Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Bush's Speeches On Terrorism

The publication of Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), marks the turn of metaphorology from the traditional rhetorical view to the cognitive perspective. The recent 20 years has witnessed an explosion in metaphor study: successful researches have been done at different levels of rhetoric, lexicon, syntax and discourse; the source of data is not confined in literary works, but extending to media, economic, and political discourses.Propelled by the fundamental and stimulating study of Lakoff and his associates (1980; 1993; 1999; 2002), metaphor study in political discourses has been a hot topic in recent five years. Studies like Metaphorization in US Presidential Inaugural Addresses (Cao, 2006), and A Contrastive Study of Conceptual Metaphors in Chinese and American Political Discourse (Chen, 2006), etc. are such successful examples.Yet in most of the previous studies, metaphors are identified, but not interpreted or explained. The function of metaphor in legitimization and ideology construction is a field unexploited until the works by Charteris-Black (2004, 2005). Rare work has been done on political discourses of specific corpora. Therefore, this thesis aims to do a pioneering work of critical metaphor analysis within the corpora of Bush's speeches on terrorism, in the hope of identifying which metaphors are chosen, why they are chosen, and how they strengthen political ideology. Through identification, interpretation, and explanation of metaphors in the corpora, the last two steps being the focus, this thesis concludes with three ideological functions of metaphor: establishing the politician's ethos; heightening the pathos; and explaining the logos. Thus, critical metaphor analysis is an efficient tool to raise critical awareness of the language in political discourses.