Terror and Evil in Iraq : A Study of Political Discourse

Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to determine the validity of the hypothesis that the effective and eloquent use of language can result in shaping beliefs and altering people’s perception of certain phenomena. In order to explore this hypothesis, a speech given by George W. Bush concerning the Iraq war is examined, followed by a brief study of two corpora, the Time Magazine Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, where the collocationpatterns of the words Iraq, evil and terror are examined. The paper starts by presenting the main concepts upon which this study is based, i.e. mental frames, the co-operative principle and conversational maxims and finally, various rhetoric devices. An analysis section follows, where George Bush’s speech is examined with the help of the concepts mentioned above and the analysis continues with the corpora-study. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that, indeed, it is possible that language can be successfully used in order to achieve political means, and that there seems to be a shift in the American public’s perception of concepts such as Iraq and terror, visible in the use of language. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether the Bush Administration has managed to dominate public discourse, through a study as minor as this one.