Rhetorical confinement, contrasting metaphors, and cultural polarities

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. David Ritchie ◽  
Alex Feliciano ◽  
Ashley Sparks
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Metaphorical Language ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Open Expression

Abstract In this study we contrast metaphors and metaphorical stories in President Trump’s 2017 inaugural address with those of former President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address. We draw on the concept of ‘rhetorical confinement’ (Patterson, 2011) to show how the contrasting life trajectories of the two leaders are reflected in the contrasting themes and tone established by their metaphorical language. We argue that Obama’s rhetorical tone, including his use of metaphors, was at least in part a response to the compound constraints of race and class. In contrast, Trump’s rhetorical tone and use of metaphors reflects and reinforces his image as a political outsider, as a challenge to the constraints of ordinary political discourse. The contrast between the rhetorically confined politeness of Obama’s discourse (lampooned as ‘political correctness’ by many of his opponents) and the unconstrained crudeness of Trump’s discourse (lauded as ‘telling it like it is’) apparently legitimates the open expression of previously suppressed resentments and encourages an extreme rhetoric that is symptomatic of, and may contribute to, the growing polarization in American political discourse.

scholarly journals Verbal Warfare in the Polish Media: An Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors In Political Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-238
Author(s):  
Ewa Gieroń-Czepczor
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Metaphorical Language ◽  
Moral Leader ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Polish Government

Cognitive semanticists, especially George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute, joined the analysts of political discourse in the 1990s. Much has been said about the metaphorical language of the US leaders, Bush and Obama, especially during the time of the War on Terror, and a range of conceptual metaphors have been pinpointed, such as THE STATE AS A PERSON, THE STATE AS THE FAMILY, THE USA AS A MORAL LEADER/DEFENDER OF THE JUST CAUSE, WAR AS MEDICINE, ARGUMENT IS WAR. Polish political discourse is, in contrast, largely focused on internal issues and debates. The resulting image of the nation and its aims, as found in official and unofficial statements made by the Polish government and parliamentarians portrays a pervading simplistic and dualistic picture of the nation and – more importantly – suggests that all aspects of politics evoke the imagery of war waged against all other parties involved. This study traces conceptual metaphors in a large corpus of material. The primary sources include interviews with politicians as well as texts written by journalists commenting on the Polish political scene and the latest developments. Another source is daily news on popular portals and online services of selected Polish dailies and magazines. All the materials cover a period between September 2011 and mid-January 2012. The outcome of the analyses of spoken and written data reveals that political, social and economic antagonisms are well fed by language which highlights dichotomies and depicts ‘the others’ as the source of all evil. The metaphorical language largely follows the patterns investigated and described by Lakoff, providing a wealth of material to support the claim that ARGUMENT IS WAR. In the light of the collected data, multiple ‘wars’ are in progress successfully generating language of conflict.

scholarly journals SPEECH PORTRAIT OF A POLITICAL LEADER (BASED ON THE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF THE RUSSIAN AND US PRESIDENTS)

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rimma R. Galiakberova ◽  
Dilyara B. Garifullina ◽  
Lyutsiya G. Khismatullina
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Communication Analysis ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
The Future ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
The Given

An inaugural address is part of the political reality of the country, and represents an essential moment in delivering political visions for the future by presidents. The given paper deals with the inauguration speeches of Vladimir Putin (2018) and Donald Trump (2017) and is aimed at analyzing the role of verbal means in forming the speech portraits of An inaugural address is part of the political reality of the country, and represents an essential moment in delivering political visions for the future by presidents. The given paper deals with the inauguration speeches of Vladimir Putin (2018) and Donald Trump (2017) and is aimed at analyzing the role of verbal means in forming the speech portraits of political leaders. By means of comparative content analysis we looked for grammatical, lexical and stylistic elements peculiar to a specific linguistic persona while comparing the speeches of the presidents as well as we attempted to determine the specific national backgrounds of political discourse. We found out that the speech portrait of a country leader is strongly related to his national identity, mentality and socio-political course of the country. Thus, each president’s inauguration context model is mostly characterized by a different set of linguistic means. The paper findings may be useful for researchers who deal with interdisciplinary studies, political and cognitive linguistics, political discourse and communication analysis.

scholarly journals Political Correctness Unplugged: Exploring the Ethics of Representation in the Classroom

Journal ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Pack
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Race And Class

In a pedagogical climate of racial and socioeconomic homogeneity, I have often found it difficult to explore issues of race and class with students openly and honestly. In response, I have developed an interactive class activity that utilises popular culture and mass media to juxtapose real events with hypothetical scenarios in order to address the ethics of representation experientially. �

scholarly journals TRUMP TWEETS THE TRUTH: METRIC POPULISM AND MEDIA CONSPIRACY

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 428-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piia Varis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Populist Movements

ABSTRACT Since its inception, studies on ‘digital populism’ have focused mainly on the savviness of populist movements and politicians in their use of social media. The focus in this paper is different: we know quite a bit already about what populistsdoon and through social media, but very little has been written about what populists sayaboutsocial media - how they frame them as environments for political communication, and with what kinds of implications. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have not only become central players in present-day debates regarding free speech, political correctness and truth/fake, but also become part of (populist) political discourse in terms of their content moderation policies and intervention, or lack thereof. I will explore these issues through an examination of Donald Trump’s discourse on social media as an environment for political communication, and their moderation policies.

scholarly journals Transitivity Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inaugural Address From the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-169
Author(s):  
Qiujian Xiang
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Systemic Functional Grammar ◽  
Political Purpose ◽  
Political Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Perspective

Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar provides a new perspective and method for political discourse analysis. This paper first introduces the research status of political discourse at home and abroad, and then elaborates three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar, namely ideational function, interpersonal function as well as textual function. On this basis, this paper makes an in-depth transitivity analysis of the inaugural address of the 46th president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden. Through profound research, this paper attempts to reveal how English language is applied to hide ideology in political speeches and how president Joe Biden uses various language features to persuade and inspire American people in order to reach his political purpose; at the same time, it also verifies the practicability of Systemic Functional Grammar in the analysis of political speech discourse.

scholarly journals Functional and Linguistic Characteristics of Donald Trump’s Victory and Inaugural Speeches

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-41
Author(s):  
Yulia Chanturidze
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Inaugural Speech ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Linguistic Means

The current research is devoted to the comparative and contrastive analysis of Donald Trump’s victory and inaugural speeches. Its objective is to identify their similarities and differences from the functional and linguistic points of view. The research consists of several stages. First, the two genres of discourse in question are defined. Then, an overview of their functions is provided. Next, the linguistic means of performing them are analyzed. The results of the research indicate that, due to their main goals, the genres in question express certain functions, which can be verbally expressed in various ways: in Trump’s victory speech the inspirative function comes to the fore, while in his inaugural address the integrative and the performative functions dominate the other ones. Furthermore, in each case linguistic peculiarities correlate with the functions: in the victory speech the focus is on the ‘greatness’ of everything and everyone, whereas in the inaugural speech words connected with patriotism prevail, which is expressed mostly by means of personal pronouns. The results of the current research may function as a basis for further analysis of the genre of the victory speech, as it has not received enough scholarly attention yet, and of the peculiarities of Donald Trump’s political discourse.

Slavery and the Civil War

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Republic

American religion flourished in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. In particular, evangelical Christianity rose to a position of unprecedented cultural authority. Although wide variations exist, evangelicals are generally defined by four attributes: an emphasis on individual conversion; a focus on the saving power of Jesus's death and Resurrection; an appeal to the Bible as the ultimate religious authority; and an enthusiasm for witnessing and activism. As evangelicalism expanded, political discourse increasingly adopted evangelical overtones. Nowhere was this more true than in the conflict over American slavery. This chapter presents the following documents: Frederick Douglass' “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” (1847), George Armstrong's The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857), Julia Ward Howe's “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862), and Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865).

scholarly journals The Function of Repetition in Trump's Inaugural Address A discourse analysis study

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (28) ◽  
pp. 709-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Habeeb M Areef Al-Saeedi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Analysis Study ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Inaugural Addresses ◽  
Main Strategy

Political speech might be one of the most problematic types of discourse because it is usually characterized by the use of different techniques and strategies that allow politicians to convey their political messages and persuade people of their ideologies and thoughts.                 The American presidential inaugural addresses are a form of political discourse that shares the characteristics of both oral and written discourse. It is actually an ample area that worth to be studied to explore some of the features that characterize this type of discourse.               This paper is an attempt to investigate the function of repetition in Trump's Inaugural address from a discourse analysis perspective.             The analysis revealed that repetition is used as a main strategy in Trump's address to reflect inclusiveness and create a shared responsibility with the audience.   

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