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A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Joe Biden’s Political Discourse

Posted on:2024-04-08Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y R MaFull Text:PDF
GTID:2545306932999429Subject:Foreign Language and Literature
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The president’s public speech is a typical political discourse.The orator has made elaborate preparations in terms of text writing,speech strategies,etc.,in order to achieve the purpose of persuasion.As President of the United States,Biden faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.To get America out of trouble,Biden introduced Build Back Better Act.Infrastructure is an important pillar of Biden’s economic policy.He has delivered several speeches to persuade the public and win support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.Metaphor is an effective way to achieve the purpose of persuasion in political discourse.With the rise of critical discourse analysis,metaphor studies have turned to a new perspective.In 2004,Charteris-Black proposed the Critical Metaphor Analysis approach,which combines cognitive linguistics,corpus method,and critical discourse analysis.This approach interprets metaphor from the perspective of pragmatics and cognition,and determines its ideological and rhetorical basis by analyzing its discourse function.This study selects 25 speeches of Biden on infrastructure from March 31,2021 to November 2,2022 as the corpus.Based on Critical Metaphor Analysis,this thesis combines quantitative and qualitative analysis methods.Using Wmatrix5 and MIP as tools,metaphor identification,metaphor interpretation,metaphor explanation of corpus are conducted in an attempt to address the following questions:(1)What types of metaphors are employed by Joe Biden in his political discourse?(2)What are the dominant conceptual metaphors that can be generalized in Biden’s political discourse?(3)What are the functions of these metaphors? What are the factors that influence the choice of metaphor?The study finds out that plenty of metaphors are employed in Biden’s political discourse on infrastructure.Among them,the six key metaphors are journey metaphors,building metaphors,sports and game metaphors,human metaphors,war metaphors and religious metaphor.The journey metaphor is the most frequently used metaphor,which can be generalized as a conceptual metaphor in THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICA IS A JOURNEY.Biden sees himself as a leader,with infrastructure policy as the path,difficulties as the obstacles,and building a better America as the destination.By applying different types of metaphors,Biden maps people’s existing experiences to complex political policies.He attempts to arouse audience emotions,explain policies,highlight information,and construct images of himself and the United States to achieve his political goals.In choosing metaphor,Biden is influenced by personal growth experience,cognitive factors,historical factors,ideological factors,and religious factors.Theoretically,this study enriches the study of Critical Metaphor Analysis and provides a new perspective for the study of Biden’s political discourse.Practically,the study of political discourse can explore the ideology and political purpose behind it and play a positive role in the public’s understanding of political discourse.
Keywords/Search Tags:Critical Metaphor Analysis, political discourse, conceptual metaphor, infrastructure
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