Read it and believe it: How metaphor constructs ideology in news discourse. A case study

Abstract

Although it may be argued that critical linguistics needs to examine language as discourse, i.e., as text embedded in the social conditions of production and interpretation, to be independently identified and examined as the text is subordinated to them (Fairclough, 1992; Hodge and Kress, 1988), we claim that a thorough linguistic analysis, employing all the methods and tools which the discipline provides, is in a large measure revealing of such conditions. However, to yield such results, i.e., to unravel these conditions and their contribution to the generation of ideological complexes, a linguistic analysis should not be restricted to viewing grammatical units as isolated sentences or smaller structures within the text, as has been the case in traditional approaches, but rather examine such grammatical and lexical structures as being incorporated in the overall formation of the text. Moreover, the focus should be primarily on higher-level organizational features as well as on rhetorical structures and semantic and pragmatic relations as they contribute to the general style of the text, thus yielding desired versions of reality and ideologies. We substantiate this claim by analyzing an article published in Time (October 12, 1992) entitled Greece's defense seems just silly. While paying close attention to both the grammatical and lexical structures of the text, our analysis views these structures within the framework of a constructed metaphor which not only permeates and dominates the whole article, but also forms the backbone of its argumentative structure. What is foregrounded, moreover, in this multi-level analysis is a preponderance of certain assumptions of an ideological nature, which, although they do not form part of the formal structure of the text, are aspects of interpretations surreptitiously cued into the subtext of the text.