Conceptual Metaphors in Donald Trump’s Political Discourse: Politics Domain (2018)

Abstract

The object of this research is conceptual metaphors in Donald Trump’s political discourse (2018) whichis aimed at his own positioning as an extremely positive and beneficial president who will “make America great again“. Furthermore, he implicitly and explicitly treats his opponents- the Democrats and previous governments as enemies who are guilty for all the problems and troubles in the USA.

Linguistic expressions of the following conceptual metaphors POLITICS IS WAR, POLITICS IS A JOURNEY, POLITICS IS A RACE, POLITICS IS A CRIME, POLITICS IS LOVE, POLITICS IS FRIENDSHIP prevail in Donald Trump’s political discourse. There are some expressions of conceptual metaphors, such as POLITICS IS A GAME, POLITICS IS WATER and POLITICS IS SLEEP in Trump’s political discourse.

The majority of these conceptual metaphors are based on the opposition I/we–they, where I stands for the President Trump, we are the members of the Republican Party and they are introduced as the Democrats.

Conceptual metaphor has an evaluative potential in Trump’s political discourse. Evaluations, expressed through linguistic metaphors and belonging to the same conceptual metaphor, may differ and acquire both positive and negative connotations.