Bush & Identity/Persona

[Linnea Micciulla]

Welcome, Patrick!

Your topic is intriguing - by 'the conception of "President Bush" that 
is constituted in his speeches/talks' do you mean the (created/designed) 
image that he is meant to display to the public? If so, that strikes me 
as a fascinating angle.  I can't recall offhand any analyses I've read 
that make the portrayal (in a broad sense) of the source of the 
discourse the main subject of analysis.  Are there particular aspects of 
his "conception" that you are looking at - prosody? word choice? syntax? 
(or lack thereof!) facial expressions? posture?  I haven't studied his 
speeches at all, but I do recall noticing at least 2 major shifts in his 
prosody (perhaps the result of speech training?) - one early on in his 
presidential career, and another after 9/11. 

There has been a lot of work done on "positive 
self-presentation/negative other-presentation" and on representation 
generally, which may be the way you want to go (even though I really 
want someone to study Bush's prosody!).  I can't think of any articles 
right now that were particularly stellar, but any relevant work by Teun 
van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, or Norman Fairclough would be useful for getting a 
grounding in CDA.  I have taken a brief look at Wodak and Meyer's 
"Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis" (2001) and I think that would 
be a good book for getting an overview of the field.

As far as political language goes, I would highly recommend Paul 
Chilton's "Analysing Political Discourse" (2004). 

I haven't actually read anything from  the "Journal of  Language and 
Politics" yet, but I have ordered several articles from volume 4:1 by 
inter-library loan.  They haven't arrived yet... according to the 
WorldCat database, there are very few libraries in the US that 
subscribe, so it may be hard to get hold of.  

If you do find any good materials relating to analysis of how the 
"deliverer" of a given discourse is portrayed, please let us know!

Best,
Linnea


Beatriz Verdasco Vidal wrote:

>Hello Patrick,
>Welcome to the list. RIght off the top of my head, I suggest you check out George Lakoff, who has written extensively on the language of US politics. Lakoff is a cognitive linguist and does not exactly use CDA, but he certainly deals with meaning and power, so you might find it useful.  He applies conceptual metaphor theory (as laid out by himself and Mark Johnson in their seminal work Metaphors We Live By) to the study of political discourse. 
>
>Some of his books are: Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (2002) and Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values, Frame the Debate (2004). 
>Incidentally, you might also want to check out  What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America, by Thomas Frank, which is neither CDA nor metaphor-theory related, but nevertheless a good study of party dynamics in the US. 
>
>And here's some online links you mind want to start with: 
>An online article by Lakoff: "Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust," at http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html
>An online interview with Lakoff: "How to talk like a conservative (if you must)", at http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/10/10_401.html
>Lakoff on framing: http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/projects/strategic/simple_framing/view
>
>Hope this is useful. Good luck with your work!
>
>Beatriz
>
>  
>