Investigating the Power of Language in English Electoral Campaigns: A Socio-cognitive Approach to Discourse Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.29.SpB.48Keywords:
Political discourse Language and power Socio-cognitive approach Cognitive manipulation Dominance of IdeologyAbstract
This study examines how language functions as a tool of power tool in English electoral campaign discourse. It investigates linguistic strategies that candidates employ in constructing authority and establishing dominance, and the cognitive processes that these strategies to influence electoral decision-making. Central aims are investigating linguistic strategies employed by candidates in constructing power and authority among citizens, and investigating cognitive processes activated due to the integration of some of these linguistic devices detected in the English electoral discourses. The current study, drawing on qualitative approach, applies van Dijk's socio-cognitive analysis framework in analyzing 2024 the USA presidential election opening speeches, namely those of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The analysis concludes that the USA election candidates apply sophisticated linguistic devices, emotion bypass, attribution manipulation, and situation modeling in constructing manufactured authority outside policy appraisal. Trump applies nostalgia nationalism while Harris applies institution-based credibility, those working below conscious threshold in order to reconstruct voter cognition. These findings give credence to van Dijk's framework in unmasking political speech as a power-building tool of communication in such a way that electoral victory is contingent on psychology triggers rather than policy rationalization
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Copyright (c) 2025 Wafa Idrees Omar, Bikhtiyar Omar Fattah
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