P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 ) 418 – 424
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elvier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of CILC2013.doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.664
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419 S anna Franssila / P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 )418 – 424 Several scholars suggest that the most frequently found source domains for metaphors in political discour em to reprent an antagonism of some kind: war, sport or competition (Deignan 2005, 27; Kövecs 2005, 174-176; Scheithauer 2007, 80, 84). There are, however, few previous studies on business as a metaphorical source domain in political discour, although political process can often be en as commercial actions, such as buying, lling or paying a price. Moreover, there is little rearch on the differences of metaphor u in different genres from the quantitative perspective. Previous rearch has shown that metaphors increa in news discour during critical periods, such as a war or an election (Vertesn and De Landstheer 2008). There are some studies of political metaphor u in the European context from the quantitative point of view, such as Zinken (2004). Within Critical Discour Analysis, corpus linguistics has increasingly become a tool of analysis, as exemplified in Baker, Gabrielatos, Khosravinik, Krzyanowski, McEnery and Wodak (2008) or Salama (2011). Regarding buy and ll metaphors, Handl (2011, 263-265) has suggested that commercial source domains (such as buy and ll) might be less ud becau of the negative value inherent in them. This veiled negativity could be the reason they are ud in political discour.
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The aim of this study is thus to explore with corpus analytic methods if metaphorical lling is characteristic of political news and if there are discour topics that particularly em to enhance ll metaphors. To understand further how business and lling structures political discour and relates to political objectives, I shall also analyze the agents and the targets of ll metaphors: who is "lling" and what is being "sold"? The scope of this study is the American presidential politics in the years 1992-2012. The data are comprid of political news and general news in the United States in written and spoken media.
The rearch questions are as follows:
Do ll metaphors occur in political contexts more than in other contexts?
Are there political agents who ll more than others?
Are there political topics which are sold more often than others?
Is there a president who actions are framed as lling more than others?
With the last three rearch questions, the focus of this study is more on the president (or his administration) than on other political agents and agenda in the United States. In the last question, t
wuhahe comparisons are made between Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who were the incumbent presidents in 1992-2012.
2. Metaphor identification, method of analysis and data
In this study, I will follow a metaphor definition suggested by a group of rearchers in the Metaphor Analysis Project and MetNet (2006)
incongruity or mantic tension has to be found in this discour event (Cameron 2003, 9). Cameron also posits that metaphor may be signaled by an incongruous lexical item, but that metaphorical interpretation can also be created in the discour context or in the larger co-text (ibid.). The incongruity aspect with regard to ll means that no element of financial exchange can be found in the discour event defined as metaphorical.
The data (Table 1) are comprid of four corpora reprenting American news: a news corpus of presidential elections in 1992-2012 (3.2 million words), a corpus of other political news in the 1990s and 2000s (1.6 million words) and lected parts of the spoken and magazines ctions from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (for short: COCA). In total, the word count is ca. 44 million words.
Table 1. The word count in the four subcorpora
Subcorpus Word count
Election news 4 086 172
Political news 2 297 585
Spoken (COCA) 20 677 437
Magazines (COCA) 21 095 533
All 43 838 271
420S anna Franssila / P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 )418 – 424 The publications in the presidential election news corpus and political news corpus are as follows:
American Thinker (online)
Commentary Magazine
Human Events
Mother Jones
National Review
Newsweek
Rolling Stone
Salon (online)
Slate (online)
rickroll
The American Conrvative
The American Prospect
The American Spectator
The Atlantic Monthly
The Harper's Magazine
The Nation
The New Republic
The New York Times editorials
The New Yorker
The Wall Street Journal editorials
The Washington Monthly
The Washington Times
The Weekly Standard
Time
U.S. News and World Report
The data in the election news corpus cover both the primary and the general election period in the pr
esidential elections 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. The data in the political news corpus are lected from news coverage of national politics in December 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009. The years were chon to avoid having election news in this corpus (no national elections in the United States in the years).This same lection of years was applied to COCA: the data are the magazines and spoken ctions of COCA from 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009. The COCA ctions reprent in this study general American news media, which is compared with the political news in the other two corpora.
The procedure of defining a topic as political was not always easy. To be classified as political, a topic had to be related to government, public policies, legislation or publicly contested social issues. The first three were fairly simple to detect, but publicly contested social issues were sometimes borderline cas. Gender issues (such as feminism), race, abortion, religion or education were defined as political topics if they were discusd as public issues with political ramifications.
3. The results
In this ction, I will show how the frequency of ll metaphors varies with regard to the topic, the agent and the target in the discour context. There are 832 ll metaphors in the data (Table 2). The occurrence level is 19 per million words in the entire corpus.
421 S anna Franssila / P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 )418 – 424
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422S anna Franssila / P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 )418 – 424
3.1. Sell metaphors in a political context
There are two types of data in this study: political news and general news. It ems that ll metaphors are applied more when the discour topic is political (Table 3). In the election news and political news corpora, there are naturally very few other topics: 97% of occurrences in the election news and 96% of political news are with a political discour topic. The spoken and magazines data from the COCA reprented general news in this study, and there are less ll metaphors with a political topic in the magazines, 56%. However, a high percentage of ll metaphors in the spoken COCA data concern political issues (95%). The spoken COCA results will be discusd in Sections 3.2 and 4. In total, there are 762 ll metaphors with a political discour topic and 70 with a non-political discour topic. The other discour contexts in which ll metaphors were found were various, such as media, criminal procedures, entertainment, family, education or religion.
Table 3. The percentage of ll metaphors with a political topic
Subcorpus % N
Election news 97 321
Political news 96 101
Spoken (COCA) 95 290
Magazines (COCA) 56 50
3.2.Who is lling?
It is not surprising that in the election news presidential candidates are the agents of lling in 99% of the cas (N=321). In the political news, 49% of ll metaphors concern presidents (N=52). The spoken COCA ction ems to have a considerable portion of national, presidential news, since 71% of ll metaphors concern a President (N=216). In contrast, in COCA magazines, a president or his administration is the context of ll metaphors in only 16% of the cas (N=14). In total, a president, his administration or a presidential candidate is the agent of metaphorical lling in 72% of occurrences (N=603). The other agents of ll metaphors were various, such as politicians, the Congress or media.
Here is an example of President Clinton lling his economic plan:mobile phone japane
manager什么意思5. BILL CLINTON: And let me say this. We need you to hold our feet to the fire. No rai in taxes unl
ess we cut spending.
ROBERTS: Bill Clinton, lling his economic plan and sounding all the right notes, but there's something off-key.
Sen. PETE DOMENICI, (R), New Mexico: This is not a deficit-eduction [sic] package by cutting spending, this is a dramatic and huge
tax increa. (Nightline 1993)
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3.3. Which president is lling?
With regard to the three presidents as agents of lling, only three corpora were ud as data for this analysis (political news, spoken COCA and magazines COCA). There are 284 ll metaphors related to presidents in the data. It is worth noting that concerning the administrations of Clinton and George W. Bush, the data are comprid of two years of each administration (1993 and 1997 for Clinton, 2001 and 2005 for Bush), but there are only one year of data of the Obama administration (2009).
There were no significant differences between the three presidents: all presidents "ll" their agenda.
In the 1993 data, there were more ll metaphors ud of President Clinton than of the two other presidents in any year. In 1997, though, there were very few ll metaphors related to Clinton. It also ems that every president lls
legislation: the major domestic or foreign agenda of his administration. In the data, Clinton and Obama sold economic recovery and health care reforms, Bush the Iraq War and a Social Security reform.
Here is an example of President Obama lling his health care reform:
6.If health care reform pass, that might be nice. But for tho voters who won't get coverage becau of it, the direct benefit will be hard
すきto grasp. That's why the White Hou and Democratic strategists are gearing up for a concerted effort to ll the benefits of health
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S anna Franssila / P rocedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 95 ( 2013 ) 418 – 424
care reform after it pass . This will include arguments for what's in the bill and the argument that improvements will be made
between the bill's passage and implementation in 2014. (Dickerson 2009)
3.4. What does a president ll?
In this analysis, only the same three corpora as in Section 3.3. are ud as data. The question is: are there any
differences in the issues that are sold by presidents? The topics addresd with ll metaphors were classified as follows: economy, health care, foreign policy, Social Security, taxes, multiple policies or agenda in general and polls or campaigning. In addition, there was a class "other". There are no great differences in the issues sold by the presidents. Economy (24%), health care (17%) and foreign policy (16%) are the political issues most often addresd with ll metaphors (Table 4).
Table 4. The target of the ll metaphors
Here is a typical example of the Bush White Hou lling the Iraq war:
good feeling
7. Becau what matters is not what's on television but the ghostly afterimage that lingers in our minds and clouds our vision after we turn off
the White Hou will no longer feel compelled to ll a projected war to the
American people but can merely pitch it to Jerry Bruckheimer, who new ries will show us why we need to spread our influence-preferably by force, since diplomacy is less apt to translate into compelling TV-throughout the Middle East. (Pro 2004)
4. Conclusion
There are three major results in this study: first, ll metaphors em to occur most often in political contexts; cond, they are especially frequent in election news; and third, they are very often ud in the context of presidential politics in the United States. In the elections, the competition element in elections and the conceptualization of voters as consumers may enhance the u of ll metaphors. The constitutional powers of the president in the United States are great. Thus, his position as a communicator of his agenda can been en as lling . There are, however, two interesting minor results. There ems to be very few differences between the three presidents from two different parties: all presidents "ll" or their agenda is a "tough ll". Moreover, there are no political issues w
hich would be framed as lling more often than others, except tho issues that are dominant in the president's agenda, such as health care for president Obama, for instance.ponds
There are some rervations to the results. First, the structure of the spoken COCA corpus ems to be somewhat biad: the presidential politics as a news topic is very dominant in this part of the COCA . Second, there is always some ambivalence in the metaphor identification. Third, it was not always very clear if a news topic was political or not. Finally, the lection of years 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009 may have led to some randomness with regard to news topics. The lection of the month December for data in the political news corpus may also affect the results in a similar way.
What is sold ? % N Economy 24 68 Health care 17 48 Foreign policy 16 45 Social Security 10 27 Taxes
8 24 Agenda, multiple policies 7 20 Polls, campaign 7 21 Other 11 31 All
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