Bowen Zheng

In early 2020, former U.S. President Donald Trump began using the term ‘Chinese Virus’ to refer to COVID-19. Although widely criticized as racially charged, Trump avoided accountability by insisting that his choice of words was purely descriptive. In this paper, I analyze Trump’s language as an instance of ‘duplicitous speech.’ By using the polysemous term ‘Chinese,’ Trump conveys a racially tinged message while maintaining plausible deniability. I begin with a review of existing accounts of strategic speech, focusing on Elisabeth Camp’s theory of insinuation. I then argue that duplicitous speech, through strategic deployment of polysemy, provides a mechanism for plausible deniability, even with overtly risky language. Finally, I consider how duplicitous speech may extend beyond racial discourse. I conclude that this framework offers broader insights for understanding evasive speech acts in various social and political contexts.