Miscellaneous

How Trump Tweets

I Study the active vocabulary and focus on Ukrainian equivalents of English words.

explore – досліджувати

fascinating – захоплюючий

dwindle  – зменшуватись

president-elect – обраний президент

at the outset  – на початку

surmise – припущення

condolence – співчуття

staffer – співробітник

rule of thumb  – практична закономірність

congratulatory – вітальний

frame – обрамляти

charge – навантажувати

sympathetic – співчутливий

decipher – розшифровувати

substitute – заміна

conversational – розмовний

exclamation – вигук

insight – розуміння

scholar – вчений

funky – незвичний

cue – сигнал

point – мета

persuade – переконувати

distraction – збентеження

headline – заголовок

baffle – спантеличувати

relay – передавати

astounding – вражаючий

majority – більшість

void – порожнеча

impact – вплив

II Vocabulary focus. Study the words and  word combinations, check your understanding using flashcards, practise their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge in the test. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their translations to make cards disappear)  and save the planet from asteroids by typing in correct translation of the words.

  

III Look at the table that contains common punctuation marks. 

Match the punctuation marks (1-12) to their symbols (A-L), for example: 4 - I

How are these punctuation marks used in written language? What is the meaning of punctuation marks in text messages, instant messages and Twitter?

Punctuation mark		Symbol
1	exclamation point	A	'
2	question mark	B	:
3	ellipsis (three dots)	C	,
4	period	D	—
5	hyphen	E	...
6	parentheses	F	!
7	apostrophe	G	-
8	semicolon	H	( )
9	colon	I	.
10	comma	J	?
11	dash	K	"
12	quotation mark	L	;

IV Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list.

manipulating; feeling; commentators; character; messages; conferences; website; debates; writing; capture;  personal; web;  certainly;  analysts; explore; announcements ; fascinating; retweets; sources; typing

Exactly one year ago today I did my best to 1)____ the way Donald Trump answers a question. His use of language in speech, I thought, was 2)____ and unique and illuminated why he’s so successful at selling a 3)____. Now that Trump has been president-elect for 50 days, we don’t get to hear much of Trump’s speech anymore. His interview appearances are dwindling and his press 4)____ are non-existent. But that doesn’t mean he stopped using a 5)____ language. These days the language that Trump puts on the public record comes largely from 6)____, specifically from writing on Twitter in 140 7)____ notes. As of December 29th 2016 Trump has tweeted 221 times as the president-elect. It’s important to note at the outset that these tweets come largely from a few 8)____. Thanks to info from the metadata we know that of the 221 a 153 or 69% come from an Android phone, Trump’s 9)____ Samsung Galaxy, 59 or 27% come from an iPhone and nine or 4% come from the Twitter 10)____ client as in someone 11)____ the tweets into a computer. A number of 12)____ and data 13)____ have surmised that the iPhone tweets are not written by Trump himself, but by his staff. I think that’s almost 14)____ true. If you look at those tweets exclusively, you 15)____ all of the 16)____ and cabinet picks as well as the holiday 17)____ and the notes of condolence. Of those 59 tweets 49 share links or are 18)____ and all or almost all of them are likely written by Dan Scavino, Trump’s director of social media or Brad Parscale, a  19)____ designer  turned high-level staffer, who Trump entrusted with tweeting for him during the presidential 20)____.

V Watch the video. Choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

Of the 153 tweets that come from Trump’s personal/professional Samsung not one shares a link. So that’s a good rule of thud/thumb if you want to determine/delete which tweets are from him and which aren’t. The huge majority of the Android tweets are Trump’s personal thoughts or restrictions/reactions and you can split them up in a few ways. For example, 40 of those are positive or congratulatory in tone, 94 are nodding/negative or critical in tune/tone, and 19 are pretty much neutral. Like in a speech/speed, one thing Trump is really really good at is emotionally framing/faming his tweets. And most of them are emotionally charged which is why 87% of them are negative or positive/possible in tone. Trump doesn’t want a symbolic/sympathetic reader to spend any time at all deciphering how to feel about what he’s saying. A lot of people have mocked the way he concludes/includes tweets with one or two-word exclamations like ‘sad!’ or ‘too bad!’, but these punctuations/pronunciation are actually powerful framing devices/determines that lubricate the content/concluded of his message. They also reflect a key insight that Trump has knowingly or unknowingly about Twitter and texting as a form of communication. While tweets are technically a kind of writing, scholars/collar have long theorized that computer mediated/meditated communication more closely resembles speech than writing where flunk/funky punctuation substitutes for conversational cues. For example, every time you see someone extend a word by adding late/letter saying ‘I’m sooo sad’ or ‘ I looove Breaking Bad’ what they’re essentially doing is trying to transmit some emotional content that would have existed in fact-for-fact/face-to-face conversation. Instant/distant messages, text messages, and tweets attract these speech-like quantities/qualities and Donald Trump understands this. While he doesn’t extend words with extra letters, his punctuations at the end of tweets are extremely speech-like. 51 of his 153 personal tweets end with mentions/exclamations like this. In 95 there is at least one exclamation point/on it.

VI Watch the video. Fill in the blanks in  the sentences with the words you hear.

Where his 1)____ and other 2)____ write through Twitter, Trump 3)____ through it. Instead of asking us to read he forces us to 4)____. But all of this begs the important 5)____: ‘What’s the point?’ Trump is no longer a 6)____ he doesn’t have to persuade us to vote for him. I mean, you could spend a lot of time looking at a 7)____ like this from the president-elect of the United 8)____ scratching your head. You could wonder about the message or the 9)____ it causes or the 10)____ it generates. But if that’s the way you think, this man will always 11)____ you. Trump doesn’t 12)____ other politicians on Twitter, he resembles the rest of 13)____. He resembles that person you know on Facebook who is 14)____ all the time about how happy they are. These people don’t tweet or post because they’re trying to relay relevant 15)____, they do it to carefully craft their own 16)____ against some imagined audience that exists only to reinforce what they need to 17)____. The media and the public act like Trump’s tweets contain 18)____ that we were meant to receive, when the truth is, I think, that he’s not thinking of us at all. When you look at it through this lens, Trump’s Twitter 19)____ makes a lot more sense. It makes sense that a lot of his 20)____ tweets are self- congratulatory and his 21)____ tweets, which account for an astounding 22)____, are personal in their attacks and sense of victimization. And it makes sense that we should 23)____ to it so strongly. We’re all in this age of social media intimately familiar with this kind of 24)____. We do it ourselves every day. What we’re not familiar with, not yet, at least, is this kind of thing from the most 25)____ person in the world. How it will fall out when you hold a position where even your 26)____ desperately tweeted into the void have global impact. But give it time and we will be.

VII Watch all the parts of the video and answer the questions.

1. How has Donald Trump used manipulative language since he became President?
2.     How many characters is a tweet?
3. How many times did Trump tweet since 29 December 2016 (till the day the video was released)?
4.     Where do Trump’s tweets come from?
5.   What personal phone does Trump have and how often does he use it to tweet?
6.    Who is the author of  Trump’s iPhone tweets?
7.   What are the main topics of iPhone tweets?
8.     Which of Trump’s messages contain links or are retweets?
9.    How many tweets sent from Samsung have a link?
10. What are the topics of Trump’s personal tweets? What is their emotional colouring?
11. How do readers understand that a tweet is negative or positive?
12. How does Donald Trump conclude his tweets? Why does he do it?
13. Do tweets resemble speech or do they have the same characteristics as writing?
14. Why do you think so?
15. What punctuation marks does Donald Trump use very often?
16. Why does Donald Trump continue using Twitter even though he is no longer a candidate?
17. What types of people behave on Twitter or other social network in the same way Donald Trump does?
18. Whom does Donald Trump congratulate in his tweets? Who is he thinking about while he sends these tweets?
19. What can be said about Trump’s negative tweets?
20. .Is this type of behaviour on Twitter unusual for a politician?