Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2012

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.

This is a case study of the metaphorical expressions in the Buddhist sutra “宝积经” (Bao Ji Jing, Ratnakūtasūtra) from the cognitive perspective provided by conceptual metaphor theory, aiming at discovering the conceptual system behind those metaphorical expressions and investigating what kind of role conceptual metaphors play in constructing and interpreting Buddhist doctrines. Altogether 64 metaphorical expressions in “Bao Ji Jing” are analysed, which centre around three themes: singing praise to Bodhisattva’s benefactions, looking on the emptiness and illusions of the mind and concluding persuasions. The key findings are that (1) metaphorical expressions are typically used for legitimising Buddhist doctrines and, to a lesser degree, delegitimising non-Buddhist doctrines; (2) the metaphorical expressions detected are usually highly consistent in structure, with a few or even over a dozen appearing in parallel; (3) often a metaphor is composed of a major source concept and a minor source concept on the one hand, and a major target concept and a minor target concept on the other, with the relationship between the former mapped onto that of the latter; and (4) a metaphor typically activates a series of projections between its source domain and target domain, giving rise to conceptual blends in the process.

This article is concerned with migration as a metaphor for metaphor. Metaphor is generally recognised an essential tool in the promotion of public understanding of difficult subjects and this begs the question of what metaphors are available for promoting the understanding of metaphor itself. A review of metaphors for metaphor is undertaken and they are found to be of three types, based on seeing, travelling and thinking. It is argued that recent developments in migration studies may have something to offer metaphor studies and migration is proposed as a metaphor for re-framing metaphors for metaphor.

Drawing on the theory of conceptual metaphors and on its socially and discursively oriented developments, this paper investigates the conceptualisation of money (and related notions like income, repayments, fees, interest rates or profit) in Romanian banking discourse. By analysing corpora composed of 74 documents issued by the National Bank of Romania (BNR) and by three other commercial banks, before and during the recent financial crisis, it aims to show how apparently unrelated metaphoric expressions (with source domains such as medicine, army or water) are in fact connected, giving rise to three coherent scenarios: a caring scenario, a physical force scenario and a river scenario. The article also highlights the role of (money) metaphor in persuading customers, creating identities and transferring ideologies.

Committed, conservative Christians and Muslims are often characterised by a perceived sense of the absolute certainty of their beliefs. This certainty and the seemingly rigid nature of what they believe (including notions such as judgement and eternal punishment) often bring them into a degree of conflict and competition with other worldviews. This situation can make attempts at mutually stimulating engagement and co-existence outside of evangelisation or debate difficult. However, I will argue that this sense of certainty is primarily located in the implicit presuppositions beneath inherently fluid action and relationship language that can often be expressed through metaphors of movement and proximity. This article analyses such metaphors in testimonials produced by Muslim and Christian converts and argues that they exhibit varying patterns of emphasis. These include a focus on a relationship with God derived from the language of intimate human relationships in the Christian testimonials, as compared to a focus on a personal journey of research and reflection in the Muslim testimonials. I will conclude by arguing that an awareness of particular individual or community patterns of emphasis in the action and relationship language of conservative believers may help those outside these communities establish points of personal connection. These points of connection may in turn contribute to the possibility of successful, mutually stimulating co-existence.