Abstract

This study explores the relation between politics and morality in the American political ideology from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The investigation is aimed at demonstrating the extent to which Obama's rhetoric during his first presidential election campaign is in line with Lakoff's (1996) predictions about political morality. In particular, it concentrates on a representative sample of Obama's 2008 election campaign speeches in order to identify the type of values he evoked and to describe how they can be related to Lakoff's description of nurturant parent morality. The study also accounts for a potential connection between the expression of moral values and the use of metaphorical language.