A Discourse Analysis of the ‘Trumpusconi’ Phenomenon

Is Trump our contemporary Berlusconi? In 2015, Frank Bruni coined the term ‘Trumpusconi’ when the media noticed some similarities between the then US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. At that time, while many Italians joked about Trump as a déjà-vu, scholars began to analyse these two political ‘outsiders’ in an attempt to imagine Trump’s probable presidency by studying Berlusconi’s career.

Regardless of any political view, it is against this background that this work analyses these two political figures through discourse analysis, to understand whether their similarities go beyond their personality traits and lifestyles.

The work is divided into two sections: the first part provides some information on Berlusconi and Trump’s socio-cultural origins and educational backgrounds, their first steps in their real-estate careers, their progression into the world of media and politics, and their relationships with women. The second part of the study proposes a discourse analysis performed on a corpus of speeches held by each politician at the beginning of their political career, in order to understand whether their personalities and lifestyles are reflected in their idiolects.

The book partially confirms the media’s ideas about the ‘Trumpusconi’ phenomenon, acknowledging some similarities between the two moguls. However, it also shows that Berlusconi and Trump belong to two different eras: even if Berlusconi’s lifestyle, language, scandals, and politics will continue to negatively and positively influence Italy for many years to come, the era of social media is leading the world towards models that differ from those of his time. Western politics is becoming ever more similar to a form of infotainment, and Trump is the perfect incarnation of this evolution. Only time will reveal his long-term legacy.