A Metaphorical Framing Analysis Of American Presidential Speeches

Political discourse is an important carrier of political information,which plays a crucial role in the process of turning political desire into social behavior.As a form of political discourse,American president's speech has been widely concerned by academics.There have been abundant researches on President Obama's speeches and President Trump's speeches,but few scholars have made metaphorical framing analysis on these two presidents' speeches from the perspective of audience.Based on conceptual metaphor theory and framing theory,this thesis selects Obama's eight speeches and Trump's eight speeches as the research corpus with economy,immigration and national security as research themes to make a metaphorical framing analysis on two presidents' speeches aiming to reveal the framing way of their speeches by comparing the similarities and differences of frames.Conceptual metaphor is a cross domain mapping from source domain to target domain,and people understand the target domain with the help of the source domain.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory,Lakoff(1996)puts forward the framing theory.Frame is a psychological structure(Lakoff,2006),which is divided into surface frame and deep frame.The surface frame activated by language refers to metaphorical surface frame and non-metaphorical surface frame,while deep frame is the moral system or world view activated by surface frame.After making a metaphorical framing analysis on President Obama's and President Trump's speeches,the main findings of this study are as follows:Firstly,as to surface frames: in the speech on economy,immigration and national security,Obama's speeches mainly include 15 kinds of metaphorical surface frames,such as journey,plant,disease and stage,and 12 kinds of non-metaphorical surface frames,such as innovation,fairness,opportunity and eternity;Trump's speeches mainly include 10 kinds of metaphorical surface frames,such as journey,plant,competition and business,and 12 kinds of non-metaphorical surface frames,such as innovation,fairness,death and strength.In general,both presidents' speeches apply 8 types of metaphorical surface frames,including journey,plant,building and human,and 10 types of non-metaphorical surface frames,including innovation,fairness,security and help.Surface frame involves language,therefore,surface frame of President Obama's speech is richer than that of President Trump's speech.Secondly,as to deep frames,it is found that:(1)On economy,Obama's speeches embody the moral value of empathy,which is in line with the moral model of the Democratic Party;Trump's speeches show the radical moral ideas of trade protectionism and isolationism in the guise of competition,which is not congruent with the traditional moral model of the Republican Party.(2)On immigration,Obama's speeches demonstrate the idea of inclusiveness that is embodied in the Democratic model of “nurturant parent”;Trump's speeches include the idea of self-discipline,which is consistent with the Republican model of “strict father”.(3)On national security,Obama's speeches present the idea of “multilateralism led by the United States”(Hai chao,2009),while Trump's speeches show the value of “America first”.Both of them conform to the most fundamental position of their respective parties: Make America great again.Lastly,as to framing strategies,the author finds that:(1)On economy,Obama's speeches weaken his speech acceptance by negating negative frames about financial crisis.(2)On immigration,Obama's and Trump's speeches both show good framing strategies by using the frame according with the audiences' values to get the support of the target group.(3)On national security,Trump's speeches use the reframing strategies to create frames which improve the public acceptance of his speech.On the whole,the framing strategies of Trump's speeches are more effective than that of Obama's speeches.This research combines conceptual metaphor theory with framing theory to analyze presidential speeches and explains the discourse cognitive mechanism from the perspective of the audience,which enriches the cognitive linguistic studies on political discourse.At the same time,it helps the public understand the values behind the American government better and provides a reference for our government to construct national discourse system with increasing international discourse power.