Metaphors In Political Discourse Research Articles

Corpus-Based Diachronic Study of WAR Metaphor in Indonesian Political Discourse

The use of metaphor in political discourse is pervasive. One of the common source domain used in political metaphor is of WAR source domain. The increasing use of WAR metaphor reflects the intensity of the political situation. This paper examines the diachronic used of WAR metaphor in Indonesian Political Discourse. The aim is to analyze the use of the WAR source domain of metaphor used to speak about the Indonesian Political Situation and to compare the use of the metaphor before and after the direct election system is in effect (in 2004). The data are taken from 1896 news articles related to the political situation dan political coalition, that spans from 1980 to 2020 in Tempo online magazine. The study is corpus-based with The Conceptual Metaphor Framework of Lakoff and Johnson used as the theoretical background. The data analysis is conducted in two stages, first by quantitative analysis using Antconc Corpus Concordance Software to measure the frequency of WAR metaphor used to speak about Political situation and the second is the qualitative analysis to evaluate the change and the development of metaphor use. The result of the study should reflect how the political change that occurred in Indonesia can be reflected through the language in particular reflected from the metaphor used to speak about the political condition. The finding shows that there are three categories of diachronic change of WAR metaphorical expression: the first is the terms that have been used metaphorically even before 1998 (reformation era); the second is the terms that are recorded in use as a metaphor after 1998 and the last is the metaphorical expressions that are recorded in use before 1998 but have not been recorded after that.

In/exclusion in fashion discourse: Are we in or out?

This article analyzes the conceptual framing of inclusion and exclusion in fashion discourse, discussing how women are denied or restricted the access to the bounded space of fashion based on a part of their identity, be it their race, religion, disability, gender identification, body weight, or social class. It relies on the data corpus is 1061 Vogue articles, collected between July 2019 and June 2020 and analyzed qualitatively. The current study complements ample research on the container metaphor in political discourse and aims to open a debate on the role of this metaphorical model in a so far largely overlooked discourse of fashion. Drawing on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Critical Discursive Psychology, I demonstrate how the container metaphor pinpoints the repertoire of inclusivity, problematizes the dichotomous relationship between the center and periphery of the fashion industry, and normalizes roles of insiders and outsiders in fashion.

Metaphorical nominations of national leaders of the past as a phenomenon of actual political communication

The article is devoted to the analysis of the metaphorical nomination of the subject as an instrument of deep-datified mediatization of a political incident of a special nature - the death/departure from active politics of a political leader on a national scale. The theoretical basis is the theory of deep mediatization, the cognitive theory of metaphor and the sociology of memory. The authors prove that the analysis of the metaphorical nominations of outstanding statesmen who left this world makes it possible to identify the public's attitude to the current state of political problematization and the structural profile of current political conflicts. Media texts and user-generated content in foreign English-language media were selected as empirical material for analysis. The resulting dataset is analyzed on the basis of the theory of metaphor in political discourse. The article shows that the death/departure from active politics of a political leader of the distant or relatively close past acts as a significant information event that generates the actualization of the political discursive field in a datatized online environment. English-language online media or online versions of traditional media were selected by the monitoring method in the system Semanticforce.ai : Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Reuters for the period 08.30.2022 ‒ 09.10.2022. A total of 12320 texts were taken into account. By means of lexical and semantic analysis, the nominations were selected from the texts and their classification into lexical and thematic groups was carried out. As a result of the study, it is shown that the death/departure from active politics of a political leader of the distant or relatively close past acts as a significant information event that generates the actualization of the political discursive field in a datatized online environment. - English-speaking online media assess the personality of Mikhail Gorbachev in a generally positive way: one of a kind, democrat, peacemaker, etc. - The thematic group of lexemes with the meaning of paradoxicity and inconsistency in English-speaking media is one of the most representative in the analyzed media discourse. - The paradoxical nature of personality assessment is linked to the counter-predictive assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev's activities during his presidency in European and Russian politics.

Translation Research on Conceptual Metaphor in the 2023 Chinese Government Work Report

In traditional rhetoric, metaphor is simply a rhetorical device used to make the mentioned things more understandable. It was not until 1980 that two cognitive linguists, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) argued in Metaphors We Live By that the essence of metaphor is the cognitive mechanism by which abstract things are explained through concrete things, shifting the study of metaphor from the linguistic level to the cognitive level. Later on, Lakoff (1996) analyzed political metaphor from a cognitive perspective for the first time in Moral Politics, which drives the upsurge of research on conceptual metaphor in political discourse. Political discourse usually uses metaphor to conceptualize the political ideas and issues it aims to disseminate, and the use of conceptual metaphor is closely related to national culture, so the translation of conceptual metaphor has become the key to the overseas publicity of political discourse. On March 5, 2023, Premier Li Keqiang delivered Chinese Government Work Report at the opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress. After reading the official translation on www.china.org.cn, the authors find that the Report contains a wealth of conceptual metaphors, and whether the translation of these metaphors is appropriate or not will affect the accuracy of people’s understanding of the Report. Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory and Group’s (2007) metaphor identification procedure, this paper takes the 2023 Chinese Government Work Report and its English translation version on www.china.org.cn as the research corpus. Through manual screening, classification and statistics of conceptual metaphors, this paper explores ten types of conceptual metaphor models, namely human metaphor, journey metaphor, war metaphor, cultural metaphor, architecture metaphor, water metaphor, animal and plant metaphor, machine metaphor, line metaphor as well as object metaphor. Based on Xiao’s (2005) cognitive strategy of metaphor translation, this paper also analyzes the translation of ten types of conceptual metaphors. This paper attempts to explore the following three research questions: (1) What are the types of metaphorical patterns in the Report? (2) How are the conceptual metaphors used in the Report and what cultural connotations and images are conveyed by them? (3) How to effectively translate conceptual metaphors in the Report to achieve a better understanding of the target audience? Microsoft Office (Word and Excel) is used as a statistical tool and a mapping tool to count specific conceptual metaphor categories and record typical metaphor keywords, and visualize the data of the proportion of various types. This paper tries to summarize and analyze the cultural connotations and images conveyed by the conceptual metaphors, so as to provide help for the English translation of Chinese political discourse and promote the international dissemination of Chinese political ideas. Through the analysis of conceptual metaphors, we can judge that although the political concepts in the Report is abstract, conceptual metaphors can express them more concretely and more easily understood by the audience through the mapping from the source domain to the target domain.

Creative Use of Metaphor in Nigerian Political Discourse

The paper investigated use of metaphor in contemporary Nigerian political discourse with the aim of revealing the multi-faceted patterns of metaphoric language in order to examine the creativity in political communication. The data were derived from a variety of illustrative texts sourced from Nigerian newspapers and magazines that are circulated nationwide. The study employed the cognitive linguistics approach originated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson to discuss the two significant metaphor themes of war and journey in the corpus data. The findings showed that metaphors are used as persuasive strategy and manipulative tool by politicians. The metaphors of war revealed that politics is typically conceived of as warfare with the primary aim of winning elections at all costs and the metaphors of journey depicted a nation in search of solutions to socio-economic problems and moving towards nationhood. The study concluded that the use of metaphor in political discourse is not just an ornamental device but a necessary feature of political communication. This research will extend the existing perspective on the rhetorical imperative in the deployment of metaphor in Nigerian political discourse.

Conceptual Field of Subsphere “Natural World” on Basis of Political Metaphors (Ukrainian and English)

The article is devoted to the conceptual field of the subsphere “Natural world” based on metaphors in political discourse in the Ukrainian and English languages. The frequency of political metaphors use in the research languages was studied. The special features of the subsphere “Natural world” in metaphors of political discourse in the Ukrainian and English languages are determined. The conceptual field’s lexical-semantic content of the subsphere “Natural world” is analyzed. The peculiarities of the subsphere conceptual field, its division into concepts, and the connotative nuances of this subsphere on the material of the research languages are distinguished. The frames of the animal and plant world are determined, where metaphors reflect the specifics of political life, election procedures, ways of attracting voters, the nature of the interaction between political parties and voters, the processes of adopting laws, reforming and international interaction. Political metaphors in the field of geology and meteorology are also analyzed, where metaphors are actively involved in political rhetoric, reflecting the political life of the country as a whole, as well as political events abroad; metaphors are actively used to denote elements of the country’s political life, which journalists present as changeable, poorly predicted, but at the same time dynamic and cyclical.

Boxing metaphors in political discourse: A quantitative corpus-based study

This paper utilizes the cognitive theory of metaphor and a corpus-based methodology to investigate the prevalent usage of metaphorical expressions derived from boxing terminology in the domain of politics. The objective is to identify and analyze the boxing metaphors that are commonly employed in political discourse. The findings of this study demonstrate the existence of boxing metaphors that exhibit strong or loose associations with the political domain. These metaphors possess distinct figurative meanings, originate from diverse metaphorical mappings, and serve multiple functions within the realm of political discourse.

Language and Politics: Framing the Use of Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse

This article examines the intricate relationship between language and politics through the lens of conceptual metaphors utilized in contemporary political discourse. By analyzing the framing and use of conceptual metaphors in political communication, the study aims to elucidate how language shapes and influences political narratives and ideologies. In this study, a qualitative research approach was adopted, incorporating critical discourse analysis (CDA) to delve into the use of conceptual metaphors in the context of American political discourse, taking as a case study Barack Obama's 2009 Cairo speech and Donald Trump's 2017 Inaugural Address. Drawing upon insights from studies on cognitive linguistics, politics, and discourse analysis, the research investigates the ways in which political actors strategically employ metaphors to construct persuasive arguments, shape public opinion, and advance specific policy agendas. This research thus aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the relation existing between language and political persuasion.

Grammatical Metaphor in Political Discourse in the Central Kurdish Language

The goal of this work is to examine political discourse in the Central Kurdish language via the prism of Halliday's grammatical metaphor. Political discourse is a common form of public discourse. In the SFG, Halliday identified the ideational and interpersonal grammatical metaphor. This study pertains to the study of Systemic Functional Grammar in that it studies the linguistic metaphors in the political speeches of Mala Bakhtyar and Abul Latif. The two figures are representing two opposing ideologies and they promote different types of religious and political ideologies. The authors utilized a mixed-methods strategy using Halliday's grammatical metaphor to assemble the findings. In the paper, the following research objectives are addressed: The most frequent form of nominalized processes and mood grammatical metaphor in the political public speeches in CK, in the political discourse in Central Kurdish are focused. Second, the expression of reality through ideational grammatical metaphor is investigated. And lastly, the convey of interpersonal meaning in interpersonal grammatical metaphor in the speeches by the political figures is examined. Overall, 133 distinct nominalized processes were identified during the speeches. Four of the six distinct nominalized types of processes were used. The total number of nominalized material process selections is 65, (48.8%) of the total, with verbal process types accounting for 58 events, (43.6%) of the total, and mental process types accounting for only 9 selections, (6.7%). Only one behavioral type was used, accounting for 0.75%. There are no other nominalized process types. And 53 instances of mood grammatical metaphor were drawn. In addition, the authors discovered that both political figures strive to represent their political beliefs using nominalized process types, and the interpersonal mood grammatical metaphor conveys interpersonal meaning.

Distinguishing and interrelation of the notions “concept”, “scheme”, “metaphor”

The article proposes a methodological scheme, on the one hand, describing the process of the formation of a new reality, which can later be constituted as an object (cognition or ideal), on the other hand, including logical “stops” interpreted as schemes, concepts and metaphors. The author presents a point of view on the distinction between the scheme and the concept of A. P. Ogurtsov, as well as his study of the development of metaphor in political discourse. On the material of the reconstruction of Plato's “Feast” and some statements of philosophers, the concepts of schema, concept and metaphor are characterized. It is argued that within the framework of the Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions of thinking, metaphors can be eliminated, and in creativity they are an integral element of any work.

Use of Conceptual Metaphors in Imran Khan and Narendra Modi's Political Speeches: A Comparative Study

This research is based on a comparative study of metaphors in political discourse. For this purpose, Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Critical Metaphor Theory (CMT) as a qualitative methodological ground and the quantitative method has been applied manually to five selected speeches of Imran Khan and Narendra Modi on the Kashmir issue after the military siege from 2019 till now. This study aims to explore the conceptual metaphors in the political speeches of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The main purpose of the study is to explore different types of conceptual metaphors like structural, ontological, and orientational that are used by these politicians to provide their thoughts, ideologies, and emotions on the said issue. This study provides new knowledge and guidance to understand the different metaphorical domains or structures in political discourse for future scholars.

Economy or ecology: metaphor use over time in China’s Government Work Reports

Abstract Government attention selectively distributed to various issues in policy-making processes is usually reflected in language, such as metaphors in political discourse. In addition, metaphor change may reveal how conceptualizations of major topics such as economy and ecology evolve over time. After self-building a corpus of China’s 45-year Government Work Reports, this study explores whether there is a difference in attention to topics of economy and ecology over time and investigates the diachronic change of metaphor use on them based on a modified framework for diachronic metaphor change analysis. Results show that attention to economy has been steadily decreasing while attention to ecology has been growing, and that there is an increasing tendency of using more economy and ecology metaphors. Metaphor change on the use of source domains is arranged on a continuum, ranging from constant use (war for economy and ecology, and journey and object for economy), incremental change (living organism and building for economy and ecology, and object for ecology) to fundamental change (building and living organism for ecology). This study may enrich the understanding of diachronic metaphor change by providing a Chinese perspective on the metaphor use in government discourse over time.

Defending our borders: Metaphor scenarios in Hungarian and Romanian political discourse on migration

Metaphor in political discourse has been described as a device for persuasion and providing legitimacy for political action. Besides these roles, however, Andreas Musolff draws attention to the dialogic potential of metaphors in public discourse when used as variations of universally accepted metaphorical frames applied and tailored in accordance with the specific ideologies, attitudes, and values of the discourse community addressed. Such subcategories, named scenarios, not only convey the target domain in terms more familiar to the audience, but they also invite evaluation and assessment on the part of the audience. In this role, metaphors, and their subcategories, and scenarios, allow expression of alternative viewpoints and particular perspectives within the frame of a public debate. This study proposes to track such reformulations in Hungarian and Romanian political discourse during the migrant crisis in 2015 concerning the CONTAINER metaphor. Conceptualizations of various discourse communities as containers are common in political discourse, circumscribing the ingroup as homogenous and compact, entailing elements like boundaries and possibilities of approach or, on the contrary, keeping away outside elements. In the concrete situation of the migrant crisis, entailments like closing or opening borders or conditions on crossing that border are common features. The corpus is composed of declarations from Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán related to events that occurred during the crisis, not only formulating attitudes and positioning toward the migrants but also towards the European Union and its policies regarding the issue. The metaphor scenarios are traceable in these speeches are means of self-presentation, defining the role and the position assumed by the two countries as members of the organization.

Metaphoricity as the most important characteristic of modern political discourse

The article deals with intercultural aspects of metaphorical modeling of political reality in Kazakh, Russian, Bulgarian and American presidential discourse. The texts of Presidents’ Addressees for 2021-2022 were used as the research material. The methodological basis is the concept of metaphor as a cognitively modeled phenomenon that plays an essential role in representing the linguistic view of the world. The subject of the research is the general and specific peculiarities and regularities of representation of reality through the use of metaphors and metaphor models in the Addressees of Heads of States. There are implemented cognitive-discursive and contextual analysis methods, modeling, and the linguostatistical method. We suppose that the construction of metaphor models, calculation of frequency of use of linguistic means and the statistical data analysis allows us to show the society's value priorities and the country's political reality. Moreover, it will help to reveal specifics of the people’s thinking and the peculiarities of their way of life at a particular historical period. The comparative analysis showed that in the texts of the Addressees for studied years, the dominant metaphorical model used in the speeches of the presidents of the four countries is a military metaphor, and the rest are associated with man, nature, landscape, mechanism, theater, sports, etc. This work represents a separate stage of studying metaphor in political discourse. It implies exploring other aspects of the problem and expanding the research material. &nbsp

Когнитивное исследование метафоры пути и милитарной метафоры в политическом дискурсе (на материале обращения Цай Ин-вэнь по случаю Дня двух десяток 2022 года и его перевода на русский и английский языки)

Когнитивное исследование метафоры пути и милитарной метафоры в политическом дискурсе (на материале обращения Цай Ин-вэнь по случаю Дня двух десяток 2022 года и его перевода на русский и английский языки)

Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse: Evidence from the Speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan

This paper reports on the findings of a study that aims at exploring conceptual metaphors in the political speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan which are delivered at the Plenary Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. Eight political speeches of the King, downloaded from his official website, are analyzed by adopting the cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The study reveals that there are four dominant themes in these speeches: (1) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, (2) the Syrian crisis, (3) terrorism, and (4) reform in Jordan. To express these themes, twenty three source domains were adopted in the King's speeches. The findings show that the most frequently used source domains are journey, war, hero, building, and human. The study concludes that King Abdullah II relies on the use of conventional conceptual metaphors to present the main themes in his political speeches.

Types of Political Metaphors in the Indonesian Mass Media

The purpose of the study was to reveal political metaphor data focused on classifying types of conceptual metaphors. The data source used is the text of political discourse in the Indonesian national mass media (kompas, antaranews, republika, detik, and waspada). Research data in the form of lingual units, both lexical and grammatical in the form of metaphors. The data collection method is used by the concept of metaphor identification procesure, while the data processing method is carried out based on conceptual metaphor analysis through three classifications, namely structural, ontological and orientational metaphors. The data analysis method uses referential methods, to show and compare references or meanings contained in the realm of source and target metaphorical speech. The study found that the types of conceptual metaphors in political discourse are identical through attempts at concretizing abstract concepts. The expression of political metaphor is a form of simplification of concepts that are correlated with human sensory experience. Ontological metaphors give a living perception of inanimate objects, both concrete and abstract. Ontological metaphors also allow units of language to present space to be filled and juxtaposed with other concepts because they have similar substances. While orientational metaphors tend to point to parts of the human body through the association of political terminology and cultural realities in society.

The connotations of conceptual metaphor in the field of nature in political speech

The conceptual metaphor theorized by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson focuses on the „concepts” of everyday life. The world around us, the beings and things in the universe, offer many possibilities for metaphorization. The proper use of conceptual metaphor in political discourse presupposes an organic interweaving of the speaker’s ingenuity and imagination. In this article we will analyze the metaphors from the field of Natural Source. We will comment on metaphors focused on some primordial elements of nature (water, fire), plant metaphors (botanical) and zoomorphic ones. After examining the metaphorical structures from the field of nature, I came to the conclusion that they are very productive and that they help to fulfill the main functions of the current political discourse: conciseness, expressiveness and persuasion.

From Happy Wedding to Divorce; Marriage Terms Metaphor in Indonesian Political Coalition

: Indonesian political multi-parties system requires political parties to build a solid coalition in anticipating any election event, at all levels; national, regional, and local. The description of the way political parties build the relationship and how candidates seek support from a party is often described metaphorically as stages of marriage. There are few studies of metaphor in political discourse in the Indonesian context, but less attention is given to the detail of the use of the specific source domain MARRIAGE. This study aims to take a deeper look at how the marriage relationship context is used to describe the conceptual metaphor of political coalition establishment. The aim of this study is to identify the mapping principle from the Source domain of MARRIAGE to the target domain POLITICAL COALITION to pinpoint the particular properties that enable characteristics in MARRIAGE to be used as the metaphorical expressions. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Deliberate Metaphor Theory of Steen, (2011) are used as the theoretical framework, with six news headlines about the political coalition from Indonesian online media news is purposively chosen as the data source.

Metaphor Analysis in Political Discourse Based on Discourse Dynamics Framework for Metaphor: A Case Study

Contrary to the pre-existing mapping and top-down instantiation from thought to language, Discourse Dynamics Framework for Metaphor(DDFM)argues that metaphor works mainly inductively upwards from the linguistic metaphor data, offering a tool for understanding people, revealing something of speaker’s ideas, affective aspects and values. This study is designed to apply DDFM to a political speech about fighting COVID-19 made by Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China. Assisted by computer software, such as tables of Microsoft Office, to sort metaphors of each segment of this speech, this article investigates metaphors in the speech by progressive process of metaphor analysis of DDFM. It is found that: (1)The most frequently occurring metaphors are related to bodily action and body experience, which implies actions Chinese government will take.(2)The dynamically emergent systematic metaphors evolve as the discourse proceeds, conveying the political ideas and attitudes of Chinese government in fighting COVID-19.(3) Most of metaphors are conventionalized, which indicates the framing role of conventional metaphors in discourse. Thus, DDFM offers a new approach regarding metaphors in political discourse.