Analysis of Political Metaphors in Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address in 2020

On the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, this paper conducts a cognitive analysis of conceptual metaphors in Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address in 2020, aiming to explain the metaphors in the State of the Union Address, reveal the political intentions hidden behind the metaphors, and construe the relationship between politics and metaphor. It is found that the metaphors in this State of the Union Address are: CONFLICT metaphors, BUILDING metaphor, JOURNEY metaphors, ORIENTATIONAL metaphors, and PLANT metaphors. Through the analysis, this paper concludes that conceptual metaphor has the function of persuading the masses and shaping the image of politicians. At the same time, this paper also finds that politics restricts the choice and application of metaphor.

Unequal values: equality and race in state of the union addresses, 1960–2018

We analyze the prevalence and framing of references to equality and inequality in presidential state of the union addresses (SOTUs) delivered between 1960 and 2018. Despite rising income inequality and increased attention among political elites to structural inequalities of race and gender in recent years, we find very few direct or indirect references to inequality as a social problem and surprisingly few references even to the ostensibly consensual and primary values of equal opportunity and political equality. References to racial inequality have been few and far between since the height of the civil rights era. By contrast, another primary value in the American political tradition—economic individualism are a major focus in these SOTUs. We trace the scant presence of equality talk in these speeches to the ambiguous scope of egalitarian goals and principles and their close tie-in with race in America. We rely on automated text analysis and systematic hand-coding of these speeches to identify broad thematic emphases as well as on close reading to interpret the patterns that these techniques reveal.

Wybrane zabiegi perswazyjne w pierwszym i ostatnim orędziu Donalda Trumpa do Kongresu na tle tradycji wystąpień State of the Union. Kontynuacja, ewolucja czy nowa jakość?

Zwycięstwo Donalda Trumpa w wyborach prezydenckich w 2016 r. zaskoczyło wielu komentatorów – wygrał bowiem polityk pod wieloma względami odznaczający się na tle konkurentów politycznych, kontrowersyjny i niewątpliwie nieortodoksyjny. Zmiana jakościowa – bez względu na to, czy oceniana jest pozytywnie, czy negatywnie – objęła m.in. takie aspekty jak instrumentarium marketingu politycznego oraz sposób mówienia przez kandydata o wartościach, różnicach partyjnych i podziałach społecznych. Ta nowa retoryka została przeniesiona na praktykę codziennego wypełniania obowiązków przez Prezydenta, znajdując wyraz m.in. w szeroko komentowanych, dorocznych orędziach do Kongresu, znanych najszerzej jako State of the Union Addresses. Chcąc dokonać przynajmniej częściowego opisu specyfiki perswazji Trumpa i prześledzić jej ewolucję, autorzy prezentują ogólne tło tego rodzaju wystąpień oraz analizują dwa wybrane przemówienia – pierwsze, z roku 2017, oraz ostatnie, z roku 2020. Na podstawie tego badania stawiają wniosek, że Trump nie zerwał całkowicie z tradycją orędzi prezydenckich i nie odrzucił narzędzi już wcześniej używanych; nie przeniósł ich jednak również bezpośrednio na swoje wystąpienia, zamiast tego dokonując reinterpretacji w ramach własnego, unikalnego stylu.

“Dollars and Nicotine”—Construction Mechanism of Evaluative Meaning in Political Speeches

Objectives: Economy and health are the most basic guarantee for a country’s stable development, they are also mandatory themes in every US President’s State of the Union Address. These two issues will directly determine the Congress and people’s evaluation towards the president’s governing capacity. Based on the binary division of explicit and implicit evaluation, taking the economic (employment and tax reform) and health (nicotine and drug addiction) of Trump’s State of the Union Address as data, this study has carried out a comparative analysis on the construction of evaluation meaning, attempting to build the evaluation model. We found that, Trump shows a very strong preference for implicit or indirect evaluation, which includes various graduation resources, infused process of AMOUNT and QUALITY, shared knowledge, specific numerals and verb tense. A closer analysis indicates that, under different themes, different constructing mechanisms have been utilized to form or strengthen the evaluation implication. To be specific: (1) both explicit and implicit resource are applied in constructing the evaluative meaning; (2) at different stages under the same theme, the constructing model shows difference, with the explicit resources being more prominent at the beginning or ending stage. In the body part, both explicit and implicit resources are of prominence, which tend to cooperate with each other, evoking or strengthening the established evaluative meaning. It proves that different types of evaluative resources show different degrees of prominence across stages within same theme.

Are American Presidents Becoming Less Rhetorically Complex? Evaluating the Integrative Complexity of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Historical Context

Are American political leaders becoming simpler in their rhetoric? To evaluate, in the present study we place the two most recent U.S. presidents’ integrative complexity against a historical context for three different types of comparable materials: Presidential Debates, Inaugural Addresses, and State of the Union (SOTU) speeches. Results overwhelmingly suggest that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are historically simple when compared to the typical president, and that is true both across parties and within their own political party. Further, segmented regression analyses suggest that part of the reason for Biden’s and Trump’s low complexity is the continuation of an ongoing historical decline in complexity among Presidents that began in 1960. However, each president uniquely defies this trend on one material type: Biden is a historical outlier for his low-complexity debates, and Trump is a historical outlier for his low-complexity inauguration speech. Taken as a whole, these data suggest that although American presidents have been declining in complexity, both Biden and Trump are nonetheless uniquely low in complexity in some ways – possibly for reasons that are different for each president.

China’s images in the State of the Union Address, 1973-2020

This paper discusses how China was represented in the State of The Union Address between 1973 and 2020. The hypothesis is that China’s image has undergone qualitative changes and that shifting the party in the White House is not a sufficient condition to transform this representation. It is employed the content analysis to map the frequency of the word ‘China’ and to analyze the discursive context of its apparition. The mentions are evaluated according to three variables: axiology (positive, negative, or mixed), discursive focus (direct or indirect), and frequency of mentions. Four discursive paradigms, or periods in which the image was qualitatively stable, are identified and discussed. The analysis showed that external shocks have an important impact on changing China’s image and that these representations usually signalize actual priorities of US foreign policy.

Expressive means of prosody in the address “On the State of the Country” (on the material of the speech given by Barack Obama in 2014)

This article examines the expressive potential of prosodic means based on the 2014 State of the Union Address to Congress delivered by the President of the United States Barack Obama “On the State of the Country”. Special attention is given to the discursive characteristics of the text and the peculiarities of communicative situation, including such prosodic parameters as pausation, tone and intensity, word accents, as well as capabilities of the syllabic consonants. The author employs auditive and instrumental methods for the analysis of speech fragments of the politician, which illustrates the effectiveness of modifications of suprasegmental speech characteristics for achieving the optimal rhetorical effect in the information-enriched text. The relevance of this research is defined by need for comprehensive analysis of the political discourse and techniques used to influence the audience. The scientific novelty lies in consideration of the expressive capabilities of prosodic means in the political texts with consideration of various extralinguistic factors, as well as within the specific type of political discourse – orientation genre as a speech of information-prescriptive nature. The acquired results demonstrate the expressive potential of suprasegmental means in oral speech, and can be implemented in teaching students-philologists the principles of analysis of political texts from the perspective of expressive syntax, prosody, cognitive syllabics, and rhetoric.

Conclusion. The Future(s) of the European Union

This concluding chapter explores the European Union’s potential future evolution alongside two dimensions. A horizontal dimension focuses on the widening or narrowing of its membership, while a vertical dimension explores the deepening or flattening of its level of integration. Every change in the membership of the Union represents a fundamental change in its material constitution. This change can occur either through European enlargements or national withdrawals. Brexit in 2020 was the first instance in which a Member State withdrew from the European Union. Ultimately, the possibility of future reductions in EU membership cannot be categorically excluded; yet the political appetite seems minimal. And a national exit from the European Union will also be much harder for those States within the Union that have constitutionally committed themselves to European integration. The chapter then looks at the European Commission’s ‘White Paper on the Future of Europe’, which presents five scenarios offering ‘a series of glimpses into the potential state of the Union by 2025’.