A Longitudinal Heuristic Polito-linguistic Approach to Metaphors in Authoritarian Regimes. The case of Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of the Republic of Belarus

Abstract

Despite the recent tendency to evaluate the power of facts and fact-checking, the power of emotions continues to attract researchers. While fact-checking is now actively addressed in public discourse, recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in understanding communication related factors that influence audiences. This article presents a new approach, entitled the Polito- linguistic Metaphor Approach, which is designed for the longitudinal study of metaphors, specifically those metaphors used in authoritarian regimes. This approach can contribute to detecting crises encountered by the regime. The approach integrates two self-sufficient research methods for analyzing metaphors and one approach for studying political discourse in political rhetoric. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are incorporated in this new method for studying metaphors in authoritarian political discourse. The research methodology of the Polito-linguistic analysis for the metaphors of an authoritarian leader is applied in this article to the (2004-2011) ritualistic political rhetoric by Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus.