The Study Of Metaphor In English Political Speeches

Metaphor has been widely adopted in our daily life. It can be found not only in literature but also in politics, science and technology, religion and so on. The study of metaphor enjoys a long history, but it is not until the publication of the great book Metaphor We Live By written by Lakoff and Johnson that a brand new era has come into being, which declares has the cognitive function of metaphor has been gradually recognized and drawn universal attention from at at home and abroad. Scholars in different fields have achieved the consensus on the point that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a cognitive phenomenon.Speech is a primary form in western political comments and has played a greatly vital important in western politics. In order to realize their desired targets, politicians tend to use various public occasions to express their politics. Political terms, however, are usually rather abstract and obscure for common people to understand, which accounts for the reason why most politicians turn to vivid and common expressions in voicing their complicated ideas so as to persuade the masses of the people to accept their values and even to form a shared ideology. Naturally, metaphor has become their first choice.The speeches delivered by the presidents serve as an important form of political public speaking in the United States and function as a typical political discourse. Under the circumstances of global financial and political destabilization, American leaders are more likely to encourage American people and fill them with all bright promises. On the basis of the conceptual theory, this thesis takes political speeches chosen from12speeches delivered by ex-President George W. Bush and Obama respectively as the research data in order to make a detailed analysis of three types of the conceptual metaphor theory, point out which type gets more frequency in Presidents’ political speeches and reveal how American leaders gain the most valuable support for their own governance. In order to better construct the study, the author adopts case study method. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used. The qualitative method is with the purpose of finding out the preferences in the choices of conceptual metaphors existing in two American presidents’ political speeches. The quantitative approach is used to identify the types of metaphors used in the research data.During the process of analysis, it has been proved that metaphors in political speeches are applied by treating human and non-human things as the source domain, political and economic events, the country and the government as the target domain. The political innovation, the economic development, the measures taken by the nation and the government are projected onto non-human and human-things, forming the cross-domain mappings of metaphors.All in all, findings of the study show that numerous metaphors do exist in political speeches and the usage of metaphors makes it easier to understand political utterances. For one thing, it will enhance a good comprehension of political speeches and promote a new understanding of American domestic and foreign administrative measures from the cognitive perspective. For another, it is beneficial for English learners to understand the semantic extension of American political speeches and deepen the understanding of metaphor study. What’s more, it will supplement the previous studies of political speeches on metaphor.