Traditional and not so traditional metaphors of love in Spanish: A way to spread and create ideologies about romance and gender on the Internet

Metaphors about love in online dating advertisements might seem to be an easy and inconsequential way to express people’s romantic expectations. Using Critical Metaphor Analysis methodology, this paper takes a closer look at a sample of love metaphors used by Spanish-speaking heterosexual ad posters, to show how they use the metaphors to create a discourse of traditional romance in a modern medium, the online dating world. These metaphors are powerful tools for conveying traditional ideologies about romance and relationships. Additionally, they provide ad posters with a useful rhetorical tool for portraying themselves as ideal romantic partners, ‘regular’ and/or ‘normal’ heterosexuals, who play according to the regulatory norms of their gender, allowing them to ‘sell’ themselves as better candidates for romance.