Linguistic Strategies of Gender and Power in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: A Critical Analysis of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s Tweets through Sara Mills’ Model of Sexist Discourse

This study provides a comprehensive critical analysis of the linguistic strategies employed by the two major candidates in the 2024 United States presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, focusing specifically on the manifestation of sexism and gendered discourse in their official communications on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). The research is grounded in Sara Mills' (2008) influential theoretical framework on language and sexism, which distinguishes between overt sexism—direct, linguistically identifiable discriminatory language—and covert sexism—subtle, indirect forms of gender bias embedded in rhetorical structures, presuppositions, tone, and culturally embedded assumptions about gender roles and leadership. Through a qualitative methodological approach, the study examines eight carefully selected tweets, four from each candidate, chosen to represent contrasting rhetorical strategies related to gender, authority, political identity, and leadership legitimacy. The analysis reveals a complex and nuanced picture of how gender operates in contemporary American political discourse. The findings demonstrate that neither candidate employs overtly sexist language in their tweets, avoiding the use of generic masculine pronouns, gendered affixes, unequal titles, or explicitly discriminatory vocabulary. However, their engagement with gendered power structures differs fundamentally and revealingly. Kamala Harris's rhetorical strategy systematically avoids both overt and covert sexist formulations. She adopts an assertive, evidence-based, and professionally authoritative voice that draws on rhetorical traditions historically coded as masculine in political communication. By employing direct critiques of her opponent's policy record, using expert testimony, and maintaining a focus on substantive issues rather than personal attributes, Harris challenges conventional gender expectations and subverts the covert sexist norms that have traditionally constrained female politicians' communicative options. Her language simultaneously reproduces masculine-coded rhetorical forms while resisting the gendered limitations those forms have historically imposed. Donald Trump's tweets, by contrast, operate through mechanisms of covert sexism as defined by Mills' framework. Through strategic deployment of contrastive framing that positions female leadership as chaotic and male leadership as restorative, through presuppositions that embed assumptions about gender and competence, through rhetorical tone that belittles and diminishes, and through appeals to culturally embedded masculine ideals of strength, dominance, and emotional control, Trump's discourse subtly but persistently reinforces stereotypes of female inadequacy in political leadership. His tweets construct a binary opposition in which Kamala Harris is framed as the source of national disorder, instability, and failure, while he himself is positioned as the natural, authoritative, and masculine corrective force capable of restoring strength, peace, and prosperity. This rhetorical pattern aligns precisely with Mills' concept of covert sexism, in which discriminatory implications are embedded in language without direct expression, allowing for plausible deniability while nonetheless reinforcing gendered power hierarchies. The analysis demonstrates that sexism in contemporary political discourse operates primarily not through explicit statements but through interpretation, reception, and the activation of culturally embedded gender norms that shape how messages are constructed, delivered, and received. The study highlights the critical importance of examining not only what is said in political communication, but also how messages are shaped by the gender of the speaker, the gendered expectations of audiences, and the broader societal context in which political discourse unfolds. The findings contribute to a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of how political figures both reproduce and resist gendered discourse norms, and how the interpretation of political language is filtered through the lens of societal gender expectations. Ultimately, this research uncovers the underlying discursive mechanisms that maintain or challenge gender inequality in political communication, even in the absence of explicit sexist vocabulary, and demonstrates the enduring power of covert sexist strategies in shaping perceptions of political leadership and legitimacy.