Comparative study of metaphor in British and United States of America (US) political discourse
Igor Ivanovic
DOI: 10.18355/XL.2017.10.02.02
Abstract
Every speech is embellished by the metaphoric expression, despite its context, content, and tone. In different fields, the application of metaphors may vary, yet still they are used regardless the situation consciously or unconsciously. In the political discourse, metaphoric expressions play pivotal role serving as the instruments of persuasion, simplification, and demonstration. As the main purpose of a political figure to attract the followers by convincing them certain agenda is right, the literal meaning of words will be not enough for such goals. At the same time, political speech of different nations varies so as the utilization of metaphors. In this case, the present research aimed to analyse the British and American political discourse and to reveal if there are differences and similarities between them, how metaphors are applied, and in what way they are used for appealing to the public. The current research used inaugural speeches of American presidents and manifestos of British political parties from 1974 to 1997 for the analysis. By utilizing the Range for Sample Corpora program for dissecting the data, the study came to a conclusion that the British corpus contains fewer metaphors than the American one. American corpus is rich in religious metaphors and both corpora include the metaphors derived from source domains as authority, motion, and liberty.
Key words: political manifesto, metaphors, comparative analysis