Image metaphors of Trianon

Abstract

AbstractThis paper studies the visual representation of the Treaty of Trianon by identifying the most common image metaphors related to it.1Three hypotheses are articulated. (1) Visual metaphors about Trianon are based on the same underlying conceptual metaphors as the corresponding metaphorical linguistic expressions. However, it is proposed that figures tend to be construed of mixed metaphors in order to convey a more condensed and complex message. In case of mixed metaphors, more source domains are applied to conceptualize the same target domain. (2) There exists a cultural cognition (Sharifian 2011) about Trianon, which is shared by the contemporary Hungarian community and which is represented in different modes of communication, namely in language and in images. The members of the community are able to understand and (re-)produce the linguistic and image metaphors about Trianon, because their conceptual system about Trianon is structured by similar conceptual metaphors. (3) Furthermore, based on linguistic dataPutz (2019), it is assumed that the figures represent the perspective of the post-1920 Hungarian nation exclusively.2The data is based on a Google search conducted on January 15, 2019, which referenced figures of Trianon with a.huinternet domain. Among the hundreds of thousands of search results, the first 150 figures were selected and ordered into six categories. Among this set of figures, the analysis focused on illustrations based on maps of pre- and post-1920 Hungary. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of eight figures, based on a three-step procedure, which is motivated bySteen et al.’s (2017)protocol.