A Comparative Metaphorical Study On American Presidential Inaugural Addresses And Campus Addresses

As a non-ignorable cultural phenomenon in western society, political addresses play an indispensable role in political life. Apart from American presidential inaugural addresses, political addresses encompass a multiple of genres, including party debates, assembly addresses, commencement addresses and congress addresses etc. In modern times, more and more politicians cast attention on universities and institutes. As is agreed unanimously, university students who receive higher education are to become the owners and pillars of the future society, whose behavior and value orientation could exert profound influence over the whole society, so unexceptionally, politicians prefer to universities and institutes as their key fronts, attempting to move university students with their own political principles.As an inseparable part of daily life, metaphor is omnipresent, in people's thought and behavior as well. Conceptual metaphor, especially, functions as an effective approach for people to know this world and express their own thoughts and opinions. So is conceptual metaphor popular with American politicians in their campus addresses, whose assimilability and persuasiveness contribute a great deal to strengthen those politicians'political stance.For a long time, inaugural addresses of American presidents have always been a heated topic, around which a large number of researches have been carried out. But the field of campus addresses by politicians is still a virgin land waiting to be explored. American politicians not only do tour addresses in the U.S. but also deliver addresses overseas. For example, President Bush delivered a speech in Tsinghua University and President Clinton in Peking University. With student audiences the target population, campus addresses differ greatly from inaugural addresses, ranging from the topics the audience is interested in, sympathetic responses to metaphors.This paper applies conceptual metaphor theory to American presidential inaugural addresses and campus addresses. The analytical methods applied here are both qualitative and quantitative. The incidence of various metaphors in both American presidential inaugural addresses and campus addresses are concluded via analysis of the metaphors in 21 inaugural addresses by American presidents from 1929 to 2009 and 19 campus addresses by American presidents in the U.S. and China from 1962 to 2009. Further revealed are the differences and connections between the two. Meanwhile, this paper also makes a tentative study on the assimilability and persuasive effects, attempts to find out further reasons and hence improves the awareness of Chinese people for traditional American culture and provides access to the political, military and economic attitude and intention of the U.S.