Abstract :
[en] Since the seminal work of Lakoff & Johnson (1980) and the development of Cognitive Linguistics, it has become clear that metaphor is a central component of human cognition and communication. While metaphors can be studied for their own sake from a linguistic perspective as a process of meaning extension or as a rhetorical device used in argumentation, metaphor studies have broadened their scope and touched upon many other scientific disciplines among the cognitive and social sciences. Among these disciplines, politics remains one prominent area where to find metaphors, as has been highlighted by many scholars (see among others Carver & Pikalo, 2008; Charteris-Black, 2011, 2013; Lakoff, 2002; Musolff, 2004, 2016). This can be explained by two main factors. On the one hand, most of our political concepts are metaphorical in nature (Lakoff, 2002, 2004). This means that our understanding of complex and abstract political concepts and processes relies on conceptual metaphors that ‘provide ways of simplifying complexities and making abstractions accessible’ (Semino, 2008:90). On the other hand, metaphors are central to the domain of politics because they have the potential to frame the debate (Lakoff, 2004) and indirectly convey hidden ideologies (Goatly, 2007). Using a particular metaphor to depict a given reality will activate a particular frame and highlight some aspects of this reality while hiding others. Through framing, ‘metaphor helps construct particular aspects of reality and reproduce (or subvert) dominant schemas’ (Koller, 2009:121). This framing function of metaphors suggests that they influence or even determine the representations of a given reality in the receiver’s mind.
In this talk I will discuss a series of studies that have been conducted as part of an interdisciplinary project on the evolution of discourses about Belgian federalism. These studies consist of semiotic analyses of metaphor use in various types of political corpora, including citizen discourse, institutional discourse and media discourse about Belgian federalism (see for instance Heyvaert, 2019; Perrez & Reuchamps, 2015a). I will more specifically question the concept of political discourse (see Randour et al., 2020) and discuss the notion of variation in political metaphor use. By looking at variation, we try to understand (i) why particular metaphors emerge in particular political contexts, (ii) which type of metaphors are produced by which of type political actors and (iii) how particular metaphors evolve in one discourse community. The results of these different studies will show how taking variation into account opens up new perspectives for the study of metaphors in political discourse.
References
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