As the
linguist said to the psychologist…
.
Linguist: His language skill
has plummeted, he cannot stay on subject, or complete sentences, he repeats
himself, he’s incoherent, he has simplistic vocabulary and tangled grammar.
.
Psychologist: It could be
stress, or anger, or fatigue.
.
Linguist: Other leaders can
cope, he can’t.
.
 |
| A me... speak... problem? |
Psychologist: Maybe he
speaks this way to appeal to his supporters who also talk like that.
.
Linguist: But he can’t
adjust his unscripted speaking style to suit the listener. He only has one
style. You talk at a rally, maybe you choose to go incoherently emotive. You
face an intellectual adversary, you switch to cerebral suasion. He can’t do
that anymore.
.
Psychologist: Are you suggesting
he is suffering from some cognitive disability? To determine that, you need to
administer a psychological test to get data. He won’t submit to that.
.
Linguist: To a linguist, the
data is there. Just parsing his speech suggests a serious prognosis.
____________
Voice-over
Apparently he wasn’t always
so linguistically disabled. In the 1980s and 1990s, he could give coherent interviews. Now, linguistic evidence suggests Trump is a severely linguistically
and cognitively crippled leader. Political office demands coherent
communication and crystal clear cognition. He doesn’t demonstrate this.
...
