In this article, I use a critical discourse analytic approach to investigate how President Trump’s campaign goal to build a wall along the US/Mexico border has been discussed in United States political discourse. The data analyzed are 30 videotaped speeches and other public events which occurred between October 2016 and March 2018. These data are publicly available from the cable news channel C-SPAN’s online video archive. The analysis focuses on the communicative techniques and strategies used to persuade others and justify one’s position in the interactions and events studied. In this article, I show how the border wall proposal is reformulated into a debate about border security, and how diverse ways of referring to persons without approved documentation are used to support arguments on both sides of the debate.

中文翻译：

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当代政治话语中的边界工作：美国/墨西哥边界墙提案的案例

在本文中，我使用批判性话语分析方法来调查美国政治话语中如何讨论特朗普总统在美墨边境修建隔离墙的竞选目标。分析的数据是 2016 年 10 月至 2018 年 3 月期间发生的 30 次录像演讲和其他公共事件。这些数据可从有线新闻频道 C-SPAN 的在线视频档案中公开获得。分析侧重于用于说服他人并证明自己在所研究的互动和事件中的立场的交流技巧和策略。在本文中，我展示了如何将边界墙提案重新表述为关于边界安全的辩论，以及如何使用不同的方式来指称未经批准的文件的人来支持辩论双方的论点。