| It has been two years since the 2016 US Presidential Election,and Donald Trump is halfway through term.However,Trump's style of speaking and the characteristics of his speeches have been a heated issue among all walks of life until nowadays.American scholars even comment that Donald Trump talks like a third-grader,while others say that his rhetoric is more sophisticated than most politicians'.His speech was one of the factors leading him to the White House.And in contrast to Hillary Clinton,Donald Trump possesses a quite different style of rhetoric and conduct which is perhaps in line with the preference of the vast majority of Americans today.Due to their large discrepancy,a large number of articles have been published at home and abroad to discuss the factors contributing to Trump's success in the election campaign,both in terms of his political means and media strategies.The articles in the academic circle mainly discuss the communication preference styles of Trump and Hillary,and conduct contrastive analysis of the parts-of-speech distribution,topic characteristics,semantic category and gendered language used by them in the TV debate.In addition,there is a contrastive analysis of conceptual metaphor of their Campaign Launch Speeches,applying Lakoff's Conceptual Metaphor Theory to the exploration of the two candidates' conceptual system reflecting on language.However,seldom from the view of cognitive rhetoric do articles investigate the characteristics of rhetoric by the two candidates,combining traditional rhetoric and cognition,on the basis of analyzing the linguistic phenomenon to explore the psychological mechanism of the speech maker.Starting from the perspective of cognitive rhetoric and using the Charteris-Black model based on Aristotle's classical rhetoric,this thesis combines rhetoric analysis with conceptual metaphor analysis to preliminarily explain the differences of persuasion effect between the two candidates in campaign speeches.Based on rhetorical analysis and conceptual metaphor analysis,the author further discusses the political myth created by the two candidates.The rhetorical analysis of the two candidates' speeches shows that Clinton mainly used Journey metaphor(42.9 % of the total metaphors)and five types of rhetorical devices,while trump mainly used Personification(33% of the total metaphors)and seven types of rhetorical devices.Subsequently,it can be found that there has been a sharp contrast between Hillary's Valiant Leader myth and Trump's Conspiratorial Enemy myth.Combined with the rhetoric strategies of the two candidates,Trump's words have brought greater effects on heightening emotions to the public than Clinton's.It shows that Donald Trump's campaign speeches are more efficient than Hillary Clinton's in arousing the sympathy and support of the public.It also reflects Trump's populist tendency.Through the research of this thesis,it is found that the contrastive analysis of the speeches of presidential candidates from the perspective of Cognitive Rhetoric provides a new perspective for the contrastive study on political discourse.It also helps deepen the interpretation of the psychological mechanism of rhetoric,and plays a positive role in the further development of cognitive rhetoric.It may even help predict the political decisions of future presidents to some extent. |
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