A Cognitive - Semantic Study of Conceptual Metaphors and Conceptual Metonymies in The USA Electoral Campaign

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a cognitive semantic account of the conceptual metaphors and metonymies in the USA electoral campaign of 2020. Conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual metonymy are applied as the framework for the study. It focuses on how conceptual structures contribute to different meaning constructions in each datum. Specifically, the paper looks at two American political speeches delivered by Joe Biden and Donald Trump as heads of the list of their parties. Based on its quantitative, qualitative and comparative analysis within a cognitive semantic framework, this study argues that conceptual metaphor and metonymy help effectively to convey different viewpoints of both politicians in presidential election campaign. Finally, this study has concluded that conceptual metonymy is the most common tool in the English corpus data. Both conceptual metaphor and metonymy have great role in meaning construction through mapping between source and target domains.