What’s in a Political Slogan?
What’s in a Political Slogan?

Summary/Abstract: Despite their efficiency and their – practically – mandatory use in political campaigns, slogans are a largely under-researched area of political discourse. This paper focuses on political slogans and investigates them from a cognitive perspective. It aims to provide a description of the conceptual structure underlying political slogans, which could also serve as a stepping stone for further investigations of their ‘witty’, ‘catchy’, and ‘quot- able’ character. The paper demonstrates that the conceptual elements in the scenario prototypically employed in political slogans are the ones of leader, people being led, a social issue/ a solution to a social issue/ a goal, time, and space. The analysis demonstrates how these scenario elements function prototypically. This hypothesized conceptual structure is tested against a dataset specifically compiled for the present purposes. The dataset includes 25 slogans used within UK and USA political contexts over the last 70 years. The analysis conducted is qualitative.

• Details
• Contents