Metaphorization In US Public Political Speeches

Metaphor is not a new topic for research. Traditionally it has been considered merely as an elegant rhetorical device or even a linguistic quirk. The year 1980 witnessed a cognitive turn in metaphorology with the landmark publication of Lakoff and Johnson's works, Metaphors We Live By, in which they put forward the conceptual metaphor theory which makes a breakthrough in the traditional metaphor study and brings metaphor study into the cognitive field. They hold that metaphor is a cognitive tool. Since then, metaphor is no longer taken merely just as a matter of language but a way of thinking. It is a cognitive mechanism that helps to construct a conceptual world with its own principles. Ever since Lakoff & Johnson's putting forward of conceptual metaphor theory, lots of scholars have been studying metaphor in various types of discourse. However, most of them restrict their researches at the level of lexis. In 1985/1994, M. A. K. Halliday. published An Introduction to Functional Grammar, in which he put forward the grammatical metaphor theory which makes a breakthrough in the cognitive metaphor study. He contends that lexis is just a sublevel of lexicogrammar, and that metaphorical variation should involve lexis and grammar rather than simply lexis. Thus, according to Halliday, comprehensive metaphor study should include both lexical and grammatical.It has been more than two decades since the proposal of Halliday's grammatical metaphor theory. Over this peorid, a lot of scholars have been doing reseaches on either lexical or grammatical metaphor, some even have been comparing their working mechanisms. However, very few have tried to explore deeply their relationship. Thus the author believes it is necessary and significant to discuss more deeply their relationship. In this thesis, the author compares the functions of lexical metaphor and those of grammatical metaphor in US public political speeches and discusses the relationship between lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor.US public political speech is an essential form of style in weastern countries, and it is very significant to weastern politics. The prominent purpose of public political speech is to invoke the audience so as to seek their support. Because of its significance many scholars have been interested in the features of US public political speeches. They have been studying the features of US public political speeches from various perspectives. US presidential inaugural address is a typical form of US public political speech. It has the characteristics of both spoken and writen English, which is very different from other types of discourse. These differences can be seen from syntax, lexis, phonetics and phonology. US presidential inaugural address has religious and cultural background. Moreover, it uausally uses a large number of both lexical metaphors and grammatical metaphors, so as to invoke and pursuade US people.This paper analyzes US President John. F. Kennedy's inaugural address in 1961 for the metaphors used in it. The author conducts a qualitative analysis of lexical and grammatical metaphors used in the address, interprets them with the related theories, discusses their functions in US public political speeches, and explores their relationship. This study is based on Lakoff & Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory and M.A.K. Halliday's grammatical metaphor theory; the former is the theoretical basis of lexical metaphor, and the latter is that of grammatical metaphor.From the analysis of the lexical metaphors and grammatical metaphors used in John. F. Kennedy's presidential inaugural address, the author finds that in a US public political speech lexical metaphor has the functions of easy understanding, judging, inspiring and pursuading, while grammatical metaphor has the functions of judging, inspiring, persuading, creating objectivity, keeping the systematicity of language, and giving prominence to subjectivity, and that they have similar functions in US public politcal speeches. Moreover, although strictly speaking lexical metaphor belongs to the filed of congitive linguistics while grammatical metaphor belongs to that of functional lingusitics, they have similar conceptual base in working mechanism and both of their usages are restricted by either the speaker or the audience's cultural backgrouds and ideology. The author concludes that lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor are complenmentary to each other and that it is meaningful to study them together in future researches.