Religious Rhetoric of U.S. Presidential Candidates

Arnaud Vincent is an invited professor of linguistics at the Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles and scientific collaborator at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He holds a master’s degree in American studies from Antwerp University and a PhD in linguistics from the Université Catholique de Louvain.

• List of Figures List of TablesAcknowledgementsIntroduction1 Methodology and Limitations2 Religious Rhetoric in the Early Cold War3 The GOP’s Rhetoric of Culture Wars and Anti-Liberalism4 The Religious Rhetoric of the Democratic Party: Religious Denominations, Communities of Brothers and Sisters and Biblically Inspired Language5 ConclusionIndex

"Arnaud Vincent’s new book, analytically strong and armed with a combination of methodologies, reveals the existence of consistent and party-specific linguistic differences. It is an impactful contribution to the academy, not least because it never loses sight of the perspective that language is never neutral, and that the use, the quantity, the concepts, and the omissions of rhetorical argumentation are crucial when it comes to the analysis of presidential discourse." - Miriam Diez Bosch, Ramon Llull University, Presidential Studies Quarterly"Overall, this book makes a unique contribution to religious rhetoric research and U.S. political communication in two respects. Firstly, it convincingly shows the synergistic power of corpus linguistics and political communication...secondly, besides empirically corroborating previous studies, it challenges and extends the monolithic 'rhetorical God gap' theory, broadens the current understanding of the role religion plays in today's American presidential elections, and offers illuminating insights into the research field. The book is not only a valuable reference for scholars but also a useful guide for novice researchers and students who wish to apply critical thinking to a well-acknowledged theory and interpret empirical results within historical contexts.” - Shanshan Zhang and Fan Pan, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, European Journal of Communication