The Study Of Metaphorical Expressions In The Political Speeches Of Barack Obama

Making Political speech is a necessary channel for the communication between the leaders of the country and the public, and an important cultural phenomenon in the western society. The political speeches of Barack Obama, which make the whole Americans rebuild and recover the economy through the difficult financial recession times, and lead America to a beautiful future, as well as build the world into a harmonious and prosperous big family, exert powerful influence on the public. This thesis intends to study the metaphorical expressions in the political speeches of Barack Obama by the application of Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory. As we know that, conceptual metaphor plays a significant role in political speeches for it can turn complicated and abstract concepts into vivid and clear statements and illustrations. It is often employed by politicians to serve their political purposes.According to Lakoff and Johnson(1980:3),"metaphors are pervasive in daily life, not just in language but in thought and action. As a way of knowing the world by human being, conceptual metaphor is closely related to cognition, which can effectively reveal ideas and thoughts of human being."Metaphorical Concepts are widely embedded in Barack Obama's Political speeches. Through the mappings of the source domain and target domain of the conceptual metaphor, the president builds a bridge from the government to the public. Besides, the application of conceptual metaphors makes people understand the government's ideas more clearly, persuades the mass accept and support the leader's policies.This thesis intends to find out and analyze the conceptual metaphors in Barack Obama's political speeches, exploring the ways how they are coherently organized to make the speeches vivid, interesting, and considerably effective. Through the analysis of his Inaugural address, the victory speech and the State of the Union Address, the three kinds of conceptual metaphors are categorized: the structural metaphor of JOURNEY and WEATHER are frequently used, besides, they are coherently related; the orientational metaphor of UP, DOWN, BARACK and FORWARD; and the ontological metaphors of HUMAN BODY, ANIMAL and OBJECT.The thesis, divided into five chapters, is mainly based on the theory of conceptual metaphor by Lakoff and other scholar's studies, which have been listed in the references. Chapter one serves as an introduction, which consists of the brief introduction of Barack Obama and his political speeches and the objective of the present study. Chapter two is about the literature review, briefly review the studies on metaphor from the perspective of traditional approach and cognitive approach. Chapter three is about the lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory. Chapter four focuses on the analysis of the conceptual metaphors by the classification of structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors in the political speeches of Barack Obama. Chapter five is the major findings of the present study, presents the limitations and puts forward directions for the future study.