Conceptual Metaphors and Their Functions in the Political Discourse of the Government of Prudence and Hope

The use of metaphor as a linguistic strategy has long been considered by politicians around the world. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the function of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in the speeches of three members of the Government of prudence and hope: Mr. Rouhani, Jahangiri and Zarif. The main issue of the research is to show how conceptual metaphors are expressed in the words of these political authorities and how their function in organizing political realities can be explained. For this purpose, we have collected the data in a library research method and examined it analytically. The results indicate that political metaphors are used in different source domains: route, personification (humans, animals and plants), war, sports, buildings and natural phenomena, among which, the route is the most And the natural phenomena has had the least use. The results show that metaphor has an important rhetorical and persuasive usage in political discourse and plays an important role in conveying the political messages of prudence and hope government’s members. What is clear is that metaphor, in addition to facilitating the analysis of political issues for the audience, has given these politicians the opportunity to more easily explain their issues in order to arouse the audience's emotions. With the help of  metaphor, they try to highlight or hide some aspects of political discourse so that they can persuade the audience to apply their beliefs. It should be said that conceptual metaphors with different appearances have been manifested in line with the purposes of the government of Prudence and Hope discourse, called Moderation discourse. Thus, metaphors can be used by journalists, political analysts, and political discourse researchers as an effective and powerful tool to analyze the messages of political officials and facilitate the decoding of their words. Therefore, the results of this study can be useful for this group of experts and ultimately to measure the political pulse of the country.