This thesis deals with researching Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategies in first three television debates for the Republican nomination, taking place in 2015. Based on chosen political and communication scientific theories we built our own analytical model for researching rhetoric of candidates in election campaigns. In the political theoretical part we analyzed political concepts of democracy and citizenship, television debates in election campaigns and voting behavior. In the communication part we theoretically covered the concepts of public, rhetorical and political discourses. Analytical model is constituted by the description of three basic elements of rhetorical strategies and the definition of specific rhetorical strategies that candidates use in television debates. In the heuristical framework, we firstly defined two research theses about Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategies in republican primary debates and continued to describe the basic context and features of Trump’s election campaign. We conducted the case study with the method of critical content analysis. In the described way the thesis searches for anwsers on the questions of what Trump had said in chosen television debates and why was such rhetoric persuasive? Two theses, which directed our case study based on gathered data, are that Donald Trump’s rhetoric had features of right-wing populism and trolling.
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