Gendered Metaphors Research Articles

Netzwerk, Bruderschaft, Zelle Die Rolle von Geschlecht und Gewalt bei der Formierung neuer religionspolitischer Gruppen in ,Okzident' und ,Orient'

AbstractTaking as a starting point the reality of a worldwide return of religion in the cultural and political spheres, the article undertakes a comparative examination of the role of gender metaphors and performance in building of new religious groups as "imagined communities". These groups have increasingly taken the form of fundamentalist and Islamist networks, especially in non-European regions including the United States, and in the context of ,,new wars."

Towards a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English

This paper investigates the methodological convenience of a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English. We begin by reviewing recent research in cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with regard to advertising metaphors and gender, then proceed to characterize advertising gender metaphors as indirect cognitive–pragmatic devices used in Advertising English to give rise to often covertly sexist communicated interpretations. Next, we present a description of advertising gender metaphors, subtypes (cases of metaphorical gender, universal gender metaphors and cultural gender metaphors) and cross-categorization in a case study of 1142 advertisements published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). Finally, we argue that a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to advertising gender metaphors is of most salience since it permits to (1) help the audience's search for cognitive efficiency, (2) unmask the advertiser's rhetorical intentions to make certain non-neutral assumptions more manifest to the target audience without making public its intention to do so and (3) call for action on the part of the addressee to overcome negative social consequences of its use in Advertising English.

Joining the club: the ideology of quality and business school badging

The ideology of quality and the frameworks used to measure it can profoundly affect academic identity. This article explores the role of quality frameworks in UK business schools, focusing on the way that individuals confront the logic of accreditation when they are subject to its discipline. By defining business schools as an institutional field, inhabited by social actors who negotiate with each other to establish the significance of the rules, it is possible to analyse the factors that influence adoption of quality frameworks. Analysis of interviews with academics and administrators in four case studies suggests that the ideology of quality relies on the concept of elitism to achieve differentiation, and uses gendered metaphors to emphasize the competitive aspects of this process. The authors conclude that, as long as business schools define themselves as a field driven by processes of emulation, the potential to resist this ideology remains limited.

A critical cognitive-pragmatic approach to advertising gender metaphors

In this paper we claim that pragmatics combined with cognitivism can enhance a critical discourse understanding and debate (Fairclough 1989, 1992, 1995) on ideologically-loaded metaphors and, in particular, on advertising gender metaphors. The former are defined as metaphors that conceal underlying social processes and determine interpretation, and the latter are characterised as cognitive-pragmatic discourse devices used to give rise to often covertly communicated sexist interpretations. We attempt to present a comprehensive description and evaluation of a combined critical cognitive-pragmatic approach to the analysis of ideological metaphors on the basis of a prototypical case study of gender metaphors in 1142 ads published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). We argue that such an approach is desirable since it is useful in accounting for metaphor as a multifunctional phenomenon that is not exclusively discursive, cognitive, or pragmatic. The application of the proposed model to advertising gender metaphors has proved useful in helping the ad audience’s search for cognitive relevance, in revealing the advertiser’s rhetorical and ideological intentions, and in calling for action on the part of the ad addressees to overcome the negative social consequences of the use of sexist advertising gender metaphors.

Ireland's Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Ireland’s Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular Culture José Lanters (bio) Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Ireland’s Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular Culture. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. xi + 304 pp. $30 (paper). The "Others" in the title of Elizabeth Cullingford's illuminating study of gender, ethnicity, and class in Irish literature and popular culture are numerous, and both real and fictive. In addition to Ireland's own "internal Others," which she lists as "women, gays, abused children, travellers, and the working class" (6-7), she also discusses the reversal of the Irishman on the English stage, the Irish construction of the stage Englishman. In the first part of the book, beginning with Dion Boucicault, and moving on to George Bernard Shaw, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, and Neil Jordan, Cullingford traces the representation of Irish-English relations in gendered terms, uncovering a narrative of homosocial or -erotic bonding between English and Irish males that serves as an alternative to the familiar metaphor of the Union as rape or heterosexual marriage. She argues that, of all the stereotypes about Celt and Anglo-Saxon, gendered and sexual metaphors are the most persistent formulation of the politics of national difference, and this may go some way to explaining why her study is so heavily weighted toward this theme, and why other Others she mentions, such as travellers and the working class, are given comparatively short shrift. Part two of the study focuses on analogies between the Irish predicament and the tribulations of other civilizations. Some of these are (safely) long-dead, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Carthage. The discussion in the opening chapter of this section focuses primarily on McGuinness's Carthaginians, although there are also readings of Seamus Heaney and Friel. Other analogies analyzed here refer to contemporary groups involved in postcolonial struggles apparently similar to the Irish experience, like African Americans and Native Americans. Beginning with a reading of James Joyce in light of Charles Vallancey's theory about the origins of the Irish language in Phoenician Africa, Cullingford extends this ethnic debate to a reading of contemporary authors like Roddy Doyle, whose The Commitments famously—and, as she argues, precariously—compares North Dubliners to African Americans, and to representations of Native Americans and cowboys in works like Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, which is mainly discussed through Jordan's film version. The third section of the book deals with "Literary and Political Canons," and begins with a chapter about the ways in which mass culture incorporates and transforms the classics of the past. This initial focus on cultural ideology (appropriations by American, English, and Irish "low" or popular culture of icons of Irish "high" culture such as W. B. Yeats), while fascinating in itself, does at times seem to move perilously far away from the book's declared focus on "Ireland's Others," particularly given its emphasis on gender and ethnicity. This is remedied in the next chapter, on the representation of Eamon de Valera [End Page 81] in Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, whichreturns to a discussion of sexual and gendered metaphors, while the concluding chapter of the book is a feminist defense of Heaney and Sinead O'Connor in light of attacks on them by other feminists, in the context of Margot Harkin's Hush-a-Bye Baby, a film to which, as the author points out, "feminist scholars (myself included) return again and again" (5). Ireland's Others is a wide-ranging study packed with fascinating insights and enlightening readings, so it might seem a little churlish to remark that Cullingford does return "again and again" to the same handful of authors, and that her preoccupation with McGuinness, Jordan, Harkin and, to a significantly lesser extent, Friel, Heaney, Shaw, Yeats, and Joyce, does perhaps take something away from the book's potential scope. It is not surprising in itself that McGuinness's plays and Jordan's films are given so much attention, given their consistent use of gender as political metaphor; the analysis of Friel, however, is mainly confined to Translations, with only casual mentions of Dancing at Lughnasa and...

Imperial and Postcolonial Desires: Sonata de Estio and the Malinche Paradigm

[E]s o sera santa, prostituta, reina, mendiga, virgen, adultera, martir writes Octavio Paz, listing the roles Maria Felix played on and off the screen. At various moments, Mexican, Chicano, and Chicana cultures have characterized La Malinche in similar terms, prescribing the cultural role of visible women through her cultural and literary trajectory. In the figure of Ramon del Valle-Inclan's Nina Chole, the confluence of La Dona and La Malinche resounds across cultures and across historical landmarks, creating a connectthe-dots vision of the staying-power of gendered metaphors for culture. Reading the canonical Spanish novel Sonata de estio and the star-studded Mexican film Sonatas through the lens of post-nationalist Chicana feminism evinces the international application of La Malinche's capacity as the quintessential symbol of loss in nationalist discourses on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State

Dans cet article, l'A s'interesse a l'ideologie de genre concernant la securite de l'Etat. En se basant sur les ecrits de Thomas Hobbes a propos de l'autorite, l'A revient sur le concept patriarcal de protection de la femme et de l'enfant, les subordonnant ainsi a des citoyens de seconde zone. L'A met en relation le comportement masulin traditionnel avec l'engouement pour les conflits armes internationaux, et les appels et mouvements feministes pour la paix, en s'intorrgeant sur l'avenir de la democratie aux Etats-Unis depuis les evenements du 11 septembre 2001

Gender and Metaphor: Descriptions of Familiar Persons

This study investigates the extent to which metaphors used to describe familiar or known persons are gendered. University students (N = 461) described someone they know well using metaphors or similes in an open-ended essay. We hypothesized that there will be few gendered metaphors with the attendant gender stereotypes because respondents have access to individuating, personal attributes of the targeted person. Respondents generated 1,648 metaphors, but we analyzed only 32 metaphors used 5 or more times. Those metaphors that were used to describe women significantly more than men were sun, flower, and mother, whereas the metaphor rabbit was used to describe men more than women. Content analysis of the 32 most frequently used metaphors revealed that women are described as cheerful, dependent, and attractive, whereas men are described as strong or sturdy and big or tall. The data speak more powerfully to gender similarity than difference; however, the significance placed on physical appearance for both familiar men and women is noteworthy.

Les belles infidèles: gènere, violència i traducció

One of the main concerns which has created a landmark in the history of translation from the seventeenth century to the present is how to remain faithful to the original text. The concern about faithfulness and unfaithfulness in translation has given rise to unnumerous violent gender metaphors. The aim of this article is to bring these metaphors to the surface.

In the Valley of the Sweet Mother: Gendered metaphors, domestic lives and reproduction under a Brazilian state mining company

Metaphors have been studied by feminist geographers as examples of both power over and empowerment by women. In this article, the author takes three gendered metaphors used by people in the Brazilian mining town of Itabira as starting points to enlarge a discussion of the mining economy's effects on women's lives. One, the 'sweet mother,' describes the company's reskilling and cultural education of male workers from the 1940s to the early 1980s. Second, women react to these strategies with a contending image of the company as 'the rival.' Finally, the phase of company downsizing has created a new metaphor: 'the stepmother.' These metaphors elucidate ways that public and private spaces become intertwined in three moments of the state mining company's life: its arrival in the region in the mid-1940s; its expansion from the 1960s to the 1980s; and its restructuring in the last 10 years. The author suggests that women's ironic rewriting of the foundational metaphor of 'sweet mother' is central to their reconceptualization of economic change under the company. The alternative metaphors also reflect women's changing views on motherhood, sexuality and family partnership.

Blueprints and Recipes: Gendered Metaphors for Genetic Medicine

In the face of documented difficulties in the public understanding of genetics, new metaphors have been suggested. The language of information coding and processing has become deeply entrenched in the public representation of genetics, and some critics have found fault in the “blueprint” metaphor, a variant of the dominant theme. They have offered the language of the “recipe” as a preferable metaphor. The metaphors of the blueprint and the recipe are compared in respect to their deterministic implications and other associations. The likelihood of the recipe metaphor framing cognition in more useful ways is called into question.

On the Desymbolization of Psychoanalytic Metaphors of Gender: Commentary on Velleda C. Ceccoli's “Beyond Milk and the Good Breast: Reconfiguring the Maternal Function in Psychoanalytic Dyads”

Ceccoli (1999a) argues that, because of their capacity for maternity, women analysts are capable of certain interventions that men are not. Taking issue with such assertions, this commentary argues that although the gendered metaphors of psychoanalytic intervention have changed usefully since Freud's paternalistic imagery, in favor of the maternal language of Klein and Winnicott, these metaphors are regressive if their value as symbolism is undermined. Ceccoli's case study is revisited and reevaluated to posit an alternative view: that theory is sometimes employed to fill gaps that might be more productively tolerated in the service of the analysis. It is argued that Ceccoli's use of Kristevan theory to support an essentialist position that translocates the paternal phallus into the female analysts' “gendered, bodily specificity … on the basis of our capacity for maternity” (p. 695) is an example of such a use of theory.

Animals, embryos, thinkers and doers

Abstract Research into the linguistic descriptions of women have revealed that females tend to be defined in terms of their relationships to men, their appearance and/or sexual attributes, and that women and their activities tend to be trivialised (Pauwels 1987; Thorne et al. 1983). Additional, more recent research into gender representation has revealed dehumanising descriptions of women as food and as animals, such as birds and horses (Hines 1994; Stirling 1987). Such metaphors reflect individually or socially constructed conceptual associations between real-world phenomena that may serve to trivialise or enhance members of a given group. This paper reports on an investigation into lexical representations of men and women in the Hong Kong variety of English. Analysis includes all nominal and verbal descriptors of men and women and the acts performed by them. These descriptors were distributed into semantic classes on the basis of the qualities they reveal about their human referents. Results show that men are conceptualized as pro-active and assertive beings, to some extent born to succeed; while women are under-developed, emotional and in need of protection. The gender metaphors of women are compatible with concepts of both early stages of human development and subhuman entities, such as animals.

The Sphere: Reading a gender Metaphor in the architecture of modern cults of identity

This article investigates the spherical form and its derivatives (ribbed dome, tumulus, grotto) in modern public architecture in terms of the interrelationship of gendered metaphors and the representation of political identities. Starting with Boullée's Temple of Nature/Reason of 1793, it follows the use of these architectural bodies as metaphors during the French Revolution. The smooth sphere, invented by Boullée for the Newton Cenotaph to signify in stereometric abstraction a scientific cosmos, then became a signifier for the Nation, marking the androcentric universality of a new ‘sovereign’– the People – that excluded women. The grotto signified the ‘other’ of revolutionary reason, linked to the symbolical field of a female earth/vulva. Grotto and tumulus then became part of memorial architecture in the nineteenth century as images of national mother earth to which the fallen hero returns. In the 1920s and 1930s sphere, tumulus, grotto and ribbed dome reappeared, representing the enemy systems of mass democracy, Fascism and revolutionary Russia. As images of totality they are nonetheless constructed within the fields of signification that are shaped by the symbolic order of gender difference. Has the degree of metaphorical gender polarization observed in these architectural ‘discourses’ something to do with the fundamentalist tendencies of collective identities?

Gendering Organizational Change: The Case of Relate, 1948-1990

In this paper we argue for the need to develop a gendered understanding of processes of organizational change. However, this should not simply be seen as a question of the proportions of women and men at different levels in the hierarchy. Organizational culture and the gendered metaphors and rhetorics that are used within the organization are also shown to be significant. Our analysis focuses upon a single case, a historical and sociological study of Relate, formerly the National Marriage Guidance Council. This case is especially interesting in that issues of gender inevitably enter into its primary task, the treatment of matital difficulties, and that as a voluntary organization it has employed a high proportion of unpaid women in the key activity of counseling, while the managerial positions have been dominated by men. This organization experienced a period of crisis in the 1980s culminating in the commissioning of a report from a firm of management consultants. We argue that the analysis of organizational difficulties at this time was considerably weakened by the failure to develop an understanding of complex issues of gender.

Gendering Modern Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi-Artusi Controversy

This essay examines the presence of gender metaphors in the documents of the Monteverdi-Artusi controversy. Such metaphors include literal and figurative representations of sexuality and gender in the theoretical arguments on both sides; representations of gender, sexuality, and power in the oratione asserted to have governed the composition of the two most discussed works, the madrigals "Cruda Amarilli" and "O Mirtillo"; and representations of resistance to patriarchal authority in the armonia of both madrigals. Such examination shows (1) that the focus on these two madrigals by both parties to the controversy irresistibly sexualized "modern music" and feminized its sonorous traits by associating them with images of the sensual and disobedient body rather than the rational and controlling anima; (2) that the Monteverdi brothers' defense of the seconda prattica was a rhetorical effort to legitimate modern music as an alternative patriarchy; and (3) that these gender messages became inextricable from the style they were used to defend, with consequences for both seventeenth-century practitioners and twentieth-century scholars of early "modern music."

The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought

Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells Barnett, and Fannie Lou Hamer are but a few names from a growing list of distinguished African-American women activists. Although their sustained resistance to Black women's victimization within interlocking systems of race, gender, and class oppression is well known, these women did not act alone.' Their actions were nurtured by the support of countless, ordinary African-American women who, through strategies of everyday resistance, created a powerful foundation for