“PRO-WHOM?”: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICY SPEECHES

Immigration has been an integral part of American history, drawing everyone’s attention to the country’s presidents, including the incumbent Donald J. Trump. President Trump is known to have been quite "frank" in conveying his views of immigrants and immigration, as well as his perspectives regarding their positive and negative aspects. This qualitative descriptive study is aimed ate analyzing the view about immigrants and immigration conveyed through President Trump’s speeches on immigration policy. Using Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for its analysis, the study finds that President Trump’s ideology is reflected in several textual aspects of his speeches, including their transitivity, mood, modality, and thematic structure. These practices highlight the involvement of other actors in drafting these speeches, which offer a discourse on immigrants and immigration that marginalizes previous policies.