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- Volume 6, Issue, 2016
Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2016
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Metaphors for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths
Author(s): Zsófia Demjén, Elena Semino and Veronika Kollerpp.: 1–19 (19)More LessThis paper discusses the metaphors used by sixteen palliative healthcare professionals from around the United Kingdom in semi-structured interviews to describe what they see as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deaths. The interviews, conducted for the large-scale “Metaphor in End-of-Life Care” project, are set against the background of contemporary practices and discourses around end-of-life care, dying and quality of death. To date, the use of metaphor in descriptions of different types of deaths has not received much attention. Applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) we find that the difference between good and bad deaths is partly expressed via different frequencies of contrasting metaphors, such as ‘peacefulness’ and ‘openness’ as opposed to ‘struggle’ and ‘pushing away’ professional help. We show how metaphors are used to: evaluate deaths and the dying; justify those evaluations; present a remarkably consistent view of different types of deaths; and promote a particular ‘framing’ of a good death, which is closely linked with the dominant sociocultural and professional contexts of our interviewees. We discuss the implications of these consistent evaluations and framings in broader end-of-life care contexts, and reflect on the significance of our findings for the role of metaphor in communication about sensitive experiences.
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Pictorial-verbal metaphors in Chinese editorial cartoons on food safety
Author(s): Chun Lan and Danyun Zuopp.: 20–51 (32)More LessBased on a corpus of 120 cartoons collected from the website http://cartoon.chinadaily.com.cn, this study attempts to give an account of pictorial-verbal metaphors in Chinese editorial cartoons on food safety from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and multimodal metaphor theory. The findings are as follows: (1) Four major mode configuration patterns are observed: cross-modal mapping, mono-modal mapping, multimodal mapping and implied mapping. (2) The pictorial-verbal metaphors centre around five major target domains: unsafe food, consumer, producer/seller, supervision authority and food safety law/standard. (3) A large number of scenario metaphors are observed in the data, which can be further divided into those that are cross-culturally perceivable and those that are heavily embedded in Chinese culture. The working mechanism of scenario metaphors can be accounted for by Conceptual Blending Theory. The study helps delineate the food safety situation that we are facing in China from a metaphorical perspective. It also extends the application of multimodal metaphor theory to a Chinese context and contributes to the refinement of the theory.
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Follow this path
Author(s): Terese Thonus and Beth L. Hewettpp.: 52–78 (27)More LessThis paper examines conceptual metaphor use by graduate-student writing consultants in a university writing center. Our goal was to develop a taxonomy for consultant metaphor in asynchronous online consultations; to find evidence that consultants could produce deliberate metaphors as an instructional strategy when responding asynchronously by e-mail to students and their texts; and to compare these data with Thonus’s (2010) investigation of consultant metaphor use in face-to-face consultations, Results showed that writing consultants trained in the use of strategic metaphors employed them in subsequent consultations. In addition, trained consultants used deliberate, coherent, and systematic metaphors in all six categories of our analysis, and they exploited metaphors students had developed in their writing. In comparison with their pre-training metaphor use, the consultants demonstrated increased metaphor use after training and used metaphors significantly differently from consultants who had received no training. We discuss these results in terms of deliberate vs. non-deliberate metaphor use in writing instruction, and we consider the feasibility and advisability of training writing center consultants to employ metaphors — specifically coherent, systematic metaphors — as vehicles for writing instruction in an online setting.
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A critical metaphor analysis of Arab uprisings in “The Washington Post” and “Keyhan” editorials
Author(s): Nahid Fallah and Mohammad Raouf Moinipp.: 79–102 (24)More LessThis study examines the metaphorical representation of the Arab uprisings in a number of Arab countries that came to be known as the Arab Spring in the editorials of two newspapers, one Persian and the other in English, namely “Keyhan” and “The Washington Post”. Sixty editorials from the two newspapers were examined for the metaphorical representation of the Arab uprisings during 2011 and the possible ideologies those representations reflect. A cognitive-pragmatic approach was adopted in the analysis of the editorials to uncover any ideology embedded in the fabrics of the text. The results indicated that the newspapers cast the same events in completely different frames. It is shown that these events were mainly portrayed as a religious conflict in “Keyhan”, presenting the dictators and their supporters as unbelievers and the greatest evil and the demonstrators as believers and God’s soldiers. However, the same events were described by “The Washington Post” via a range of different source domains, the main ones being a journey toward democracy, a natural phenomenon and a game between political powers.
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“Pour water where it burns”
Author(s): Mohsen Bakhtiarpp.: 103–133 (31)More LessWhile dysphemism has been extensively studied as a general phenomenon, there are not too many studies on how it is used in political discourse by top officials. This paper aims to examine the ways in which a sample of two high-level Iranian politicians offensively conceptualize their alleged enemies, namely the U.S., Israel, and the West, through conceptual metaphors and metonymies. A cognitive linguistic analysis of the speeches of Iran’s supreme leader and ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicate that the selection of the metaphorical dysphemistic source domain is primarily determined by religion, previous discourse (pre-existing conventional dysphemistic metaphors), aspects of the target domain, and anger or hatred toward the enemies. The analysis indicates that most of the pejorative connotations are attributed to Israel as the alleged number one enemy of Iran via Israel is an animal, Israel is a tumor, and Israel is a bastard. The other presumed enemies, that is, the U.S. and the West are characterized via the u.s. is a devil, and the u.s. and the west are criminals. Moreover, the two politicians, while resorting to taboo concepts, remain loyal to the established discursive norms of delegitimizing the actions and thoughts of the enemies of the Islamic Republic.
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The role of metaphor and metonymy in framing terrorism
Author(s): Erica Pinellipp.: 134–155 (22)More LessIn this paper I analyze the role of metaphor and metonymy in framing conflict events. In particular, when framing a terrorist attack in media discourse these two linguistic elements are crucial for the interpretation of the event. The data from two Russian newspapers, the “Novaja Gazeta” and the “Rossijskaja Gazeta”, show how metaphorical and metonymical processes are used to promote a particular interpretation and modify the structure of the event itself.
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