Wolfgang Mieder: “Yes we can”: Barack Obama’s proverbial rhetoric.

of Vermont, the founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, is an outstanding and internationally recognized paremiologist and phraseologist. Among the more than one hundred and fifty books that he has published on proverb studies, there is a large number of publications on language and politics, e.g. The politics of proverbs: From traditional wisdom to proverbial stereotypes (1997), The proverbial Abraham Lincoln (2000), "No struggle, No progress": Frederick Douglass and his proverbial rhetoric for Civil Rights (2001), "Call a spade a spade": From classical phrase to racial slur (2002), "Proverbs are the best policy": Folk wisdom and American politics (2005). It is little wonder, therefore, that Barack Obama -well-known for his impressive rhetoric and metaphorical language -has attracted the author's special attention. Nevertheless, this new book differs from those mentioned above in that it examines the rhetoric of a contemporary politician. Without any doubt Obama is the most eminent political leader of the present: his speeches and books have been followed and read by millions of people all over the world and are accessible through the modern media even today. This aspect alone makes the book outstanding and significant for a readership interested in language and politics in contemporary history, in "a new politics for a new time" (Obama).