conceptual metaphors in political interviews

This paper presents preliminary research findings on the use of conceptual metaphors in political interviews in Croatian newspapers and magazines. The language of a successful politician is thelanguage of persuasion that convinces an audience of what is right or wrong. Political leaders mobilize their followers by using highly effective rhetorical strategies, such as conceptual metaphors. Our opinion is that the choice of metaphor is often essential to its rhetorical persuasiveness. Based on these theoretical considerations, we have analyzed the use of metaphors, combining both quantitative and qualitative text analysis with a focus on identifi cation and interpretation of source domains. Our corpus encompasses 49266 words from 40 political interviews given by Croatian politicians Jadranka Kosor, Vesna Pusić, Ivo Sanader and Stjepan Mesić. Our research findings reveal that metaphors used by Croatian politicians are based either on personification or on the use of source domains of journey and conflict/war.