“I MEAN, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? YOU HAVE THE MORALS OF AN ALLEY CAT” – THE NEGATIVE EVALUATIONS OF THE POLITICAL OPPONENT IN THE 2024 US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2025.17.1Abstract
The paper focuses on the rhetoric of the two US presidential debates held in 2024 between the Republican and Democrat presidential nominees, the first between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, and the second one between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. We investigate the strategies of discrediting the political opponent, such as insults, pronoun-based oppositions, repetitions and three-part lists, and metaphors. It is shown that both the Republican and Democrat nominees abundantly used these devices and relied on similar argumentative strategies in the debates, which may have had an evaluative and persuasive function and deepened the political polarization. This has contributed to the impression of predominantly hostile and polarizing rhetoric employed in the 2024 debates.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Maja Stevanović, Tijana Vesić Pavlović
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