A Referendum Is a Forward-Moving Object or a Bundled Object?

Abstract

This article analyzes how a referendum is represented through the use of conceptual metaphors in two major newspapers in Taiwan, the Liberty Times and the United Daily News. The analysis indicates that a general schema for the referendum a causer causes an object to move or stop, which is further divided to the forward-moving and stopping sub-schemas, can be retrieved from the metaphors used. Moreover, it shows that three expressions for the forward-moving sub-schema, as lexicalized in the legislation domain, are predominant in the representation of the referendum. With the inevitability to use the general schema, the two newspapers take strategies to elaborate or neutralize the effects embedded in the schema, so as to transmit their respective political stances.