Conceptual Metaphors and Ideologies in the Inaugural Speeches of Selected United States Presidents
Extant studies on presidential inaugural speeches in the United States often focused on persuasive effects of metaphors from the stylistic, pragmatic, socio-linguistic and cognitive perspectives. Not much attention was paid to conceptual metaphors and ideologies used. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate language use in inaugural speeches of selected United States’ presidents, with a view to determining the conceptual metaphors and ideologies projected in them. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Jonathan Charteris-Black’s critical metaphor analysis served as the framework, while the descriptive design was adopted. The selected presidents were Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Their first inaugural speeches were sourced from the White House. The data were subjected to critical discourse analysis. Three dominant source domain metaphors identified were JOURNEY, BUILDING and PERSONIFICATION. They were used to conceptualise the socio-economic and political issues identified in the speeches in order to persuade the American citizens. Conceptual metaphors identified were AMERICANS AS TRAVELERS ON A CHALLENGING PATH, AMERICANS AS DARING TRAVELERS, AMERICAN ECONOMY AS A WEAK HUMAN BEING, AMERICAN ECONOMY AS A BUILDING. The ideologies reflected in the speeches were nationalist ideology which centred on allegiance to American nation. Messianic ideology which projected a deliverer from bad governance and reformist ideology projected positive changes/improvement in governance. The conceptual metaphors and ideologies serve to secure the citizens supports.
Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor, Cognitive Linguistics, Inaugural Speeches of the U.S Presidents, ideologies.
