Evaluative Prosodies of Political Actors: The Wall Street Journal1 Coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Election

Abstract

Anchored in the premise that computer-aided research methods can illuminate linguistic
inquiries, this paper postulates that the knowledge of evaluative prosody can provide insights
into the workings of evaluation and the tacit formation of attitudes. Specifically, this research
examines the extent to which the WSJ’s ‘No endorsement’ stance towards Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. election is embedded in the evaluative prosodies ascribed to
them, as investigated in a 5,8-million-word newspaper corpus. Deploying the corpus linguistics
concept of evaluative prosody, the study explores whether the WSJ portrayal of the two
candidates is politically motivated. The collocation extraction process was conducted using the
corpus analysis software AntConc 3.4.4. The findings revealed that the nodes DONALD
TRUMP and HILLARY CLINTON display roughly similar evaluative prosodies, mirroring the
neutral political stance espoused by the newspaper in which they occurred. Analysis of corpus
data thus showed that the WSJ coverage of the 2016 election was unequivocally aligned with its
avowed intention to endorse no presidential candidate.