Moral Accounting Metaphors in American Political Discourse
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概要
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Behind American English, there are some specific moral values, American worldviews, deeply embedded in their culture. Such values are reflected in the Moral Metaphors that people use when speaking of moral values, and such values greatly influence the ways people think and talk about politics. As rhetorical strategies, politicians and orators often use Moral Metaphors to justify their morality and criticize others' immorality. Linguistically, Moral Metaphor is the way in which one source domain (i.e. usually special values in one culture) is used to speak of the target domain (i.e. morality). For example, in his landmark speech, Martin Luther King Jr. effectively used the financial transaction term," cash a check," to ask the government to return the human rights African Americans are entitled to. There are several types of such Moral Metaphors. One of them is Moral Accounting Metaphor that George Lakoff has proposed (Lakoff, 2002). Moral Accounting Metaphor is the way in which people describe the state of well-being by using financial words such as "owe" and "pay." In this paper, in the first place, it will be discussed how Moral Accounting Metaphor linguistically functions when talking about morality in American political discourse. In the second place, based on Moral Accounting Metaphor, it will be analyzed how some American politicians have actually justified their ideas. Learning Moral Metaphors specific to American political discourse can be clues to understanding the most common conceptual systems specific to one culture, or one country.
- 2013-03-00