Analyzing and comparing de Blasio’s and Quinn’s speech in their democratic election programs for 2013 New York Mayoral Elections

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to compare de Blasio’s and Quinn’s programs for 2013 New York Mayoral Elections to reveal their rhetoric and figurative language as a means of persuasion in political campaigns. This along with their backgrounds, appearance and previous supports will disclose some key points contributing to de Blasio’s victory. As this study focuses on linguistics, I rely on Political Discourse Analysis (Wilson, 2001), Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Wodak and Meyer, 2009), van Dijk’s Sociocognitive Approach (2008) and polarization (1999) – Chilton’s legitimation/delegitimation (2004) –, Charteris-Black’s Corpus Approach to Critical Metaphor Analysis (2004), politeness and facework (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967), and Taboada and Grieve’s (2004) approach of Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005; White, 2012). The results will show which verbal devices and phenomena are used as a linguistic weapon to influence people’s thoughts and attract voters, as well as to give a positive image of themselves (positive self-representation) or a negative image of the political opponent (negative other-representation).