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Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 32:1 (2019) ► pp.304–328

Analyzing and comparing de Blasio’s and Quinn’s speech in their democratic election programs for 2013 New York Mayoral Elections

| Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

This paper aims to compare de Blasio’s and Quinn’s programs for 2013 New York Mayoral Elections to reveal their rhetoric and figurative language as a means of persuasion in political campaigns. This along with their backgrounds, appearance and previous supports will disclose some key points contributing to de Blasio’s victory. As this study focuses on linguistics, I rely on Political Discourse Analysis (Wilson, 2001), Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Wodak and Meyer, 2009), van Dijk’s Sociocognitive Approach (2008) and polarization (1999) – Chilton’s legitimation/delegitimation (2004) –, Charteris-Black’s Corpus Approach to Critical Metaphor Analysis (2004), politeness and facework (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967), and Taboada and Grieve’s (2004) approach of Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005; White, 2012). The results will show which verbal devices and phenomena are used as a linguistic weapon to influence people’s thoughts and attract voters, as well as to give a positive image of themselves (positive self-representation) or a negative image of the political opponent (negative other-representation).

Keywords: De Blasio, Quinn, 2013 New York Mayoral Elections, political discourse, democratic candidates
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
  • 4.2013 New York Mayoral Elections and Democratic candidates’ background
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Comparison of the topics and sections in both programs
    • 5.2Bill de Blasio
    • 5.3Christine Quinn
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.16009.san
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