1887
Volume 6, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2210-4070
  • E-ISSN: 2210-4097
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Abstract

In 2008 a financial crisis threatened to make economies collapse worldwide. The world entered an era of bank and businesses failures, private defaults and massive layoffs. The crisis became a major topic in the media. The present article sets out to analyse the conceptualization of the crisis in the English, Spanish and French press. I found that journalists relied heavily on metaphorical imagery to describe it. The crisis was conceived in terms of a structured set of conceptual metaphors which depict it as a living organism, a disease, natural disaster, a weather phenomenon and a harmful object. These metaphors not only shape the readers’ view of the crisis, but also construct a negative evaluation of this economic phenomenon by highlighting its harmful effects. The study also shows the commonalities and divergences in the conceptualization of the crisis across languages.

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2016-10-14
2025-02-16
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): economic discourse; evaluation; financial crisis; image schema; metaphor
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