"Routledge Focus"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Conclusion. The religious rhetoric of the Democratic Party: Religious demoninations, communities of brothers and sisters and biblically inspired language -- Religious rhetoric in the early Cold War -- The GOP's rhetoric of culture wars and anti-liberalism -- The religious rhetoric of the Democratic Party: Religious demoninations, communities of brothers and sisters and biblically inspired language -- Conclusion.
Summary:
Drawing on corpus linguistic methods of analysis, this book critically examines the "rhetorical God gap" in American political discourse between the Democratic and Republican parties. The volume investigates the claims (which have often not been substantiated by quantitative data in the literature and have tended to focus on particular genres of political discourse) that there is a correlation between a higher degree of religiosity in Republican political discourse and voting preferences for the party and that Democratic politicians should engage in similar discourse toward "closing" the gap. The book adopts a keyword approach, using such techniques as collocation analyses, concordance reading, and Bible-specific N-gram identification, toward the study of a corpus of general campaign speeches over a 50-year period, and links findings from this data with social and cultural contextual factors to provide a more informed understanding of rhetorical patterns in religiously laden political language.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.