Considers how traditional approaches such as cohesion and classical rhetoric may be integrated with 'critical' approaches to discourse analysis such as critical metaphor analysis. Presents a range of critical and discourse theories and considers the relationships between linguistic features of speeches and their social and cultural contexts.
The book offers a linguistic analysis of political leadership, exploring the use of metaphors in oratory and rhetoric. It examines the reasons behind metaphorical language in political discourse, providing insights into its impact on communication and persuasion in leadership. Through this unique approach, the text uncovers the significance of metaphorical usage in shaping political narratives and influencing public perception.
Michel Foucault, one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences, devoted his last three lectures to a study of leader development. Going back to pagan sources, Foucault found a persistent theme in Hellenistic antiquity that, in order to qualify for leadership, a person must undergo processes of subjectivation, which is simply the way that a person becomes a Subject. From this perspective, an aspiring leader first becomes a Subject who happens to lead. These processes depend on a condition of parresia, which is truth-telling at great risk that is for the edification of the other person. A leader requires a mentor and advisors in order to lead successfully, while also developing the capacity in one's own mind to heed the truth. In other words, a leader must learn how to guide oneself. A valuable contribution to the field of leadership studies, this book summarizes these last lectures as they pertain to the study and practice of leadership, emphasizing the role of ethics and truth-telling as a check on power. It then presents several other contexts where these same lessons can be seen in practice, including in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose career as a writer epitomized speaking truth to power, and somewhat surprisingly in the United States military, in response to its twenty-first century mission of counterinsurgency.
No Cherries on the Cake?
How were social media posts, scripted speeches, traditional news media and political cartoons used and understood during the Brexit campaign?
Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?
This book explores the metaphors used in public and media communication to ask how language shapes our moral reasoning about the global coronavirus crisis.
This detailed study of fire metaphors provides a deep understanding of the purposeful work of metaphor in discourse. It analyses how and why fire metaphors are used in discourses of awe (mythology and religion) and authority (political speeches and media reports). Fire serves as a productive and salient lexical field for metaphors that seek to create awe and impose authority. These metaphors offer a rich linguistic and conceptual resource for authors of mythologies, theologies, literature, speeches and journalism, and provide insight into the rich interplay of thought, language and culture. This book explores the purpose of fire metaphors in genres ranging from the Norse sagas to religious texts, from Shakespeare to British and American political speeches. Ultimately it arrives at an understanding of the rhetorical work that metaphor accomplishes in communicating evaluations and ideologies.