Designing a Corpus-Based Cognitive Analysis of Political Discourse

Abstract

In his play Translations, Brian Friel (1981) points to the Greek word exo-gamein — “to marry outside the tribe.” He writes that “you don’t cross those borders casually. Both sides get very angry.” Marrying outside the tribe is not any easier when it comes to linguistic theories and frameworks. But it can also be a way to ask the right questions, and provide innovative methods to answer them. This is one of the goals of the present study, as it proposes a corpus-based cognitive analysis of political discourse, in which discourse analysis is meaningfully informed by cognitive linguistics, while empirically grounded in careful corpus analysis. It also answers recent calls by cognitive linguists for the validation of theoretical claims in the discipline with corpus-based analyses, especially as far as conceptual metaphors are concerned (Semino 2008). While Conceptual Metaphor Theory is prominently featured in the following chapters, Mental Space Theory and Blending Theory also play relevant roles. These cognitive elements are applied to the analysis of new Labour discourse: they offer significant insights into the discursive expression of a social phenomenon, which is the main goal of discourse analysis. The latter is a versatile field in which different traditions cohabitate while their chosen methods of analysis can range from a strong reliance on quantitative data to a primary focus on the meaning of ideology and hegemonic struggles.KeywordsTarget DomainPolitical DiscourseSemantic ConceptSource DomainConceptual MetaphorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.