AGGRESSION AND DIGRESSION IN THE THIRDPRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP

Verbal aggression can be defined as an attack on another?s self -concept, rather than his/her position. The effect or the perlocutionary act of verbal aggression includes lower self-concept, frustration, anxiety, anger, and resentment, embarrassment, and physical aggression. Thus, the interaction that involves this act may contain quarrels or conflicts. In this view, the talk may be taken away from the main concern for a while. Differently paraphrased, aggression and digression are linked in the interaction in a kind of relation. The questions raised in this study are; what is the relation between the two pragmatically interpreted phenomena? And are all the aggressive contributions in the interaction are digressive? The study aims at exploring the relation between aggression and digression in the American presidential debate between the candidates Clinton &Trump and finding out whether all the aggressions are digressive in nature. In fact, the data is the last presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (2017) which involves a great deal of challenge, conflict and quarrel. . It is conclude that personal attack is a fundamental strategy in representing digression and only part of the digressions are aggressive in the data under analysis.