First Lady, Secretary of State and Presidential Candidate : a comparative study of the role-dependent use of metaphor in politics

Abstract

While many studies have examined to what extent politicians invoked a particular source domain to advance their ideology, no study to date has focused on the metaphor use of an individual politician across different political roles. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the war metaphors used by Hillary Clinton in her personal speeches in the roles of U.S. First Lady, a U.S. Senator, and as a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for U.S. President and demonstrates that Clinton’s metaphor use reflects a politician who chooses her battles carefully and invokes figurative language to gain support for the causes that are important to her.