The Language of Populism: Exploring Linguistic Strategies in President Donald Trump’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly (2025)

Language plays a decisive role in political discourse, functioning not merely as a means of conveying messages and disseminating information but also as a powerful tool for constructing ideologies, identities and strategic relations. Across the world, in the domain of contemporary politics, populist leaders increasingly rely on strategic language usage to mobilize audiences, frame political realities and legitimize authorities. Therefore, this study investigates how linguistic strategies contribute to the construction of populist discourse in an international political setting by examining President Donald Trump’s speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2025. The primary aim of this study is to unfold the linguistic strategies employed by Donald Trump to construct a populist identity and to examine how these strategies reflect power relations and ideologies, inside the socio-political context. As numerous previous studies have mainly focused on Trump’s domestic speeches and campaign rhetoric, while limited scholarly attention has been paid to his populist discourse by housing formal global institutions. Correspondingly, this study addresses this gap by analyzing how populist language operates within the diplomatic and institutional norms of the UNGA. This study employs a qualitative research design based on in-depth textual analysis of Donald Trump’s UNGA (2025) speech, using Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis to examine textual, discursive and social practices. Therefore, the research highlights that populist discourse extends beyond domestic politics and can be strategically adapted to international forums. Consequently, this study demonstrates the flexibility of populist communication and underscores language as a central instrument in constructing ideology, legitimizing authority and negotiating power in contemporary global politics.