Language is a ‘Beautiful Creature’, not an ‘Old Fridge’

Abstract

Abstract Direct metaphor has been widely studied from the cognitive perspective, but its functions in the communicative dimension (Steen, 2011) remain less well understood. This study investigates direct metaphor as a tool of metaphorical framing (Ottati et al., 2014; Ritchie & Cameron, 2014) in discourse, by examining a corpus of British newspaper texts on the topic of language and language change. The analysis of direct metaphors is sufficient to point to major ideologies of language and communication in the observed media context, which echo broader anxieties over social change, social organization and control. Most notably, unlike the meanings stressed in existing studies, the vast majority of direct metaphors are here found to serve the specific role of relational argumentation. This function is achieved through a kind of ‘corrective framing’, which explicitly juxtaposes two conflicting representations through an ‘A is B and not C’ type of metaphor. The findings are discussed with respect to deliberateness, metaphorical framing and rhetorical goals in discourse. It is hypothesized that corrective framing is among the major functions of direct metaphor in public discourse, which can influence public opinion in ways different from other metaphorically created representations.