Constructing Threat, Sovereignty, and Populist Authority: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s 2025 UN Address

Abstract

Political speeches, particularly at international platforms, play a very significant role in shaping public opinion. They influence the understanding of problems and their solutions. Donald Trump’s address to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, on 23rd September, 2025, draws global attention. It attracts critical focus due to Trump’s assertive tone, his warnings against immigration, his emphasis on national sovereignty, and his criticism on multilateral institutions. This research paper aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis of this speech. Explicitly, the study focuses on Trump’s use of four impression markers: “pronouns”, “modal verbs”, “repetition”, and “parallelism”. These impression markers facilitate Trump in building his narrative on the three major ideological themes: immigration, sovereignty, and global order. To study the link between the small impression markers and the broader ideological narratives, the researcher develops and utilises an integrated framework based on Fairclough’s (2015) three-dimensional model, which is supported by Van Dijk’s (1997) ideological square, Ruth Wodak’s (2001) argumentation strategies, and Charteris-Black’s (2011) rhetorical concept of political charisma. The findings reveal that the impression markers are not only small and simple stylistic features, but they carry the potential to construct the broader ideological discourse. They facilitate Trump in building and legitimizing his discourse that immigration is a threat, national sovereignty is a sacred duty, and unilateral action is necessary to restore the global order. Moreover, the findings also highlight that Trump’s speech contributes to the recent populist discourse.