Trump Wasn’t Always So Linguistically Challenged. What Could Explain The Change?

There has been a lot of talk about Donald Trump’s bizarre and use of language. Questions have been raised about his intelligence, his age, his intellectual abilities.

At least one professional has wondered if he is showing an expressive language disorder.

A few recent reports have focused on the changes in Trump’s language skills. Reports show that his grammar/syntax and expressive vocabulary have both shown decreases over time. He used to be articulate. Now he is nearly unintelligible.

Some experts believe that Trump’s loss of fluency and clarity are due to normal aging processes.

But as a retired speech/language pathologist with 25 years of experience, I disagree. I have not met the President, and would not attempt to make a definitive diagnosis.

However, I’ve reviewed both video and transcripts of Trump’s expressive language 30 years ago, ten years and currently.

1987 Trump on Larry King Live

In this CNN interview, King was asking Trump about a possible run for the presidency. Trump was answering that the world is laughing at us. He used many of the same phrases that he uses now, including “a total disaster” and “tremendous.” He failed to complete a few sentences, but for the most part his language was logical and sequential.

Here is a short sample from that interview:

“Well I think just to answer your first part, I believe its very important that we have free trade. But we don’t have free trade right now. Because if you want to go to Japan, or you want to to go to Saudi Arabia, or various other countries, its virtually impossible for an American to do business in those countries. Virtually impossible.”

2007 Interview with Wolf Blitzer

This interview on CNN focused on the Iraq War, and Blitzer asked Trump if he saw a way out of it. As noted above, Trump used familiar words and phrases. He was just as assured and forceful as he is now.

But the fluency of his expressive language was equal to what it was in 1987. Few sentences were broken, and if they were, the following clause was connected to what had been just said. There were no disconnected tangents.

This sample shows the clarity of Trump’s responses:

“The war is a disaster. It’s a total catastrophe. In fact, I gained a great deal of respect for our current President’s father by the fact that he had the sense not to go into Iraq. He won the war and he said,’Let’s not go the rest of the way, and he turned out to be right.’ And Saddam Hussein, whether they like him or they didn’t like him, he hated terrorists.”

The Lester Holt Interview, 2017

This is the interview that Trump gave shortly after firing James Comey. While there were complete sentences, there were also a far greater number of broken sentences than in the previous two tapes. There were mistakes in grammar and syntax. There were filler words and, most notably, there were misused words.

Here’s the sample from the most recent interview, when Trump answered a question about the Russia investigation:

“Look, look, lemme tell you. As far as I’m concerned I want that thing to be absolutely done properly. When I did this, now, I said I probably, maybe will confuse people, and maybe I will expand that, you know, I’ll lengthen the time, because it should be over with, in my opinion, it should have been over a long time ago, because all it is is an excuse.”

So what’s going on?

STAT asked a group of experts to assess the changes in Trump’s vocabulary and expressive organization. They all agreed that there has been a significant decline.

They concluded that the changes in language could be related to declining brain health, but could also simply be normal aging, or to stress.

But a review of language research shows that’s unlikely. One study from the University of Kansas compared changes in language skills between a group of healthy aging adults and a group of older adults with Alzheimer’s.

The conclusion from that study is that in normal aging, changes are noted in the number of vocabulary words. Older people use fewer words, and rely on more familiar words.

But in the group with Alzheimer’s there were more significant changes and losses noted. People begin to repeat themselves, to use words that have little meaning (thing, this, that), and to use fragmented sentences.

Like Trump, people with Alzheimer’s are hard to follow because they leave out the nouns and verbs that give sentences meaning.

This is not to say that Trump has dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. He could be showing some type of aphasia. What’s important for us to know is that whatever the cause, the President of the United States has shown a remarkable loss of communication skills.

Whatever the cause, this can’t be good.

Featured image via YouTube screengrab.

 

 

 

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"