Dr. Sylvia Shaw
Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Westminster. She has published ‘Gender, Power and Political Speech’, an analysis of the TV debates of the 2015 General Election (with Professor Deborah Cameron). Her monograph ‘Women, Language and Politics’ was published in 2020.
Email: S.Shaw@westminster.ac.uk
U.S. Election 2024
36. The tilted playing field, and a bygone conclusion (Dr David Karpf)
37. Looking forwards and looking back: Competing visions of America in the 2024 presidential campaign (Prof John Rennie Short)
38. Brat went splat: Or the emotional sticky brand won again (Prof Ken Cosgrove)
39. Election 2024: Does money matter anymore? (Prof Cayce Myers)
40. Advertising trends in the 2024 presidential race (Prof Travis N. Ridout, Prof Michael M. Franz, Prof Erika Franklin Fowler)
41. Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024 (Sean Whyard, Dr Joshua P. Darr)
42. Kamala Harris: Idealisation and persecution (Dr Amy Tatum)
43. Kamala Harris campaign failed to keep Democratic social coalition together (Prof Anup Kumar)
44. Revisiting Indian-American identity in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Madhavi Reddi)
45. Harris missed an opportunity to sway swing voters by not morally reframing her message (Prof John H. Parmelee)
46. In pursuit of the true populist at the dawn of America’s golden age (Dr Carl Senior)
47. Language and the floor in the 2024 Harris vs Trump televised presidential debate (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
48. Nullifying the noise of a racialized claim: Nonverbal communication and the 2024 Harris-Trump debate (Prof Erik P. Bucy)
49. A pseudo-scientific revolution? The puzzling relationship between science deference and denial (Dr Matt Motta)
50. Amidst recent lows for women congressional candidates, women at the state level thrive (Dr Jordan Butcher)
The importance of televised presidential debates to the U.S presidential elections was underscored in 2024. In the first debate between Biden and Trump on June 27th, Biden’s hesitant and ponderous performance undoubtably played a large part in his eventual resignation as the presidential candidate and his endorsement of Kamala Harris as his replacement less than month later. The second U.S. presidential televised debate was held by ABC News on September 10th, and although viewers’ polls suggested that Harris had ‘won’ the debate and performed well, there were some unusual communicative and linguistic features of this event.
One of the most noticeable aspects was the differing non-verbal communication of Harris and Trump. Both from the outset, when Harris appeared to surprise Trump by approaching him for a handshake as they took their places, and throughout the debate. Harris frequently turned towards Trump when he was speaking, smiling and laughing at his claims and shaking her head. In contrast, Trump faced resolutely ahead for the entire debate and did not look towards Harris at all, even when he addressed her directly. These stances were reinforced by the language the candidates used to address each other. Trump only referred to Harris as “she”, frequently coupling her with “Biden” and using “they”. He did not once refer to her by name. In contrast, Harris mainly referred to her opponent using his full name or as the “former president”.
Political televised debates are designed to ensure the equal division of turns between the speakers and the Harris Vs Trump debate was no exception. The speakers were allowed to have two minutes to give an answer, two minutes for rebuttals and one minute for responses. There was no studio audience and the microphones of the speakers were turned off when it was not their speaking turn. Close examination of the debate floor shows that the debate proceeded in a much more disorderly fashion than this planned structure would suggest, however. For a debate format designed to permit the equalisation of turns between speakers, the division of the floor was actually all but equal with Donald Trump taking 73 speaking turns (approximately 8,000 words) and Kamala Harris only 32 turns (approximately 5,900 words).
Although the main questions were allocated equally by the moderators, Trump accrued more turns partly because the moderators intervened on his speaking turn to press him to answer the question or to factually correct a statement he had made. This was something Trump complained about after the debate, claiming the debate was biased as a “three to one” attack. However, the majority of speaking turns accrued by Trump were gained by resisting the moderator and interrupting in order to respond to a point that Harris had made against him or to refute a factual correction made by the moderator. Trump exerted control over the debate by taking his turn before the moderator invited him to do so, by resisting the moderators’ requests to stop speaking and by taking unallocated turns by insisting “I need to respond to that” when it was not his turn. Notably, Harris only tried to insist on a response in this way twice in the whole debate, and was only successful in gaining a turn once.
It is not surprising that Harris did not attempt to break the interactional rules in this way, as previous research has shown that women can be judged extremely harshly for such transgressions. Political performances by women have been described as a tight-rope of impression management where they have to negotiate the perceived dissonance of femininity with political leadership. They must appear strong (as a leader) but not aggressive (as a woman), with negative judgements following gendered and racial assumptions about what is too loud, too aggressive and too dominant. Harris manages these competing expectations well and mitigates her attacks on Trump for his views and policies with her smiling facial expressions and open posture.
While it is unclear whether capturing the debate floor in this aggressive way gave Trump an advantage with the viewing public, it is clear that he dominated the interaction and gained more than his fair share of the speaking time. Certainly, the interruptions, disdain for the rules, for Harris and the moderators did not appear to disadvantage him, as these aspects were not mentioned in post-debate commentaries, which tended to focus on Harris’ success. It is equally clear that despite operating skilfully within the parameters available to her, Harris would not have been given these affordances.