Investigating Political Discourse from the Perspective of CMA: A Case Study on Trump's Speeches

CMA (Critical Metaphor Analysis) analyzes metaphors in discourse by applying pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and corpus-based methods so as to reveal the true attitudes, intentions, and emotions of discursive communities implied in their discourses. In this paper, the authors analyze the political metaphors in Trump's 4 speeches in the framework of CMA with an aim to reveal the true meaning behind the discourse. It is found that Trump used a lot of sports metaphors in his speeches, and preferred to compare the international situation with competition instead of with war. In political discourses, politicians often use metaphor for the purpose of persuasion and expression. We can reveal the true political intentions behind the discourse by utilizing the CMA model.