Trends in Political Communication: Analytical Approaches to the Political Discourse of Barack Obama

This text presents a synthesis of some interesting approaches to analysing the language and discourse characteristic of Barack Obama's political communication in the light of current trends in this area. Examples are given of the following methodologies: lexical approaches based on word frequencies, collocations and conceptual metaphors; the role of defining terms; the use of narrative structures. Obama's effective use of multimodality and the web are also touched on here. The overall analysis confirms that he is in the forefront of current trends toward personalisation in political communication and political marketing of a political persona.