This analysis of the rhetoric of nine successfully persuasive politicians explains how their use of language created credible and consistent stories about themselves and the social world they inhabit. It explores their use of metaphors, their myths, and how language analysis helps us to understand how politicians are able to persuade.

Each chapter of this book analyzes the rhetoric of speeches by major American and British politicians to show how metaphor is used to create political myths of monsters, villains and heroic leaders. Metaphors are shown to interact with other figures of speech to communicate subliminal meanings by drawing on the unconscious emotional association of words. An innovative study for students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, journalism and media studies.

This book presents an investigation of the influence of gender, social class, age and illness type in the language of people talking about their experiences of illness. It shows evidence of both conformity with and resistance to gender stereotypes.
  

The language of persuasion looks both outwards and inwards: politicians promise a better future based on an evaluation of the current external reality, but they communicate this vision by activating deep-seated ideas, values and feelings that are hidden within the audience. This fully updated second edition analyses the rhetoric of three additional politicians - Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and Enoch Powell - as well as revised accounts of the original six politicians to produce a comprehensive study of some renowned exponents of persuasion. It also contains a new chapter on the role of metaphor in political communication. Successful politicians are those who have credible stories to tell, who can involve us with the drama of the present by explaining what is right and wrong and who convince us that they are better than their opponents. This book explains how their use of metaphors and myths create credible and consistent stories that help us to understand the rhetorical means through which persuasion occurs.

Each chapter of this book analyzes the rhetoric of speeches by major British or American politicians and shows how metaphor is used systematically to create political myths of monsters, villains and heroic leaders. Metaphors are shown to interact with other figures of speech to communicate subliminal meanings by drawing on the unconscious emotional association of words. This book is an innovative study of interest to students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, journalism and media studies.

An investigation of the influence of gender, social class, age and illness type in the language of people talking about their experiences of illness. It shows evidence of both conformity with and resistance to gender stereotypes.