A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of American Presidential Debates

Metaphor is commonly employed in persuasion in argumentative discourses such as political speech.Critical metaphor analysis emphasizes that metaphor can be explained by consulting individual resources and social resources.It offers a theoretical framework to study metaphor in discourse.Literature review shows that although there are many studies on metaphors in political discourse,few studies are conducted on American presidential debates from the perspective of critical metaphor analysis.Under the framework of critical metaphor analysis(Charteris-Black,2004),the present study aims to analyze metaphor uses in American presidential debates(2008,2012,2016)from the perspectives of categories,connotations and functions.The present study is designed to solve the following three questions: 1)What kinds of metaphors are chiefly used in American presidential debates? 2)What types of conceptual metaphors can be generalized from these metaphor uses? How to interpret their connotations in American presidential debates? 3)What are the functions of the metaphors and conceptual metaphors that are employed in American presidential debate corpus? How these functions are performed?Firstly,the transcripts of presidential debates in years of 2008 and 2012 are collected from the official website of Commission on Presidential Debates,while the transcripts in 2016 are taken from the official website of The Washington Post.Therefore,a corpus of American presidential debates is built by the author.Secondly,metaphorical keywords are identified by referring to MIP and dictionaries.Metaphors should be classified into different categories in terms of their source domains.The frequency of each metaphor category can be counted with the help of AntConc3.5.0.0.Thirdly,the author will interpret how presidential candidates convey their political policies and values through metaphors with instances and generalize the underlying conceptual metaphors.Finally,the author will explain the functions of the metaphors and conceptual metaphors used in American presidential debates.The study finds out that the most frequently employed metaphors in American presidential debate corpus are conflict metaphors,journey metaphors and building metaphors.In addition,plant metaphors,body parts metaphors,religious metaphors,illness metaphors as well as light and fire metaphors are also constantly used in American presidential debates.Moreover,eight conceptual metaphors are generalized in American presidential debates: 1)POLITICS IS CONFLICT.Presidential candidates are defenders who protect abstract social goals and social groups,defeat those enemies that will do harm to the society and the country and fight for the realization of valuable social goals and the settlement of social problems.2)PURPOSEFUL SOCIAL ACTIVITY IS TRAVELLING ALONG A PATH TOWARDS A DESTINATION.Destinations refer to goals of development.Roads represent political policies.Tourists are the American people.The guide is the presidential candidate who knows the right destination and the right road and leads the American people to move towards a brighter and better future.3)WORTHWHILE ACTIVITY IS BUILDING.Buildings represent political objectives.Blueprints describe political polices.The architect is the presidential candidate.The building is solid and well-structured,implying that these political policies are justified.4)SOCIETY IS A BUILDING.Building is the society itself.What is outside the building is a better future.5)POLITICS IS RELIGION.Religious beliefs signify political faiths.Religious missions refer to political goals,demonstrating presidential candidates' determination to achieve their political goals.6)SEEING IS UNDERSTANDING.Vision refers to the understanding about development goals,suggesting that presidential candidates have a clear perception of these development goals.7)ECONOMY IS HUMAN.Illness indicates economic recession.Rehabilitation implies economic recovery.Human's pursuit of physical fitness is consistent with the presidential candidate's pursuit of healthy economy.8)HOPE IS LIGHT.Light represents hope.Darkness refers to hopelessness.These conceptual metaphors are all based on cross-domain mappings from people's physical experiences onto obscure political policies and values.This mapping can facilitate electorates' understanding of candidates' policies.Metaphor interpretation shows thatmany metaphors are related to economic policies.Analysis of the entities involved in these policies indicates that Democratic candidates' economic policies tend to advocate for the middle class,the poor and social marginal groups.Whereas Republican candidates' economic policies are inclined to advocate for the wealthy,employers and entrepreneurs.Furthermore,metaphors and conceptual metaphors in American presidential debates play three main functions: 1)Persuading electorates:Electorates are from a range of backgrounds and the vast majority of them are not familiar with political language.Metaphor enables presidential candidates to elucidate their political ideologies by means of everyday experiences so as to promote electorates' understanding and thereby winning their support.2)Highlighting or concealing information: Generally,candidates highlight positive aspects of metaphor,convey positive connotations and conceal negative aspects of metaphor when they expound their own political policies and opinions.Nevertheless,presidential candidates also use metaphor to emphasize negative implications when they criticize their opponents' political policies.3)Arousing emotions: These emotions could influence electorates' value judgments.In presidential debates,in order to win electorates' support,the candidate must defend his own political policies and opinions,attack the opposing candidate,and persuade electorates that he is the best choice to be the president.The present study broadens the research range of critical metaphor analysis and provides a novel perspective for the study of American presidential debates.Meanwhile,this study will help electorates to further their understanding about political language and improve their critical awareness about presidential debates.