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Personification In Bush's Speech

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The use of language is always manipulated to convey a goal of the speaker in order to have an effect on the hearer. Personification is a linguistic figure that is based on describing a word with the use of another word that in other contexts would be a word that is used to define a person. The use of the word that is defining a person-like quality or action should define a word that is normally not associated with a person-like attribute or action. Personifications arouse our attitudes, feelings and beliefs about a given subject. The typical reasoning for using personifications is “either to arouse empathy for a social group, ideology or belief evaluated as heroic, or to arouse opposition towards a social group, ideology or belief that is evaluated …show more content…

The use of the term friend(s) is metaphorical in the sense that it is a term describing relations between humans, transferred to describe relations between nations and organizations. In all the cited examples, America had been transferred the positive connotations of the words “friends” and “friendship” whereas the enemy is linked to the negative emotion of hatred “The regime […] has a deep hatred for America and our friends”. These metaphors serve, first, as a personification fitting the “United We Stand” political myth and, second, as an appeal for uniting legitimization for the War on …show more content…

Preemption typically means attacking an enemy before he attacks you. But preemption in the Bush administration’s sense is more accurately understood as “preventive war.” The president remains unapologetic for challenging this understanding. In June 2002 he told West Point cadets that: If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long […] we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act. Bush administration’s preventive war is intertwined with the second principle of the Bush doctrine that is to say, that of spreading of US’ democratic values. The decision to remove the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power went beyond simply eliminating a possible threat. In fact, it was intended to dislodge a tyrant and establish a democratic government in Iraq; in Bush’s

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