scholarly journals Language of Persuasion: Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 85-110
Author(s):  
Olha Lapka
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Source Domain ◽  
Family State ◽  
Theresa May

The aim of this article is to study the scope of conceptual metaphors as a persuasive tool inherent to political discourse in English. In particular, it dwells upon the use of four conceptual metaphors such as NATION IS A FAMILY, STATE IS A BODY, POLITICS IS A WAR, and POLITICS IS A GAME. For this purpose, the transcripts of twenty-eight public speeches delivered by David Cameron, Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, and Donald Trump were analysed. The results revealed numerous functions of these metaphors in the process of persuasion. Apart from that, the analysis showed that the majority of the analysed politicians resort to the source domain of WAR to conceptualise their political activities, while the source domain of GAME is the least frequently used. 

scholarly journals The discrediting strategy in the pre-election political discourse (based on the example of debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden)

2021 ◽  
Vol 273 ◽  
pp. 12138
Author(s):  
Diana Abdurakhmanova ◽  
Ekaterina Redkozubova
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Political Activities

Speech manipulation in the pre-election discourse aims to influence the audience in order to increase the number of the electorate and present their political activities in a more favorable way. This article is devoted to the study of ways to achieve this goal using strategies of self-presentation and discrediting. It is known that the political struggle for power at the stage of debate is carried out mainly through a strategy of discrediting. The task of belittling the opponent's status comes to the fore. Such activity involves a set of certain tactics that help to implement it: from the most common tactics of accusation and ridicule to less frequent tactics of exaggeration and unproven undermining of authority. This analysis demonstrates the variety of tactics used by Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the 2020 political debate as part of a discrediting strategy. The result of the study showed that politicians resort more to tactics of open speech influence, which takes place in offhand speech. In addition, the efficiency of the strategy of discrediting in political discourse was revealed.

scholarly journals Transitivity Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s First Television Debate

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yichao Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Relational Process

Halliday holds that all cultures reflect some universal meta-functions in the languages and proposes three such meta-functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This paper employs the transitivity theory in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyze the first television debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Specifically, through a quantitative analysis, this paper tries to find the answers for the next two questions: First, what are the distributions of six processes used by the two candidates; are there any similarities and differences or some rules in the distribution? Second, what are the reasons of such distributions, and what are the functions of the distributions of different processes and main participants in helping the speakers to convey their intentions? The main findings show that material processes, relational process and mental processes are relatively dominate in both candidates’ speeches; while compared with Hillary, Trump tends to use more existential processes. In political discourse, the speakers measure their words with special caution to interact with people, to expresses their attitudes and judgments, and to influence the viewpoints and behavior of the audience, which is mainly the realization of the interpersonal function.

Motivational underpinnings of support for radical political leaders

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Political Candidate ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Willingness To Engage

In three studies conducted over the course of 2016 US presidential campaign we examined the relationship between radicalism of a political candidate and willingness to engage in actions for that candidate. Drawing on significance quest theory (Kruglanski et al., 2018), we predicted that people would be more willing to make large sacrifices for radical (vs. moderate) candidates because the cause of radical candidates would be more personally important and engagement on behalf it would be more psychologically rewarding. We tested these predictions among supporters of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. Our findings were in line with these predictions, as the more followers perceived their candidates as radical, the more they viewed leaders’ ideas as personally important, gained more personal significance from those ideas, and intended to sacrifice more for the leader.

Making Americans Feel Great Again? Personal Significance Predicts Political Intentions of Losers and Winners of the 2016 US Election

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Times

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during the times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 US presidential elections we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one’s candidate is related to hostile vs. benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).

The Propaganda Feedback Loop

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
False Reporting ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
Crowd Out ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter presents a model of the interaction of media outlets, politicians, and the public with an emphasis on the tension between truth-seeking and narratives that confirm partisan identities. This model is used to describe the emergence and mechanics of an insular media ecosystem and how two fundamentally different media ecosystems can coexist. In one, false narratives that reinforce partisan identity not only flourish, but crowd-out true narratives even when these are presented by leading insiders. In the other, false narratives are tested, confronted, and contained by diverse outlets and actors operating in a truth-oriented norms dynamic. Two case studies are analyzed: the first focuses on false reporting on a selection of television networks; the second looks at parallel but politically divergent false rumors—an allegation that Donald Trump raped a 13-yearold and allegations tying Hillary Clinton to pedophilia—and tracks the amplification and resistance these stories faced.

What Time Does in Language: a Cross-Linguistic Cognitive Study of Source Related Variation in Verbal Time Metaphors in American English, Finnish and Hungarian

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-238
Author(s):  
Zsuzsa Máthé
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Source Domain ◽  
Metaphorical Language ◽  
Related Variation ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Study

"What Time Does in Language: a Cross-Linguistic Cognitive Study of Source Related Variation in Verbal Time Metaphors in American English, Finnish and Hungarian. Such a universal yet abstract concept as time shows variation in metaphorical language. This research focuses on metaphorical language within the framework of the cognitive metaphor theory, investigating time through a contrastive cross-linguistic approach in three satellite-framed languages. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this study attempts to identify what time does in language in a metaphorical context, with a focus on verbs in causative constructions (e.g. time heals) as well as manner of motion verbs (e.g. time rushes), through an empirical corpus-based study complemented by the lexical approach. The two main conceptual metaphors that are investigated in this study are TIME IS A CHANGER and TIME IS A MOVING ENTITY. While these two conceptual metaphors are expected to be frequent in all three languages, differences such as negative/positive asymmetry or preference of a type of motion over another are expected to be found. The primary objective is to explore such differences and see how they manifest and why. The hypothesis is that variations among the three languages related to the source domain (CHANGER and MOVING ENTITY), are more likely to be internal and not external. The purpose is to investigate these variations and to determine what cognitive underpinnings they can be traced back to, with a focus on image schemas. The study reveals that source internal variation does prevail over source external variation. The results show that cross-linguistic differences of such a relevant concept as time do exist but more often through unique characteristics of the same source domain rather than new, distinctive domains. Keywords: cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, conceptual metaphor theory, metaphorical entailments, source domain "

Forecasting Presidential Nominations in 2016: #WePredictedClintonANDTrump

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 691-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Dowdle ◽  
Randall E. Adkins ◽  
Karen Sebold ◽  
Jarred Cuellar
Keyword(s):  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Presidential Nominations

ABSTRACTA number of scholars successfully modeled and predicted presidential nomination outcomes from 1996–2008. However, dramatic changes occurred in subsequent years that would seem to make replicating these results challenging at best. Building on those earlier studies, we utilize a series of OLS models that included measures of preprimary resources and early campaign successes or failures to forecast that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations in 2016. This outcome suggests that some fundamental factors governing nomination outcomes have not changed despite the conventional wisdom.

scholarly journals Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis- and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511877601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Ross ◽  
Damian J. Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports

Twitter is increasingly being used within the sociopolitical domain as a channel through which to circulate information and opinions. Throughout the 2016 US Presidential primaries and general election campaign, a notable feature was the prolific Twitter use of Republican candidate and then nominee, Donald Trump. This use has continued since his election victory and inauguration as President. Trump’s use of Twitter has drawn criticism due to his rhetoric in relation to various issues, including Hillary Clinton, the size of the crowd in attendance at his inauguration, the policies of the former Obama administration, and immigration and foreign policy. One of the most notable features of Trump’s Twitter use has been his repeated ridicule of the mainstream media through pejorative labels such as “fake news” and “fake media.” These labels have been deployed in an attempt to deter the public from trusting media reports, many of which are critical of Trump’s presidency, and to position himself as the only reliable source of truth. However, given the contestable nature of objective truth, it can be argued that Trump himself is a serial offender in the propagation of mis- and disinformation in the same vein that he accuses the media. This article adopts a corpus analysis of Trump’s Twitter discourse to highlight his accusations of fake news and how he operates as a serial spreader of mis- and disinformation. Our data show that Trump uses these accusations to demonstrate allegiance and as a cover for his own spreading of mis- and disinformation that is framed as truth.

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