Metaphors In Political Discourse Research Articles

Conceptual Metaphors in Political Discourse in Croatian, American and Italian Newspapers

Abstract In political discourse metaphors are frequently employed for persuading and manipulating the public. The aim of our research is to show whether there are differences in the use of source domains of conceptual metaphors among Croatian politicians in comparison with American and Italian politicians. The corpus of our research consists of political newspaper articles and interviews from Croatian, American and Italian daily newspapers (Jutarnji list, Večernji list, Corriere della Sera, Repubblica, ABC, USA Today and The New York Times), downloaded from newspaper archives. We can conclude that metaphorical expressions vary from language to language, but often the same metaphorical expressions appear in all languages. Expressions that frequently recur are victory, attack, battle, race, defense, splay, stage and role. Except for two ontological metaphors in Croatian examples, we can say that there is no major difference in the source domains between Croatian, American and Italian political discourse.

Функции концептуальной метафоры в политическом дискурсе

Функции концептуальной метафоры в политическом дискурсе

RUSSIAN <i>BEAR</i> AND CHINESE <i>LONG</i>: ZOOLOGICAL METAPHOR IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Zoometaphor plays a very important role in linguistics, especially in contrastive studies, and has long attracted the attention of both Russian and Chinese linguists, including A. N. Baranov, A. P. Chudinov, F. N. Guketlova, T. S. Vershinina, Zhao Yanfan, Xue Yahong, Guo Weihai and others who also show deep interest in the role of this kind of metaphor in political discourse. Russian linguist A. P. Chudinov believes that each concrete metaphor reflects the worldview of one person thus contributing to the creation of a common metaphorical picture of the world of a certain society. Representations of the animal world, characteristic of Russian and Chinese cultures are reflected in zoometaphors involved in political discourse in both languages. Chinese linguists Xue Yahong and Guo Weihai consider the conceptual metaphor “man is an animal” one of the most important means of cognition and representation of knowledge in language. By resorting to zoometaphors statesmen and politicians choose a more effective and efficient way of conveying their political views and thus exercise a stronger influence on the target audience. The article analyzes examples of metaphors with the “bear” component and metaphors with the “Long” component. These two words play an important role in conceptualizing the world of Russian and Chinese people and metaphorically represent the two cultures. The image of the bear metaphorically represents the political authority of Russia; the use of the word “bear” stands for “strength” contributing to a positive image of a powerful state that can protect itself. Likewise, Long represents China, and in the eyes of the Chinese it is a symbol of everything sacred, noble, strong and successful, so it shows China as an authoritative state. It is stressed in the article that both Long and the dragon have mythological roots and arouse different associations, therefore it is appropriate to use the word “Long” rather than “dragon” when addressing Chinese culture. Analysis of metaphors with the bear and Long components in western political discourse shows that respective metaphors can transmit negative attitudes, which points to a controversial attitude of western politicians to Russia and China.

Metaphorical Nomination of Politicians in Russian and English

The article deals with transferred meanings of the nouns denoting subjects of professional activity (zhandarm, lavochnik, myasnik, soldat, axeman, executioner, slave-driver, sportsman, etc.) in Russian and English political communication. Research material was selected from the National Russian Corpus and the Oxford English Corpus. Special attention is paid in the article to the identification and modeling of the structure of knowledge lying at the basis of metaphorization. The analysis of the sample has shown that the following semantic subspheres within the sphere “Professional Activity” regularly serve as sources of metaphorization in political communication: supervision and investigation; military service and sport; witchcraft and magic, commerce and finance. The Russian and the English languages display a similarity between the regular features of metaphorization in the given semantic groups. The presence of a pejorative component in the transferred meanings of lexemes nominating workers of law enforcing and punitive bodies, as well as those associated with cruelty and violence (meat and wood purveyance), is typical of both Russian and English political communication. Metaphorization of lexemes is regularly employed by the military and sport spheres, and the focus is placed on the stereotypical positive personality traits of military men and sportsmen (military men are presented as noble, courageous, self-sacrificing, loyal people; sportsmen nominations are used to denote honest politicians who abide by the rules of the game and know how to lose). In both languages, the metaphors from the sphere of commerce regularly include a negative evaluative component, but the reasons for the negative evaluation may be different: in English, the nominations of traders serve to denote politicians who are engaged in dissemination and propaganda of something unpleasant and dangerous; in Russian, the accent is placed on the personal traits of the seller, which allows creating nominations of greedy officials ready to do anything for personal gain and willfully using something for their own personal profit. The transferred meanings of the lexemes from the semantic subsphere “Witchcraft and Magic” show that the character of the evaluative component of metaphors in political discourse (negative: the metaphors are used to denote rogues and deceivers) may not correspond to the type of evaluation in other kinds of communication (positive evaluation associated with reference to outstanding abilities is quite frequent).

Шотландский регионалистский дискурс в британских СМИ

The article is devoted to the Scottish regionalist discourse in the British quality press. The period from the time of the referendum on independence in 2014 till 2019 is covered. Regionalist discourse is considered as an object of linguistic study. The definition of the term regionalist discourse as a kind of political discourse is proposed. The framework for the study of regional discourse from the standpoint of political linguistics is given. With the help of semantic-stylistic and discursive analysis the specific characteristics inherent in the Scottish regionalist media discourse are revealed. The latter include metaphorization based on both universal and culturally specific images, as well as a philological vertical context. The functions of metaphor in political discourse are briefly clarified. The author analyzes the universal metaphor of the divorce process and the cultural-specific metaphor based on the colour symbolism and cultural reference. Particular attention is paid to the geographical marking of the border between North and South in the Scottish regionalist discourse. The potential of historical and philological vertical context is discussed. Communicative strategies of appeal to the authority of Scottish literary figures (R. Burns, W. Scott, R. L. Stevenson) are revealed. The stylistic potential of Scottish dialect inclusions in the English text is considered.

The body politic of independent Scotland

AbstractThe creation of national personifications is a political act that informs us about ideological and cognitive strategies underpinning nation-building. Many European nations are associated with national personifications, but Scotland stands out by not having a tradition of representing the nation in this way. The 2014 independence referendum began to change that, and national personifications featured, not only in the main pro-independence campaign material, but in the visual profile of many new, radical organizations. These personifications also raise questions about the use of metaphor in political discourse. By combining multimodal metaphor and metonymy analysis with interviews with artists who have designed Scottish personifications for the independence movement, this article investigates how new Scottish body politic metaphors were constructed during the campaign. This methodology increases our understanding of the wider context of the referendum, and aids the interpretation of national personifications by providing arguments for interpretation. The analysis shows that body politic metaphors used in the campaign draw on traditional Scottish symbols, but traditional body politic metaphor types are subverted, typically concerning gender roles, in order to convey messages that are relevant in a contemporary political landscape.

The Dynamic Use of Metaphor in Political Discourse

The Dynamic Use of Metaphor in Political Discourse

Metaphor as linguistic instrument of manipulation to realize the persuasive strategy in the texts of Spanish political parties programs

Text of any party program is communicative that is it contains information that an author transfers to a recipient. This information can serve as a source of knowledge about phenomena and events as well as to be a source of a strong emotional impact on recipient encouraging him to act certain way. Since the emotional sphere is one of the levers that controls behaviour of any person, it is very important for the authors of the pre-election political programs to make an impact on readers and also make an ideological settingdesired for these authors.To use kilfully the mechanism of persuasiveness is to get electoral support of the electorate. One of such mechanisms used in the texts of the pre-election polititical programs is using of metaphors. Page 79 И. В. Смирнова79The political metaphor is very sensitive to events happening in the country and language of politics. It is one of the most signi cant and common methods of language manipulation that capable of long conserving in memory and making an impact on the recipient’s associative thinking. The use of metaphors in political discourse is mostly applied for manipulation of the electorate and their use is also a powerful persuasion technique.

Analysing Metaphorical Political Discourse in the L2 Academic Classroom

Abstract The purpose of the following paper is to show a practical solution for analyzing metaphors in political discourse in accordance with the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff 1980) integrated into teaching an L2 upper-intermediate academic class. In view of the fact that the lesson was developed and conducted with military students, the material for analysis was chosen from President Obama's 2013 speech on Syria. Students’ task was to formulate metaphors on the basis of metaphorical expressions distinguished in bold in the speech by the teacher. As a result, orientational, ontological and structural metaphors were properly created, which constituted further basis for the interpretation of the discourse sample. In order to assess the relevance of such classes, a post-lesson survey was conducted directly after the lesson. Obtained results point to the usefulness of learning metaphors to facilitate the comprehension of political discourse. Additionally, their importance for the professional career in the army was revealed.

English

The use of metaphors in political discourse is a linguistic strategy that has been used all over the world. Studies on metaphor have therefore been done in various parts of the world. This paper reviewed studies on metaphor in political discourse to assess the role metaphor played in political discourse. It aimed to contribute to the field of metaphor in political discourse by reviewing studies done in this field. The study aimed to show that a metaphor as a linguistic tool could be manipulated both for pragmatic and strategic reasons. The review showed that metaphors were used to help the voting public to make sense of different political issues and therefore to express their general attitudes towards politics. Further, they helped to make citizens identify with and understand their beliefs and goals for their country. The mapping principle of source and target domains was further used by the politicians to fulfill their persuasive and rhetorical goals in political discourse. Apart from being used as a face-saving strategy, the review showed that metaphors also revealed speakers’ ideological positions. Key words: Politics, political discourse, cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor.

Театральная метафора в политическом дискурсе (на материале исследования миграционного кризиса в Европейском Союзе в британских и немецких СМИ)

Театральная метафора в политическом дискурсе (на материале исследования миграционного кризиса в Европейском Союзе в британских и немецких СМИ)

Political metaphor, a matter of purposeful style

There are currently attempts to dovetail classical and conceptual metaphor to improve analyses of metaphor in political discourse, but the results, to date, are not robust or sufficiently comprehensive. In this article, I return to Aristotle’s original definition of metaphor in order to set up a framework for the analysis of political metaphors. I first designate the exact position of Aristotle’s theory within conceptual metaphor theory, in order to avoid a lack of coherence between classical and conceptual metaphor theory. In the combination of the two theories I am able to define three styles of purposeful political use of metaphor: reason-based, emotion-based and strategy-based usage of (conceptual) metaphor. These styles are significant, because using a political metaphor is performing a political speech-act, and an important purpose of that speech-act, besides persuasion, is establishing a political identity and style. Examples of the three metaphor purposes and styles show how they can be identified in political discourse. The framework can be used in further political analysis to assess what the role of rhetorical style is in political processes.

Metaphoricalparasitesand “parasitic” metaphors

The metaphorical categorization of social and political adversaries as “parasites” has an infamous history in public discourse: For two centuries it has been routinely used for the purpose of racial and socio-political stigmatization. In cognitive accounts, theparasite-metaphorhas usually been treated as an example of semantic transfer from the biological to the social domain. Historically, however, the scientific uses cannot be deemed original or primary, as their emergence in the 17th and 18th centuries was preceded by a much older tradition of religious and social meanings. The paper charts the main traditions of diachronic variation in the discourse history of the parasite-metaphor anddiscusses the implications of its findings regarding the assumption of “uni-directionality” of metaphorization processes, which has been a central tenet of cognitive analyses. In conclusion, we ask whether metaphors in political discourse might fruitfully be viewed as a “parasitic” form of communication.

Metaphor as Argument: Rhetorical and Epistemic Advantages of Extended Metaphors

This paper examines from a cognitive perspective the rhetorical and epistemic advantages that can be gained from the use of (extended) metaphors in political discourse. We defend the assumption that extended metaphors can be argumentatively exploited, and provide two arguments in support of the claim. First, considering that each instantiation of the metaphorical mapping in the text may function as a confirmation of the overall relevance of the main core mapping, we argue that extended metaphors carry self-validating claims that increase the chances of their content being accepted. Second, we show how the recognition of an extended metaphor’s sophistication and relevance (on behalf of the addressee) can benefit the speaker’s perceived competence (ethos). We then assess whether these two arguments measure against the dual epistemic monitoring postulated in the notion of epistemic vigilance (i.e., assessment of the source of a message and assessment of the message) and conclude that extended metaphors may fulfil the requirements of epistemic vigilance and lead to the stabilisation of a belief. We illustrate our account with an analysis of the extended metaphor of the USA as an empire found in a political pamphlet written by the Swiss politician Oskar Freysinger.

The development of the journey metaphor in political discourse

The present paper focuses on the variation and dynamics of cross-cultural conceptual metaphor national DEVELOPMENT is a journey in Lithuanian political discourse. The paper aims to answer the question: To what extent do we share the same or different understanding of politics as a journey? Employing Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) (Charteris-Black, 2005) as methodological background, an attempt is made to look at variation of conceptual metaphor and metaphorical linguistic expressions within one political party, i.e. the Conservative Party, but at different periods of time. It is assumed that linguistic metaphorical expressions underlying the conceptual metaphor NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IS a JOURNEY are likely to have a temporal character. The results show that metaphorical linguistic expressions underlying the JOURNEY metaphor alter significantly within one political discourse before joining the European Union and NATO and after it. Moreover, marked changes in conceptual metaphor have also been observed. Thus, the development of the JOURNEY metaphor shows ideological implications emerging in the political discourse of Lithuania.

Metaphors of Hegemonic Masculinity – Women’s Understanding of Sport Metaphors in Political Discourse

Abstract Within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and Critical Discourse Analysis (van Dijk 1993, Wodak 2006) we analyse in this paper the results of a survey conducted among 100 women and 20 men in order to establish the level of their understanding of sport metaphors in political discourse. The results indicate that sport metaphors may pose a serious barrier to women’s understanding of political life and may discourage women’s political participation.

Метафора войны в политическом дискурсе

Метафора войны в политическом дискурсе

Metaphor in political dialogue

Metaphor and other figurative uses of language play a central role in political dialogue on account of their semantic, pragmatic and textual ‘added value’ effects: they provide an opportunity to introduce new thematic aspects, increase the textual coherence of the dialogue contributions and provide warrants for (analogical) conclusions. One of the oldest examples of metaphor use in political dialogue is the so-called fable of the belly, which tells the story of a dispute between the seemingly ‘lazy’ stomach/ruler and the more ‘active’ body members/citizens over the right to receive food. One of its most famous renditions can be found in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, where it is embedded in a debate between the character of the senator Menenius and rebellious citizens. This dialogic frame and the dispute ‘within’ the fable establish a multi-layered inter-dialogic pattern. Whilst the literary construction of this dialogue system in Shakespeare’s play is unique, it underlines the more general aspect of metaphor’s dialogic role, which is discussed further with regard to the present-day use of body-based metaphor in political discourse. These case studies are interpreted as evidence for the necessity to integrate this dialogic function as a central aspect in cognitive metaphor analysis.

Metaphors in political discourse

This paper analyzes metaphors usage within political discourse, i.e rhetoric of political public speech. The analysis is based on public speech held at Vukovi sabori manifestations from 1987-2005, by active politicians or cultural elite at a given time period. Manifestations such as Vukovi sabori or Saborski dani were created primarily as purely cultural and artistic; however, they have also proven to be a good medium for messages with clear political agenda, hidden in metaphors of the speakers. These metaphors, in a political rhetoric, are thus seen as an instrument used to channel desired aims and win over potential voters. On the other hand, they also could be taken as one of the indicators of ideological-political paradigm change after 2000. In both cases, these metaphors are analyzed as a potential for promoting certain interests carrying heavy influence on key values and attitudes within the political discourse.

Deliberate Metaphor Affords Conscious Metaphorical Cognition

Abstract Contrary to what is assumed in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), the conceptual power of metaphor may not lie in its widespread unconscious use but in its more limited and targeted deliberate use, which may or may not give rise to conscious metaphorical cognition. Deliberate and conscious metaphorical thought is connected to the general functions of all conscious thought as described by Baumeister and Masicampo (2010). Their theory provides a basis for demonstrating how deliberate and conscious metaphorical cognition facilitate social and cultural interactions, by reconsidering Musolff’s (2004) analysis of metaphor in political discourse on European integration. The paper concludes by formulating some implications of CMT’s neglect of conscious metaphor and of deliberate metaphor more generally. If the power of metaphor lies in thought, as has been held by CMT for thirty years, it may be that conscious rather than unconscious cognition - or, more generally, deliberate rather than non-deliberate metaphor use - enables that power. Given the relative infrequency of deliberate and conscious metaphor use, this, in turn, may entail that the online effect of metaphor is more restricted than has been assumed over the past three decades.