Donald Trump’s speech patterns are quite strange and
unnatural. I am not talking about the content of what he says so much as the
way he uses words. He frequently treats words as though they were objects, not
as syntactic components in sentences designed to communicate thoughts. I have
long thought that he is probably dyslexic and that his father treated him
brutally because of that disability. Consequently, I was interested to read that
Mary Trump somewhere in her book (I have not looked at it) describes her uncle
as having an undiagnosed case of dyslexia.
My favorite example of dyslexia is from the movie “Jack Reacher”
starring Tom Cruise. The movie is made from one of the novels by Lee Childs in
which Jack Reacher is the main character. In the novel, Reacher is described as
being 6’5” tall. Tom Cruise is 5’6” tall. I have always thought that the
casting director was dyslexic.
He frequently treats words as though they were objects, not as syntactic components in sentences designed to communicate thoughts.
ReplyDelete“When I use a word,’ [Donald Trump] said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said [Donald Trump], ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll and Through the Looking Glass)
That's good, but I would go a bit deeper. "When I think a thought", says poor Donald scornfully, "I think without thought". Joe Biden: "Aahh, yeah, me to---at least I think I do."
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