Analyzing the Cognitive Impact of Trauma from a Metaphorical Perspective: A Case Study on the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

Research indicates that trauma can significantly affect human cognition. While previous studies have extensively examined the psychological consequences of trauma, the majority have focused on the long-term effects, particularly in relation to post-traumatic stress disorder, due to challenges in data collection. This paper seeks to fill this gap by introducing an interdisciplinary approach that combines cognitive linguistics and trauma theory to investigate the immediate cognitive effects of trauma, specifically through the analysis of metaphorical language. We explore the cognitive impact of trauma by analyzing Donald Trump's presidential campaign speeches delivered before and after the 2024 attempted assassination. Using MetaPro, a computational tool designed for metaphor analysis, we identify cognitive patterns from a large corpus of speeches. Our findings suggest that the assassination had a certain effect on Mr. Trump's cognitive processing, as reflected in changes in his metaphorical concept mappings. This traumatic event may prompt Mr. Trump to psychologically retreat into the cognitive patterns in 2016.