A Cognitive Semantics of Politics: With Focus on Debates between the U.S. Presidential Candidates

초록

Most of the studies of previous presidential debates focused on the types and numbers of words and sentences used by individual candidates, the impact of debates on polls, turn-takings, and gender roles, but little attention has been paid to figurative languages used in political debates. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the figurative language used in the 2020 U.S. presidential TV debates and compare the results with the results of the past five elections since 2000, and find out the characteristics of the political rhetoric. The findings of this study are as follows. First, there is no regularity in using conceptual metaphors at each election. Second, the frequency of conceptual metaphors is the candidate's personal inclination in that the number of conceptual metaphors used by political party or year does not vary much. Finally, it is shown that historical events are actively reflected in political rhetoric and especially expressed in terms of conceptual metaphors.

키워드