Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2018

Abstract

The present study aims at exploring the evocative power of metaphor in a number of remarkable American political speeches. The investigation concentrates on the metaphorical framing of political issues in terms of light and darkness. The analysis is carried out on a corpus consisting of the top 100 political speeches in the twentieth century according to a ranking given by American rhetoricians in a national survey (http://www. news.wisc.edu/misc/speeches). Overall, the study shows how the metaphorical uses of the evocative concepts of light and darkness have facilitated the communication of central political ideas, values and beliefs in twentieth century American political rhetoric.

Abstract

The creation of national personifications is a political act that informs us about ideological and cognitive strategies underpinning nation-building. Many European nations are associated with national personifications, but Scotland stands out by not having a tradition of representing the nation in this way. The 2014 independence referendum began to change that, and national personifications featured, not only in the main pro-independence campaign material, but in the visual profile of many new, radical organizations. These personifications also raise questions about the use of metaphor in political discourse. By combining multimodal metaphor and metonymy analysis with interviews with artists who have designed Scottish personifications for the independence movement, this article investigates how new Scottish body politic metaphors were constructed during the campaign. This methodology increases our understanding of the wider context of the referendum, and aids the interpretation of national personifications by providing arguments for interpretation. The analysis shows that body politic metaphors used in the campaign draw on traditional Scottish symbols, but traditional body politic metaphor types are subverted, typically concerning gender roles, in order to convey messages that are relevant in a contemporary political landscape.

Abstract

In this article, I identify and describe multimodal hybrid metaphors—the conceptual representation of two elements represented as merged into a new single ‘gestalt’—represented by the machine and human body domains in “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (鉄男: Tetsuo), a Japanese avant-garde film. Since “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” portrays the genesis of a man whose body becomes a human-machine hybrid, I explore to what extent this film can act as an example of how hybrid metaphors are conveyed. In line with the ideological function of metaphors, where the use of alternative metaphors may produce different meanings and potentially have different effects on the recipient, I also try to interpret how these hybrid metaphors reveal information about the contemporary Japanese society. Specifically, the ideological analysis considers how the notion of ‘artificial’ and the social phenomena of misogyny, homophobia and social deviance are held to characterise the post-World War II Japanese culture.

Abstract

Previous work has shown that the abstract use of the spatial prepositions in and on retains spatial meaning, such as containment and support that includes the control relationship between a located object (the figure) and a reference object (the landmark/ground) (Feist & Gentner, 2003; Talmy, 1983). We extend these ideas to the case of metaphorical descriptions of emotion in Spanish—some of them featuring the emotion as a located entity in the person’s body, others featuring emotion as the ground in which the person’s body stands. Two rating experiments show that people judge emotions in Spanish as more controllable when they are described as located entities (the figure) than when they are described as grounds. We conclude that functional elements of the spatial meaning of the preposition en in Spanish are extended to abstract uses in metaphor, affecting the perceived controllability of emotions.

Abstract

In this study we contrast metaphors and metaphorical stories in President Trump’s 2017 inaugural address with those of former President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address. We draw on the concept of ‘rhetorical confinement’ (Patterson, 2011) to show how the contrasting life trajectories of the two leaders are reflected in the contrasting themes and tone established by their metaphorical language. We argue that Obama’s rhetorical tone, including his use of metaphors, was at least in part a response to the compound constraints of race and class. In contrast, Trump’s rhetorical tone and use of metaphors reflects and reinforces his image as a political outsider, as a challenge to the constraints of ordinary political discourse. The contrast between the rhetorically confined politeness of Obama’s discourse (lampooned as ‘political correctness’ by many of his opponents) and the unconstrained crudeness of Trump’s discourse (lauded as ‘telling it like it is’) apparently legitimates the open expression of previously suppressed resentments and encourages an extreme rhetoric that is symptomatic of, and may contribute to, the growing polarization in American political discourse.

Abstract

This study is a corpus-based examination of denominal verbs with figurative meanings in the British business broadsheet The “Financial Times”. Based on the study of word-formation as the source of metaphoricity (Brdar & Brdar-Szabó, 2013; Janda, 2011, 2014; Steen et al., 2010) and propositional analysis (Pankrats, 1992; Steen, 2002), it presents the classification of such verbs, and discusses how and why denominal verbs with metaphorical meanings were used in the journalistic discourse about business. The empirical base of this study was a 621,000 word corpus of articles from The “Financial Times” from the years 2014–2015. The authors conclude that the frequency of denominal verbs is due to the conceptual and evaluative functions of metaphor. There is consideration of the implications of these findings for linguists, translators, ESP students and those interested in corpus research into metaphor.

Abstract

The article aims to provide a critical review of 23 studies that have used metaphor analysis to provide insight into academic literacy research over the past 30 years. It begins by summarising some of the key issues and trends that have been addressed using metaphor analysis, grouping these into two broad categories: metaphor as a methodological tool, and metaphor as an intervention tool. Methods of metaphor collection and analysis are then outlined and discussed. It is noted that an increasing number of studies in this area have identified methodological issues resulting from what Armstrong et al. (2011) term ‘the subjectivity problem’, and the article thus discusses how such issues may be resolved in future research.

This article reviews Metaphor Wars: Conceptual Metaphors in Human Life9781107071148

This article reviews Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority9781472532541

This article reviews Mixing Metaphor9789027202109