Rhetorical Analysis Of Metaphors In Hillary Clinton's Speeches

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A Rhetoric Analysis of Metaphors used in the Speeches examines the emergence of morality in the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s electoral speeches. It attempts to uncover underlying discursive literal and metaphorical structures in her presidential campaign discourse. The researcher’s goal is to verify whether or not Hillary Clinton introduces herself as a progressive leader who embraces all nurturing moral values that are assumed by Lakoff (2004). The abstract nature of values such as care, fairness, health care, education and the like necessitates the use of literality and metaphors which provide an incite for their conceptualization. On the one hand, the investigation is based on a semantic point of view that relies on an application of Lakoff’s (1996) Family based models of political morality which include the Nurturing Parent and the Strict Father models. On the other hand, the study derives from Lakoff’s (2004) publication as he gives values a central position for the testing of his predicted models. Moreover, the investigation tries to answer Lakoff’s (2004) raised question of how different people make a link between morality and individual concepts of health, wellbeing, wealth, strength or more precisely frame such concepts according to their particular own understanding and definition of moral criteria. …show more content…

Furthermore, this study builds upon the findings of previous studies on Lakoff’s family based models employed in other political discourses; it draws attention to the need for more study of moral values in American political discourse in general. The model speeches Hillary Clinton which are taken for the analysis ranges from January to February 2016. They are appended with clear cut division of “Date of Speech”, “Metaphorical Expressions” and “PVs- Metaphorically