Using Metaphors in Political Discourse: Selected US Inaugural Speech

This paper sets out to examine the use of metaphors in political discourse, specifically in US presidential inaugural speeches. It attempts to find out the pervasive conceptual source domain of the metaphors in this particular political genre used by the speakers as well as investigates how the use of metaphors reflect the speaker¿s ideology and power relations as to fulfil their aims. I see metaphor as an important cognitive and linguistic device that reflect and shape people¿s belief, world view and attitude. Basically, two main theoretical approaches are used in this study: Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth, CMT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, CDA). The former is concerned with the conceptualisation of an entity, especially an abstract one through another more tangible concept. The latter attempts to investigate the underlying intention of the metaphors and how ideology and power are practised through metaphors. The data consists of four speeches selected from the US presidential inaugural addresses that were delivered in the last decade by two prominent presidents namely, George. W. Bush and Barack Obama.