Tropes as Rhetorical Devices in the Presidential Campaign in Croatia

In this paper authors analyse figurativeness in speeches of presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in Croatia in 2009/2010. This paper explores how the usage of rhetorical tropes in speeches of presidential candidates influenced the election results and number of votes of each candidate. In contrast to the other figures of speech, tropes are more closely related to content than to form or structure. Rhetorical tropes fulfil many different purposes in political discourse, especially in regard to positive political self-presentation and negative political other-presentation. Rhetorical tropes analysed in this paper are divided according to the Burke’s (1969) classification: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. The metaphor is analysed and outlined as one of the master tropes. In Croatian political discourse metaphor is most commonly drawn from the sports and military terminology, for example, the expressions “political competition“, “presidential race“, “leading the political battle“. Authors compare usage of rhetorical tropes with the success of presidential candidates in the above mentioned presidential campaign.