Metaphor and the Social World - Online First

This article examines the use of the term ślad (‘footprint’, ‘trace’) in Polish online press, particularly in equivalents of footprint metaphors (e.g., carbon footprint). It aims to identify the broader frames and contexts in which these metaphors appear and the framing of responsible entities. Previous studies highlight how terms like the carbon footprint often attribute environmental impact to individual actions. This study confirms this trend in contexts like weight-based footprints and travel, but also finds that in the frame of resource use, products and processes are construed as responsible. Researchers of metaphors in science claim that environmental metaphors shape moral judgments and this study explores how metaphorical footprints and traces relate to morality and responsibility in Polish online press. Using examples from four press outlets, the study demonstrates the evaluative role of metaphorical footprints and traces, and their use in moral accounting.

Cognitive linguists have long argued that our comprehension of abstract concepts is primarily based on metaphorical or metonymic mappings from more concrete or familiar experiences (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2008, 1999). Accordingly, metaphor identification commonly involves contrasting concrete senses of words with their contextual meanings. However, examples like a huge log spinning down into nothingness and Max opened a door into nothingness are reminders that, through metonymy, even highly familiar source concepts such as spatial areas can be targets grounded in abstract concepts. Both these instances evoke scenes in which the abstract notion of ‘nothingness’ is a space that physical entities move into.

This study highlights the complexity of figurative language and underscores the need for further exploration into how abstract concepts can ground our understanding of more concrete experiences. It also serves to bridge the gap between current metaphor identification practices and the directionality of metonymy. Focusing mainly on mappings in one direction can pose challenges for metaphor researchers, as they might mistakenly categorize such cases as metaphorical rather than as expressions of spatial relations. This is particularly relevant in contemporary metaphor research, which often relies on establishing the basic meanings of individual words to identify metaphorical relationships.

The metaphorical representation of discourse about social unrest is omnipresent. Elemental metaphors are extensively employed by news articles and media channels to depict social crises and difficult circumstances. This research focuses on social unrest discourse because this field of research has been universally recognized as inherently metaphorical (Lakoff, 2002). In particular, it thus studies experimental methods for analyzing metaphorical framing effects and functions of elemental metaphors in social unrest discourse. The results of the experiment show subtle lexico-grammatical differences in metaphorical framing analysis created a significant impact of how the reader construed the same material situation in alternative ways. In both experiments, we studied the role of metaphor in shaping reasoning about the complex societal problem of social unrest. We found that metaphors influence people’s reasoning by instantiating frame-consistent knowledge structures and inviting structurally consistent inferences. Overall, this research highlights how metaphors guide complex reasoning and underscores the value of integrating experimental methods with metaphor analysis in discourse-analytical studies.

This contribution offers an analysis of the role of the card game metaphor used by President Trump in his fiery exchange with President Zelensky during their meeting in the White House to discuss the possibility of peace talks for the war in Ukraine. It aims to show what metaphor researchers can contribute to the public understanding of this meeting.

Although Canada is reputed for being a multicultural society, Canadians’ opinions vary regarding the extent to which multiculturalism should be promoted. Examining metaphorical language in discourse about multiculturalism may reveal which metaphors are typically used to endorse it and which ones are typically used to express a more skeptical stance. This study analyzed 646 opinion pieces regarding multiculturalism published in Canadian newspapers. Linguistic metaphors were identified and then grouped under themes. The texts were categorized according to the authors’ stance, and instantiations of the metaphor themes were tallied to determine if some occur more frequently in discourse that promotes multiculturalism compared to discourse that expresses reservations. Some metaphor themes were instantiated more often either in texts painting a positive picture of multicultural society (e.g., a multicultural society is a varied, multi-component work of art or craft) or in ones expressing reservations (e.g., multiculturalism is a destabilizing or divisive force). Such contrasts were nonetheless attenuated by the way a single metaphor theme can be used to serve different rhetorical purposes. It also appears that writers are not always aware of the entailments of the metaphors they use, especially if these are conventionalized phrases.