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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:2 (2025) ► pp.177–213

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From Barack Obama to Donald Trump

The evolution of moral appeals in national conventions

ORCiD logo with link | Northwestern University
Published online: 8 March 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22173.lin
Abstract
Do Democrats and Republicans appeal to different sets of moral foundations in their national convention speeches? Do they make efforts to frame their messages so that it is attractive to their base and moderate voters? This study examines the moral appeals that political elites use to communicate to their supporters. I analyze speeches starting from the 2008 to the 2020 Republican and Democrat National Conventions to see if there are differences in appeals to Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority and Purity, which are tenets of the Moral Foundations Theory. I find that Republicans are more likely to appeal to Authority, and in 2020, Purity, while Democrats appeal mostly to Harm. Using qualitative content analyses, we see that both parties apply the moral language favored by the other side in their convention speeches on top of making appeals to moral foundations that are favored by their own base.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Moral Foundations Theory
  • 3.Appeals to morality in politics
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1The data
      • 4.1.1Democrat National Convention (DNC)
      • 4.1.2Republican National Convention (RNC)
    • 4.2Analysis plan
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Application of the moral foundations dictionary
    • 5.2Content analysis of national convention speeches
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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