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Justifying Operation Iraqi Freedom - A Study of Moral Metaphors in Political Statements

<p>Abstract</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the way George W. Bush used moral metaphors to intensify the language in his statements on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Three moral metaphors are presented within two different models that are applied on the data.</p><p>The collected material for the metaphors is constituted of cognitive linguistic books from prominent linguists, such as George Lakoff, Alan Cruse and William Croft, and the data is collected from the official White House website. The scientific method used in this study has been qualitative text analysis where the hermeneutic approach has been an essential part of it.</p><p>The main question: In what way did George W. Bush use moral metaphors in his statements to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom?, resulted in use of moral metaphors that sermons people’s moral values, depict Saddam Hussein’s characteristics as immoral, activate people’s moral priorities to help the Iraqi people, and addresses both conservatives and liberals in America.</p><p>The conclusion of my study is that President Bush deliberately intensified the language in his statements through moral metaphors to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom.</p><p>Keywords: Cognitive Linguistics, Metaphor, Figurative Language, Operation Iraqi Freedom, War on Terror, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, USA, Iraq, Qualitative Text Analysis, Hermeneutics.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:vxu-421
Date January 2006
CreatorsBeganovic, Armin
PublisherVäxjö University, School of Humanities
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, text

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