Ideological strategies of stereotyping the other and creating moral panic in media political discourse

Abstract

This study examines the ideological strategies in a political speech posted on social media platforms, with a focus on stereotyping the other and creating moral panic in relation to the immigration issue. The study investigates the shift in illocutionary force in political discourse, where certain expressions serve as a pragmatic cover to conceal exclusionary ideology and explicit threats of migration. Accordingly, the study aims to examine the linguistic structures that contribute to the demonization of immigrants and to turn social anxiety into an existential crisis that legitimizes radical decisions. This requires employing Fairclough's (2013) approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze excerpts taken from Trump's speech on Thanksgiving loaded with expressions on immigration posted on X platform on Nov. 28, 2025. This approach involves coding speech acts (such as expressives, directives) and analyzing conceptual metaphors and exclusionary expressions to relate them to the overall ideological context. The study reveals that Trump's speech relies on pragmatic maneuvering by exploiting a national occasion to reinforce the representation of US and THEM, and linguistically shifting migration from a legal issue into a biological disease that requires eradication. Moreover, it concludes that moral panic is linguistically constructed by depriving the other of their mental and cultural competence, depicting reverse migration as an act of national rescue rather than as a repressive measure. Therefore, the language transforms from a mere means of communication into an ideological weapon that reconstructs social and political reality.