“The state of our Union is strong.” Metaphors of the nation in State of the Union addresses

This chapter discusses the metaphors of the nation used by the last four US presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump) in their annual State of the Union addresses. It is argued that the two main metaphors of the nation used by the presidents, a nation is a building and a nation is a person, are key discursive elements which define the essential ideological characteristics of the nation and constitute a hegemonic concept of national identity. The chapter explains elements of continuity and variation in these metaphorical images in the presidential addresses in terms of the ritual nature of the address and the genre theory of the “New Rhetorics.”