A Framing Model Analysis Of Metaphorical Discourse In American Parties' Presidential Speeches

Political discourse constantly receives attention of discourse analysts.As a particular genre of political discourse,the presidential speech closely concerned with ideology contains certain discursive strategies and particular political intentions.American presidents of both parties employ the metaphorical discourse in their political speeches respectively,through which diverse metaphorical framing models are thus realized.Although fruitful researches on American political discourse have been carried out by scholars at home and abroad,rare ones have touched on a dynamic analysis of the presidential speech from the stance of the audience within an integrated framework of cognitive mechanism,let alone academic studies on the framing models of metaphorical discourse in American presidential speech of the respective party.Framing Theory claims that ‘frame' is a cognitive structure in our mind and determines how we view the world.‘Frame' can be classified into ‘surface frame' and‘deep frame'.How frames work lies in the mutually interactive activation.In political discourse,the highest hierarchy is concerned with morality.Based on the collected data consisting of sixteen State of the Union Address including eight delivered by President Bush(2001-2009)and eight by President Obama(2009-2017),this study selects parts involving a particular issue,‘diplomacy',as its linguistic data.Within an theoretical framework incorporating both Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA)and Framing Theory,this thesis attempts to reveal the framing models of metaphorical discourse in Bush's and Obama's diplomatic speeches by conducting a qualitative discourse analysis.The cognitive mechanism in political discourse construction is explored as well.This thesis intends to address the following research questions:1.What surface frames are manifested in metaphorical discourse in Bush's and Obama's speeches on diplomacy?2.What are the similarities and differences between Bush's and Obama's surface frames in their speeches?3.What deep frames are realized in metaphorical discourse in Bush's and Obama's speeches on diplomacy? How do American parties' moral values influence their deep frames?4.What is the framing model of metaphorical discourse in American parties' presidential speeches? What is the cognitive processing mechanism involved?This study adopts MIPVU(Steen et al.2010)to identify the conceptual metaphors in the data.The selection,classification and calculation of retrieved metaphors are further conducted based on what Lakoff(2008)concluded as the frequently-used metaphors employed by American parties.This study respectively presents Bush's and Obama's surface frames in their metaphorical discourse with a focus on similarities and differences between them.Deep frames are further explored.This study attempts to propose a generalized framing model of the metaphorical discourse in American parties' presidential speeches involving important political issues and to present the illustrative cognitive processing mechanism in it.Detailed research findings are as follows.In the first place,in the presidents' State of the Union Address on diplomacy,eleven types of metaphorical surface frames including JOURNEY Frame,BUILDING Frame,MATCH Frame,HUMAN Frame,PLANTING Frame and so on are manifested in Bush's speeches.Twelve types of metaphorical surface frames are in Obama's speeches,covering HUMAN Frame,CONTAINER Frame,JOURNEY Frame,BUILDING Frame,STAKE Frame are in Obama's speeches.Secondly,as a whole,five types of metaphorical surface frames are summarized as the discursive strategy in both presidents' speeches on diplomacy,namely JOURNEY Frame,DRAMA Frame,HUMAN Frame,PLANTING Frame and BUILDING Frame.Differences lie in American parties' moral systems.President Bush representing the Republican Party sticks to moral values like individuality,independence,success etc,thus making three surface frames prominent,namely JOURNEY Frame,MATCH Frame and BUILDING Frame.On the contrary,moral values like empathy,alliance and cooperation are propagated by Obama who represents the Democratic Party.He pays attention to two surface frames of HUMAN Frame and CONTAINER Frame.Thirdly,based on the research findings of surface frames,the thesis concludes that the Republican Party which holds up ‘Strict Father' constructs three deep frames,namely small government,international authority and individual responsibility.The Democratic Party,based on ‘Nurturant Parent',constructs three deep frames including big government,cooperation union and shared empathy.All these are deeply influenced by the ideology and morality implanted in both parties.Therefore,American audience will make mental processing of the political discourse they have received,and match what they received with their moral values for further responses.In all,this is an indicator of whether the political intentions of American parties are indeed realized.Ultimately,a metaphorical framing model for American parties involving the significant political issues is proposed and illustrated,i.e.,a dynamic processing model that consists of five steps: moral concepts ? deep framing models and conceptual metaphors ? metaphorical surface framing models and metaphorical discourse?party's assumption of nation image and identity?social actors.Besides,a cognitive processing mechanism in constructing political discourse can be established,thus providing interactive potential for discursive level and ideological level.Cognitive approaches to discourse studies give due considerations to the‘interpretive' stage,which helps disclose the relations between discursive strategies and the power hidden in the texts.As a combination of politics,cognitive science and linguistic studies,this research will be conducive to the audience's better understanding of American political discourse system and moral value system of both parties.