Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:6 (2025) ► pp.889–909

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Exploring the evolution of the concept of liberty in the U.S. presidential inaugurals

ORCiD logo with link | University of Valencia
ORCiD logo with link | University of Valencia
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Universitat de València.

Published online: 21 October 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.24103.gim
Abstract
As daily news unveils, fundamental human values such as equality and liberty can be expressed through various terms influenced by multiple factors, reaching significant levels of disparity, ambiguity and controversy, particularly in specific socio-political contexts. This article employs advanced corpus analysis tools to examine the lexical and semantic configuration of the “right to liberty” as expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and as North American presidents have transmitted it throughout their presidential inaugural addresses. The corpus of speeches is analyzed diachronically to identify the prevalent terms, connotations, and associated semantic categories and observe their differences and evolution. This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the concept of liberty in this context and highlights its startling malleability in American politics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and background
  • 2.Distinctiveness of presidential inaugural addresses
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Description and characterization of the CARs associated with liberty
    • 4.2Description and frequency of references to liberty according to the presidents
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (31)
References
Anderson, Roger, and Olive Demetrius. 1993. “A flow-map method of representing cognitive structure based on respondents’ narrative using science content.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 301: 953–969. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan (ed.). 1995. The Cambridge History of American Literature: Vol. 1, 1590–1820. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Binder, W. 2019. Social imaginaries and the limits of differential meaning. Österreich Zeitschrift für Soziologie 44 (2): 17–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biria, Reza, and Azadeh Mohammadi. 2012. “The socio pragmatic functions of inaugural speech: A critical discourse analysis approach.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (10): 1290–1302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bizas, Konstantinos. 2021. “Freedom and its diachrony.” Global Intellectual History 6 (2): 238–246. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bondi, Marina. 2014. “Changing voices: Authorial voice in abstracts.” In Abstracts in academic discourse: Variation and change, ed. by Marina Bondi, and Rosa Lorés Sanz, 243–270. Linguistic Insights 1871. Bristol: Peter Lang. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, Karlyn, and Kathleen Jamieson. 2008. Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1975. “Vers une typologie des champs lexicaux.” Cahiers de lexicologie 271: 30–51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Dijn, Annelien. 2020. Freedom: an unruly history. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ericson, David. 1997. “Presidential inaugural addresses and American political culture.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27 (4): 727–744.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles, and Collin Baker. 2012. “A frames approach to semantic analysis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, ed. by Bernd Heine, and Heiko Narrog, 313–339. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles, and Sue Atkins. 1992. “Towards a frame-based lexicon: the semantics of RISK and its neighbors.” In Frames, Fields and Contrasts. New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization, ed. by Adrienne Lehrer, and Eva Feder Kittay, 75–102. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huriot, Jean-Marie, and Lise Bourdeau-Lepage. 2012. “Utopia, equality and liberty: The impossible ideal.” Utopia and Spatial Justice 51: 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Parliamentary discourse.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel, 1113–1133. London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1982. Begriffsgeschichte and social history. Economy and Society 111: 409–427. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michal. 2019. “Brexit and the imaginary of ‘crisis’: a discourse-conceptual analysis of European news media.” Critical Discourse Studies 16:4: 465–490, Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. The Discursive Construction of European Identities. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Recontextualization of neoliberalism and the increasingly conceptual nature of discourse: Challenges for critical discourse studies.” Discourse & Society 27(3): 308–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michal, and Natalia Krzyżanowska. 2022. “Narrating the ‘new normal’ or pre-legitimizing media control? COVID-19 and the discursive shifts in the far-right imaginary of ‘crisis’ as a normalization strategy.” Discourse & Society 33(6): 805–818. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kubát, Miroslav, and Radek Čech. 2016. “Quantitative Analysis of U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses.” Glottometrics 341: 14–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lauer, Ilon. 2015. “Epideictic rhetoric.” Communication Research Trends 34 (2): 4–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lehrer, Adrienne, and Eva Feder Kittay (eds.). 1992. Frames, Fields and Contrasts. New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, Charlton. 1890. An Elementary Latin Dictionary. New York: American Book Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, Fang. 2012. “Genre Analysis of American Presidential Inaugural Speech.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2 (11): 2407–2411. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Llácer-Llorca, Eusebio, and Rosa Giménez-Moreno. 2025. “Analysis of the right to equality through the US inaugural presidential speeches.” Atlantis 47 (1). June 2025.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGee, Michael Calvin. 1980. “The ‘ideograph’: A link between rhetoric and ideology.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 661: 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mohammadi, Vali, Reza Abdi, and Eisazadeh Hadi. 2020. “Inaugural Addresses of American Presidents: A CDA-oriented Analysis of Party Affiliation.” Applied Research on English Language 9 (4): 539–560.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rundblad, Gabriella, and David Kronenfeld. 2003. “The semantic structure of lexical fields: Variation and change.” In Variation and Change Words in Time. Diachronic semantics from different points of view, ed. by Regine Eckardt, Klaus von Heusinger, and Christoph Schwarze, 67–114. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryan, Halford (ed.). 1993. Inaugural Addresses of Twentieth-Century American Presidents. Westport: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sansome, Rosemary. 1986. “Connotation and lexical field Analysis.” Cahiers de lexicologie 2 (49): 13–33.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue