Donald Trump’s political campaign rhetoric. A cognitive study

Abstract

Politicians recruit conceptual metaphors, as these means enable them to talk about abstract political problems in terms of more tangible and commonplace entities. This study aims to explore linguistic aspects of Trump’s presidential campaign and is conducted in light of premises derived from Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Metaphor Theory. The selected speeches were analyzed using a corpus research tool, i.e. Metaphor Identification Process was implemented. Donald Trump’s campaign speeches were retrieved from internet sources. The period from January 24th, 2015 to October 20th, 2016 was chosen for compiling the primary corpus of 20 speeches. The qualitative analysis indicates that the President used metaphorical expressions frequently. The author of the article enumerates some grand metaphorical themes underlying Donald Trump’s campaign speeches.