The Language of Violence

This unique linguistic analysis of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf examines how Hitler constructed Feindbilder (images of the enemy) and, in contrast, glorified the so-called Aryan race using a variety of lexical and rhetorical resources. Hitler’s anti-Semitic imagery is analyzed in detail using the modern cognitive theory of metaphor associated with George Lakoff and Mark Turner. This book, which includes English translations for all quotations from Hitler’s German text, reveals how anti-Semitic discourse may act as a paradigm for all racist and totalitarian propaganda. It will appeal to linguistics scholars and those in other fields – particulary historians and political theorists.