Full Description
Political metaphors and related figurative discourse tools are characterised by their variability and contentiousness. Using them, discourse participants try to gain competitive advantage over others by offering their audiences new meaning nuances, challenging each other and announcing political initiatives. It is here that metaphor as a means to change meanings - and thus, to change social and political reality - comes into its own.
Political Metaphor Analysis provides an innovative approach to the study of figurative language use in political discourse by presenting empirical analyses based on a large corpus of political metaphors and metonymies, linking these analyses to theoretical positions and assessing their limitations and perspectives for further exploration. The 'classic' model of conceptual metaphor analysis, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and expanded and amended over the past thirty-five years, is critically examined with regard to new findings about the variation, historicity, pragmatic exploitation, comprehension and interpretation of metaphors.
As a central new analytical category, the notion of "metaphor scenario" is proposed and tested against various sub-sets of data. It allows to link hypothesised conceptual metaphors to narrative, argumentative and evaluative patterns in actual discourse and understanding processes, so that their cognitive significance can be more reliably gauged and theoretically modelled.
Contents
Acknowledgements
1.Introduction
2. Political conflict as war
2.1. Metaphors and concepts
2.2. Inferences from metaphors in relation to conceptual domains
2.3. Conceptual domains and metaphor corpora
2.4. Discursive frames in metaphor corpora
2.5. Summary
2. Metaphors, cognitive models and scenarios
3.1. Political metaphor and FAMILY models
3.2. Two metaphor models - one domain?
3.3. Family scenarios
3.4. Further scenario functions
3.5. Summary
4. The life and gimes of a metaphor scenario: Britain at the heart of Europe
4.1. Memories of a metaphor
4.2. The emergence of a metaphor scenario
4.3. Scenario development
4.4. Scenarios and blends
4.5. Summary
5. The belly and the body politic
5.1. Memories of a fable
5.2. The body politic tradition
5.3. Body politic, corps politique, politischer Korper: Traces of national discourse tradition in metaphor usage.
5.4. Historical explanations for the development of metaphor scenario
5.5. Summary
6. Parasites, scrounging, and the question of deliberate metaphor
6.1. Parasites, metaphor and etymology
6.2. Metaphorizations 'back and forth'
6.3. Metaphor and racism
6.4. Immigrants as 'parasites'
6.5. Metaphors as deliberately chosen scenario elements
6.6 Summary
7. Nations as persons: collective identity-construction
7.1. Introduction: speaking for a nation
7.2. From 'extended hands' to a 'new Nakba' in eight speeches
7.3. Nations as persons with social identities
7.4. Two case summaries
7.5. Summary
8. Understanding political metaphor
8.1. The unpredictability of metaphor as understanding
8.2. Interpretations of the NATION AS BODY metaphor
8.3. Interpretations of the NATIONS AS PERSON metaphor
8.4 Summary
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
Notes
Bibliography
Index
