Hyperbole in Donald Trump’s diplomatic language

Abstract

Contemporary diplomatic language has long favoured lexical restraint and modal caution; Donald Trump's presidency, by contrast, has made hyperbole a central device of political communication, including in the most sensitive matters of foreign policy. The Iranian file marked by the unilateral American withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and, later, by the direct military escalation of Operations "Midnight Hammer" and "Epic Fury" (2025-2026) offers a particularly rich observation ground for examining this phenomenon over nearly a decade.

This study aims to establish the extent to which hyperbole functions as an organising principle rather than a mere ornamental device of American diplomatic discourse on Iran, by identifying its recurrent forms, its internal stylistic structure, the argumentative and persuasive functions it fulfils, and the limits it encounters over time.

Methodologically, the analysis draws on a qualitative corpus of statements attributed exclusively to Donald Trump himself tweets, Truth Social posts, televised addresses, press conferences and media interviews covering the period 2018-2026 and verified through cross-referencing of independent journalistic and institutional sources. Each retained statement is translated into French, broken down according to its lexical, syntactic and typographic markers, and then linked to a specific argumentative function, in light of both European argumentative rhetoric (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, Charaudeau) and American, English and French scholarship on political language, diplomacy and the stylistics of hyperbole (Edelman, Ivie, Bostdorff, Schelling, George, Claridge, Fontanier, Kerbrat-Orecchioni). The expected findings are threefold. First, the study should confirm the existence of a stable typology of Trumpian hyperbole, organised around the registers of destruction, retribution, ultimatum and demonisation. Second, it should show that this device simultaneously fulfils a deterrent function directed at the adversary and a captation function directed at the domestic audience. Third, it should reveal, through internal contradictions and the sheer repetition of the device, a progressive and measurable erosion of the illocutionary credibility of presidential speech. Ultimately, this study contends that hyperbole, far from being a mere stylistic trait, provides an indispensable interpretive key to the tensions inherent in contemporary diplomacy, caught between short-term persuasive efficiency and the long-term weakening of official speech.