Outer and inner circle rhetoric specificity in political discourse : a corpus-based study Outer and inner circle rhetoric specificity in political discourse : a corpus-based study

This study explores the distinctive patterns of language use in political discourse across selected outer circle (Cameroon and Ghana) and inner circle (US and South Africa) varieties, using a corpus-based approach. More specifically, the research sets out to investigate the use of two types of linguistic features, namely, personal pronouns and kinship metaphors. In a first analysis, I adopt an alternative approach to investigating the use of personal pronouns in political discourse. The approach essentially draws from the cognitive linguistic concept of ‘frames’ as articulated by the theory of frame semantics (Fillmore, 1976, 1977a, 1982, 1985, 2008; Fillmore & Baker, 2010). I use an automatic frame semantic parsing tool, the SEMAFOR parser (Das et al, 2014), to identify the different types of (semantic) frames and frame roles with which specific personal pronouns are instantiated across the four varieties. I then compare the findings to illustrate instances of universality and variation. In a second analysis, I examine the types of metaphorical conceptualizations which are made using kinship terms across the varieties. Working top-down from conceptual schemas to linguistic instantiation, I identify and compare the frequencies of metaphors from the kinship field and also describe the types of cross-domain mappings typically involved in each of the varieties. My analysis is mostly informed by mainstream cognitive approaches to the study of metaphors, more especially cultural variations in the use of conceptual metaphors (Kövecses, 2002, 2005). I demonstrate that although there is empirical evidence for the use of a kinship conceptual schema across all four varieties, there are however significant variances in the specific metaphorical mappings used to instantiate this high-level conceptual structure. Both analyses make a case for the fact that in the field of political discourse especially, language use may be structured and constrained by conceptual schemas which themselves are culturally determined.