Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Preface -- Chapter One: Political language within the framework of Discourse Studies -- 1. Politics and language -- 1.1 The notion of politics -- 1.2 From cooperation to manipulation: selected principles of successful language use -- 1.2.1 Cooperative Principle -- 1.2.2 Speech Act Theory -- 1.2.3 Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory -- 1.2.4 Relevance Theory -- 1.2.5 Manipulation -- 2. Aspects and elements of political discourse -- 2.1 The concept of discourse, its features and constituents -- 2.2 Strategic functions of political discourse -- Chapter Two: Value and evaluation in Critical Discourse Studies -- 1. Value as an object of axiological study -- 1.1 Between subjectivist and objectivist doctrines in the study of value -- 1.2 Selected classifications of values -- 2. Linguistic approaches to the study of value -- 2.1 From axiological semantics to the analysis of evaluation in discourse -- 2.2 Residual and holistic approaches to value in Polish axiological linguistics -- 3. Critical discourse approach to the study of value -- 3.1 Language as a vehicle of ideology in Critical Discourse Analysis -- 3.2 The concepts of value and evaluation in critically-oriented approaches to discourse -- Chapter Three: Toward the analysis of values in political discourse -- 1. Main objectives and assumptions -- 2. Selected linguistic mechanisms in the articulation of evaluation in political discourse -- 2.1 Manipulating with agency: nominalization and passivization -- 2.2 Modality -- 2.3 Manipulating with evidence: evidentiality, source-tagging, and numbers -- 2.4 Metaphor -- 2.5 Proximization and fear construction -- 2.6 Assertion-based sequences and thesis-antithesis patterns -- Chapter Four: The corpus of political texts and its context.

1. State of the Union address as one of the cornerstones of the American rhetorical presidency -- 1.1 The US rhetorical presidency -- 1.2 State of the Union address: its history and its present -- 2. The details of the corpus -- 3. The Bush presidency: background and assessment -- Chapter Five: A critical discourse analysis of values in President George W. Bush's State of the Union addresses -- 1. Axiological domains and positive ideological, moral, cognitive, and vital values in the investigated State of the Union Addresses -- 1.1 Positive ideological values -- 1.1.1 Security -- 1.1.2 Freedom -- 1.1.3 Justice -- 1.1.4 Peace -- 1.2 Positive moral values -- 1.2.1 Compassion -- 1.2.2 Resolve -- 1.2.3 Courage -- 1.2.4 Strength -- 1.3 Positive cognitive values -- 1.3.1 Education -- 1.3.2 Research, Technology and Innovation -- 1.4 Positive vital values -- 1.4.1 Human Life and Dignity -- 1.4.2  Health and Healthcare -- 2. Axiological domains and negative ideological, moral and vital values -- 2.1 Negative ideological values -- 2.1.1 Terrorism and Tyranny -- 2.2 Negative moral values -- 2.2.1 Enmity -- 2.2.2 Brutality and Inhumanity -- 2.2.3 Secrecy, Deceitfulness and Defiance -- 2.3 Negative vital values -- 2.3.1 Death and Destruction -- 3. Summary of the results and discussion -- Chapter Six: Concluding remarks -- Works cited and consulted -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- Appendices -- Appendix one: Positive ideological values -- Appendix two: Positive moral values -- Appendix three: Positive cognitive values -- Appendix four: Positive vital values -- Appendix five: Negative ideological values -- Appendix six: Negative moral values -- Appendix seven: Negative vital values -- Appendix eight: The frequency list of the words whose concordance lines were created -- Name Index.