The Rhetoric of Rejection: Deny and Counter in Trump and Harris’s 2024 Debate Discourse

This study examines the use of Disclaim resources — specifically Deny and Counter — in the 2024 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, drawing on Appraisal Theory within Systemic Functional Linguistics. It investigates how linguistic strategies of rejection function to manage disagreement, construct evaluation, and shape interpersonal positioning in real-time political discourse. Adopting a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative analysis with qualitative discourse analysis, the study compares the frequency, distribution, and rhetorical functions of Deny and Counter in the candidates' debate performances. The findings show that Trump employs 193 Disclaim instances (19.78% of 976 clauses), considerably more than Harris’s 60 instances (13.19% of 455 clauses), indicating a stronger tendency toward oppositional and confrontational rhetoric. In both datasets, Deny overwhelmingly outweighs Counter, with «not» as the most frequent marker, while «but» serves as the primary Counter resource, reflecting a shared preference for direct negation and contrast. The study contributes to the extension of Appraisal Theory to real-time debate interaction and offers insights into how political actors strategically deploy rejection resources to influence audience alignment and evaluative interpretation. The findings highlight the central role of Deny and Counter in persuasive political discourse.