Language of Persuasion: Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse

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.

Simultaneous interpretation of complex structures from English into Arabic

A complex sentence is described as such by virtue of its multiple constituents which vary from clauses, subclauses to phrases. English and Arabic linguistic literature includes references to the issue of syntactic complexity, yet the approaches are different. The present study seeks to investigate how Arab simultaneous interpreters translating from English into Arabic deal with syntactically complex structures. To achieve this goal, the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is selected as the test-ground. The study finds that simultaneous interpreters operating from English into Arabic deal with complex structures in different ways by adopting and adjusting their strategies. The dominant strategy is linearization, which is triggered by the need to translate under time pressure. This strategy also unloads the simultaneous interpreter’s cognitive burden. Yet complete linearization is impossible, since omission and compression may interfere as in the case of embedding and ‘that’ structures. Other strategies, particularly addition and chunking, are also observable, being applied when interpreters find themselves faced with asyndetic structures and multiple embedding.

The cost of a divided America: an experimental study into destructive behavior

Does political polarization lead to dysfunctional behavior? To study this question, we investigate the attitudes of supporters of Donald Trump and of Hillary Clinton towards each other and how these attitudes affect spiteful behavior. We find that both Trump and Clinton supporters display less positive attitudes towards the opposing supporters compared to coinciding supporters. More importantly, we show that significantly more wealth is destroyed if the opponent is an opposing voter. This effect is mainly driven by Clinton voters. This provides the first experimental evidence that political polarization leads to destructive behavior.

Perspectives on Gender Stereotypes: How Did Gender-Based Perceptions Put Hillary Clinton at an Electoral Disadvantage in the 2016 Election?

Research on gender stereotypes has largely emphasized that women candidates are evaluated differently compared to their male counterparts. In this article, I argue that such differential evaluation put Clinton at an electoral disadvantage in the 2016 election. I develop my expectations based on the differences between feminine stereotypes and masculine stereotypes and how voters’ perceptions of the latter match the longstanding popular expectations for political leaders, in a way that advantages men as candidates and disadvantages women. I also expect that a “gender affinity effect” influenced the election, with Democratic women being more likely to vote for Clinton. In this article, I rely on data from the 2016 American National Election Survey to evaluate the role of gender affinity effect and gender stereotypes in Clinton’s electability. The results show that masculine personality traits had the largest effect and were more fundamental for winning the White House. They also show that there was no significant evidence of a gender affinity effect among Democratic women in terms of voting for Clinton. These results offer new insights into voters’ gender stereotypic perceptions of Clinton and their consequences for the electoral fortunes of women candidates in general.

The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2020 Presidential Election

Recent scholarship on the effect of candidate visits in presidential elections has found that appearances by candidates appear to mobilize both supporters and opponents. Specifically, in the 2016 presidential election, donations to campaigns of the visiting presidential candidates increased, but—in the case of Republican nominee Donald Trump—so did donations to his opponent, Hillary Clinton. In this paper, we extend this research by assessing the effect of visits on campaign donations by presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2020 election. We find evidence that visits by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had strong mobilizing and counter-mobilizing effects, increasing donations to both campaigns. We find weak evidence that visits by Joe Biden increased contributions to his campaign, but we do not find evidence that his visits had a counter-mobilizing effect, and we find no evidence that visits by Mike Pence affected donations in either direction.

Did Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency? A Counterfactual Analysis of Minor Party Voting in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote for president in 2016, but lost to Donald Trump in the Electoral College. Trump’s margin of victory in several decisive battleground states was smaller than the combined vote for the two leading minor party candidates: Gary Johnson, of the Libertarian Party, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. The perception that Johnson and Stein “stole” the 2016 presidential election from Clinton is widespread, and potentially consequential for future minor party candidacies, but it has not yet been rigorously tested. In this article, we extend the analysis of minor party voting in the 1992 election from Lacy, D., and B. C. Burden. 1999. “The Vote-Stealing and Turnout Effects of Ross Perot in the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (1): 233–55, by using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to estimate a multinomial probit model of voting behavior—including outcomes for vote choice and abstention—and calculate the predicted probabilities that Johnson and Stein voters would have voted for another candidate or abstained from voting, had one or both of these candidates been excluded from the ballot. We then reallocate Johnson’s and Stein’s votes accordingly, to estimate Clinton’s and Trump’s counterfactual vote shares nationally and within key battleground states. Our analysis indicates that Johnson and Stein did not deprive Clinton of an Electoral College majority, nor Trump the legitimacy of winning the national popular vote. We estimate that most Johnson and Stein voters would have abstained from voting if denied the choice to vote for their preferred candidate, and that most of Johnson’s remaining voters would have supported Trump.

Comments on Cassese and Holman 2019

During his campaign for the Republican Party nomination and for U.S. president, Donald Trump suggested that Hillary Clinton benefited from playing a "woman card". The effect of exposure to Trump's woman-card attack was investigated in the Cassese and Holman (2019) Political Psychology article "Playing the woman card: Ambivalent sexism in the 2016 U.S. presidential race". However, neither Cassese and Holman (2019) nor a reanalysis of data analyzed in the article provided sufficient evidence for key claims in the article. Moreover, Cassese and Holman (2019) is unclear whether its Study 2 experimental data could be used to test claims made based on its Study 1 non-experimental data, providing an example of how journal policy requiring access to survey questionnaires could help peer reviewers and readers better assess reported research.

RHETORICAL DEVICES IN THE AMERICAN LEADERS’ POLITICAL SPEECHES AS THE MANIPULATION WAYS OF THE CITIZENS’ PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Increasing of language contacts, globalization and internationalization of public relations, expansion of modern information technologies encourage a comprehensive study of modern English communication. Political activity has always played a special role in society. An important role in determining the country’s international image is played by its presentation by the country’s political leaders. With the help of speeches, politicians have the opportunity to address both the international community and the citizens of their country. Direct contact with the audience determines the choice of lexical, syntactic and phonetic means in the design of speech. Political speeches have three main functions: the communication function, the announcement function and the influence function. American oratory theorists point to the need for the speaker to concentrate on composing his speech, taking into account the audience reaction what he is trying to provoke. Much attention in the American oratory theory is paid to the speech compositional construction. One of the political discourse genres is political speech. Presidential political speech is an oral political text, which is proclaimed by the president to a mass audience, sets urgent tasks in a particular sphere of public life, and gives recommendations for the implementation of tasks. It performs the functions of persuasion, agitation, congratulations, has a pre-created script, which depends on the communicative situation. The construction of a political speech is based on the principle of argumentation (introduction, main part, final part), which facilitates the speech audience perception. The study was based on the political speeches texts of two American presidents – John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The analyzed speeches have different topics: inaugural addresses of presidents, comments during hostilities and diplomatic (delivered during visits). The article highlights the concept of political discourse; it’s identified and described the main types of political speeches; revealed the linguistic and stylistic features and expression means of John F. Kennedy’s; Ronald Reagan; Hillary Clinton political speeches.Key words: English discourse, political speeches, linguistic and stylistic aspect, translation aspect, rhetorical devices. Розширення мовних контактів, глобалізація та інтернаціоналізація суспільних відносин, впровадження сучасних інформаційних технологій спонукають до всебічного дослідження сучасної англомовної комунікації. Політична діяльність завжди відігравала особливу роль у житті суспільства. Політичний дискурс – це явище, з яким люди стикаються щодня. Боротьба за владу є основною темою та рушійним мотивом цієї сфери спіл-кування. Політична комунікація, орієнтована на викладення тих чи інших політичних подій, пропаганду ідей, установок, цінностей, володіє емоційним та інтелектуальним впливом на свідомість громадян. Важливу роль у визначенні іміджу країни відіграє спосіб презентації політичними лідерами держави. За допомогою виступів політики мають можливість звернутися як до міжнародної спільноти, так і до громадян своєї країни. Прямий контакт з аудиторією зумовлює вибір лексичних, синтаксичних і фонетичних засобів в оформленні промови. Політичні промови мають три основні функції: функцію спілкування, функцію повідомлення та функцію впливу. Теоретики американського ораторського мистецтва вказують на необхідність оратора сконцентруватися на тому, щоб його промова була складена, враховуючи реакцію аудиторії, яку він намагається викликати. Велика увага в теорії американського ораторського мистецтва приділяється композиційній побудові ораторської промови. Одним із жанрів політичного дискурсу є політична промова. Президентська політична промова – це усний політичний текст, який проголошується президентом перед масовою аудиторією, ставить назрілі завдання в тій чи іншій сфері громадського життя, дає рекомендації щодо здійснення поставлених завдань. Вона виконує функції переконання, агітації, вітання, має завчасно створений сценарій, який залежить від комунікативної ситуації. Побудова політичної промови засновується на принципі аргументації (вступ, основна частина, завершальна частина), що полегшує сприйняття промови аудиторією. На основі аналізу текстів політичних промов можна змоделювати інтереси, вподобання, типові реакції політичного лідера, його уявлення про друзів і ворогів. Матеріалом дослідження слугували тексти політичних промов двох американських президентів – Джона Кеннеді, Рональда Рейгана – й кандидата в президенти Гілларі Клінтон. Проаналізовані промови мають різну тематику: інавгураційні звернення президентів, коментарі під час воєнних дій і дипломатичні (що виголошувалися під час візитів). У статті викладено поняття політичного дискурсу; визначено й описано основні типи полі-тичних промов; виявлено лінгвостилістичні особливості й засоби вираження політичних промов Джона Кеннеді, Рональда Рейгана, Гілларі Клінтон.Ключові слова:англомовний дискурс, політичні промови, лінгвостилістичний аспект, перекладацький аспект, риторичні прийоми.

Assessing the Russian Troll Efforts to Sow Discord on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. Election

Although experts agree that the Russian Internet Research Agency deployed trolls on Twitter to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election, questions remain about the nuances of their efforts. We examined almost 350,000 original tweets made during the two-year electoral cycle to investigate the emphasis, timing, content, and partisanship of the trolls’ efforts targeting leading candidates. Despite only dedicating a fraction of their tweets to candidates, troll behavior generally tracked the relevance of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz during the election cycle. Trolls were significantly more likely to engage in name-calling in tweets about Trump, Clinton, and Cruz than in tweets about other topics. Name-calling peaked in tweets addressing Clinton during the general election. Right trolls were more likely to focus their attention on Trump, Clinton, and Cruz than were other partisan trolls.

Why Much of the Liberal Left Can Now be Termed ‘Regressive’: Discourses on Trump, Immigration, and Islam

We find much of the discourse from the soi disant progressive politicians, media and academy to be misinformed, hypocritical, and even regressive. This applies to discussions about politicians such as President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and especially concerns the issues of Islam and immigration. We argue that much of the contemporary liberal left appears to be more intolerant, more Orwellian, than its traditional rivals on the right [while recognising that there are differences between those who describe themselves as ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’, including moderate left, centre left, far left etc., we have decided to use the portmanteau ‘liberal left’ as this equates to the more generally agreed upon signifier ‘progressive’].