ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN THE UTTERANCES OF DONALD TRUMP IN THE 2016 AND 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATES

The utterances delivered by candidates in political debates not only convey
information, but also strategies to persuade audiences, attack opponents, and shape
public opinion. By examining illocutionary acts, it can be seen how Donald Trump
used utterances in the debate to achieve these political goals. This research aims to
determine the kind of illocutionary act that Donald Trump most frequently used in
the 2016 and 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Debates, to differentiate the use of
illocutionary acts of Donald Trump from the 2016 debate with 2024 debate and to
identify social and cultural values underlying the illocutionary acts in the utterances
of Donald Trump. The methodology used in this research is a descriptive qualitative
design. The result of this research showed that the most dominant type of
illocutionary act that Donald Trump used in the both debates is assertive
illocutionary speech act. The similarities of illocutionary acts in the utterances of
Donald Trump are the consistency of the use of assertive illocutionary, directive
illocutionary act, commissive illocutionary act, expressive illocutionary act and
assertive illocutionary act remained as the most type used in the both debates. The
differences are can be seen from the various function of each type of illocutionary
acts and the intensity of the use of those types. In the 2016 debate, as much as
78.86% from the total of Donald Trump's utterances were assertive illocutionary
speech acts, while in the 2024 debate the percentage increased slightly to 80.06%.
In the 2016 debate, directive illocutionary speech acts were used in 12.30% of total
utterances, while in the 2024 debate decreased to 11.61%. In the 2016 debate,
commissive speech acts covered for about 6.62% of the total utterances, while in
the 2024 debate decreased to only 3.87%. In the 2016 debate, expressive
illocutionary acts used in 2.21 with a slightly higher frequency in the 2024 debate
in 4.46%. The social and cultural values underlying the illocutionary act in the
utterances of Donald Trump, he used the social and cultural values to identify the
motivation of why he said his utterances. The pattern of campaign style of Donald
Trump is almost same in the both debates.
Keywords: Illocutionary Acts, U.S Presidential Election Debates, Donald Trump