Title: "Now is the time to root out evil" : the role of natural world metaphors in the construction of the "Us" and "Them" dichotomy
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2019, vol. 45, iss. 1, pp. [57]-74
Extent
[57]-74
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2019-1-4
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/140995
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The paper focuses on metaphorical construction of the "Us" and "Them" groups in the discourse of U.S. President George W. Bush in the period ranging from 9/11 to May 2003. Three metaphorical motifs drawn from the source domain of natural world that contributed to the construction of the dichotomous representation are analysed: metaphors of "hunt", "plant" and "growth". The aim of the paper is to explore social and political impact of metaphors and their function in the process of creating the dichotomy. The theoretical framework that is adopted in the process of analysis draws on Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) proposed by Charteris-Black (2004a, 2005, 2007, 2014). This approach to metaphor analysis focuses on the interpretation of metaphors in their social context and on the exploration of ideology in texts. The findings from the analysis imply that "natural world" metaphors were employed as discursive devices that effectively conveyed arguments for the involvement of the USA in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
References
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[40] Oddo, John (2011) War legitimation discourse: Representing "us" and "them" in four US presidential addresses. Discourse and Society 22(3), 287–314. DOI 10.1177/0957926510395442 |
[41] Perrez, Julien and Min Reuchamps (2015) Special issue on the political impact of metaphors. Metaphor and the Social World, 5(2), 165–176. DOI 10.1075/msw.5.2 |
[42] Reisigl, Martin (2006) Rhetorical tropes in political discourse. In: Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition. Boston: Elsevier Publishing, 596–603.
[43] Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.
[44] Ritchie, David L. (2013) Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[45] Sandikcioglu, Esra (2000) More metaphorical warfare in the Gulf: Orientalist frames in news coverage. In: Antonio Barcelona (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 299–320.
[46] Santa Ana, Otto (1999) "Like an animal I was treated": Anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse. Discourse and Society 10(2), 191–224. DOI 10.1177/0957926599010002004 |
[47] Semino, Elena (2008) Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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[51] White, Michael (2003) Metaphor and economics: The case of growth. English for Specific Purposes 22(2), 131–151. DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(02)00006-6 |
[52] Wilson, John (1990) Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
[53] Zhang, Juyan (2007) Beyond anti-terrorism: Metaphors as message strategy of post September-11 U.S. public diplomacy. Public Relations Review 33(1), 31–39. DOI 10.1016/j.pubrev.2006.11.006 |
[2] Bhatia, Aditi (2009) The discourses of terrorism. Journal of Pragmatics 41(2), 279–289. DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.05.016 |
[3] Bhatia, Aditi (2015) Discursive Illusions in Public Discourse: Theory and Practice. Oxon: Routledge.
[4] Boyd, Michael S. (2013) Reframing the American Dream: Conceptual metaphor and personal pronouns in the 2008 US presidential debates. In: Okulska Urszula, Piotr Cap (eds.) Analyzing Genres in Political Communication. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 297–319.
[5] Cameron, Lynne (2010) Responding to the risk of terrorism: The contribution of metaphor. D.E.L.T.A. 26 (special issue), 587–614. DOI 10.1590/S0102-44502010000300010 |
[6] Cameron, Lynne (2012) Comparing responses to violence and uncertainty in Brazil and the UK: A collaborative project. ANTARES 4(7), 8–28.
[7] Cap, Piotr (2002) Explorations in Political Discourse: Methodological and Critical Perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
[8] Cap, Piotr (2014) Applying cognitive pragmatics to critical discourse studies: A proximization analysis of three public space discourses. Journal of Pragmatics 70, 16–30. DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.05.008 |
[9] Cap, Piotr (2016) The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[10] Cap, Piotr (2017) Studying ideological worldviews in political discourse space: Critical-cognitive advances in the analysis of conflict and coercion. Journal of Pragmatics 108, 17–27. DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2016.11.008 |
[11] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004a) Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[12] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004b) Why an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm: A corpus- based comparative study of metaphor in British and American political discourse. In: Advances in corpus linguistics: Papers from the 23rd International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 23). New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 133–150.
[13] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2005) Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[14] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2007) The Communication of Leadership: The Design of Leadership Style. Oxon: Routledge.
[15] Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2014) Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[16] Chilton, Paul (1996) Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
[17] Chilton, Paul (2004) Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
[18] Chilton, Paul and George Lakoff (1995) Foreign policy by metaphor. In: Schäffner, Christina and Anita L. Wenden (eds.) Language and Peace. Aldershot: Ashgate, 37–60.
[19] Chovanec, Jan (2010) Legitimation through differentiation. In: Okulska, Urszula and Piotr Cap (eds.) Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 61–81.
[20] Chow, Mei Yung Vanliza (2014) The movements of the economy: Conceptualizing the economy via bodily movement metaphors. Metaphor and the Social World (4)1, 3–26. DOI 10.1075/msw.4.1.01cho |
[21] Dunmire, Patricia L. (2007) "Emerging threats" and "coming dangers": Claiming the future for preventive war. In: Hodges, Adam and Chad Nilep (eds.) Discourse, War and Terrorism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 19–43.
[22] El-Hussari, Ibrahim A. (2010) President Bush's address to the nation on U.S. policy in Iraq: A critical discourse analysis approach. In: Okulska, Urszula and Piotr Cap (eds.) Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 99–118.
[23] Ferrari, Federica (2007) Metaphor at work in the analysis of political discourse: Investigating a "preventive war" persuasion strategy. Discourse and Society 18(5), 603–625. DOI 10.1177/0957926507079737 |
[24] Forchtner, Bernard (2013) Legitimizing the Iraq War through the genre of political speeches: Rhetorics of judge-penitence in the narrative reconstruction of Denmark's cooperation with Nazism. In: Cap, Piotr and Urszula Okulska (eds.) Analyzing Genres in Political Communication. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 239–265.
[25] Goatly, Andrew (2007) Washing the Brain – Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
[26] Hodges, Adam (2011) The "War on Terror" Narrative: Discourse and Intertextuality in the Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.
[27] Kövecses, Zoltán (2004) Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[28] Kövecses, Zoltán (2010) Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (2nd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[29] Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago.
[30] Lazar, Annita and Michelle M. Lazar (2007) Enforcing justice, justifying force. America's justification of violence in the new world order. In: Hodges, Adam and Chad Nilep (eds.) Discourse, War and Terrorism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 45–65.
[31] Leudar, Ivan, Victoria Marsland and Jiří Nekvapil (2004) On membership categorization: "Us", "them" and "doing violence" in political discourse. Discourse and Society 15(2–3), 243–266. DOI 10.1177/0957926504041019 |
[32] Musolff, Andreas (1995) Promising to end a war = language of peace? The rhetoric of allied news management in the Gulf War 1991. In: Schäffner, Christina and Anita L. Wenden (eds.) Language and Peace. Aldershot: Ashgate, 93–110.
[33] Musolff, Andreas (2004) Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[34] Musolff, Andreas (2010) Political metaphor and bodies politic. In: Okulska, Urszula and Piotr Cap (eds.) Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 23–41.
[35] Musolff, Andreas (2014) Metaphorical parasites and "parasitic" metaphors: Semantic exchanges between political and scientific vocabularies. Journal of Language and Politics 13(2), 218–233. DOI 10.1075/jlp.13.2.02mus |
[36] Musolff, Andreas (2015) Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1), 41–56. DOI 10.1075/jlac.3.1.02mus |
[37] Musolff, Andreas (2016) Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
[38] Musolff, Andreas (2017) Metaphor and persuasion in politics. In: Semino, Elena and Zsófia Demjén (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language. Oxon: Routledge, 309–322.
[39] O'Brien, Gerald V. (2003) Indigestible food, conquering hordes, and waste materials: Metaphors of immigrants and early immigration restriction in the United States. Metaphor and Symbol 18(1), 33–47. DOI 10.1207/S15327868MS1801_3 |
[40] Oddo, John (2011) War legitimation discourse: Representing "us" and "them" in four US presidential addresses. Discourse and Society 22(3), 287–314. DOI 10.1177/0957926510395442 |
[41] Perrez, Julien and Min Reuchamps (2015) Special issue on the political impact of metaphors. Metaphor and the Social World, 5(2), 165–176. DOI 10.1075/msw.5.2 |
[42] Reisigl, Martin (2006) Rhetorical tropes in political discourse. In: Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition. Boston: Elsevier Publishing, 596–603.
[43] Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.
[44] Ritchie, David L. (2013) Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[45] Sandikcioglu, Esra (2000) More metaphorical warfare in the Gulf: Orientalist frames in news coverage. In: Antonio Barcelona (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 299–320.
[46] Santa Ana, Otto (1999) "Like an animal I was treated": Anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse. Discourse and Society 10(2), 191–224. DOI 10.1177/0957926599010002004 |
[47] Semino, Elena (2008) Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[48] Silberstein, Sandra (2002) War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. London: Routledge.
[49] Skinner, Daniel and Rosa Squillacote (2010) New bodies: Beyond illness, dirt, vermin, and other metaphors of terror. In: Okulska, Urszula and Piotr Cap (eds.) Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 43–60.
[50] Taylor, John R. (2002) Category extension by metonymy and metaphor. In: Dirven, René and Ralf Pörings (eds.) Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 323–347.
[51] White, Michael (2003) Metaphor and economics: The case of growth. English for Specific Purposes 22(2), 131–151. DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(02)00006-6 |
[52] Wilson, John (1990) Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
[53] Zhang, Juyan (2007) Beyond anti-terrorism: Metaphors as message strategy of post September-11 U.S. public diplomacy. Public Relations Review 33(1), 31–39. DOI 10.1016/j.pubrev.2006.11.006 |