Vol 28, No 1 (2024): Metaphor across Languages, Cultures and Discourses

This special issue explores metaphor across languages, cultures, and discourses, bringing together papers that reflect the diversity and scope of this research area. The aim is to foster discussion and exchange ideas concerning the role of metaphor in conceptualization, persuasion, and the construction of meaning. In this introductory article, we focus on the two main themes: (1) the universality of metaphor versus cultural variations in its usage; (2) the communicative function of metaphor in discourse. Within these main themes, we discuss case studies that highlight specific domains, including universal and cross-cultural variation in metaphor usage, discursive and communicative aspects of metaphor, and multimodal metaphor. In this article, we provide a summary of the contributions of our authors that represent up-to-date research on issues involving metaphor from a wide scope of perspectives and manage to open up a methodological discussion within metaphor studies. Finally, we summarize the main results and suggest a brief avenue for further research.

Cognitive linguistic investigations into the metaphorical conceptualization of anger suggest that languages are remarkably similar on a schematic level, with intensity and control as two, possibly universal dimensions underlying the metaphorical conceptualization of anger. These dimensions, however, can manifest themselves in language-specific metaphors. Yet arriving at a definitive answer to the question of universality versus variation is hindered by (a) a relatively limited number of systematic, contrastive analyses; and (b) varied methodologies, with some papers adopting a type-based account, while others following a token-based analysis. We take up both challenges in the present paper with the aim of offering a more definitive answer to the question of the universality and variation of anger metaphors. We investigate the anger metaphors of a type-based analysis, focusing on dictionary data of anger-related idioms, and a token-based analysis, focusing on data collected from online corpora, in three languages: (American) English (2,000 random instances of the lemma anger from the Corpus of Contemporary American English), Hungarian (1,000 instances of the lemma düh from the Hungarian National Corpus) and Russian (1,000 instances of the lemma gnev from the Russian National Corpus). The lexical data were analyzed with the well-established Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP). Our results indicate that there is a great deal of congruence relative to shared metaphors in both approaches, but this derives from specific-level metaphors in the lexical approach, whereas it derives from more schematic, generic-level metaphors in the corpus-based approach. The study shows that the full picture of the metaphorical conceptualization of a complex emotion concept such as anger can only emerge with the combination of the type- and token-based approach.

The present study examines how the language of political symbolism operates within the framework of identity construction. It focusses on the themes of sovereignty during the 2022 French presidency of the European Union and the national presidential election campaign. On the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, it suggests that, apart from purely linguistic features, extra-linguistic factors are also essential in order to convey a global view of symbolic rhetoric. The analysis is conducted according to an overall 6-tier model of figurative origins involving the parameters of personal background, political context, cultural history, reference, conceptual metaphor and linguistic metaphor. By applying the parameters of the model, it is proposed that the core of political argumentation in the corpus analysis is based on national symbols and the conceptual mapping they embody. The basic hypothesis of the model assumes that a politician attempts to portray the symbolisation of unity in accordance with his or her political background and personal biography. A political narrative is thereby created within the current political context using predominant symbols in cultural history. An over-riding factor is the role of referential points which may determine divergence in conceptual mapping. These features then lead to the construction of conceptual metaphors which can take on a particularly hyperbolic structure in the ensuing linguistic metaphors. The implications of the study highlight the important role of symbolism in political debate, its interaction with conceptual metaphor, the relevance of extra-linguistic factors portrayed by the 6-tier model, the link between cultural history and hyperbolic linguistic structures and political divergence in similar symbols.

As the geopolitical situation changes, it is necessary to discuss how politics is structured by metaphor in the context of recent social phenomena, such as the European migrant crisis. This paper analyses the conceptual metaphors politics as war, politics as a game, politics as a trade, and politics as a theater in British and Bosnian-Herzegovinian newspapers. The goal of this study is to establish to what extent and in which situations journalists resort to figurative language to persuade the recipients to view politics in a desired way. The paper aims to reflect on the use of deliberate metaphor as a perspective-changing device by journalists striving to achieve their rhetorical goals and influence recipients’ perception of the political situation. The corpus comprises 174 British and 307 Bosnian-Herzegovinian articles collected from August 2015 to March 2016 (247,912 words). Relying on Steen et al.’s (2010) model of metaphor analysis, the paper investigates the types of metaphor in the corpus, the deliberate use of politics metaphors and their communicative function in migration discourse - discussing both the rhetorical goals of journalists and the rhetorical effects on recipients. It has been established that the analyzed set of metaphors has a divertive and persuasive function in migration discourse. Similar studies are encouraged to shed light on how deliberate metaphors related to politics may have diverging communicative functions in other types of discourse.

This article focuses on various trends and linguistic approaches to metaphor studies in Russia (2019-2023). The latter deal with different types of metaphors, process of metaphor formation and the use of metaphors in discourse. The basic methods of investigation include comparative, inductive, generalization and descriptive approaches. The article summarises new results in modern studies of metaphor on data from Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages. In the paper, we show the role of metaphor both as a trope and a cognitive operation in monolingual and comparative studies. Alongside these traditional areas, we discuss the results of metaphor studies in multimodal texts and corpora. Multimodal texts are frequently constructed on the intersection of mental, semiotic and semantic fields. Corpora, which have proved to be a convenient source of recent and reliable data, present another modern sphere of investigation of metaphoric potential in Russian studies. We discuss such important areas of metaphor studies as the interdisciplinary approach, pluralism of methods, critical attitudes to universalism, emphasis on cultural features of communication and discourse, and the blending of rhetorical and cognitive methods.

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