The strength to be nurturers: Obama's framing of political issues

In Moral Politics (1996), Lakoff proposes two idealised cognitive models, which he claims underlie American right-wing versus left-wing political rhetoric. According to the linguist, these cognitive models reflect two opposing worldviews, each relying on a different notion of morality. One is described as the Strict Father (SF) model and is associated with the Republicans. The other worldview, which is closer to Democratic values, is expressed in the Nurturant Parent (NP) model. Not surprisingly, the models have inspired empirical investigations (Cienki 2004, 2005a, 2005b; Ahrens and Lee 2009; Ahrens 2011), but their results do not seem to confirm the validity of the models. The need for further analyses has motivated the exploration of Lakoff’s models in a recent book-length investigation (see Degani 2015). This paper is based on observations discussed in that larger study and focuses more specifically on the key notion of ‘strength’ and its framing in Obama’s speeches during his first election campaign in 2008.