Leiden University Student Repository

Hoppenbrouwer, Femke (2020)

The Iraq War: America’s Biggest Purpose or America’s Heaviest Burden?

Master thesis | International Relations (MA)

This thesis researched the extent to which Bush and Obama used different conceptual metaphorical frames in their rhetoric concerning the Iraq War, and to what extent these frames helped them create a worldview that justified or opposed the Iraq War. The thesis argued that Bush and Obama both use the same metaphorical model, in which they create a hero, villain, and a victim, to justify or oppose the Iraq War. Whereas the existing literature mainly focused on the use of metaphorical framing in a political context, this thesis looks at the political context concerning war. The thesis specifically contributes to the existing literature on metaphorical framing in a war context, and the "Fairytale of a Just War theory" by George Lakoff, because it shows that telling a story in which there is a hero, villain, and a victim can be used to tell a different story than the story in which war is justified

Iraq War

Metaphorical Framing

Foreign Affairs

Bush

Obama

Rhetoric

Author

Hoppenbrouwer, Femke

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

International Relations: Global Conflict in the Modern Era

Supervisors

Gawthorpe, Andrew

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en