Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios

Description

Political metaphors and related figurative discourse tools are characterised by their variability and contentiousness. Using them, discourse participants try to gain competitive advantage over others by offering their audiences new meaning nuances, challenging each other and announcing political initiatives. It is here that metaphor as a means to change meanings - and thus, to change social and political reality – comes into its own. Political Metaphor Analysis provides an innovative approach to the study of figurative language use in political discourse by presenting empirical analyses based on a large corpus of political metaphors and metonymies, linking these analyses to theoretical positions and assessing their limitations and perspectives for further exploration. The ‘classic’ model of conceptual metaphor analysis, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and expanded and amended over the past thirty-five years, is critically examined with regard to new findings about the variation, historicity, pragmatic exploitation, comprehension and interpretation of metaphors. As a central new analytical category, the notion of “metaphor scenario” is proposed and tested against various sub-sets of data. It allows to link hypothesised conceptual metaphors to narrative, argumentative and evaluative patterns in actual discourse and understanding processes, so that their cognitive significance can be more reliably gauged and theoretically modelled. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Political conflict as war 2.1 Metaphors and concepts 2.2 Inferences from metaphors in relation to conceptual domains 2.3 Conceptual domains and metaphor corpora 2.4 Discursive frames in metaphor corpora 2.5 Summary Chapter 3 Metaphors, cognitive models and scenarios 3.1 Political metaphor and family models 3.2 Two metaphor models – one domain? 3.3 Family scenarios 3.4 Further scenario functions 3.5 Summary Chapter 4 The life and times of a metaphor scenario: Britain at the heart of Europe 4.1 Memories of a metaphor 4.2 The emergence of a metaphor scenario 4.3 Scenario development 4.4 Scenarios and blends 4.5 Summary Chapter 5 The belly and the body politic 5.1 Memories of a fable 5.2 The body politic tradition 5.3 Body politic, corps politique, politischer Körper: Traces of national discourse traditions in metaphor usage 5.4 Historical explanations for the development of metaphor scenarios 5.5 Summary Chapter 6 Parasites, scrounging and the question of deliberate metaphor 6.1 Parasites, metaphor and etymology 6.2 Metaphorizations ‘back and forth’ 6.3 Metaphor and racism 6.4 Immigrants as ‘parasites’ 6.5 Metaphors as deliberately chosen scenario elements 6.6 Summary Chapter 7 Nations as persons: Collective identity construction 7.1 Introduction: Speaking for a nation 7.2 From ‘extended hands’ to a ‘new Nakba’ in eight speeches 7.3 Nations as persons with social identities 7.4 Two case studies 7.5 Summary Chapter 8 Understanding political metaphor 8.1 The unpredictability of metaphor understanding 8.2 Interpretations of the nation as body metaphor 8.3 Interpretations of the nation as person metaphor 8.4 Summary Chapter 9 Conclusion: How does scenario analysis fit into cognitive metaphor studies? Appendix I: Source concepts of the metaphor nation as body in British, French and German media in BODYPOL Appendix II: Source concepts and English lexis in the metaphor field centred on the (nation) state is a (human) body in BODYPOL Appendix III: Linguistic/cultural background of questionnaire participants Notes Bibliography Index