An Empirical Research On Conceptual Metaphors In American Presidential Debates

Debating for presidency has strong purposes. It is mainly used to express the politicalstands and governing ideas of the presidential candidates, which can be better accepted by thepublic and help the presidential candidates win more votes. Influenced by the characteristic oftimeliness, the language of presidential candidates in the debates are filled with both written andspoken English. What’s more, it also has a great many figures of speech, such as parallelism,metaphors, rhymes and metonymies. This thesis aims to the study of metaphors in thepresidential debates. In order to let the audience have a better understanding of their politicalintentions, the candidates often use metaphors to make their words understandable and close topeople’s cognitive and understanding abilities. As Mio&Katz (1996, p.57) pointed out,metaphors provide a good way to solve political problems, and frame the directions forbehaviors which politicians always want the public to have.Based on Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory and his works that published later, Thisthesis studies the conceptual metaphors in2008American presidential debates. Lakoff（Lakeoffand Johnson,1980）studies metaphors from the perspective of cognition. He pointed out thatmetaphor is not only a kind of rhetorical devices, but also an important mode of thinking andmechanism of human cognition. This concept breaks away from the traditional metaphor theoryand brings the metaphor study into the field of cognitive metaphor. Additionally, this thesis alsobelongs to the field of political metaphors. Until now, though many researchers have had anexploration into political metaphors, they limited their studies only to the functions of metaphor,ideology behind the metaphor or the relationship between metaphor and politics during theirprocess of exploration. Even if some researchers carried on their studies of conceptual metaphors in political metaphors, they still adopted the usual studying method such ascomparison or just stopped before a further or deeper study. However, this thesis will have adeep and comprehensive study of political metaphors and the ideologies behind them, and theauthor believes that this thesis will bear a unique feature.In order to ensure preciseness and reliability, the sample discourses in this thesis are from“The American Presidency Project” Website. Qualitative and quantitative methods are adoptedin this thesis to study conceptual metaphors of American presidential debates in2008. Inaddition, this thesis adopts critical metaphor analysis proposed by Jonathan Charteris-Black(2004). It provides three steps to analyze conceptual metaphors, namely, metaphoridentification, metaphor description and metaphor explanation. According to the thesis research,the author finds there are plenty of conceptual metaphors in2008American presidential debates,such as CONTAINER metaphor, WAR metaphor, JOURNEY metaphor, BUILDINGmetaphor, UP-DOWN metaphor,etc. Among them CONTAINER metaphor takes the largestamount. These metaphors uncover the intentions, governing ideas, ideologies of politicians, thethinking characteristics and values of the whole nation.By studying conceptual metaphors in presidential debates, this thesis further improves oursensitivity to metaphors in political discourse, lays a foundation for other nations to know aboutAmerican politics and provides reference for future researches. Thus, people will have a deeperunderstanding of conceptual metaphors in political metaphors. In addition, the object of thisstudy is on the debates. Until now, few scholars make researches on debates, especially onmetaphorical metaphors in debates. Therefore, this thesis will also provide more references tothe future studies on debates.