Novel metaphor in polarising discourse

Abstract

Since the advent of the cognitive linguistics in the 1980s, the study of metaphor has tended to be focused on metaphor as thought (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003). Aspects regarding the metaphorical use of language, i.e., novel or active metaphorical utterances, are discarded as less interesting since these are often considered to be derivative expressions, the “surface manifestation of conceptual metaphor” (Lakoff, 1993, p. 224). This dismissal has proven problematic for the study of metaphor in political discourse. Coupled with a socio-cognitive approach to ideology, it has led authors to claim that novel metaphorical concepts, and the active metaphorical utterances motivated by them, are, at best, only minimally ideological (Goatly, 2007, p. 29). Elsewhere, however, it has been recognized that a cognitive approach to metaphor is insufficient for the analysis of how metaphor is used in political discourse, and that it must be complemented by a pragmatic one (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 11; Musolff, 2012, p. 302). This thesis applies a pragmatic theory for the identification and interpretation of novel metaphorical utterances (Romero, 1990-1, Soria, 1992; Romero & Soria, 1997-8, 1998, 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2021a, 2021b, forthcoming) and applies it to a corpus of polarising discourse. More precisely, it investigates the metaphorical use of language by potentially populist and non-populist speakers in the eighth European Parliament (2014-2019) and during the presidential elections in the United States, 2016. It is an example of research which could be classified as part of the new field of corpus pragmatics (Romero-Trillo, 2008, 2013). The general research objectives, and corresponding results, were as follows: 1. To apply a pragmatic theory of metaphor to political discourse In order to apply a pragmatic theory of metaphor to large and complex corpora, I had to develop method which combined vertical and horizontal reading (Rühlemann and Aijmer, 2015). This allowed me to extract metaphorical utterances from their wider discursive context for quantitative analysis while retaining relevant information from their wider discursive context for qualitative analysis. It was achieved through manual tagging and automatic extraction of tagged material into more refined sub-corpora. The method results in “a representative volume of data, sieved through pragmatics theories” (Romero-Trillo, 2013, p. 1). 2. To investigate the use of active metaphorical utterances by potential populists Using a holistic-grading method (Hawkins & Silva, 2019), I graded each speaker for populist framing in their discourse. I then compare how different populist and non-populist speakers communicate their political ideologies using metaphorical utterances. The findings indicate that populists use metaphorical utterances to communicate their populist frames, by attributing illiberal metaphorical thoughts to the “elite” outgroup, and then negating or disassociating themselves from these metaphorical thoughts. Thus, metaphor is an effective tool for attempting affective political polarisation, i.e. increasing the distance between followers of different political/ideological positions (Tucker et al., 2018, p. 8). 3. To investigate the use of active metaphorical utterances to communicate ideology Using Michael Freeden’s approach to ideology as the communication of conceptualisations of essentially contested political concepts (Freeden, 1996, 1998, 2006, 2013, 2017), the framework developed in this thesis is precise in its analysis of how political ideology is communicated through active metaphorical utterances. The identification and interpretation of active metaphorical utterances involve the construction of ad hoc metaphorical concepts, which contribute to what is said by a speaker, a metaphorical what is said (Romero & Soria, 2007). In political discourse, speakers can communicate their conceptualisations of political concepts via these metaphorical ad hoc conceptualisations. Therefore, in the case of polarising discourse, metaphor is also a useful tool in fomenting ideological political polarisation, i.e. increasing the distance between different political/ideological positions (Tucker et al., 2018, p. 8). In conclusion, this research uses a pragmatic theory of metaphor identification and interpretation (Romero, 1990-1, Soria, 1992; Romero & Soria, 1997-8, 1998, 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2021a, 2021b, forthcoming), in combination with theories of political ideology (Freeden, 1996, 1998, 2006, 2013, 2017), and populist framing (Hawkins & Silva, 2019; Aslanidis, 2016; Benford & Snow, 2000), in order to develop a framework for the pragmatic analysis of active metaphorical utterances in political discourse. This framework is tested on corpora of political speeches, with a particular emphasis on analysing the polarising discourse of populists. The findings indicate ways in which novel metaphorical concepts and active metaphorical utterances are used for the communication of political ideologies in polarising discourse.