A Corpus-based Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In American Presidential Inaugural Addresses

Metaphors,existing everywhere in people's daily life,are not only a simple rhetoric skill,but also a good and effective way of thinking.In the meantime,they are beneficial to help people perceive and understand the world.When reading the political speeches,it can be found that metaphors are extensively existing in these discourses,such as American Presidential Inaugural Addresses(later abbreviate for APIAs)(Usually the inaugural address is delivered by the president when the new election is over.).Analyzing these discourses,it can be summarized that metaphors have important effects in them.For example,their textual function can connect articles well or their explanatory function can help people understand the complex and abstract concepts clearly in political speeches.From the perspective view of cognitive linguists,metaphors,as a way of thinking,are part of human being's conceptual system.In recent years,it has become the focus of scholars' attention in various fields,such as language,biology,neurology.The scholars of previous studies always choose a few speeches to do research(one or two speeches),nevertheless,when reading different speeches,it can be found that there are many different kinds of metaphors in different speeches and there are different effects of metaphors in different discourses.Within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory,the present study discusses the American Presidential Inaugural Addresses.According to the classification of Lakoff and Johnson(orientational metaphors,ontological metaphors and structural metaphors),so as to find the kinds of metaphors in political addresses and the effects in them.There are all three research questions: Firstly,how many kinds of conceptualmetaphors have been recognized in American presidential inaugural addresses from1901-2017;Secondly,which kind/kinds of conceptual metaphor(s)is/are the most frequently used in American presidential inaugural addresses;Thirdly,what effects do these metaphors achieve.Data are taken from APIAs from 1901 to 2017.Totally there are twenty American presidential inaugural speeches being selected as the object.In order to find the answers of the three questions,the present study creates a small Corpus of Inaugural Addresses of American Presidents(CIAAP)which is included the twenty addresses and mainly uses the corpus retrieval method and artificial identification method to do this research.First,the author read the twenty addresses word by word and in the process of reading,the author identifies the typical words of different kinds of metaphors and retrieves these typical words,for example,UP and Down are for orientational metaphors,journey and travel are for journey metaphors,build and rebuild are for building metaphors and so on.Second,using the artificial identification method to check all the sentences which have metaphors.Once the author assures a metaphor,she will marks it here or there(e.g.human metaphor).In the end,the study uses the software of AntConc 3.4.4w(Windows)aiming to count the number of different kinds of metaphors correctly and analyzes which kind/kinds of metaphor is/are more popular and the effects of metaphors in APIAs.Through systematic analysis of mapping mechanism between source domain and target domain in these addresses,it generalizes that there are mainly twelve kinds of metaphors embodied in APIAs: UP metaphors,DOWN metaphors,BACK metaphors,FORWARD metaphors,HUMAN metaphors,LIGHT metaphors,NATURE metaphors,JOURNEY metaphors,BUILDING metaphors,WAR metaphors,RELIGIOUS metaphors and FAMILY metaphors.And the first three kinds of conceptual metaphors are namely BUILDING metaphors,JOURNEY metaphors and HUMAN metaphors which are most frequently used in presidential political discourses.Interpreting and analyzing these metaphors in political addresses,it reveals that there are mainly four effects of APIAs: they are cognitive and textual function,persuasive and communicative function,explanatory and illustrative function and the function of presidents get motivation and emotion from people andpresidents offer strong-will power to people.Meanwhile,the author also finds that the American leaders often use some metaphors to inspire their people and let them support the government.