Metaphor, economy and persuasion : A socio-cognitive approach to metaphor in times of elections

ABSTRACT The study presented in this dissertation contributes to the research field of Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Kovecses 2008, 2010; among many others) from a socio-cognitive, discourse-analysis and corpus-based approach. This combination of approaches is in line with recent claims on the changing and adapting nature of metaphor as part of a changing society (Bernardez 2008; Romano 2013; Romano & Porto 2016; Soares da Silva 2016), as it aims at observing its pervasiveness in a socioculturally and politically framed background. It also pursues to offer further insight into the use of this device in the economic discourse found in the media that can be accessed by all human beings. In other words, it contributes to studies on Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Metaphor Analysis as well (Fairclough 1995; Charteris-Black 2004; Hart 2008, 2010; Wodak & Meyer 2009; Musolff 2004, 2016; Soares et al. 2017), since it analyses not only the typology of metaphors used in discourse, but also their potential effect on the public through persuasive strategies. Finally, it also consists in a contrastive study, since it compares two different languages (English and Spanish) and three different ideological sides. The data under analysis consists of economic reports published by three Spanish and three English newspapers. Moreover, each newspaper belongs to one ideological side of the political sphere of each country, more specifically: right-wing, left-wing and centre. By means of computational tools, economic reports are retrieved from the following sources: ABC, El Pais and Publico in Spanish, and The Guardian, The Independent and The Telegraph, in English. All of them were retrieved during a similar time frame, that of the pre-electoral week to the general elections of each country in 2015, hence the aforementioned socio-political frame. The final corpus under study can be sub-divided into (1) two different linguistic sub corpora on the one hand, and (2) three different ideological ones, on the other. The study follows a corpus-based, target-oriented approach, and it uses #Lancsbox corpus tool to identify metaphorical expressions taking a set of targets related to the economy as the searching node. Additionally, two different identification methods are applied: Stefanowistch’s Metaphorical Pattern Analysis (2006), first, and Steen’s et al.’s MIPVU (2010), second. This combination of methods supposes an innovative approach to metaphor in discourse, since there is no record of them being combined, yet the aim is to acquire the broadest, most comprehensive identification of metaphors in the corpus. The central analysis focuses in four classifying scales, including (1) metaphorical cultural schemas, (2) metaphor novelty and conventionality, (3) metaphor internationality and domesticity and (4) persuasion in metaphor, which is observed through two different strategies: polarity and euphemism and dysphemism. The different levels of analysis aim at analysing the retrieved and identified metaphors in the most detailed, informing and combined form. The results obtained from the analysis show that metaphor is a pervasive element of economic discourse in the general press of both countries under study and that it is used as a pervasive tool in a highly ideologically loaded frame as it is the national elections. More specifically, findings reveal that metaphor frequency varies across languages, showing the English corpus a significantly larger number of metaphorical expressions than Spanish. Moreover, the different levels of analysis offer interesting insights into the study of cultural schemas (Sharifian 2015), as well as the levels of metaphor conventionality and metaphor novelty or creativity in the discourse of the economy, and the levels of metaphor internationality or domesticity. However, the most revealing findings concern the last level of analysis observing persuasion, as it shows that metaphor is in fact used as a powerful persuasive tool in the discourse of the economy in both languages and in all three ideologies, yet significant differences are found at all levels. Therefore, this serves to shed some light and advocate for further attention on this element of discourse and society. Finally, the design of the study, combining different tools and procedures proves to be reliable and applicable to further studies on this field.