Analyzing English-Language and Bulgarian-Language Political Speeches

The paper aims to present, first, an integrated approach to whole texts and genres exemplifying the ‘triangle of discourse-cognition-society which is indeed the site of multidisciplinary discourse analysis’ (Van Dijk) and, secondly, to suggest an alternative perspective to ‘old’ areas of research such as the analysis of political speeches. It illustrates the potential of studying the production and perception of individual text genres as governed by particular mental models. Such mental models, it argues, are possible to isolate analytically and verify statistically. Differences in English- and Bulgarian-language political speeches are used to demonstrate the possible application of the suggested approach.