Was it merely contentious or were there casualties? Metaphorical Framing in Local and International News Reporting

Jill Hallett,Marta Degani

doi:10.23963/cnp.2020.5.1.1

Abstract

This study investigates the role of metaphor in news reporting by focusing on one US event, the historic 2012 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike and compares its coverage in local and international English-language news. We are particularly interested in finding out how a news story, like the CTU strike, with strong localised metaphorical discourses, can be presented to readers outside the local and national cultural speech communities. In this sense, the research also contributes to understanding how the media can affect the portrayal and reception of important social events by using metaphorical language in newspaper coverage. Employing a qualitative research approach of Discourse Analysis and drawing on Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black 2004), a particular focus is put on salient metaphor use across contexts (Goatly 2002) and on the role of reporters and news wire services in the presentation of facts. The findings indicate that both local and international news chiefly rely on two types of metaphor, journey and conflict. Notable differences were found in how the conflict metaphors were expressed in the two contexts.

Highlights

Media are responsible for the transmission of knowledge across languages and cultures worldwide, and their discourses have the potential to shape opinions, influence attitudes, and trigger behavioural patterns
Our research uses an approach of Discourse Analysis to local and international Englishlanguage news coverage of one US story, the historic 2012 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike
It was hypothesised that the CTU strike would be portrayed differently in local vs. international news given the fact that it originated in a specific cultural, social and political context, with which people outside of Chicago might not be too familiar

Summary

Introduction

Media are responsible for the transmission of knowledge across languages and cultures worldwide, and their discourses have the potential to shape opinions, influence attitudes, and trigger behavioural patterns (see Downing et al 2004). Media establish priorities by foregrounding and backgrounding information, by giving voice and salience to certain issues while at the same time silencing others They function as historical depositories of information since their records represent the tangible counterparts of volatile and elusive collective memories about facts. Journalists can adopt different framing techniques when reporting on facts, such as selecting a topic, planning on headlines, leads and concluding statements, choosing sources, deciding to report, quote or paraphrase, and using images to support the argumentation While these important strategies have more to do with structural (or graphic, in the case of images) components of journalistic texts, other framing devices such as keywords, repetitions, slogans, and metaphors affect journalistic contents more directly. As Semino (2008, 91) points out, metaphor has consequences for how a particular issue is ‘framed’ or structured, which aspects are foregrounded and which are backgrounded, what inferences are facilitated, what evaluative and emotional associations triggered, what courses of action seem to be possible and so on

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