On the linguistic features of American political discourse

Abstract

The present-day public communication space is dominated by the language of politics, thus allowing political discourse to both influence and become one of the components of contemporary culture. The paper aims at discussing the typical linguistic features of a sample of political speeches given by the major actors in American political campaigns in the year 2012. Attention will be given to the use of rhetorical devices, which serve as examples of both the figurative use of words and their constituent part of political language – used here as an instrument to increase power and to suggestively, and most frequently, subjectively, convey knowledge about the world. Though the typical linguistic features of political speeches have thus far been the focus of many linguists and researchers during their analysis of this phenomenon of discourse, not much attention has been given to establish a comparison of the rhetorical devices used by American politicians to win the hearts of a specific political party voter, i.e. a Democrat or a Republican.