engleski

Metaphor in political discourse

Cognitive linguistics has increasingly focused on the use of metaphors in political discourse in recent years. According to G. Lakoff (2008) our future depends critically on which metaphorical conceptions predominate since these conceptions influence our thoughts, actions and worldviews. Recognising the power of metaphors, an aim of this research is to find a conceptual pattern in which the spatial/political development of the EU is taken in. The following reasearch questions are addressed: (1) What conceptual metaphors are used in political discourse related to the political integration of the EU and accession of Croatia to the European Union and what is their relative frequency? (2) How best may the conceptual metaphors be categorized? (3) Are there any strategy (semantic engineering) in the choice of mental images in political discourse? Cognitive theory is outlined (Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Kövecses (2002), Goatley (1997) and is applied to the basic terms of political discourse as found in the 'Euro-speak' and Croatian political debate. This paper provides a quantitative overview of the most frequent metaphor clusters used in a selected corpus. The data is taken from discourses in a range of national and international media and relevant databases such as Eurovoc (http://www.hidra.hr/pojmovnik_eurovoc), Hrvatska jezična riznica (http://riznica.ihjj.hr/), EUROMETA, etc. It consists of 7000 words from 65 articles, and 1150 conceptual metaphors. The results of the analysis show that a small set of 'conceptual frames' underlies the principal political metaphors, e.g. Europa=person/body, Europa=process/movement, Europa = house/home/family, Europa=space, etc. The body was the predominant metaphor through which the European state was understood (Europe=person/body parts> e.g. Political and economic Europe do not live in separate rooms). Synthesis of our results shows the potentialities of metaphor as a privileged cognitive tool for abstracting and constructing discourse strategies. Concepts in cognitive linguistics offer a framework for the identification and analysis of linguistic strategies for manipulation in political discourse.

political discourse; metaphors

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