature related to the study, synthesizing prior research and outlining the theoretical foundations that underlie the study’s purpose It establishes the scholarly context and clarifies the core concepts driving the investigation The following chapter will present the study’s methodology and procedures, detailing the research design, data collection methods, and analysis plan.
RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES
RESEARCH METHODS
This study employs a dominant mixed-methods design that integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyze the Trump–Biden debates The qualitative component describes and compares the debates to identify similarities and differences in rhetorical strategies between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, while the quantitative component assesses the frequency of Appraisal values across the discourse The research is further supported by additional methodological steps to triangulate findings and enhance validity, resulting in a comprehensive understanding of the debates’ linguistic patterns.
The study employed descriptive methods to provide a detailed portrayal of the collected data, used comparative and contrastive analyses to identify the similarities and differences in the debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and, by applying both synthetic and analytic methods, synthesized the findings and drawn the study’s final conclusions.
DATA COLLECTION
This study analyzes the first 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, chosen as the most recent debate for analysis, held on September 29, 2020, a 90-minute event divided into six 15-minute segments with no ad breaks, addressing Trump’s and Biden’s records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in U.S cities, and the integrity of the election Data were drawn from reliable online sources, compiling about 15,000 words in total—roughly 9,000 from Trump and 6,000 from Biden—and the debates were coded as DT for Trump and JB for Biden.
DATA ANALYSIS
Guided by the Attitude subsystem of Appraisal theory, this study analyzes attitudinal resources—Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation (including their subcategories)—in a first-debate transcript lasting over 90 minutes Attitude is coded for polarity (positive/negative) and strategy (inscribed/explicit or invoked/implicit), and all data are imported into Microsoft Excel to calculate the frequency and proportion of each Attitude class The resulting data are summarized and displayed in tables and charts, enabling a comparative analysis of the Attitude sub-types used by each candidate to reveal similarities and differences in linguistic stance during the debate.
RESEARCH PROCEDURES
The study was carried out as follows:
+ First, the topic for the investigation was chosen by a thorough review of previous studies;
+ Second, the first 2020 Presidential Debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden were collected;
+ Next, the attitudinal resources used in the debates were identified;
+ Then, the ways the US presidential candidates used the attitudinal resources in their discussions were compared and discussed;
+ Finally, the limitations of the study were listed, and suggestions for further research were made.
Reliability and Validity in the research
Reliability and Validity are the two criteria for evaluating the quality of the data
Data were collected from prestigious websites to ensure reliability The theoretical background for expressive and attitudinal analyses was developed by respected experts in the relevant fields.
The data met the fundamental validity criteria and proved to be original Values were extracted from debate transcripts and carefully checked to preserve the natural language used by Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
SUMMARY
Chapter 3 establishes the theoretical framework for data collection and data analysis, clarifies the study’s research methods and procedures, and confirms the validity and reliability of the research This methodological overview ensures rigor and transparency, linking the study design to the data gathered and the analyses performed Chapter 4 then presents the research findings.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Affect
Martin and White (2005, pp 48-51) identify four sub-types of affect in discourse: Un/Happiness, Dis/Inclination, In/Security, and Dis/Satisfaction Un/Happiness covers the range from happiness to sadness, In/Security ties to feelings of peace and anxiety in relation to our surroundings, Dis/Satisfaction signals feelings of achievement or frustration about the activities we engage in as participants or observers, and Dis/Inclination denotes a preference or stance toward something The following sections examine these affect resources and their role in shaping stance, evaluation, and emotional tone within the ongoing debate.
Affect refers to the semantic resources used to construe emotions, and a chart shows how these affect-related items are distributed across the debates The data indicate that affect items account for 49% of Donald Trump's debate language, versus 35% for Joe Biden.
Chart 4.1 Affect in the first debate
Chart 4.1 shows that all types of Affect resources are used by both Donald Trump and Joe Biden in their debates, reflecting the purpose of the presidential debate to present opinions and attract voters The distribution of affect types differs between the two candidates: in Trump’s debate, Dis/Inclination is the most frequent affect type at 61%, followed by Un/Happiness and Dis/Satisfaction at 15% each, and In/Security at 9%; in Biden’s debate, Dis/Inclination occurs at 41%, followed by Dis/Satisfaction at 25%, with Un/Happiness and In/Security each at 17%.
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden use the first type of Affect items—Dis/Inclination—in their debate discourse to express desire, with the verb "wanting" emerging as a statistically significant marker of that inclination This word is employed to reveal the opponent's passion, illustrating how the candidates frame the other side's motives and intensity By analyzing these exchanges, we see "wanting" functioning as a key expressive device that goes beyond neutral description to magnify perceived drive and commitment In short, Dis/Inclination and the targeted use of "wanting" help shape audience impressions of political motivation during the debates.
Well, he wants to shut down this country, and I want to keep it open, and we did a great thing by shutting it down
Wait a minute, Joe Let me shut you down for a second, Joe, just for one second He wants to shut down the country
He wants to shut down the whole country
And he wants to close down the… He will shut it down again He will destroy this country
He doesn’t want to let me answer, because he knows I have the truth His position has been totally thoroughly discredited
He's not drawing a clear line on methane, insisting that methane emissions aren't a problem and that more methane can be emitted without consequences This is the same person who argues that there is no need for mileage standards for automobiles that exist today.
Second, they use this channel to articulate their own policy positions on key debate topics, including the present Supreme Court vacancy, the coronavirus, the economy, race and violence in American cities, their records in office, and election integrity These messages reflect how individuals frame issues to support their views, as illustrated by the examples that follow.
(4.10) JB : (14:41) God, I want to make sure-
No, I want to give them better healthcare at a much lower price, because Obamacare is no good
But more importantly, I want to help people Okay I said,
―You’ve got to run it so well.‖ And I just had a meeting with them
Chris, let me just say something, that it was the tax laws I don’t want to pay tax Before I came here, I was a private developer, I was a private business people
Yes, I want to respond: the tax code that puts him in a position where he pays less tax than a schoolteacher earns is a result of his own actions He says he's smart for taking advantage of the tax code, and he does take advantage of it That's why I plan to eliminate the Trump tax cuts and the accompanying tax breaks.
Also, in the debate, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden used this word to mention every American citizen's desire, safety, or welfare This is shown in the following example:
People want their schools open, their states functioning, and their restaurants able to operate so they can return to their daily lives Looking at New York, it’s heartbreaking to see how the city feels like a ghost town, raising questions about the path to recovery Ultimately, communities seek open institutions and businesses and a credible route back to normal life.
People want to be safe
They’ll be careful, but they want their schools open
People want to be safe
During a recent meeting, I stressed that Obamacare must be run as effectively as possible, but they countered that, no matter how well Obamacare is managed, it’s a disaster: it’s too expensive, premiums are too high, and the system simply doesn’t work.
So we do want to get rid of it Chris, we want to get rid of that and give something that’s cheaper and better
During the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Trump used hopeful affective rhetoric He wanted to show his competitors that he doesn’t need void ballots and that the election will be fair This intent is illustrated by the examples that follow.
I'm counting on observers to scrutinize the ballots, hoping their oversight isn't needed to decide the election but recognizing it's essential for ballot integrity What’s happening is alarming: I read that at least 1% of the ballots from the 2016 election were invalidated, with some ballots being rejected and discarded We don’t like that reality, and the idea that ballots can be taken and thrown out underscores the need for vigilant ballot monitoring and reform to protect voters’ choices.
I'm urging my supporters to go to the polls and monitor the process closely, because that’s what has to happen Today there was a problem in Philadelphia: poll watchers—those who observe the voting—were removed and not allowed to watch, with the claim that bad things happen in Philadelphia I’m urging my people to participate, and I hope the election will be fair.
By doing so, the candidate wants to express that they care so strongly about their citizens‟ future and understand their hope and desire
In addition, at 44:03, Donald Trump used the word 'hopefully' to express his hope about the three great Supreme Court judges
We take care of our veterans, and we’ve rebuilt our military Some observers say this could be the most consequential achievement of the first term—appointing roughly 300 federal judges and Court of Appeals judges by its end, a move that will shape the judiciary for years to come.
I'm pursuing a record number of judicial appointments, hoping to nominate over 300 judges and, ideally, three great Supreme Court justices One major factor behind this push is that President Obama left me 128 vacancies to fill, creating a substantial backlog of openings.
During the Trump–Biden debate, the second category of affective language identified is Un/Happiness Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden used un/happiness cues in their rhetoric, as illustrated by the examples below.
JUDGEMENT
Judgment is the second sub-system of the Attitude domain, defined by Martin & White (2005) as the evaluation of human characters and behaviors It arises whenever an agent assesses others’ actions or engages in self-evaluation, aiming to orient readers or listeners to adopt a similar stance, with ethics and moral criteria underpinning language-user evaluation Martin & Rose (2003) note that Judgment values can be positive or negative and may be expressed explicitly or implicitly Judgment is divided into two categories: Social Esteem and Social Sanction Under Social Esteem, language resources evaluate how unusual (Normality), capable (Capacity), and dependable (Tenacity) someone is; under Social Sanction, Judgment values assess how truthful (Veracity) and ethical (Propriety) someone is.
The following sections illustrate the Judgment resources in the first debate As stated by (Martin & White, 2005), Social Esteem, encompassing
Normality, Capacity, and Tenacity, plays a critical part in forming social networks, while Social Sanction, incorporating Veracity and Propriety, foregrounds what is termed as „civic duty and religious observances‟(p.52)
During the first 2020 U.S presidential debate, Social Esteem values are more dominant than Social Sanction, with the Attitude sub-system accounting for 26% in the Donald Trump debate and 20% in the Joe Biden debate The distribution of Judgement sub-categories for Donald Trump and Joe Biden is presented in Table 4.2 and illustrated in Chart 4.2.
Table 4.2 Sub-types of Judgment in between Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Judgement Donald Trump Joe Biden
Chart 4.2 Types of Judgement in Donald Trump and Joe Biden
It is clear from Table 4.2 and Chart 4.2 that both Social Sanction and Social Esteem values are found across the two candidates in the debate In
An analysis of judgments about Donald Trump reveals that 76% are social esteem and 24% social sanction overall, with the breakdown showing that within Trump-specific judgments social sanction is 36% and social esteem 64%; a detailed distribution of the subcategories for social sanction and social esteem is presented in Chart 4.3.
Capacity Normality Tenacity Veracity Propriety
Chart 4.3 Judgement resources in the first debate
The study shows that all subtypes of Judgement are employed in the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Judgments are divided into perssonal judgments which denote either admiration or criticism, and moral judgments which indicate praise or condemnation Personal judgements expressing positive evaluation of a character are subsumed under admiration, the negative ones under criticism
Martin and White (2005) term this type of judgment „social esteem‟ They are „concerned with how people‟s behaviour lives up to or fails to live up to socially desirable standards‟ (Eggins and Slade 1997: 31), Iedema et al.,
According to a 1994 source, quoted in Eggins and Slade (1997:131), positive social values can raise the esteem with which the public views someone, while negative values can diminish or destroy that esteem.
As noted in Chapter 2, modal verbs serve as a vehicle for expressing evaluation within the judgment domain A quantitative analysis of the first debate reveals numerous instances of modality, with will emerging as the most frequently used modal.
Will serves as a marker of tenacity, signaling a strong wish and determination; when its modal commitment is higher, it indicates that more actions will be taken in the future This pattern appears in political discourse, including the debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, where speakers lean on heightened expressions of will to pledge upcoming steps and demonstrate resolve.
Thank you very much, Chris I will tell you very simply We won the election Elections have consequences
Well, I’ll ask Joe The individual mandate was the most unpopular aspect of Obamacare
I’ll tell you what, he is not for any help for people needing healthcare (4.43) DJ: (06:36
Well, I’ll give you the list of the people who
The line "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by" demonstrates how extremist rhetoric can surface in political discourse The speaker asserts that something must be done about Antifa and the left, arguing that this is not merely a right-wing problem but a broader issue involving left-wing elements as well This framing prompts reflection on cross-ideological tensions and the role of political violence across the spectrum, underscoring the challenge of addressing extremism without amplifying harmful narratives.
And the first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Accord I will join the Paris Accord because with us out of it, look what’s happening
He's out of touch with the facts, but here's the deal: the reality is I will accept the outcome, and so will he If it's not me, I'll support the result, and I'll be a president who serves all Americans, not just the Democrats.
Throughout the Trump–Biden debates, the modal verb will is used with the subject I to signal the candidate’s firm mindset and future determination This shows how different levels of modal commitment shift meaning: will indicates a larger degree of certainty about a proposition The repeated use of will by both candidates projects a strong resolve to act and to achieve their stated targets, and a higher degree of commitment implies that more actions will definitely be taken in the future.
In the first debate, Donald Trump and Joe Biden rely heavily on the modal can, using it to express what each candidate can do and to frame claims in terms of capacity The modal can means "have the ability to do something," a way of judging whether actions are possible and credible Across their exchanges, can appears as both a statement of capability and a test of reliability, shaping how policies are presented and what promises are considered feasible These examples show how the candidates deploy this modality to project competence, challenge opponents, and set expectations for what can be achieved.
Well, I’ve spoken to the companies and we can have it a lot sooner It’s a very political thing because people like this would rather make it political than save lives
According to the CDC Director, we could lose as many as 200,000 people between now and the end of the year, but simply wearing a mask could save about half of those lives We support vaccines, but we don’t trust the messenger behind them; what we trust instead is science and scientists.
To bring the country together, we must include everyone and unite Americans from all backgrounds When we stand united, there's nothing we can't achieve Together, we can confront this challenge and defeat racism in America.
To safeguard public health and the planet, we must do everything we can to ensure clean air and clean water, and pursue other constructive environmental actions The Billion Tree Project aims to plant a billion trees, a bold reforestation effort that excites people worldwide and demonstrates a commitment to environmental sustainability This initiative supports climate action, biodiversity, and long-term ecological resilience, illustrating how collective action through tree planting and related conservation work can make a real difference.
APPRECIATION
Appreciation is the final sub-system of Attitude, Martin & White
As noted in 2005, appreciation proves useful for examining the evaluation of objects, processes, and natural phenomena, and it is categorized into three types: Reaction, Composition, and Valuation.
Appreciation is expressed through the appraiser’s reaction to an object, reflecting how its impact on the observer shapes perceived quality The appraisal may also examine the object's composition, including balance and complexity In addition, the appraiser assesses the object's valuation by considering its significance and the benefits it offers.
The Affect and Judgement categories concern people, while the Appreciation category evaluates things As shown in Table 4.1, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden use more Appreciation items than Judgement items, suggesting their debates focus more on issues than on people Chart 4.6 presents the ARs of Appreciation for both candidates’ debates.
Resources of Appreciation in Donald Trump and
Chart 4.6 ARs of Appreciation in Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Chart 4.6 shows that, in order of appearance, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, there is a distinction Donald Trump has the highest frequency of valuation (50 percent), whereas Joe Biden has the highest reaction frequency (50 percent) However, in Donald Trump‟s debate, Reaction items present a higher frequency than Composition items (41% and 9%, respectively) On the contrary, in Joe Biden‟s, Valuation (47%) items occur more frequently than Composition (3%) items
Reaction values depict the emotional impact of an event or object on readers, consisting of two components: impact items and quality items Impact items describe interactive, emotive responses to the subject, while quality items assess adherence to a designated standard.
Firstly, the two candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, use reaction-based criteria to evaluate actions taken before, during, and after the United States political campaign These evaluations illustrate two distinct categories of appreciation: how past decisions are assessed and how ongoing campaign events are interpreted The examples below help explain how these two forms of appreciation operate in practice.
Ohio had the best year it’s ever had last year Michigan had the best year they’ve ever had
The greatest, before COVID came in the greatest economy in history, lowest unemployment numbers, everything was good Everything was going (4.65)JB: (06:12)
And the justice, I’m not opposed to the justice, she seems like a very fine person
I’m urging my supporters to go to the polls and watch very carefully, because careful observation of the voting process is what has to happen Today there was a big problem in Philadelphia: poll watchers—a safe, legitimate part of the process—went to observe, but they were thrown out.
I want crystal clean water and air, and truly beautiful, pristine air We now have the lowest carbon emissions, and if you look at our numbers today, we’re performing phenomenally—without destroying our businesses.
Every voter reportedly received two ballots, fueling claims of election fraud like you’ve never seen before On November 3, you’ll watch the results come in and see who wins the election I believe we’ll do well, because people are genuinely happy with the job we’ve done.
Following the killing of a young woman, reporters asked the president for his thoughts, and he responded, "There were very fine people on both sides." That remark drew sharp criticism, with many asserting that no president has ever said anything like that.
Across the cited examples, the reaction words used by both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are consistently positive, with terms like the best, good, greatest, fine, and nice aimed at expressing appreciation for their country and its citizens This pattern suggests that both candidates rely on positive sentiment in their messaging to convey national pride and support for the nation.
The appreciation value of reaction stands out in debate, and it’s a key principle associated with Joe Biden, who emphasizes recognizing opportunities and the time spent creating jobs while maintaining a clean environment.
By prioritizing a clean environment, we can create solid, well-paying jobs and improve everyone’s health and resilience Today we spend billions on floods, hurricanes, and rising seas, a stark reminder of our exposure to climate risk Embracing environmental stewardship and climate resilience isn’t just protective—it’s also a path to economic opportunity, reducing future costs and strengthening communities.
By adopting these responsive tactics, Donald Trump and Joe Biden signal awareness of the global and U.S challenges we face today, and they underscore the importance of presidential debates and the health of democracy.
During discussions about Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and America's future, the adjective "great" frequently emerges as a shorthand for evaluation Analysis shows that the frequency of the word great is significant in debates between the two candidates, signaling its prominence in how audiences gauge their impact on the nation This pattern reveals how language shapes public perception by framing Trump and Biden through concise, positive descriptors during their debates, making great a central keyword in these discussions.
SUMMARY
In summary, this chapter has presented the findings and discussions of Attitudinal values employed in the first debate of Donald Trump and Joe
Analysis indicates that all three attitudinal resource types—Affectual, Appreciation, and Judgement—are present in the two-candidate debate and are largely positive However, their distribution varies markedly: Affectual resources constitute the largest proportion, Appreciation the second, and Judgement the smallest This pattern suggests the candidates relied most on affective language, followed by evaluative appreciation, while judgments were less prominent, leading to fierce rhetoric and a focus on personal and family matters, with emotional and often aggressive responses to each other’s accusations.
Trump projected louder confidence as he fixated on his opponent, while Biden maintained a calmer but rebuking tone, speaking directly and often looking at the camera or the moderator For more details, the satisfactory conclusion of the findings is introduced in the next chapter.