A Study Of Kennedy’s Addresses On Cold War From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA for short) is a new development of criticaldiscourse analysis. It is an intercross study of disciplines such as discourse analysis, corpuslinguistics analysis, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics. Through the investigation ofmetaphor in the discourse (especially political discourse), CMA reveals the emotions andattitudes hidden behind the discourse, thereby exposing discrimination and prejudicewithin; Through the identification of metaphors in the corpus and interpretation of themetaphors from cognitive and pragmatic perspectives, the readers can eventually obtain afull understanding of the functions of the political discourse and further understand moredeeply the motivation of using the metaphors in discourse.The American President J.F. Kennedy served his term during the Cold War period. Hedelivered seventy-five speeches in total in the public media of TV and broadcast. The fourspeeches to be discussed which are marked with strong characteristics of the times and ofKennedy’s emotions can best represent his attitudes towards the Cold War.The present study is conducted within the framework of CMA, based on a research methodborrowed from Corpus Linguistics. It is intended to identify, interpret and explain thefeatures and pragmatical intentions of those metaphors, and thus relate them to ideology. Itis found that in these four speeches, Kennedy applied seven types of metaphor, includingconflict metaphor, journey metaphor, body metaphor, geographical environment metaphor,building metaphor, religion metaphor, fire and light metaphor, among which conflictmetaphor stands out clearly, amounting to74.9%of all metaphors used, illuminating thehostility between the Eastern and Western camps during the Cold War Period. Journeymetaphor takes up11.8%, describing a better future of the country and the difficulties to beexperienced on the way. Body metaphor, amounting to9.7%, is often used to express“brotherhood”, a sense of solidarity, with the implication that United States is always readyto give help when this brother is in need of help. The ‘brotherhood’ metaphor plays acomplementary role to the ‘conflict metaphor’. The word ‘struggle’ comes first in thenumber of metaphorical use in the four speeches, whose meaning penetrates the entire discourses, rendering the topic of the Cold War.The metaphor analysis of the study also exposes the political views and ideologiesunderneath. Kennedy did not support the Cold War before he took presidency to the extentof speaking against interference in other countries ’ internal affairs. But in the fourspeeches delivered after he took office, Kennedy made an extensive use of conflictmetaphor, revealing Kennedy’s change of stand.This empirical study on metaphors in Kennedy’s speeches reinforce claims on thesocio-cultural and ideological aspects of metaphor and CMA serves as a powerful tool forrevealing the speaker’s assumptions, beliefs and values towards the world.