الإصدار 5 - العدد 15 (2026-06-20)

The Use of Conjunction: Extending in Donald Trump Second Inauguration Speech in 2025

Dr: Hasan Isam Aldulaimi

Department of Scholarships & Cultural Relations

University of Technology- Iraq

The purpose of the present study is to understand how President Donald Trump has developed his second inaugration speech in 2025, namely, by analyzing the use of the so-called extending conjunctions. In order to reach the rigorous scientific approach, the study followed the framework of the systemic functional linguistics developed by M. A. K. Halliday, analyzing the speech text to identify and classify all extending conjunctions into three major categories: additive, adversating and varying. Theses conjunctions were analyzed and it was found that additive conjunctions were most common use of the conjunction in the speech and far outweighed the other conjunctions. This is an indication of the wish of the speaker to outline his policies and programs in a chronological and favorable order, relying on the systematic style of developing and elaborating ideas to make the message clear and very systematic to the audience. Conversely, there was minimal usage of adversative and varying conjunctions, which meant that the discourse was aimed at stating a future vision instead of introducing conflicting thoughts. Moreover, the negative and subtractive forms of extending conjunctions were used very rarely, which proves that the general mood was positive and understandable and did not contain linguistic complications that could bewilder the listener. The findings proved that these extending conjunctions were not just the casual linking words, but a successful tool of creating a coherent and logical discourse, therefore, simplifying the way the masses comprehend and are influenced by political messages. Thus, the study suggests that future researchers may consider other forms of conjunctions, including elaboration and enhancing, or make linguistic comparisons between the styles of various leaders to learn how official messages are designed and how they can impact the opinion of the population.